Great things are done when men and mountains meet. - (William Blake)
This is the story of those doughty sappers of Khunjerab Force who were flown to China in 1966 to construct the famed Karakoram Highway (KKH) in close coordination with the Chinese road builders. These intrepid sappers were the first individuals from Pakistan who actually commenced what one day would be known as China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). This epic saga of courage, grit and super human will power had lain obscured except in the regimental diaries, Corps of Engineers’ history and few individual accounts. It’s time the lid was lifted from this heartwarming account that rivals in many forms any one of the twelve labours of Heracles in Greek mythology.
The process of Sino-Pakistan cooperation had begun in earnest after the 1965 war, when a US-wary Pakistan started looking east to address its strategic vulnerability of overreliance on Western economic and military aid. Since the Chinese were also seeking to break their international isolation, the fortuitous concatenation of these interests resulted in a proposal to construct a “Friendship Highway '' that linked both countries. The proposal was discussed between the two countries at diplomatic level.
General N.A.M Raza, Pakistan’s Ambassador to China found Prime Minister Chou-En-Lai responding with alacrity to the proposal of entering into an agreement for construction of “Friendship Highway '' through the mighty Karakorams. To achieve the above end a preliminary meeting of the technical delegates of the two countries was held at Kashgar during January 1966. Pakistani delegation was led by Engineer in Chief Major General Faruqi and consisted of Lieutenant Colonel T.H Bashir, Major M.Z Kidwai, S.Q Hassan from Survey of Pakistan, Political Agent Gilgit Mr Ijlal Hussain, and Mr Sadaqat Hashmi & Salahudin from Ministry of Communications.
After five days’ discussion the two sides agreed that a road linking both countries would be constructed through the Khunjerab Pass, rejecting the old Silk Route due to technical reasons. It was also decided that the road would be made in two years’ time for which the Chinese government would provide logistical support to Pakistani road builders working from Khunjerab Pass towards Pakistan. Owing to a limited window of time available for construction at that height i.e 15 June to 15 September it was agreed that a 1500 member task force from Pakistan would be airlifted from Pakistan to China at Hotien Airport, from which the team would be driven in Chinese vehicles to Khunjerab Pass for road construction.
The team was supposed to start construction by June 1966 to make optimum use of the limited working season of 1966. A joint survey team was to visit Khunjerab Pass during next June to fix the junction point for the road builders of the two countries; Pakistani Survey team was invited to Peking for a joint survey of the road junction and to discuss the additional requirement of construction machinery and equipment required for early completion of the highway. The Survey team with Brigadier Humayun as leader and Majors M.Z Kidwai, Jan Nadir Khan, Jafar Ali, left Rawalpindi by air and reached Kashgar via Dacca, Peking and Urumqi. From Kashgar the Pakistani and Chinese survey teams jointly proceeded to Khunjerab Pass by road. It took the two teams hardly an hour to locate the road junction point on the watershed of Karakoram at 4700 meters above mean sea level. The criteria for location of junction point was the availability of sufficient open and even space for making a reasonably big turning circle around the junction point
The air was thin and climbing even a puny ten meters high knoll was like climbing snow covered peaks. The landscape was white and though the wind blew biting cold the warmth of the two teams made the conditions pleasant. The two leaders jointly drove a spike with sledge hammers at the agreed point as the rest clapped to celebrate the commencement of a project that was to become the eighth wonder of the world. On the way back the team stayed at Peking (Now Beijing) to finalise the details of administrative and logistic support for the Khunjerab force including the move plan from Rawalpindi on around 22nd June 66 to Hotien and then to Yarkand, Kashgar, Tashkurgan and Khunjerab pass. At Kashgar all the stores, equipment, transport as per the agreed lists were to be handed over to Pakistani road builders and then transported to the Khunjerab Top.
In view of the deployment deadlines, the Khunjerab Force was hurriedly assembled at Risalpur from amongst the scattered units of Corps of Engineers, some of which were still in field deployment mode. The advance party of the force comprising 200 men was raised and put under command of Captain (Later Lieutenant General) Javed Nasir who was called by the Military Secretary’s branch and congratulated on being selected for a foreign secondment. Captain Javed Nasir who was newly married broke the glad tidings to his newly wed wife. The enthusiasm of the newlyweds wore thin when eventually told of the location of the foreign assignment at Khunjerab Pass. The men who had been assembled did not know about their assigned area of operation and therefore had no mailing address to be left for their families. The parent unit 101 Road Construction Battalion of the Khunjerab Force had not yet come into being and therefore the force had to send its advanced party of 200 men under command of Captain Javed Nasir.
The force was seen off by Commander Indus Valley Road project Brigadier Humayun with these words, “You are proceeding on a mission to construct a road linking Pakistan with China. Presently there will be no contact with you for sometime. Detailed instructions will follow with the main body. This is the greatest challenge ever thrown to the Corps of Engineers. Since you would be constructing the road in competition with the Chinese engineers the eyes of the entire country would be on you. Acquit yourselves honourably and Godspeed.” The advance party boarded the C 130s and landed at Hotien (KHOTAN). Several funny incidents relieved the somberness of the occasion. Many troops who had boarded C130 had to sit on the floor of the Spartan American origin transport behemoth and were therefore queasy. Captain Javed Nasir had to devise a novel way to make everyone hold a rope together to stay safe while the plane buffeted and swayed in the mountain air.
When the plane landed at a Chinese airfield there were strange sounds of the pavement cracking like the crunching of potato chips under the load of the landing gear and wheels. The Chinese airfield probably did not have a runway designed for the C130 landings. It was obviously an era of Chinese isolation under the Iron Curtain and lack of infrastructural sophistication as today’s leading world power. The aircraft were made to make safe traverses for taxiing and subsequent take offs. The troops alighted from the aircraft much to their relief and boarded the Chinese trucks for a journey to Kashgar through Yarkand.
At Kashgar, they took over the tentage, clothing, vehicles and other stores. After two days’ journey the force reached Kashgar which was a city apparently designed in Mughal style. A big mosque like Lahore’s Badshahi mosque was spotted by troops. The local population told the troops that the mosque was only opened on Sundays. Since it was Friday and the troops wanted to offer prayers a request was made to Chinese who allowed the prayers to be held. A Friday prayer congregation was held nearly after ten years in that mosque.
While getting acclimated at a height of 20 kilometers short of the pass, over ninety percent of the soldiers went down with altitude sickness with two succumbing to their illness. These two men were the first martyrs of the Karakorum Highway project. The Force landed at Khunjerab Top on June 30, 1966 and established a camp. The next morning, there were rumours of apparitions and demons who shrieked and screamed throughout the night apparently at the impudence of the troops who had desecrated their abode of ‘Koh Qaf’.
Captain Javed Nasir also heard the shrieks and screams throughout the night. The next morning he ordered the ground under his tent to be dug. The digging revealed that the place where the camp was established was in fact a frozen riverbed where the freezing and thawing produced dreadful noises as the soil particles of thick layer of moraine rubbed against the stony river bed. With the demon issue thus resolved the force set about its task of track construction.
It was a unique project in the history of Pakistan Army where all ranks donned Chinese uniforms and worked with picks, shovels and other construction equipment. The officers worked like ordinary sappers without wearing any badges of rank in Chinese tradition.
The weather conditions were extremely hard with temperatures dipping to minus 30 degree Celsius even in August after which the thermometers broke! Due to height and low temperatures, the body chemistry changed with blood getting thicker and the hearts having to work harder. Many interesting incidents happened during the first season where the nearest human habitation was seven days of walk away at Sust. One day the Commanding Officer of the Force, Lt Colonel MZ Kidwai, while working with troops collapsed because he felt sudden chest pain and was carried to the regimental medical officer Captain Tarar. The doctor examined the Colonel in a precarious state and in panic injected Coramine fluid directly into his heart. Miraculously, the intervention worked and the Colonel recovered, years later when the Colonel went for a routine examination his physician told him that he had in fact suffered a mild heart attack at Khunjerab and that his body had formed a natural bypass due to his physical resilience and that he owed his life to the incident at Khunjerab.
Despite hardships, only one incident of desertion happened during the project when a soldier absconded towards Pakistan. After walking for two days he turned back towards his camp arriving in a haggard condition. No questions were asked as he quietly picked up his shovel to rejoin the road-building group. The road alignment followed Khunjerab River emanating from Khunjerab Glacier and moving through a gorge with steep gradients.
The road alignment was kept above the high flood level through a painstaking ‘S bend’ construction technique. As the winter approached the Chinese got worried and supplied the force with more equipment asking all the while about the winter relief plans. They had planned to close their camp by end September and to reopen it the next May but the relief of our troops was not in sight due to lack of information at main headquarters about the ground conditions.
Providentially, the debonair Air Chief, Air Marshal Nur Khan who was on a routine helicopter trial mission flew over the area. He got curious upon seeing Pakistani features in Chinese uniforms on land. He immediately landed keeping the helicopter on running rotors due to rarefied air. After a stay of 15 minutes during which he got a short briefing and a cup of tea, he flew back. On his arrival at Rawalpindi, he met the Commander-in-Chief and apprised him of the lack of relief plans for a body of 1500 troops at Khunjrab. A relief plan was subsequently made and the troops were made to march all the way to Passu near Hunza carrying their equipment. The long march from Khunjerab Pass to Passu by a force of 1500 men with their personal belongings on their back, covering a distance of about ninety miles from an altitude of 16000 feet to 8000 feet along the most rugged terrain was a super human undertaking.
When the tired troops reached Passu after an exhausting long march from Khunjerab, they instead of rest and recreation were told to construct an airfield with whatever little equipment was available to them. They even achieved this.
The Force was again sent back to work the next summer. After two years the Force managed to construct a 13 kilometers long and four meters wide track capable of upholding three-ton Lorries at 30 miles per hour, a superhuman undertaking indeed, that too on heights ranging between 13000 to 15000 feet.
The work on the Karakoram Highway was disrupted during 1971 Indo-Pak War after which it restarted in 1972 under the patronage of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The eighth wonder of the world, a 616 kilometers long highway, connecting Thakot to Khunjerab, was finally inaugurated in June 1978 taking a toll of 11 officers, 25 junior commissioned officers, 531 soldiers, and 246 civilian labourers. Khunjerab Force indubitably was the first body of men that commenced a project that one day would metamorphose into China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
A gathering of the members of the Khunjerab Force and the present lot of officers of the unit that was once the famed outfit was held at precisely the same point where the epic struggle against the weather and terrain was waged by the intrepid road builders. A ceremony was held to commemorate the deeds of the pioneers of KKH and a plaque was unveiled in the presence of Lt Colonel (retired) M.Z. Kidwai, the commanding officer of 1966 Khunjerab Force and Lt General (retired) Javed Nasir, the adjutant of the force. As the ceremony was in progress the wizened old eyes of Javed Nasir lit up with excitement as he gazed deep towards north eying some clouds in the far distance. He said ,”Hurry up youngsters as my experience of 1966 tells me that a snow storm is approaching here. You have got only 30 minutes to wrap up.”
The warning of the veteran of Khunjerab Force was heeded and the ceremony closed and after 30 minutes there was a snow storm engulfing the Khunjerab Top in summer i.e 28 May 2001. The Khunjerab Force’s adjutant’s sense of weather forecast proved dead accurate even after 35 years!
This is the story of those doughty sappers of Khunjerab Force who were flown to China in 1966 to construct the famed Karakoram Highway (KKH) in close coordination with the Chinese road builders. These intrepid sappers were the first individuals from Pakistan who actually commenced what one day would be known as China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). This epic saga of courage, grit and super human will power had lain obscured except in the regimental diaries, Corps of Engineers’ history and few individual accounts. It’s time the lid was lifted from this heartwarming account that rivals in many forms any one of the twelve labours of Heracles in Greek mythology.
The process of Sino-Pakistan cooperation had begun in earnest after the 1965 war, when a US-wary Pakistan started looking east to address its strategic vulnerability of overreliance on Western economic and military aid. Since the Chinese were also seeking to break their international isolation, the fortuitous concatenation of these interests resulted in a proposal to construct a “Friendship Highway '' that linked both countries. The proposal was discussed between the two countries at diplomatic level.
General N.A.M Raza, Pakistan’s Ambassador to China found Prime Minister Chou-En-Lai responding with alacrity to the proposal of entering into an agreement for construction of “Friendship Highway '' through the mighty Karakorams. To achieve the above end a preliminary meeting of the technical delegates of the two countries was held at Kashgar during January 1966. Pakistani delegation was led by Engineer in Chief Major General Faruqi and consisted of Lieutenant Colonel T.H Bashir, Major M.Z Kidwai, S.Q Hassan from Survey of Pakistan, Political Agent Gilgit Mr Ijlal Hussain, and Mr Sadaqat Hashmi & Salahudin from Ministry of Communications.
The Survey team with Brigadier Humayun as leader and Majors M.Z Kidwai, Jan Nadir Khan, Jafar Ali, left Rawalpindi by air and reached Kashgar via Dacca, Peking and Urumqi.
After five days’ discussion the two sides agreed that a road linking both countries would be constructed through the Khunjerab Pass, rejecting the old Silk Route due to technical reasons. It was also decided that the road would be made in two years’ time for which the Chinese government would provide logistical support to Pakistani road builders working from Khunjerab Pass towards Pakistan. Owing to a limited window of time available for construction at that height i.e 15 June to 15 September it was agreed that a 1500 member task force from Pakistan would be airlifted from Pakistan to China at Hotien Airport, from which the team would be driven in Chinese vehicles to Khunjerab Pass for road construction.
The team was supposed to start construction by June 1966 to make optimum use of the limited working season of 1966. A joint survey team was to visit Khunjerab Pass during next June to fix the junction point for the road builders of the two countries; Pakistani Survey team was invited to Peking for a joint survey of the road junction and to discuss the additional requirement of construction machinery and equipment required for early completion of the highway. The Survey team with Brigadier Humayun as leader and Majors M.Z Kidwai, Jan Nadir Khan, Jafar Ali, left Rawalpindi by air and reached Kashgar via Dacca, Peking and Urumqi. From Kashgar the Pakistani and Chinese survey teams jointly proceeded to Khunjerab Pass by road. It took the two teams hardly an hour to locate the road junction point on the watershed of Karakoram at 4700 meters above mean sea level. The criteria for location of junction point was the availability of sufficient open and even space for making a reasonably big turning circle around the junction point
The air was thin and climbing even a puny ten meters high knoll was like climbing snow covered peaks. The landscape was white and though the wind blew biting cold the warmth of the two teams made the conditions pleasant. The two leaders jointly drove a spike with sledge hammers at the agreed point as the rest clapped to celebrate the commencement of a project that was to become the eighth wonder of the world. On the way back the team stayed at Peking (Now Beijing) to finalise the details of administrative and logistic support for the Khunjerab force including the move plan from Rawalpindi on around 22nd June 66 to Hotien and then to Yarkand, Kashgar, Tashkurgan and Khunjerab pass. At Kashgar all the stores, equipment, transport as per the agreed lists were to be handed over to Pakistani road builders and then transported to the Khunjerab Top.
In view of the deployment deadlines, the Khunjerab Force was hurriedly assembled at Risalpur from amongst the scattered units of Corps of Engineers, some of which were still in field deployment mode. The advance party of the force comprising 200 men was raised and put under command of Captain (Later Lieutenant General) Javed Nasir who was called by the Military Secretary’s branch and congratulated on being selected for a foreign secondment. Captain Javed Nasir who was newly married broke the glad tidings to his newly wed wife. The enthusiasm of the newlyweds wore thin when eventually told of the location of the foreign assignment at Khunjerab Pass. The men who had been assembled did not know about their assigned area of operation and therefore had no mailing address to be left for their families. The parent unit 101 Road Construction Battalion of the Khunjerab Force had not yet come into being and therefore the force had to send its advanced party of 200 men under command of Captain Javed Nasir.
In view of the deployment deadlines, the Khunjerab Force was hurriedly assembled at Risalpur from amongst the scattered units of Corps of Engineers, some of which were still in field deployment mode.
The force was seen off by Commander Indus Valley Road project Brigadier Humayun with these words, “You are proceeding on a mission to construct a road linking Pakistan with China. Presently there will be no contact with you for sometime. Detailed instructions will follow with the main body. This is the greatest challenge ever thrown to the Corps of Engineers. Since you would be constructing the road in competition with the Chinese engineers the eyes of the entire country would be on you. Acquit yourselves honourably and Godspeed.” The advance party boarded the C 130s and landed at Hotien (KHOTAN). Several funny incidents relieved the somberness of the occasion. Many troops who had boarded C130 had to sit on the floor of the Spartan American origin transport behemoth and were therefore queasy. Captain Javed Nasir had to devise a novel way to make everyone hold a rope together to stay safe while the plane buffeted and swayed in the mountain air.
When the plane landed at a Chinese airfield there were strange sounds of the pavement cracking like the crunching of potato chips under the load of the landing gear and wheels. The Chinese airfield probably did not have a runway designed for the C130 landings. It was obviously an era of Chinese isolation under the Iron Curtain and lack of infrastructural sophistication as today’s leading world power. The aircraft were made to make safe traverses for taxiing and subsequent take offs. The troops alighted from the aircraft much to their relief and boarded the Chinese trucks for a journey to Kashgar through Yarkand.
At Kashgar, they took over the tentage, clothing, vehicles and other stores. After two days’ journey the force reached Kashgar which was a city apparently designed in Mughal style. A big mosque like Lahore’s Badshahi mosque was spotted by troops. The local population told the troops that the mosque was only opened on Sundays. Since it was Friday and the troops wanted to offer prayers a request was made to Chinese who allowed the prayers to be held. A Friday prayer congregation was held nearly after ten years in that mosque.
While getting acclimated at a height of 20 kilometers short of the pass, over ninety percent of the soldiers went down with altitude sickness with two succumbing to their illness. These two men were the first martyrs of the Karakorum Highway project. The Force landed at Khunjerab Top on June 30, 1966 and established a camp. The next morning, there were rumours of apparitions and demons who shrieked and screamed throughout the night apparently at the impudence of the troops who had desecrated their abode of ‘Koh Qaf’.
Captain Javed Nasir also heard the shrieks and screams throughout the night. The next morning he ordered the ground under his tent to be dug. The digging revealed that the place where the camp was established was in fact a frozen riverbed where the freezing and thawing produced dreadful noises as the soil particles of thick layer of moraine rubbed against the stony river bed. With the demon issue thus resolved the force set about its task of track construction.
It was a unique project in the history of Pakistan Army where all ranks donned Chinese uniforms and worked with picks, shovels and other construction equipment. The officers worked like ordinary sappers without wearing any badges of rank in Chinese tradition.
The weather conditions were extremely hard with temperatures dipping to minus 30 degree Celsius even in August after which the thermometers broke! Due to height and low temperatures, the body chemistry changed with blood getting thicker and the hearts having to work harder. Many interesting incidents happened during the first season where the nearest human habitation was seven days of walk away at Sust. One day the Commanding Officer of the Force, Lt Colonel MZ Kidwai, while working with troops collapsed because he felt sudden chest pain and was carried to the regimental medical officer Captain Tarar. The doctor examined the Colonel in a precarious state and in panic injected Coramine fluid directly into his heart. Miraculously, the intervention worked and the Colonel recovered, years later when the Colonel went for a routine examination his physician told him that he had in fact suffered a mild heart attack at Khunjerab and that his body had formed a natural bypass due to his physical resilience and that he owed his life to the incident at Khunjerab.
Providentially, the debonair Air Chief, Air Marshal Nur Khan who was on a routine helicopter trial mission flew over the area. He got curious upon seeing Pakistani features in Chinese uniforms on land. He immediately landed keeping the helicopter on running rotors due to rarefied air.
Despite hardships, only one incident of desertion happened during the project when a soldier absconded towards Pakistan. After walking for two days he turned back towards his camp arriving in a haggard condition. No questions were asked as he quietly picked up his shovel to rejoin the road-building group. The road alignment followed Khunjerab River emanating from Khunjerab Glacier and moving through a gorge with steep gradients.
The road alignment was kept above the high flood level through a painstaking ‘S bend’ construction technique. As the winter approached the Chinese got worried and supplied the force with more equipment asking all the while about the winter relief plans. They had planned to close their camp by end September and to reopen it the next May but the relief of our troops was not in sight due to lack of information at main headquarters about the ground conditions.
Providentially, the debonair Air Chief, Air Marshal Nur Khan who was on a routine helicopter trial mission flew over the area. He got curious upon seeing Pakistani features in Chinese uniforms on land. He immediately landed keeping the helicopter on running rotors due to rarefied air. After a stay of 15 minutes during which he got a short briefing and a cup of tea, he flew back. On his arrival at Rawalpindi, he met the Commander-in-Chief and apprised him of the lack of relief plans for a body of 1500 troops at Khunjrab. A relief plan was subsequently made and the troops were made to march all the way to Passu near Hunza carrying their equipment. The long march from Khunjerab Pass to Passu by a force of 1500 men with their personal belongings on their back, covering a distance of about ninety miles from an altitude of 16000 feet to 8000 feet along the most rugged terrain was a super human undertaking.
When the tired troops reached Passu after an exhausting long march from Khunjerab, they instead of rest and recreation were told to construct an airfield with whatever little equipment was available to them. They even achieved this.
The Force was again sent back to work the next summer. After two years the Force managed to construct a 13 kilometers long and four meters wide track capable of upholding three-ton Lorries at 30 miles per hour, a superhuman undertaking indeed, that too on heights ranging between 13000 to 15000 feet.
The work on the Karakoram Highway was disrupted during 1971 Indo-Pak War after which it restarted in 1972 under the patronage of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The eighth wonder of the world, a 616 kilometers long highway, connecting Thakot to Khunjerab, was finally inaugurated in June 1978 taking a toll of 11 officers, 25 junior commissioned officers, 531 soldiers, and 246 civilian labourers. Khunjerab Force indubitably was the first body of men that commenced a project that one day would metamorphose into China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
When the tired troops reached Passu after an exhausting long march from Khunjerab, they instead of rest and recreation were told to construct an airfield with whatever little equipment was available to them. They even achieved this.
A gathering of the members of the Khunjerab Force and the present lot of officers of the unit that was once the famed outfit was held at precisely the same point where the epic struggle against the weather and terrain was waged by the intrepid road builders. A ceremony was held to commemorate the deeds of the pioneers of KKH and a plaque was unveiled in the presence of Lt Colonel (retired) M.Z. Kidwai, the commanding officer of 1966 Khunjerab Force and Lt General (retired) Javed Nasir, the adjutant of the force. As the ceremony was in progress the wizened old eyes of Javed Nasir lit up with excitement as he gazed deep towards north eying some clouds in the far distance. He said ,”Hurry up youngsters as my experience of 1966 tells me that a snow storm is approaching here. You have got only 30 minutes to wrap up.”
The warning of the veteran of Khunjerab Force was heeded and the ceremony closed and after 30 minutes there was a snow storm engulfing the Khunjerab Top in summer i.e 28 May 2001. The Khunjerab Force’s adjutant’s sense of weather forecast proved dead accurate even after 35 years!