On the 6th of September, Field Marshal Ayub Khan addressed the nation and disclosed that India had attacked Lahore. He said India had misjudged Pakistan’s capabilities. The nation would respond with its full might and teach the aggressor a lesson.
A full-scale war broke out along the international border between India and Pakistan. Day after day, commentator after commentator told us that the Pakistani armed forces were crushing the Indian aggressors. We were also told that Pakistan was about to capture Kashmir, which was the unfinished business of Partition.
At some point, we were told that the army’s elite 1st Armoured Division had conquered the Indian outpost of Khem Karan. As evidence, the army chief, General Musa, was shown standing on the platform of the Railway Station.
Then, out of nowhere, a ceasefire was announced on the 23rd of September. We were stunned. A few months later, Ayub met the Indian Prime Minister Shastri in Tashkent at the invitation of the Soviet Premier and signed a peace accord. Foreign Minister Bhutto resigned in protest saying what we had won on the battlefield was lost at Tashkent. He formed his own political party and took on Ayub, his mentor. We were bewildered.
Many of us believed that narrative for decades. When former army chiefs Musa Khan and Gul Hassan and former air chiefs Asghar Khan and Nur Khan began to pen their memoirs, along with colonels, brigadiers and air commodores, a new narrative began to emerge. The new narrative was supported by several scholarly works by defense analysts and academics around the globe. Here are the main points.
Many of us believed that narrative for decades. When former army chiefs Musa Khan and Gul Hassan and former air chiefs Asghar Khan and Nur Khan began to pen their memoirs, along with colonels, brigadiers and air commodores, a new narrative began to emerge. The new narrative was supported by several scholarly works by defense analysts and academics around the globe. Here are the main points.
Sometime in 1964, Bhutto convinced Ayub that the time to seize Kashmir from India had arrived. The US and the UK had begun supplying India with advanced military hardware after the Indo-China skirmish in 1962. In a few years, it would be impossible for Pakistan to engage India in battle.
The skirmish at the Rann of Kutch was a test encounter. Since it prevailed over India, the Pakistani army was confident that it could defeat the much bigger Indian army in a limited conflict. Ayub had convinced himself that one Pakistani soldier was worth ten Indian soldiers. Bhutto had convinced Ayub that the Kashmir conflict would not escalate into a full-scale war. Thus, Ayub gave the green light to the incursion into Kashmir.
In early August, Pakistan sent in thousands of insurgents into Indian-held Kashmir. They were disguised as locals seeking independence from a brutal India. They knew neither the language nor the terrain. The local Muslim population did not rise in rebellion, as Ayub had hoped. In fact, it handed them over to the Indian army. To make matters worse, a few insurgents spilled the beans on All India Radio.
Sensing that the guerilla incursion had failed, on the 1st of September, the army launched a combined infantry-armor-artillery assault on Indian army units in Kashmir. The goal was to cut off India’s links with Srinagar, the jugular vein.
To relieve pressure in Kashmir, India launched a three-pronged attack on Lahore. This was a complete surprise to Pakistan, where a quarter of the army was on leave. In response, the Pakistan Army launched its 1st Armored Division into India with the aim of capturing the Indian city of Amritsar. The division was equipped with Patton tanks that were vastly superior to anything in India’s arsenal.
On the previous day, the Indian Air Force had destroyed a supply train, leaving most of the Pattons with only 30 rounds of ammunition and limited fuel. The Pattons charged ahead anyway only to find themselves bogged down in a sugar cane field. The Indians had breached a neighboring canal, flooding the field. Indian army units, which were waiting in the wings, used their Jeep-mounted recoilless rifles and Sherman tanks to wreak havoc on the Pattons. By nightfall, they had taken out 97 Pattons, eliminating any chances of a Pakistani victory.
Consumed by hubris, Pakistan’s elite armored division had not bothered to coordinate its advance with its supporting infantry. The division did not bother to carry out a ground survey and reconnaissance in depth. It did not send in its sappers to clear mines and make paths through the sugar cane fields. The Pattons moved in too quickly, leaving maintenance crews far behind. Pakistani commanders failed to follow US training advice to keep the tanks in reserve and spray the field with machine-gun fire before moving up.
Some of the Pattons captured by the Indian Army had as few as 300 kilometers on them, a standard very inadequate for troop training. One analyst said that some of these Pattons appeared “so new that even the original US markings on them had not been erased. They had been obviously lying in cotton wool.”
Air Marshal Asghar Khan wrote, “Even senior commanders in the counter-attack force had been kept in the dark about their role, objectives and the exact area of operation. Large-scale maps, which are essential for fighting a land battle, were not available with commanders until about twenty four hours after the attack had been launched.”
The failure of this counter-attack doomed Pakistan’s Kashmir initiative. Had the Pakistani counter-offensive succeeded, it would have destroyed Indian forces between the Beas River and the international border. As an Indian general wrote, “East of that point, up to Delhi, the Grand Trunk Road lay open, practically undefended, with all our forces on the other side of the Beas—thus bringing within an ace of realization Ayub’s dream of ‘strolling up’ to Delhi.”
Ayub was informed that the military was running out of artillery shells and of starter cartridges for its fighter jets because of the US arms embargo. He had no option but to agree to a cease-fire even though Kashmir remained in Indian hands.
Ayub was informed that the military was running out of artillery shells and of starter cartridges for its fighter jets because of the US arms embargo. He had no option but to agree to a cease-fire even though Kashmir remained in Indian hands.
Pakistan had based its Kashmir incursion on five assumptions. One, Kashmiris would rise in revolt. Second, Pakistani soldiers were far superior to Indian soldiers. Third, India would not retaliate across the international border.
Fourth, the US would not impose an arms embargo. Fifth, that the 1st armored division would finish off Indian units by cutting off the road between Amritsar and Delhi. All the assumptions were false.
The results validated Field Marshal Moltke’s dictum that no war plan survives the first 24 hours of contact with the enemy.