1965 War - The complete story

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

I believe Kasrkin is quoting from A HISTORY OF THE PAKISTAN ARMY by Col. Brian Cloughley. Boy there are some really nasty comments about PA in the book especially when he talked about two divisions of troops working as servants in officers’ messes and homes.

His latest book, 'War, Coups and Terror', has an entire chapter devoted to Army benefits and organizations such as the Fauji Foundation. He explains the benefits in great detail and also debunks many of the critics (including some parts of Military Inc.) of those benefits by pointing out how they compare to India and the developed world.

 

[qsaark]

His latest book, 'War, Coups and Terror', has an entire chapter devoted to Army benefits and organizations such as the Fauji Foundation. He explains the benefits in great detail and also debunks many of the critics (including some parts of Military Inc.) of those benefits by pointing out how they compare to India and the developed world.

Ok, let me see if I could find it here in the public library, else would buy. It should be an interesting read I believe. At any rate, the issue mentioned above is already being addressed by the PA as these guys are being replaced with the civilians I guess.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

I one hundred percent agree with you. But it was the GoP that accepted the August 1948 resolution that I myself find absurd for the reasons you have given. But once Pakistan accepted the resolution, they had to comply with it, and they did not. Hence in the process we lost the moral high ground. It would have been better if Pakistan had not agreed on that first resolution that it would withdraw all its forces. Jinnah was right, experience he gained from dealing with the Congress party and the British; he knew all too well that the only way of getting Kashmir was through a military action hence he ordered Gracey to send Pakistani troops in the valley. It was a bad luck or what that we had Gracey as our C-in-C who refused to listen to his supreme commander. Finally when the troops were sent, it was already late and rest is history.

I disagree how you interpret Pakistan's loss of moral high ground - Pakistan did not just disagree with the initial resolutions and walk off in a huff (as India has done since), it continued to argue its case int the UN, and if you follow the subsequent resolutions, it managed to obtain more neutral and pragmatic conditions.

The Indians were participating in this the entire time - so the whole process of obtaining more favorable resolutions, that got us to the point that we discuss in the UN thread, was part of a 'peaceful political process'. This is what negotiations are about - you don't like the first set of conditions, then you keep going back and arguing your case until some more favorable compromise gets worked out.

So how on earth can you say that we lost the 'moral high ground' when we were involved in the UN the entire time, in trying to diplomatically obtain better conditions, and eventually did so (at which point the Indians just backed out altogether)?

 

[third eye]

ok third eye accepting your claims that no one was holding onto the fort....well then why was there no counter attack once pakistanis occupied it.....given the claim that we just walked into it and sat down!!!

no counter attack means two things

1) the indians had no clue as to the where abouts of where pakistani army & militia were.....this is bad INTEL on the indian part

2) the indian army was soundly beaten in the area and couldnot muster a counter attack.....[/B

You have to see things as they existed back in '65. The capture of a fort did not alter anything for the defender nor did it help the attacker to further his war aims. In fact there were no aims on the Pk side to further the capture. It just stayed put. It did extend the PA logistics resulting in diverting resources that could have been used elsewhere.

To counter attack would have meant removing troops from elsewhere thinning out the defences. There must have been no offensive plans in that part of the world.

As rgds the IA being ' soundly beaten', I do not wish to burst your bubble ( there were no IA troops there ) but as I mentioned - the loss of K Garh changed nothing hence there must have been no felt need to restore the situation which would have got restored as it did after the cease fire.

No he said only the RAC were in that location. This is a somewhat para military unit and the implication is that this sector was of small importance to the Indian military.

If you read the BR reference I mentioned you will notice rather quickly the Indians were having problems with communications as well as logistics in the complete region.
This may mean they would have problems doing anything at all.



Well it is just housed on that site. It is in fact the "Official War History - 1965", by the History Division, Ministry of Defence, Government of India.
Now like all such histories they may have a level of leaning in a particular direction, but so would one from Pakistan.
Though the chapter I listed is not that bad.



I noted the disposition of the forces, well as much as could be determined from that History reference.

I have a few problems understanding why the main force was pushed into the south as that reference indicates. The only reason I see was the road and rail links into India. The only thing of interest is there are a few more Indian settlements in this region vs the north. But as far as anything else goes the desert was a wider barrier in this region, ie between the border and the closest Pakistan settlement areas. It would be a problem for both sides. What raiding that occurred on the Indian side of the border appears not to have been significantly halted by the Indian force anyway.
Leaving a smaller force in the south and hopefully more mobile wold have resulted in the same. Also if the main Indian force have been in the north of this bulge it could have made a reasonable input to the Lahore battles by moving against places as Rahimyar Khan. Though this assessment is made with no knowledge of the pakistan disposition at that time.
Even if a move by these Indian forces resulted in no ground gain it would have made a more significant impact with the Lahore battles due to its close proximity.

I appreciate your interest in tactics.

Switching forces when under fire is not a easy task.The area in Q was rightly not considered as important as the South hence the deployment. The terrain acted as a force multiplier - something the PA found in the ill fated attack on Laungewala in 71. As rgds the underlined part above, six years later the wide desert was breached by Indian troops and Naya Chor was captured.

Add to all this the road communications that must have existed back then. If the attack on K Garh was a feint meant to divert troops from the south - it didn't work.

Lastly ,once a piece of ground is lost or threatened the best way to unhinge an enemy is to attack him to threaten at a place whose loss would be unacceptable. As IA did to Lahore which made PA recoil in J&K.

 

[paritosh]

I'll quote Cloughley's work:

"The Rann of Kutch conflict was ended by British intercession and the dispute was solved when both countries agreed to appointment of the Indio-Pakistan Western Boundary Case Tribunal by the UN Secretary General. The Tribunal presented its report on 19th February 1968. It awarded Pakistan a mere 300 square miles out of a claim of 3,500 and upheld almost all the Indian claim. This was an excellent example of how international 'Good Offices' and mediation, followed by independent analysis and arbitration, can result in lasting solutions to territorial disputes."

well whatever you quoted...is what I know...and i never disputed the above stated fact.I merely was interested in getting a link to your claim that Pakistan had 'possessed' the Runn of Kutch before the final settlement was made.

 

[Kasrkin]

I believe Kasrkin is quoting from A HISTORY OF THE PAKISTAN ARMY by Col. Brian Cloughley. Boy there are some really nasty comments about PA in the book especially when he talked about two divisions of troops working as servants in officers’ messes and homes.

Apparently, you haven’t even read the book. Its one of my favorite books and I hardly remember any such thing. In fact Cloughley was the one who said that most criticism of the Pakistan Army in recent days was unfair. Furthermore in his new book (as AM mentioned) he goes on to thoroughly thrash arguments in Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa’s book (whom he also happens to know in a personal capacity). Maybe you came across a very selective reference from his work but the fact that his books consist of healthy, factual criticism of the Army lend further credibility to his views when it comes to debunking mythical rhetoric many of the anti-army sort come up with. I suggest you read his books, particularly War, Coups and Terror and then talk to us about your take on it.

well whatever you quoted...is what I know...and i never disputed the above stated fact.I merely was interested in getting a link to your claim that Pakistan had 'possessed' the Runn of Kutch before the final settlement was made.

To you I would suggest the same thing, read the book. Pakistan won the war over the contested territory. What does that mean? You've been told that it was India that gave the territory back? Don't you think that goes against logic? Or have you been lead to believe that you won the war as well? This 90% reference was from Cloughley's work but I can't find exact the page. Pakistan got 300 square miles out of the 3,500 claimed, thats actually less than 10%, and Pakistan did get almost all the territory it claimed thats why they say we won the war. I don't have a link for you though, I can only suggest you go through impartial books as opposed to believing in heresay.

 

[qsaark]

Apparently, you haven’t even read the book.

No I have not, except for the selected paragraphs from here and there posted by the people on the net.

 

[paritosh]

To you I would suggest the same thing, read the book. Pakistan won the war over the contested territory. What does that mean? You've been told that it was India that gave the territory back? Don't you think that goes against logic? Or have you been lead to believe that you won the war as well? This 90% reference was from Cloughley's work but I can't find exact the page. Pakistan got 300 square miles out of the 3,500 claimed, thats actually less than 10%, and Pakistan did get almost all the territory it claimed thats why they say we won the war. I don't have a link for you though, I can only suggest you go through impartial books as opposed to believing in heresay.

I know of the Indian losses in the Rann of Kutchh....but nowhere is it mentioned how much territory was with you and whether you captured the entire 3,500 sq miles of the disputed territory.
Pakistan won the war over which contested territory?
from your post...
"Pakistan got 300 square miles out of the 3,500 claimed,thats actually less than 10%, and Pakistan did get almost all the territory it claimed thats why they say we won the war."
Please explain what exactly you mean by that.


Rann of Kutch: Facts, Discussion Forum, and Encyclopedia Article

from the article...fifth para...
"part of India and Pakistan's ongoing border dispute concerning Sir Creek
The Sir Creek is a 96 km creek disputed between India and Pakistan in the Rann of Kutch marshlands. The creek, which opens up into the Arabian Sea, divides the Kutch region of the Indian States and territories of India of Gujarat with the Sindh province of Pakistan....
. In April 1965, a dispute there contributed to the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965
The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 was a culmination of skirmishes that took place between April 1965 and September 1965 between India and Pakistan....
, when fighting broke out between India and Pakistan. Later the same year, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson
Harold Wilson

James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, Order of the Garter, Order of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal Society, Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council was one of the most prominent British politicians of the later half of the 20th century....
successfully persuaded both countries to end hostilities and set up a tribunal, to resolve the dispute. A verdict was reached in 1968 which saw Pakistan getting 10% of its claim of . The majority of the area thus remained with India. Tensions spurted again in 1999 during the Atlantique Incident"

well...this shows clearly that runn of kutch was settled AFTER the war...so the idea of pakistan showing goodwill prior to the war..and India not following up to settle the kashmir dispute is not true....instead...the experiences in the Rann of kutch prompted Pakistan of replicating the act in Kashmir.
I would know the facts from the heresay Karskin, thank you.
There is another pretty accurate description of the war...
Pakistan Army Committed Kargil Like Disaster in 1965 War As Well
I'd appreciate if you go through it sometime and point out whatever you think doesn't match.

 

[Kasrkin]

well...this shows clearly that runn of kutch was settled AFTER the war...so the idea of pakistan showing goodwill prior to the war..and India not following up to settle the kashmir dispute is not true....

Actually, the point I raised about India accepting third party mediation once the war in Kutch had gone badly still holds. You yourself accepted that India endorsed the commission after the Kutch War and before the September War. Findings of the commission would come later as stated in Cloughley’s extract, but Pakistan had committed itself to honoring the verdict from a third party despite our military success, a verdict that would turn out to be almost entirely beneficial to India’s claim. Pakistan used military maneuvering to encourage a neutral and fair settlement while India used military assertion simply to annex the disputed territory in disregard to prior commitments and UNSC resolutions.

The fact that Pakistan showed good will by accepting a ceasefire despite a militarily-advantageous position and committing itself to a neutrally mediated solution in Kutch prior to the 65 war is utterly true. The fact that India’s position on Kashmir remained unchanged despite our flexibility here is also true, as is the fact that the commission’s findings were honored and respected by Pakistan despite the fact that 90% of our claim was dismissed, which obviously resulted in a loss of potential gains during the war. But despite her obvious gains through impartial mediation, India didn’t/hasn’t felt obliged to replicate the neutral settlement procedure in Kashmir, where she relies on military assertion alone to occupy and annex Disputed Territory.

Your links don’t sound too neutral to me, but I’ll go over them if and when I have time.
I hope that clears things up for you.

 

[qsaark]

I disagree how you interpret Pakistan's loss of moral high ground - Pakistan did not just disagree with the initial resolutions and walk off in a huff (as India has done since), it continued to argue its case int the UN, and if you follow the subsequent resolutions, it managed to obtain more neutral and pragmatic conditions.

The Indians were participating in this the entire time - so the whole process of obtaining more favorable resolutions, that got us to the point that we discuss in the UN thread, was part of a 'peaceful political process'. This is what negotiations are about - you don't like the first set of conditions, then you keep going back and arguing your case until some more favorable compromise gets worked out.

So how on earth can you say that we lost the 'moral high ground' when we were involved in the UN the entire time, in trying to diplomatically obtain better conditions, and eventually did so (at which point the Indians just backed out altogether)?

OK, Agno, I re-visited the UN resolutions starting from resolution VI of 13 August 1948 to the resolution 209 adopted on 4 September 1965. During this time period (13 August 1948-4 Sept. 1965) a total of 14 resolutions were adopted. And all of them keep referring back to the earlier resolutions while reminding both the parties of the principles contained in the UN resolutions of 17 January 1948, 13 August 1948 and 5 January 1949.

Resolution of 13 August 1948:

Part II A(2): The Government of Pakistan will use its best endeavor to secure the withdrawal from the State of Jammu and Kashmir of tribesmen and Pakistan nationals not normally resident therein who have entered the State for the purpose of fighting.

Resolution of 5 January 1949:

2: A plebiscite will be held when it shall be found by the Commission that the cease-fire and truce arrangements set forth in Parts I and II of the Commission's resolution of 13 August 1948, have been carried out and arrangements for the plebiscite have been completed.

I will appreciate if you give me a reference in support of the argument you are making in the text I have underlined in your reply. Upon going through the reference you would provide me, I’ll see if I still hold to my understanding of “we lost the moral high ground”. It is an interesting scholarly debate and it should be continued in the present spirit.

 

[Muradk]

Dude calm down. My question was based on your claim that the Pakistan military had a edge in 1965. All i asked is - how come the edge that you had, just disappeared in 6 years?

How about using your left part of the brain, look at the situation in1971, GOP was fighting on 1 front in the West in East they were facing a 4 sided attack. With 1 SQD to fight against 10 of them.

 

[Renegade]

How about using your left part of the brain, look at the situation in1971, GOP was fighting on 1 front in the West in East they were facing a 4 sided attack. With 1 SQD to fight against 10 of them.

Being in a rush to advice me to use my brain i think you forgot to use yours instead - look at post No:4 in this very thread where you friend claims that Pakistan had an edge over India in 65. To which my question was "How come this edge suddenly disappeared just 6 years later?" To which the poster in question blabbered something about Indians being cheats, bigots & the other usual rhetoric. He just ducked the question - there was never any answer to what edge Pakistan had????

I am still waiting for a reply to know what this so called edge was as claimed by your friend in post-4 of this thread.

 

[sonicboom]

The myth of September 6, 1965

Mehmal Sarfraz

Every year we Pakistanis celebrate September 6th with a lot of ‘national fervour’ and laud the armed forces for being ‘victorious’ against the Indian forces back in the 1965 war. The state commemorates the ‘Defence Day’ by holding various ceremonies and special programmes. Milli naghmay (patriotic songs) are aired on the local television channels and radio stations, while the newspapers bring out special supplements to mark the day. This is all very well, but I wonder if our people know that in actuality we are not celebrating a victory. Not only did we lose militarily in 1965 – state propaganda aside – but we also lost our national unity in the process. Forty-two years down the road, ours is a country that is on the verge of dismemberment, again.

August 1947 gave birth to two independent states, India and Pakistan. It also gave birth to territorial disputes that haunt both South Asian neighbours to date. Kashmir is one of the main disputed territories. The two infant states fought a war in 1948 on the Kashmir issue, but despite a ceasefire, the issue was never resolved. At the beginning of 1965, skirmishes between the two neighbours erupted once again on another disputed territory – Rann of Kutch. Having no real economic value, the Rann conflict was only rooted in the overall contentious relationship between the two sides. Fortunately, the Pakistan army was successfully able to defend itself against the Indian army and in fact gave it a bloody nose. This served as a morale booster for our military.

The high morale of the military, egged on by Ayub Khan’s overambitious foreign minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, led to a misadventure that cost Pakistan its dignity. In the late summer of 1965, Pakistan launched ‘Operation Gibraltar’. Pakistan sent infiltrators – military commandos in civvies – into Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) to ‘liberate’ it, and expected that the ‘downtrodden’ Kashmiris would support the insurgency. Little did we know that the plan would crumble like a house of cards.

It was not only a plan fraught with miscalculation, but a foolish one to begin with. There was no proper reconnaissance, no political intelligence, and the Kashmiris in IHK were not even taken into confidence. “Whatever his [Ayub’s] reasons, Pakistan went into Operation Gibraltar without any preliminary preparations and undertook a guerrilla operation inside IHK with a large number of regular soldiers, some SSG elements and a smattering of irregulars, expecting to be welcomed by the local population and raise them up in arms against the Indian government. They were destined to be rudely disillusioned. Far from rising up in arms, the local population denied any support and, in many instances handed over the infiltrators to Indian troops” (Qadir, Brigadier (retd) Shaukat, ‘Operation Gibraltar: Battle that never was’, Rediff.com).

Before the operation was launched, Z A Bhutto somehow managed to convince Field Marshal Ayub Khan that even if India responded to the incursions in Kashmir, it would not cross the international border. Thus there was no question of a full-fledged war. But as soon as India had brutally crushed the insurgency in IHK, it launched an attack on Pakistan on September 6, 1965. The public was led to believe that India had launched a ‘surprise attack’ on Pakistan, and that ‘Hindu India’ would be taught a lesson. Thus the armed forces had full public support.

It is to the credit of our air force and the jawans fighting in the battlefield that they put up a strong fight against a superior enemy. But it is the generals who let the country down. “Ayub had attempted to save his forces in Kashmir; more importantly, he wanted to avoid a general war. But the war he sought to avoid had come to Pakistan, and the nation had to be rallied to efforts not envisaged in the plans to capture Kashmir. The vast majority of Pakistanis knew virtually nothing about the course of the hostilities. All they knew came from Radio Pakistan, and in the name of national morale, the public was informed over and again of the successes on the battlefield, or at the very least, the heroism of units and individual members of the armed forces who had fallen in combat. The fact that Pakistan itself had been targeted by Indian forces, that air raids had ranged to Peshawar on the one side and Dhaka in East Pakistan on the other, did not shake the Pakistani public’s belief that the war was going well and that India was paying a heavy price for its audacious assault on Pakistani territory” (Ziring, Lawrence, Pakistan in the Twentieth Century: A Political History, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 293).

The reality of the much-touted ‘friendly’ relations between Pakistan and the US was also exposed during the 1965 war. Pakistan had allied itself with the US during the Cold War era, and in an effort to please the US, Pakistan joined the South East Treaty Organisation (SEATO) in 1954 and later the Baghdad Pact in 1955, which was renamed the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO) in 1959. Being a signatory to these treaties gave Pakistan the necessary means and resources to strengthen itself militarily and economically. When the war broke out in 1965, Pakistan expected that the US would come to its aid and used US-supplied weaponry against India. The US never came to Pakistan’s help, because it perceived communism to be the threat to its interests, hardly India. Thus a military embargo was imposed on Pakistan and military supplies were cut off by the US.

A little more than two weeks into the battle and it was quite evident to Ayub that the army was running out of logistics – ammunition, fuel, food, etc. It is reported that during the war, the American ambassador said to Ayub Khan, “They [the Indians] have got you by the throat Mr President, don’t they?” or words to that effect. It is ironic that when our fairweather ‘friend’ the US decided to leave us in the lurch, the communist Soviet Union came to our aid and helped broker a ceasefire between India and Pakistan.

The Pakistani nation was left bewildered about why Ayub Khan opted to end the war that we were ‘winning’ and instead signed the Tashkent Agreement. Since the public was kept in the dark about the real reasons behind the war and its actual progress, it was hard for them to understand that Ayub had indeed made a wise move by ending the war. The public considered it a sell-out and a betrayal. Little did the public know that had the war gone on, we would have lost much more than our ‘pride’.

There are some lessons to be learnt from the experience of 1965. One of the main lessons is that subjective and wishful thinking in politics and war is no substitute for objective analysis. It would be useful in this context to recall the old Clausewitzian adage: ‘War is the extension of politics by other means.’ It is also time we reflect on the loss of our national unity. Back in 1965, the nation stood behind our military. Today, the situation is quite different. Why is it that today we are not as emotional about our ‘sons of the soil’ as we were back in 1965? These are the wages of repeated military interventions at the cost of national unity. When the military took away the sovereign right of the people, the right to rule the country themselves, it took away the respect it rightfully deserved. We can still rediscover this unity if the military goes back to the barracks and allows the civilians to exercise their democratic rights.

 

[third eye]

How about using your left part of the brain, look at the situation in1971, GOP was fighting on 1 front in the West in East they were facing a 4 sided attack. With 1 SQD to fight against 10 of them.

The shooting war in 71 started after the pre emptve strikes PAF 5 Indian airfields on 03 Dec.

Wonder if GOP was aware of the possiblilties brought out by Murad then ?

 

[Zob]

@ THIRD EYE

You have to see things as they existed back in '65. The capture of a fort did not alter anything for the defender nor did it help the attacker to further his war aims. In fact there were no aims on the Pk side to further the capture. It just stayed put. It did extend the PA logistics resulting in diverting resources that could have been used elsewhere.

To counter attack would have meant removing troops from elsewhere thinning out the defences. There must have been no offensive plans in that part of the world.

As rgds the IA being ' soundly beaten', I do not wish to burst your bubble ( there were no IA troops there ) but as I mentioned - the loss of K Garh changed nothing hence there must have been no felt need to restore the situation which would have got restored as it did after the cease fire.


ok i don't understand 1 thing someone takes over a piece of your land you think it is NOT WORTH DEFENDING currently you rather defend other areas.....and before the cease fire how did INDIA know it will infact get it back....??? doesn't make any logical sense...its like if the indians attack in sindh we say hey let them march on in sidh but we need to defend SIALKOT only!!! we will have areas in sindh back after the cease fire!!!



Being in a rush to advice me to use my brain i think you forgot to use yours instead - look at post No:4 in this very thread where you friend claims that Pakistan had an edge over India in 65. To which my question was "How come this edge suddenly disappeared just 6 years later?" To which the poster in question blabbered something about Indians being cheats, bigots & the other usual rhetoric. He just ducked the question - there was never any answer to what edge Pakistan had????

I am still waiting for a reply to know what this so called edge was as claimed by your friend in post-4 of this thread.

ok RENEGADE

listen carefully because i have answered this before!!! & thanks to ONE OF YOUR INDIAN FRIENDS who put the words in my mouth!! by explaining why india couldn't do better than a STALEMATE in 1965


his explaination was as follows

india was exhausted after fighting china just 3 years ago and depleted resources!!!


now if i use his example PAKISTAN fought a war in 65 and was under embargo throughout a 23 day war with a 6 times LARGER enemy......the only thing on our side was a 1 front war!!

now in 71 with depleted resources we were trying to suppress a civil uprising and INDIA intervened!!!

so now we faced a two front war and the resources were already thin.....& besides the enemy had the advantage of back stabbing us & calling it moral high ground!!


NOW PLEASE DON'T TRY TO MAKE PAKISTANIS GET INTO A GUILT TRIP HERE BY DISCUSSING 71....stick to 65