The Longest August (28 page)

For the Pakistani public, this was the first full-scale war with India, the 1947–1948 conflict in Kashmir having been a minor affair and confined to that princely state. This time the antagonists deployed two-thirds of their total tank arsenals (Pakistan, 756; India, 620). What followed were some of the most intense armored battles since the end of World War II, often in sugarcane fields along the Punjab border. To boost morale, the public was bombarded with stories of victories on the battlefield embellished with heroism of individual soldiers and their units.
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The battle around the small town of Khem Karan, a few miles from the international border inside Indian Punjab, gripped popular attention on both sides. The Pakistani armor and infantry had seized it on September 7. The Indians resolved to retake it against heavy odds. They could marshal only three armored regiments equipped with a mishmash of inferior tanks against Pakistan's six armored regiments driving versatile Pattons. But they compensated for their disadvantage in hardware with superior tactics, surprising the enemy force and encircling it.

Their field commander, Major General Gurbaksh Singh, arrayed the tanks in a U-formation in unharvested sugarcane fields outside the village of Asal Uttar during the night of September 9–10. Then he flooded the surrounding area. The next morning the advancing Pakistani armor divisions got trapped within the enemy's horseshoe formation and found it hard to turn around because of the marshy terrain. The Indian gunners opened fire from their camouflaged locations only when the Pakistani tanks came close, thereby managing to penetrate the Pattons. By the time the fierce battle was over, India had lost thirty-two tanks while destroying or capturing ninety-seven of Pakistan's tanks, including seventy-two Pattons.
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“So many tanks lay destroyed, lying in the battlefield like toys,” wrote Lieutenant General Harbakhsh Singh in his memoir
In the Line of
Duty
.
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On the opposing side, Pakistanis were regaled with their army's capture of Khem Karan on September 7. “We were also taken to Khem Karan,” recalled Mahmood Shaam four decades later. “We felt proud to
see the battleground where we won. Even
Time
magazine reported that ‘despite claims from both sides the awkward fact is Khem Karan is under Pakistan administration.'”
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What followed next—a debacle—was censured.

While censuring such news as enemy warplanes bombing targets in Peshawar and Dacca, Radio Pakistan announced raids on the famed Chandni Chowk shopping area of Delhi—a mood-enhancing tonic for Pakistanis. “When I went to Rawalpindi in January 1966 to cover a ministerial conference between India and Pakistan, Pakistani journalists asked me how badly Chandni Chowk . . . [had] been damaged by bombs,” wrote Kuldip Nayar in his book
India: The Critical Years
. “My reply that not a single bomb had been dropped in Delhi was greeted with derisive laughter.”
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Equally, Indian journalists were in a triumphalist mode. At the daily press briefings in Delhi, the most frequent questions were: “Has Lahore airport fallen? Is Lahore radio station under our control?”
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The reality was that though India's tanks had reached Batapur near the Allama Iqbal international airport—halfway between the international border and the city center of Lahore, twenty miles from the Wagah border post—causing an exodus, its generals had no intention of seizing the city of one million. It would have involved hand-to-hand fighting and later burdened the occupying army with the taxing tasks of maintaining law and order and feeding the people.

Overall, a comforting belief had taken hold in Pakistan that the war was going well and that Hindu India was paying a punishing price for its unprovoked attack on their hallowed territory. The popular perception clashed with reality on the ground, as noted by general headquarters in Rawalpindi. By the third week of hostilities, it became evident to Field Marshal Ayub Khan and his close aides that the army's supply of bombs, bullets, fuel, and food was dangerously low, and that no military assistance by a foreign power was in the offing.

Diplomats at Work

Following the rebuffs from the United States and SEATO, Pakistan ruled out approaching Moscow, given its close ties with Delhi. On his part, however, in early April 1965, Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin had welcomed Ayub Khan and Bhutto during their eight-day tour of the Soviet
Union in a move to counterbalance the influence America and China enjoyed in Pakistan. The Kremlin then hosted Shastri on a weeklong trip in mid-May to highlight the Indo-Soviet friendship forged by Jawaharlal Nehru.

In the war, China resolutely backed Pakistan. It warned Delhi against any Indian incursion into Pakistan's territory. And when that happened, it condemned India's move. In its message to the Shastri government in Delhi on September 16, it stated that it would go on supporting Pakistan in “its just struggle” as long as Indian aggression against it continued.

Facing a dire situation on the battlefield, on the night of September 19–20, Ayub Khan and Bhutto flew from Peshawar to Beijing for a clandestine meeting with top Chinese leaders. Mao Zedong coupled his earlier promise of assistance with advice that Ayub Khan should prepare contingency plans to withdraw his army to the hills and fight a long guerrilla war against India.
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Such counsel washed over the Sandhurst-trained Ayub Khan and the Berkeley-educated lawyer Bhutto. In practice, all Beijing did was to threaten to open a second front against India.

In the leading world capitals there was considerable apprehension that any direct Chinese involvement in the conflict would draw other powers into the conflict. Western ambassadors therefore kept pressing Pakistan not to encourage China to go beyond rhetorical statements. Equally they pressured India not to attack East Pakistan, which would have drawn Beijing into the bilateral war.

After his shuttle diplomacy in South Asia, U Thant reported to the UN Security Council on September 16 that each of the warring countries had expressed its desire to cease hostilities under certain conditions that were unacceptable to the other side. Among the few suggestions he made to the Council was a request to the leaders of the sparring nations to meet in a mutually friendly country to discuss ending the present conflict and other outstanding differences. On September 18 Kosygin addressed letters to Ayub Khan and Shastri to meet in Tashkent in Soviet Uzbekistan or any other Soviet city for negotiations on the Kashmir issue, and offered to attend the bilateral meeting if so wished by both sides. Shastri accepted the suggestion on September 22 and informed the parliament. Ayub Khan prevaricated, replying a week later that such a meeting would not be fruitful “at present.”
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Meanwhile, at the Security Council the United States and the Soviet Union worked together to draft a resolution. As a result, Resolution 211
secured a swift and unanimous passage on September 20.
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It called for a cease-fire at 0700 hours GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) on September 22, 1965, negotiations to settle the Kashmir dispute, and a subsequent withdrawal of “all armed personnel” to the positions held before August 5. India accepted the resolution on September 21. Addressing the Security Council on September 22, Bhutto described the resolution as unsatisfactory but accepted it for the sake of international peace. The guns fell silent at 0330 hours on September 23, Indian Standard Time (IST)—2200 hours GMT on September 22.

Unsurprisingly, the claims made by Delhi and Rawalpindi regarding their losses and gains were out of sync. According to Pakistan, 8,200 Indians were killed or captured, and 110 of India's aircraft and 500 of its tanks were destroyed or seized. Herbert Feldman, an academic specialist on Pakistan, put India's losses as follows: fatalities, 4,000 to 6,000; tanks, about 300; and aircraft, 50. The statistics for Pakistan were 3,000 to 5,000 dead and losses of 250 tanks and 50 planes.
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Delhi admitted a loss of 75 aircraft, which chimed with neutral observers' figure of 60 to 76. But their estimate of India losing 150 to 190 tanks was well below Feldman's. Whereas Delhi claimed that 5,260 Pakistanis were killed or captured, the neutral commentators settled for 3,800. And their estimate of Pakistan losing 200–300 tanks was in line with Feldman's 250. India's claim of destroying 43 to 73 Pakistani aircraft was way above the neutral observers' 20.

According to David Van Praagh, a Canadian academic, India gained 710 square miles of Pakistan, including a third of the total in Azad Kashmir. By contrast, Pakistan acquired 210 square miles of the Indian soil, all except 19 square miles being in Kashmir.
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Pakistan's gain in the Indian Punjab was restricted to the environs of Khem Karan.
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What was the end result of the war? This question is best answered by stating the primary objective of each protagonist. The aim of Pakistan, the instigator, was to change the status quo in Kashmir by force. It failed to do so. India's objective was merely to frustrate its adversary's goal. It succeeded. In a way, Delhi won by not losing. In stark contrast, Rawalpindi gained nothing from a war it initiated. Indeed, catastrophic results came to pass in domestic politics. This armed conflict set in motion trends that culminated in the downfall of Ayub Khan's regime, followed by the breakup of Pakistan, with its eastern wing seceding to form the sovereign state of Bangladesh.

When the Guns Fell Silent

Most Pakistanis could not figure out why their generals had signed a cease-fire when they were vaunting glowing victories on the battlefield. The credibility of Ayub Khan's government suffered a precipitous fall from which it never recovered, even though the president addressed several gatherings rationalizing his decision.

His defensive posture contrasted sharply with Bhutto's. “Pakistan will fight, fight for a thousand years,” he declared at a press conference in October. “If India builds the [atom] bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own. We have no alternative . . . bomb for bomb.”
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Bhutto's statement was a signal to India that Pakistan was aware of its clandestine nuclear weapons program. He had garnered that information from Munir Ahmad Khan, a senior technician at the eight-year-old International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN watchdog, during Bhutto's visit to Vienna earlier in 1965. Later, during Bhutto's presidency in 1972 Ahmad Khan would be appointed head of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission.

During the three-week conflict with India, East Pakistanis realized to their consternation that their province was woefully short of troops to assure their security. Whereas the military consumed 60 percent of the nation's budget, only 7 percent of its ranks came from East Pakistan, which accounted for 54 percent of the country's population.

In India there was disgruntlement among its soldiers, who would have preferred to keep on destroying Pakistan's armor. After flamboyantly posing for cameras on top of a captured Patton tank, Shastri addressed the troops at the garrison border town of Ferozepur. He explained that he agreed to a truce because of pressure from America, on which India was dependent for food and economic aid.
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This would become abundantly clear later in the year, when a steep drop in US economic aid forced Delhi to liberalize its restrictions on foreign trade and devalue its currency by a staggering 57.5 percent.
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After the cease-fire no progress was made on the belligerents' withdrawal to their positions of August 5 as required by Resolution 211. This situation required mediation by a great power. Kosygin repeated his earlier proposal for an Indo-Pakistan summit in Tashkent in his letters on November 21. Shastri responded positively. In Rawalpindi, the wily Bhutto finagled an immediate invitation for a state visit by the Kremlin as a means to pressure the United States before the scheduled December 10
Ayub Khan–Johnson meeting in Washington. Ayub Khan and the president dashed to Moscow on November 23, and two days later Ayub Khan accepted Kosygin's proposal.

Soviets' Success as Peacemakers

On January 4, 1966, the Tashkent Conference at the grand municipal hall opened with an address by Kosygin, a sixty-two-year-old leader with deep-set eyes and sparse graying hair. Besides officials from India, Pakistan, and the Soviet Union, his audience included three hundred representatives of the international media.

The Indian delegation, headed by Shastri, wanted the restoration of the prewar cease-fire line, except the mountain passes its army had seized in the Haji Pir, Poonch-Uri, and Kargil regions, and the signing of a no-war pact with Pakistan. Its counterparty, which included the pugnacious Bhutto, had no intention of ceding the mountain passes, which were the main infiltration points into India-held Kashmir, or entering into a no-war agreement.
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When the Indian side insisted on a no-war pact, the Pakistanis responded that they would agree only if there were a built-in mechanism to discuss resolving the Kashmir issue. Reiterating that Kashmir was an integral part of their country, the Indians refused. A stalemate ensued.

In his private talks with Shastri, Kosygin told him that if India refused to withdraw fully from the captured territories completely, as demanded by Resolution 211, the Kremlin would not use its veto against possible UN sanctions against Delhi. That softened up Shastri. At the same time Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko convinced the Pakistani delegates that it was futile to try to achieve gains at the negotiating table that they had failed to obtain on the battlefield.
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As the last throw of the dice, on the morning of January 9 Kosygin took Ayub Khan on an unscheduled tour of the vast warplanes manufacturing plant in Tashkent, aware that Washington had cut off supplies of military hardware to Pakistan. Ayub Khan, a lifelong soldier, was impressed—all the more as he was bombarded by Kosygin with jaw-dropping statistics of the number of tanks and warplanes the Soviet Union produced annually. A bond grew between the two leaders. Kosygin adroitly interweaved his narrative with his viewpoint that, lacking resources, developing countries like Pakistan and India should avoid
resolving their differences through use of force. Ayub Khan got the message.
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In the evening the nine-point draft of the Tashkent Declaration was finalized.
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