Realities that were obscured, intentionally
The bold and audacious Operation Grand Slam too failed to achieve its objectives because the GOC, 12 Div, Major General Akhtar Malik was replaced by Major General Yahya Khan on 2 September, perhaps because President Ayub wanted Yahya to get the glory to be appointed the next chief. In fairness to Yahya who has often been accused of this failure, probably any other in his place would have taken as much time and suffered the same fate.
The result was disastrous as related by Indian Army’s Major General Joginder Singh, COS to India’s Western Command during the 1965 war, in his book, Behind the Scenes. He discloses that the artillery regiment meant for the defence of Akhnur had defected because Akhtar Malik had steamrolled across Chhamb and Akhnur was in his grasp, when Providence came to India’s rescue giving them a respite because of the change in command of Pakistan Army’s 12 Div and Akhnur was ably defended. Lieutenant General Harbakhsh Singh GOC Western Command, in his book War Despatches: Indo-Pak Conflict 1965 confirms that after capturing Akhnur, Akhtar Malik was going for Jammu following which Kashmir would have been wrested from Indian control.
The reasons for the failure of Operation Grand Slam have been stated but the faux pas of Operation Gibraltar is even more serious and merits pondering over since the blunder was repeated in Kargil in 1999 with the same disastrous results because no analysis was carried out after Operation Gibraltar.
Brigadier Shaukat Qadir, in his article, ‘Operation Gibraltar: Battle that never was’ with hindsight states: “For some obscure reason, Pakistan undertook Operation Gibraltar without preparing the grounds for it or seeking guarantees of local support, or even attempting to assess the mood of the Kashmiri people.”
General Musa in his book My Version says, “We had not even consulted the public leaders across the ceasefire line about our aims and intentions, let alone associating them with our planning for the clandestine war…”
KH Khurshid, who was the secretary to Mohammed Ali Jinnah, and also the first elected President of Azad Kashmir government, commented: “I firmly believe that Ayub Khan was not fully aware of the reasons for the war of 1965. Foreign Office, Home Ministry and some senior officers from the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs which included A B Awan, Nazir Ahmed, Aziz Ahmed and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, prevailed on him and assured him that it was only a limited programme which would not lead to a war with India. Ayub Khan who offered India ‘joint defence’ would not have agreed to a full scale war with India… These men wanted to weaken Ayub’s hold on the government, and this is the real reason why he was so angry with them after the war.”
It is unthinkable that the volunteers and regular Pakistan Army troops in the guise of mujahedeen were launched without adequate planning or preparation only because Zulfikar Ali Bhutto advised President Ayub that the window of opportunity to liberate Kashmir was closing due to India’s arms buildup.
Ayub should have known better and his senior staff should have guided him. History is replete with examples of successful liberation movements based on guerrilla warfare; Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Emiliano Zapata, et al took years of planning and preparation to succeed. Ho Chi Minh, the President of North Vietnam, advised his Army Commander General Vo Nguyen Giap to launch guerrilla fighters in South Vietnam. The general replied that he required ten years to plan and place a guerrilla force in occupied territory. He said first there was a need to prepare safe places for them so they were absorbed in local population and could get the necessary arms and ammunition for their tasks. Otherwise, he said, they would be like fish out of water and would be caught and butchered. Unfortunately, this is the fate that met most of the participants of Operation Gibraltar who remain unsung, unnoticed and forgotten.
Neither was a postmortem carried out for the causes of the failures of Operation Grand Slam and why Pakistan Army remained unprepared for a full scale war.
General K M Arif, in his biography Khaki Shadows: Pakistan 1947-97, reveals that “It is amply clear, though, that all prudent civil-military mechanisms of defence strategy and policy planning were bypassed in the pre-planning of Operation Grand Slam. The Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC)—the apex defense policy making body of the country—did not even meet prior to or during the war. The Defence Services Chiefs Committee (DSCC) which comprises the three services chiefs and is required to approve all military plans was never even informed about the existence of the plan. The air and naval chiefs deeply resented the fact that they were not taken into confidence.”
In the previous article on the subject, it was mentioned that Pakistan High Commissioner in New Delhi on 4 September sent a classified message through the Turkish Embassy to the Foreign Office in Islamabad that India was planning an attack on Pakistan’s territory on 6 September. Mian Arshad Hussain, a former Foreign Minister of Pakistan (April 25, 1968-April 4, 1969) and who was Pakistan’s High Commissioner at Delhi during the period, demanded a judicial probe in the events leading to the 1965 war. But it fell on deaf ears.
More ominously, K M Arif, in his biography Khaki Shadows: Pakistan 1947-97, reveals: “Pakistan suffered a loss of a different kind… Soon after the war the GHQ ordered all the formations and units of the Pakistan Army to destroy their respective war diaries and submit completed reports to this effect by a given date. This was done… Their [the war diaries’] destruction, a self-inflicted injury and an irreparable national loss, was intellectual suicide.”
Note: This is part two of a three-part article. Part one can be accessed here while part three can be accessed here.