History is only kind to those who learn from it
Back in Roman times there were grand coliseums where, on occasion, ordinary humans would face extraordinary sadism before rapturous multitudes delighting in savage voyeurism. In these theaters of death, slave-men, euphemistically declared as gladiators, would battle hard to fend off charging chariots, rapacious tigers, swordsmen, and the different faces of death deployed creatively to maximise the sadist’s viewing pleasure. The commoners would hoot and shout, pump their fists in the air as a show of cheery support or angry displeasure while witnessing this scarlet spectacle. The nobility would cheer more somberly, with the god-king deciding in the end who lived and who died.
Time has generously left these coliseums behind and diluted some of their quaint savagery; yet what has sadly survived is our obscene celebration of death. And so it is that every year the 6th of September rolls in with the razzle-dazzle of Pakistan Army at its gloating finest. Fighter jets take the air zooming up and down, left and right, looping and banking at impossible angles, jets flying solo, jets flying in pairs, and some even flying in cascading groups of impressive patterns and shapes. Back on the ground the atmospherics are no less giddy. The national flag is hoisted, men in uniform march in lock-step, and patriotic songs fill the silent spaces with a certain warm nostalgic solidarity which would melt the most hardened cynic. But amidst the synchronised salutes and the fiery goose steps lurks a bad memory – the memory of Operation Gibraltar and why this war was fought in the first place.
Gibraltar has an interesting history: a Spanish word derived from Jabal-al-Tariq meaning “Mountain of Tariq”. It was here, in Southern Spain, where Tariq Bin Ziad led a successful military incursion against Visigoth Hispania in 711 AD. Today the Moorish castle in Gibraltar – The Tower of Homage – stands tall and handsome as a testament to Tariq’s military prowess, who defeated Roderick’s much larger army; an event that would make and shake history.
Centuries later, this event would inspire its own reincarnation by a few misguided generals in the military headquarters of Pakistan. The plan was to incite armed revolt against the Indian occupying army in Kashmir via influx of infiltrators or irregulars through the northern areas. This, according to Ayub Khan and his forever scheming Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, would lead to an Azad Kashmiri attack on Indian forces and eventual liberation of Indian-held Kashmir. Simple. If Tariq could take on online casino Roderick, what are a few Indian soldiers, mused the generals. What later followed was a crisp lesson in humility. One, there was no Kashmiri rebellion. And two, the assumption that Indians would not go on the offensive — an all out war — was revealed to be a fatal error in judgment. India attacked Lahore and Sialkot. The rest is history, or perversions of it.
As with all events in history, you can take from all this isolated snippets to weave a colourful tapestry and hang it on your wall, or you could take the whole of it and instead hang your head in shame.
The idea here is not to make little of the sacrifices made by those who defended our frontiers against an Indian offensive. Those who lost their lives in combat and whose families lost their cause for living, they remain our heroes and for them we reserve our greatest respect. We also recognise the tactical brilliance of those who rescued us from the snapping jaws of a probable invasion once the Indian offensive was in full effect. But let not a soldier’s bravery in wartime be the cushy blanket that covers a narrative’s skull-and-bone tale of doom. The 1965 war was a blunder which led to the needless deaths of many. To call it a miscalculation would be to invest undue dignity in the conscience and tactical prowess of its architects whose megalomania has forever soiled the memory of Tariq’s Gibraltar. What’s more, it created more isolation in East Pakistan which remained undefended during the war, while also waking a lumbering giant, India, from its deep sleep to the threat of its smaller foe. In 1971, these two realities would come together and drop the axe on the eastern wing of Pakistan, cutting the winged country in half.
Perhaps, the memory of 65’ could best be salvaged by embracing it for what it was: a moral and military failure. So for each year we rightfully celebrate the lives lost in the damage control of this war, we forget not the sins of those who were behind the damage in the first place. And perhaps, over time, both India and Pakistan can realise that peace, not war, is what needs to be celebrated. And, above all, one hopes that one day we can all hold our heads high and stand tall on the firm ground of truth and the lessons it taught us, than to wobble on the shifty quicksand of half-truths and crude fiction we’ve been selling to our kids as history. Because, history, as we know, is only kind to those who learn from it.
