THE 1965 WAR : Did Bhutto, during 1965, test the waters for achieving his goal of grabbing power from Ayub?

 During a meeting held in late May 1965 on the directive of Vice Chief of the General Staff (Major General Abid Bilgrami), Major General Akhtar Hussain Malik (a close friend of Bhutto), GOC 12 Division revealed his plan to Colonel Syed Ghaffar Mehdi, Commander Special Services Group (SSG). The plan called for infiltrating groups of "Mujahideen" comprising regular army troops and irregulars into IHK for contriving a local uprising and unfreezing the issue without provoking a general war (Hali,2012). 

It was almost going to be a replay of the first Kashmir war. The meeting between the two was arranged by the Vice Chief of the General Staff. However, when asked by Mehdi if the Army High Command were on board, Akhtar responded that it was his plan. When asked further when he expected to launch the Mujahideen, Akhtar replied "July, the same year". According to Mehdi, he told Akhtar that the plan was a non-starter, but upon the latter's insistence, Mehdi left behind his three officers whom he had taken along for the meeting with Akhtar and "tasked them to do their best in the remaining four to six weeks".

It is generally believed that the plan was endorsed by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the Foreign Minister. Bhutto and the Foreign Secretary Aziz Ahmed had assured Ayub Khan that fighting would be confined to Jammu & Kashmir and India would not attack across the international border. The combat Power ratio (western front) at the start of the war was 2.3: 1 in India's favor. We started the war in the Valley and then reacted to the enemy's moves. India responded to Operation Gibraltar by occupying the heights in the Kargil sector, Neelam Valley, and the Haji Pir Bulge. Pakistan reacted with Operation Grand Slam in the Chamb sector. India responded by attacking along the International border, and there was a stalemate.

A ceasefire had been achieved on 23 September by the intervention of the external powers who were concerned the conflict could escalate and draw in other powers. To break the deadlock, the erstwhile Soviet Union offered to facilitate talks between India and Pakistan. The meeting was held in Tashkent from 4–10 January 1966. The conference ended with the famous Tashkent Declaration which stated that 1) Indian and Pakistani forces would pull back to their pre-conflict positions; 2) The nations would not interfere in each other's internal affairs; 3) Economic and diplomatic relations would be restored’4) There would be an orderly transfer of prisoners of war and; 5) The two leaders would work towards improving bilateral relations^. 

Ayub Khan was deeply annoyed with Bhutto and held him responsible for grossly misguiding the latter on the diplomatic front. In March 1966, Ayub Khan removed Bhutto as Secretary-General of the Muslim League and in June from the cabinet. Bhutto was furious, tells Roedad Khan, a retired bureaucrat:

 "Bhutto was sitting all alone in his lawn with a glass of whiskey in his hand. Ghulam Ishaq Khan extended his hand. Bhutto, instead, threw his hands around Ishaq Khan and broke down. He then embraced me and told us in an animated voice, ‘The way Ayub treated me today you would not treat your orderly”. 

Was the 1965 war the curtain-raiser for the fruition of Bhutto's political ambition in 1971?

On leaving the corridors of power, Bhutto started confiding with his friends that, to come into power, it was imperative that the army should be destroyed, even if it required a manipulated war with India. The 1965 war remained confined to the western theatre as India did not open a front in the east. Soon after the war, riots erupted in East Pakistan when Awami League demanded regional autonomy based on Mujibur Rehman's six points. A secession plan known as the Agartala Conspiracy came to the fore, and Mujibur Rehman, along with some of his co-conspirators, was tried for treason. 

Pakistani political leadership, parroting the Awami League and Indian narrative, rejected the idea that there had ever been such a conspiracy. Seventy years onwards, Mujib's daughter Hasina Wajid confirmed that Agartala was not a bogey, that the secessionists had regular meetings at Mujib's house, and that she used to prepare tea for them.

The aftershocks of the 1965 war resulted in Ayub Khan's ouster from power in 1969. General Yahya Khan, Ayub's successor, promised elections, which were held in 1970. In these elections, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's Peoples Party had not fielded even a single candidate from East Pakistan. Sheikh Mujib's Awami League contested only 7 out of 138 seats in West Pakistan. Why were they doing this?

As a result of the 1970 general elections, the Awami League emerged as the majority party in the parliament, but it did not have even a single representative from West Pakistan. Likewise, Peoples Party, the second-largest party in the parliament, did not have any members from East Pakistan. In a mature democracy, handing over power to the majority party would have taken place without a hassle, provided there were no hidden motives. 

As the pre-poll strategy of the two largest parties suggests, the personal ambitions of Mujib and Bhutto had already reached a stage where they were not thinking in terms of a united Pakistan but nurturing ambitions of ruling their respective wing as their independent fief. There was a so-called Legal Framework Order (LFO) promulgated by Yahya Khan, which laid down the code of conduct for the elections. Both Awami League and Peoples Party had been blatantly violating the LFO by basing their election campaign on parochialism and hatred. 

Whereas both Mujib and Bhutto were working for Pakistan's division for the fruition of their ambitions, they did not have the moral courage and integrity of character to say so openly. Their true intentions, though, slipped out occasionally. After the postponement of the national assembly's inaugural session, Mujib addressed a mammoth public meeting at Dhaka's Paltan Maidan. Responding to the crowd chanting slogans of independent Bangladesh, Mujib said "Independence, no! Not yet". In another public meeting held at Lahore, Bhutto made his famous remarks, "There are only three forces; Peoples Party, Awami League, and the Army". Then, addressing Awami League, he said "Yahan Hum, Wahan Tum (We here, you there)".

Operation Brasstacks

The purpose of mentioning Operation Brasstacks here, an event that was held 15 years after the 71 War, is to highlight that the Indian Army is also not free from political manipulations. Operation Brasstacks was similar to Bhutto and his team's 1965 adventure. It was conceived by an ambitious Indian Army Chief General Sunderji and the Indian Defence Minister Arun Nehru without disclosing the real motives to PM Rajiv Gandhi.

 In December 1986, with more than ten thousand armored vehicles spread across its western desert, India launched the final stage of a huge military exercise that stirred new tensions with Pakistan. Unlike Operation Gibraltar and Operation Grand Slam though, the scale of the operation Brasstacks was bigger than any NATO exercise and the biggest land exercise since World War II. Initially, around 600,000–800,000 troops were mobilized and stationed in Rajasthan state's western border, about less than 100 miles away from Pakistan. The commander of the Indian Army's Western Command, Lieutenant General P.N. Hoon, maintained that General Sundarji did not inform Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi about the scale of the operation and such details were hidden to him. Hoon also wrote in his memoir: "Brasstacks was no military exercise. It was a plan to build up the situation for a fourth war with Pakistan. This war, according to Indian defense analyst Ravi Rikhye, was planned by General Sunderji and Defence Minister Arun

Nehru without Rajiv Gandhi’s knowledge and concurrence. India backed down due to two main reasons: 1) Pakistan Army moved its Strike Corps to locations where they threatened East Punjab and Akhnur, the gateway to IHK; 2) General Zia, on a visit to witness a cricket match at Jaipur, threatened Rajiv Gandhi with a nuclear response. 

                                                                                                    Saleem Akhtar Malik

                                                                                                            August 31, 2019