We as a nation are very spoilt. We know our rights but not our duties. In order to win cheap popularity, successive political leaders have told us about our rights but not our responsibilities. The same is the case with our commemoration of the war of 1965. Whereas it is our right to commemorate the extreme valour of our officers and men in the field, it is our duty to take cognizance of the fact that the whole war was unnecessary, and was the result of stewardship by a very incompetent high command.
Our school books are full of the genuine and very brave exploits of our valiant soldiers. However, the kids are not told about the foolishness of the whole exercise. General Ayub sent in commandoes as 'infiltrators', in the expectation that they would be welcomed as heroes and would start a movement for independence in the Kashmir Valley. In fact no such thing was going to happen. The same Kashmiris who, in 1989, spontaneously rose in revolt were not in that mood at all in 1965. This was because by then the Indian government's scheme to cause estrangement of Muslim school children from their religion through craftily edited school books had not yet taken off. Instead of receiving the commandoes, the Kashmiris handed them over to the police.
Ayub Khan should have cut his losses and stopped at that. Instead, he embarked upon the grand design of annexing Kashmir. He attacked the only road leading into the valley at Chhamb-Jaurian expecting Kashmir, being cut off from India, to fall into his lap like a ripe fruit. He expected that India would not cross the international frontier. No idea could be more idiotic. India attacked Pakistan at Lahore and Sialkot to relieve the pressure at Jaurian.
Even before India's attack, Ayub had made another Himalayan blunder. He stopped the Jaurian offensive in its tracks by changing horses in mid-stream. He replaced General Malik, probably with Yahya. If Ayub had allowed Malik to proceed till the capture of the strategic road, things would have been different; he would have had the trump card of Kashmir to play at Tashkent.
When India attacked, troops were in such short supply that divisions had to be hastily withdrawn from the Jaurian sector to Sialkot and Lahore. From then onwards it was only the valour of our soldiers, along with the heroism and efficiency of our air force pilots, that stood between us and disaster. To put the matter in a nutshell, we attacked Kashmir and saved Lahore and Sialkot! None of the Indian cities came under threat, not Ferozepur, not Amritsar.
We tell our school children and our public about the gallantry of our soldiers, and well we might, because they were equal to the bravest on earth, and did the nation proud. But we do not tell our people that it was a great and glorious war only in respect of the heroism of our men; as far as generalship was concerned, it was far below the standard. We don't teach our children, or even our adults, about this.
What happens when a nation refuses to analyse its victories and defeats objectively and learn the appropriate lessons from it? What happens is that it commits the same mistakes over and over again. This is what happened at Kargil, which was a repeat of 1965. We had already seen in the September war that when we attacked Kashmir and India attacked us, we were unable to keep both fronts open and had to loosen our grip on Kashmir's lifeline. What was the need to repeat the same experiment and have the same result? This time India did not even attack us but merely threatened us. The fact that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, on his dash to Washington for his 4th of July meeting with Clinton, was seen off at the airport by Chief of Army Staff Musharraf shows that the army had told him they were not in a position to wage all-out war with India. Now the question is: when we had gone through this exercise in 1965, why repeat the same mistake in 1999? The answer is simple: because we had never admitted to ourselves that the war in 1965 was not well thought out, and further that we had barely saved our skin. If we had admitted as much, we would never have made the same mistake again.
Even at this late stage we should rewrite our school books and tell our kids not partial truths but the whole truth. If we keep on glorifying 1965 and Kargil, tomorrow another brainwashed kid will repeat the same mistake a third time. It will not be his fault; it will be ours, for not having told him the truth.
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Our school books are full of the genuine and very brave exploits of our valiant soldiers. However, the kids are not told about the foolishness of the whole exercise. General Ayub sent in commandoes as 'infiltrators', in the expectation that they would be welcomed as heroes and would start a movement for independence in the Kashmir Valley. In fact no such thing was going to happen. The same Kashmiris who, in 1989, spontaneously rose in revolt were not in that mood at all in 1965. This was because by then the Indian government's scheme to cause estrangement of Muslim school children from their religion through craftily edited school books had not yet taken off. Instead of receiving the commandoes, the Kashmiris handed them over to the police.
Ayub Khan should have cut his losses and stopped at that. Instead, he embarked upon the grand design of annexing Kashmir. He attacked the only road leading into the valley at Chhamb-Jaurian expecting Kashmir, being cut off from India, to fall into his lap like a ripe fruit. He expected that India would not cross the international frontier. No idea could be more idiotic. India attacked Pakistan at Lahore and Sialkot to relieve the pressure at Jaurian.
Even before India's attack, Ayub had made another Himalayan blunder. He stopped the Jaurian offensive in its tracks by changing horses in mid-stream. He replaced General Malik, probably with Yahya. If Ayub had allowed Malik to proceed till the capture of the strategic road, things would have been different; he would have had the trump card of Kashmir to play at Tashkent.
When India attacked, troops were in such short supply that divisions had to be hastily withdrawn from the Jaurian sector to Sialkot and Lahore. From then onwards it was only the valour of our soldiers, along with the heroism and efficiency of our air force pilots, that stood between us and disaster. To put the matter in a nutshell, we attacked Kashmir and saved Lahore and Sialkot! None of the Indian cities came under threat, not Ferozepur, not Amritsar.
We tell our school children and our public about the gallantry of our soldiers, and well we might, because they were equal to the bravest on earth, and did the nation proud. But we do not tell our people that it was a great and glorious war only in respect of the heroism of our men; as far as generalship was concerned, it was far below the standard. We don't teach our children, or even our adults, about this.
What happens when a nation refuses to analyse its victories and defeats objectively and learn the appropriate lessons from it? What happens is that it commits the same mistakes over and over again. This is what happened at Kargil, which was a repeat of 1965. We had already seen in the September war that when we attacked Kashmir and India attacked us, we were unable to keep both fronts open and had to loosen our grip on Kashmir's lifeline. What was the need to repeat the same experiment and have the same result? This time India did not even attack us but merely threatened us. The fact that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, on his dash to Washington for his 4th of July meeting with Clinton, was seen off at the airport by Chief of Army Staff Musharraf shows that the army had told him they were not in a position to wage all-out war with India. Now the question is: when we had gone through this exercise in 1965, why repeat the same mistake in 1999? The answer is simple: because we had never admitted to ourselves that the war in 1965 was not well thought out, and further that we had barely saved our skin. If we had admitted as much, we would never have made the same mistake again.
Even at this late stage we should rewrite our school books and tell our kids not partial truths but the whole truth. If we keep on glorifying 1965 and Kargil, tomorrow another brainwashed kid will repeat the same mistake a third time. It will not be his fault; it will be ours, for not having told him the truth.
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