http://dawn.com/2007/06/14/letted.htm#1
I was a junior USAF officer with the office of the US air attache at the old US embassy in Karachi at the time of the 1965 Rann of Kutch battle(s). In fact, I was wounded on an innocent boar hunt in a PIA Land Rover, as the guest of Pakistani friends and business acquaintances who were key PIA officials, as we drove through this area on Jan 31, 1965.
A surprise Indian tank shell blew another Pakistani truck coming towards us in the marsh area, injuring all of us pretty badly.
This said, I have read much of the history of the 1965 India-Pakistan war, but also lived there during that war to have been “on the scene” literally.
This wordy preamble aside, foreign minister Bhutto largely engineered the foolish events that caused or incited the 1965 war. Ayub Khan had to have known what was going on, but his chief ‘goader’, if you will, into this war was Bhutto.
Neither Air Marshal Asghar Khan nor the chief of the Pakistan Navy was involved in the 1965 war pre-planning or early on execution of that war by Mr Bhutto and the then Pakistan Army chief of staff. The air marshal rightly and sanely telephoned his Indian counter-part to immediately do what he and they could to limit this sudden, unexpected hot conflict which was not expected by the air marshal of Pakistan or the chief of the Pakistan Navy.
In my view, living there at the time, I saw and still see Air Marshal Khan as a hero of immense proportions for his brave actions to limit and damp down the start of this ill- fated war as quickly as he could.
The 1965 war was a monstrously dumb move on the part of Mr Bhutto and the Pakistani Army chief of staff’s who clearly initiated the whole war.
Your letter writer jumps to a wrong conclusion about Air Marshal Ashgar Khan, who I had met several times between 1963 and 1965 at my headquarters in Peshawar, the old US air base there. I was the USAF base liaison officer in the US embassy in Karachi.
In fact, Air Marshal Khan promptly resigned in protest over this unwarranted and wasteful war in 1965 which he had no part in planning or starting. Subsequently, the air marshal entered politics, was elected to your national legislature, was briefly jailed by his political opponent, Mr Bhutto, and then lost elective office. The air marshall has authored over 28 books, some related to this 1965 war, which the letter writer might want to read or re -read to be better informed.
COL (r) GEORGE L. SINGLETON, USAF,
Alabama, USA