Re: Myth about winning 1965 War
Jitnay munh utnee baatein but one thing comes out of all these articles, Pakistan did not badly lose the war, at best it was a draw but the fact that we stood up and defended our country against overwhelming odds was a victory. If Pakistan failed to capture Kashmir, India also failed to have tea in Lahore gymkhana which their generals were going to have within hours of crossing the Lahore border.
nahin yeh baat nahin hay. The fact is that Operation Gibraltar and Operation Grand Slam were totally failure, which triggered 1965 war by India. There was totally intelligence failure and dictator’s inability to properly assess the situation before indulging in this adventurism.
Pakistani miscalculations
The Pakistani Army’s failures started with the supposition that a generally discontented Kashmiri people, given the opportunity provided by the Pakistani advance, would revolt against their Indian rulers, bringing about a swift and decisive surrender of Kashmir. The Kashmiri people, however, did not revolt. Instead, the Indian Army was provided with enough information to learn ofOperation Gibraltar and the fact that the Army was battling not insurgents, as they had initially supposed, but Pakistani Army regulars. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5e/Mcconaughy20oct1965a.jpg/220px-Mcconaughy20oct1965a.jpg Karachi : “Continuing propaganda regarding achievements of Pak forces seems to have convinced most that only Pak forbearance saved the Indians from disaster.”
The Pakistani Army also failed to recognize that the Indian policy makers would order an attack on the southern sector in order to open a second front . Pakistan was forced to dedicate troops to the southern sector to protect Sialkot and Lahore instead using them to support penetrating into Kashmir.Operation Grand Slam ”, which was launched by Pakistan to capture Akhnoor , a town north-east of Jammu and a key region for communications between Kashmir and the rest of India, was also a failure. Many Pakistani commentators criticised the Ayub Khan administration for being indecisive during Operation Grand Slam. These critics claim that the operation failed because Ayub Khan knew the importance of Akhnur to India (having called it India’s “jugular vein ”) and did not want to capture it and drive the two nations into an all-out war. Despite progress being made in Akhnur, General Ayub Khan relieved the commanding Major General Akhtar Hussain Malik and replaced him with Gen. Yahya Khan . A 24-hour lull ensued the replacement, which allowed the Indian army to regroup in Akhnur and successfully oppose a lackluster attack headed by General Yahya Khan. “The enemy came to our rescue”, asserted the Indian Chief of Staff of the Western Command. Later, Akhtar Hussain Malik criticised Ayub Khan for planning Operation Gibraltar, which was doomed to fail, and for relieving him of his command at a crucial moment in the war. Malik threatened to expose the truth about the war and the army’s failure, but later dropped the idea for fear of being banned.[SUP][107]](India–Pakistan war of 1965 - Wikipedia )[/SUP] war game – conducted in March 1965, at the Institute of Defence Analysis, USA. The exercise concluded that, in the event of a war with India, Pakistan would win.[SUP][108]](India–Pakistan war of 1965 - Wikipedia )[/SUP][SUP][109]](India–Pakistan war of 1965 - Wikipedia )[/SUP] Other authors like Stephen Philip Cohen, have consistently commented that the Pakistan Army had “acquired an exaggerated view of the weakness of both India and the Indian military… the 1965 war was a shock”.[SUP][110]](India–Pakistan war of 1965 - Wikipedia )[/SUP]Air Marshal and Commander-in-Chief of PAF during the war, Nur Khan , later said that the Pakistan Army, and not India, should be blamed for starting the war.[SUP][111]](India–Pakistan war of 1965 - Wikipedia )[/SUP][SUP][112]](India–Pakistan war of 1965 - Wikipedia )[/SUP] However propaganda in Pakistan about the war continued; the war was not rationally analysed in Pakistan,[SUP][113]](India–Pakistan war of 1965 - Wikipedia )[/SUP][SUP][114]](India–Pakistan war of 1965 - Wikipedia )[/SUP] with most of the blame being heaped on the leadership and little importance given to intelligence failures that persisted until the debacle of the 1971 war , when then East Pakistan was invaded by India and seceded from West Pakistan, leading to the creation of Bangladesh .