Much of this has been summarised earlier. Please feel free to skip it and move on.
What followed the beginning of Grand Slam is complex. Contrary to impressions that we have gathered so far, there was in fact a plan, Operation Riddle, prepared by the Indian Army in response to the Indian PM's request after the events of the Rann of Kutch. This had the three broad objectives as follows:
- To destroy the ability of the Pakistan Army to wage war;
- To occupy territory that could be used for negotiation later on;
- To defend against Pakistan's attempts to grab Kashmir by force.
These are borrowed from Shuja Nawaz's presentation at the Hudson Institute, where he quotes from the book based on the war diaries of Y. B. Chavan. However, that presentation has its issues:
- For a pacifist Prime Minister such as Shastri to consider grabbing land in the Rann of Kutch is simply ludicrous; in fact, the intention was that of Pakistan.
- For I Corps to be given this task well in advance of the conflict, when it had not been formed or deployed, is far-fetched. In the event, Mr. Nawaz mentions XI Corps as carrying out this plan, that had two parts to it:
- An attack towards Lahore: this was led by XI Corps;
- An attack towards Sialkot, to cut lines of communications between Sialkot and Lahore, and isolate forces in northern Pakistan from forces grouped around Lahore and located further south.
The problem was, as
@PanzerKiel has pointed out already, General Chaudhuri and General Harbaksh Singh had very different views on the conduct of the war. There was a higher level version of this, in that the Defence Minister Chavan did not have confidence in his COAS; in meetings, Chavan felt, Chaudhuri would not answer questions fully, (read: honestly), and that in general, he was always keeping things close to his chest.
There was also a general impression about Chaudhuri in the minister's mind, that Chaudhuri was too careful and was a plodding kind of general. This is vindicated in part by his abrupt decision to pull Indian troops back behind Amritsar, leaving that city defenceless and open to capture by Pakistani forces, when the Pakistan Army got a breakthrough in Khem Karan.
Why did Pakistan have the impression that she could hold her own in a defensive war against India?
For one thing, the force levels: there was a belief that India would need a 4:1 numerical advantage to attack Pakistan and penetrate her defences. The norm is 3:1; therefore the Martial Races premium in the minds of the Pakistani High Command may be calculated at (0.33 - 0.25 =) 0.08, or 1 in 12. In 1964, Pakistan had 8 Divisions, from some accounts; a ninth, the 6th Armoured Division, was set up in 1965 itself, and was sent into action. The general idea was to absorb an enemy attack successfully, and then counter-attack. Pakistani General Mahmud Ahmed has been quoted as reporting that the Pakistan Army HQ had estimated that India had 19 Divisions, but 7 were committed to the Chinese front, while 2 were committed to East Pakistan. Of the remainder, 4 Infantry Divisions and 1 Armoured Division, as well as an Armoured Brigade were in the Vale of Kashmir; this was an obvious morale booster for the planners in Pakistan, who felt that they should be able to take care of the 5 Divisions left over with no difficulty.
On the other hand, the ISI had apparently in August 1965 informed all concerned in the Pakistan Army, the Pakistan Navy and the Pakistan Air Force that the Indian Government had allowed the Indian COAS to cross the border into Pakistan whenever and wherever necessary. It is difficult to sympathise with Pakistani shock at Operation Riddle being launched at Lahore and Sialkot. The report also claimed that Indian troops were within striking distance of the International Border between India and Pakistan, but this makes strange reading. One only needs to see the distances that some units had to travel, the inability of others to got to battle because of their exhaustion, and the consequences of diversion of Mountain Divisions into plains field battles.
In the event, GHQ Pakistan believed that the main Indian effort would be in Kashmir, with some action against East Pakistan, but nothing against West Pakistan. This was incorporated into one of their Operations Directives.
It deals with the operations of two Indian Army Corps (I am writing this entirely from the point of view of the Indian Army), XI Corps and I Corps, and with the detailed operations of 15th Infantry Division, 7th Infantry Division and 4th Mountain Division. Within those broad categories, there was the specific operation of 54th Brigade and 38th Brigade under 15th Infantry Division, and their constituent battalions and armoured regiments and integral artillery.
The Pakistani assessment of the war was that the Army punched above its weight, and held its own against a much larger adversary, and that the Air Force, too, played a major role in the initial stages of the war, while the Indian Air Force was nowhere to be seen at the outset, while the two navies played a very tangential role. However, the Pakistan Navy did make a very bold move, shelling Dwarka. This enfuriated the Indian CONS, who demanded a meeting with the Defence Minister, failed to get a release to attack, asked to see the Prime Minister, failed again, and went and met the President (reported in Chavan's war diaries). He was stalled at all three levels, told that the Navy would be brought in, but later, and had to be content with that.
We have to reckon with two different points of view of how the Indian Army fared. One of them is obviously the Indian side, the other, equally obviously, the Pakistani side. So let us look at them.
Two sources have been cited to encapsulate the Indian point of view, the book War Despatched by General Harbaksh Singh, and a recent article by Manoj Joshi in The Wire. So "XI Corps performance was a sickening repetition of command failures leading to the sacrifice of a series of cheap victories." And "...I Corps, with the exception of a few minor successes, the operational performance was virtually a catalogue of lost victories. In two key battles, Dograi near Lahore and Phillora, early in the war, Indian forces broke through, but were pulled back by commanders who were worried that they had been sucked into a trap."
Akhtar Malik on the other hand says, "...we lost the initiative the very first day, and never recovered it." Another view, from Shuja Nawaz, was that the campaign was marked by "tactical brilliance and gallantry at the lower levels of command, nullified by a lack of vision and courage among the higher leadership of the Pakistan Army."
Mahmud Ahmed's book was originally titled "Illusions of Victory", and was changed by the Pakistan Army to "History of the Indo-Pak War, 1965", had a similar assessment. Apparently 28 study groups were set up to dissect the lessons of the war at the Staff College, Quetta; it is not known how many were set up in India.
This was NOT the official (=Government) point of view; Ayub Khan's government proclaimed the war a magnificent victory for Pakistan.
In effect, Pakistan had failed to liberate Kashmir, and had failed to rouse a popular uprising. India, with a numerically superior force, failed to dominate the Pakistan Army, and failed to make the Pakistan Army sue for peace.
@Cuirassier
@Mumm-Ra
For your consideration.
"The 1965 war was a war between two Second World War armies, trained to fight for someone else, and both sides demonstrated not a balance of power, but a balance of incompetence."
American General
