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The following is the third in a series of up to twelve articles by Colonel Singleton in the November 2010 Quarterly Issue on line of the COLD WAR TIMES, as found on the Internet in the COLD WAR TIMES MUSEUM website. The COLD WAR MUSEUM/COLD WAR TIMES are an arm of the SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM system in Washington, DC.
PAKISTAN'S BRIEF 1965 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION & RELATED WAR AGITATION
By George L. Singleton, Colonel, USAF, Retired
During the month of December, 1964, Pakistan prepared to hold Presidential elections in what to most of us Westerners then serving in Pakistan seemed a most unusual and undemocratic fashion.
Election day was January 2, 1965. Some 80,000 "basic democrats," as members of urban and regional councils, caucused to vote. The Convention Muslim League and the Combined Opposition Parties made up of some 5 opposition parties, were the contestants.
The Combined Opposition Parties had a platform which in part included restoration of direct popular elections, democratization of the 1962 Constitution, and the adult vote. As the so called Combined Opposition Parties were in fact very much disunited they compromised by selecting Fatima Jinnah as their candidate. Miss Jinnah was the younger sister of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.
My same age Pakistani Foreign Office, Ministry of Defense, and business friends in Karachi tried to convince me and other Westerners that this was the sort of Presidential election, quick and over with, which the people of Pakistan wanted. I found this incredible and of course unbelievable.
During the single election month of December I and both Pakistan and European friends went to the beach every weekend. The last few weekends of December we started to encounter crowds, or downright mobs of ordinary, poor, and bedraggled Pakistanis demonstrating on the single paved road to and from the beach and into the massive City of Karachi.
The last Sunday in December we encountered an outright riot underway on the highway and one of my Pakistani young Foreign Office friends directed me to drive widely around the boiling mad crowd, out into the open, flat desert, around the rioters, then onto the other side of the paved road back in to Karachi.
While I drove this quick detour around the rioters my Pakistani friend told me that these people were general trouble makers and we would be in danger of loosing our lives as we were obviously well to do Pakistanis and Westerners. I had no doubt we would have been harmed, so had no trouble obeying his request to drive around them all.
In addition to the incumbent President of Pakistan, Field Marshal Ayub Khan and Fatima Jinnah, there were two other unknown candidates with seemingly no real party backing from anywhere...but they were somehow included on the ballot on which the "basic democracies" delegates would vote. I thought perhaps the two additional candidates were merely a ruse to dilute Miss Jinnah's vote.
Incumbent President Ayub Khan openly and blatantly used the power of his office to decide all election issues of due process and related questions in his own favor. The "deck was stacked" and on 2 January 1965 Ayub Khan was re-elected and Miss Jinnah was defeated, all in the context of the 80,000 basic democracies group of electors who in turn became essentially the Electoral College of Pakistan.
Friendly pro-West native Pakistanis and Westerners then working inside Pakistan felt in general that had a direct popular presidential election been held that Miss Jinnah would have won "in a walk." But who were we to know such things as outsiders or insider pro-democracy Pakistanis?
Meanwhile during December 1964 and into late January, 1965, Pakistani Foreign Minister S. A. Bhutto, Chief of the Pakistani Army General Musa, and President Ayub Khan planned and moved into scattered military actions against Indian forces up and down the common border between then West Pakistan and Eastern India.
In the Kashmir area Pakistani soldiers dressed as locals were used to try to infiltrate and fight India forces. In the South, near the Arabian Sea Coast, in the poorly defined Rann of Kutch marsh area, regular Pakistani Army forces were sent into what they had to know was actually Indian territory. The result was small scale, then over time, episodically growing into larger scale Pakistani vs. Indian Army unit skirmishes which eventually became battles.
The Rann of Kutch was at that time being explored by a USSR Oil and Gas team on behalf of Pakistan. False rumors were spread by the USSR team/agents which contributed to the overall military clash, as the Russians falsely alleged that they had discovered huge or vast oil and natural gas deposits inside the Rann of Kutch.
An example of a Pakistani military vs. India military clash involving me and my accompanying Pakistani civilian friends. On Sunday January 30, 1965, I was a guest of two Pakistani contemporaries in a Pakistan International Airways Land Rover truck with short bed and wooden benches in the rear which we sat on facing inward, with our unloaded shot guns across our laps. A large Pakistani flag was painted on the hood of the Land Rover truck. In the front seat were the driver and two Pakistani hunting "beaters" intended to help flush wild pigs out for us to shoot. Sitting In the back of the truck on the wooden benches facing inward was me. On the opposing wooden truck bench were my hosts, first cousins, Aftab and Masoot Khan.
I had borrowed an antique single shot 10 gauge shotgun from a friend, a same age young US Foreign Service Officer at the US Embassy in Karachi. The borrowed shotgun lying across my lap was to have it's wooden stock snapped in two in the process of the shortly to be Indian tank shell knocking the oncoming truck into our Land Rover catastrophe. The breaking of the borrowed family heirloom shotgun in my lap of course led to the cracking of the femur in my left leg. A minor detail.
Seemingly out of the blue we first heard distant shots, tank or artillery firing. Then a Pakistani truck carrying scrap metal scavenged from the marsh area from times past was rushing toward us on our paved but narrow road. We could see a tank barrel coming over the top of a distant sand dune. We heard a distant report from the tank gun. Then the scrap medal carrying truck was blown into our Land Rover truck . I and the boys in the rear, my two Pakistani friends were thrown up into the air. Then I was unconscious for a while.
When I came to, the three of us who had been in the back of the truck on the benches had ended up in or on sand dunes, which apparently broke our fall somewhat. We were all badly banged up, as we had flown through the air sideways into the back of the cab wall of the Land Rover truck.
My left side was smashed by the impact of hitting the truck cab. My friends suffered right side damages, the Khan cousin closest to the rear wall of the cab taking a harder hit than his cousin, who more or less smashed into him, then up into the air and onto a sand dune.
The driver was severely wounded and bleeding badly. The other two front seat beaters were banged up and seemed to be bleeding from several parts of their bodies.
Not to go on. We simply were wounded in one of several skirmishes that were the prelude later in 1965 to a more full blown, division sized series of land and then air battles.
Very little of consequence in the way of naval actions took place, although since 1965 minor naval events on both sides, India and Pakistan, were reported but seemed badly blown out of proportion to reality.
Thus ended in 1965 what in 1964 what started out to be very good, friendly international Cold War cooperation 1964 between Pakistan and the Western world.
My next, fourth installment, of up to twelve articles about my first hand experiences in then West Pakistan from 1963-1965 will deal with a meeting that happened soon after I was wounded in early 1965 at the Karachi US Embassy with representatives from the US Embassy in New Delhi, India.
FOOTNOTE: The author is a retired Colonel, USAF, who served 6 years on active duty, then served 25 years in the active USAF Reserve from the squadron level up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff level. January 1, 1991 Colonel Singleton volunteered back on active duty to help run the entire East Coast USAF Air Lift for Desert Storm I out of Charleston AFB, SC.
Colonel Singleton is retired from the US Department of Veterans Affairs where he helped start up the National Disaster Medical System for all VA hospitals and clinics inside Alabama in conjunction with local hospitals statewide; with the Department of Defense with the then Federal Emergency Planning Agency; and with the US Public Health Service.
Singleton as a civilian had formerly worked in the Office of the US Surgeon General, US Public Health Service, in the Washington area. He likewise had served as a reservist with HQ US Special Operations Command, Office of the Chief of Staff; with HQ US Forces Command, Office of the Commanding General (then Lt. General Colin Powell, USA) at Ft. McPherson, Georgia; and with the Commander in Chief, US Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk, Va., who was then Admiral Kelso, USN, now retired.
George Singleton is also a former New York City International Banking Officer with a Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, which bank by multiple mergers is now a part of JP Morgan Chase Bank.
PAKISTAN'S BRIEF 1965 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION & RELATED WAR AGITATION
By George L. Singleton, Colonel, USAF, Retired
During the month of December, 1964, Pakistan prepared to hold Presidential elections in what to most of us Westerners then serving in Pakistan seemed a most unusual and undemocratic fashion.
Election day was January 2, 1965. Some 80,000 "basic democrats," as members of urban and regional councils, caucused to vote. The Convention Muslim League and the Combined Opposition Parties made up of some 5 opposition parties, were the contestants.
The Combined Opposition Parties had a platform which in part included restoration of direct popular elections, democratization of the 1962 Constitution, and the adult vote. As the so called Combined Opposition Parties were in fact very much disunited they compromised by selecting Fatima Jinnah as their candidate. Miss Jinnah was the younger sister of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.
My same age Pakistani Foreign Office, Ministry of Defense, and business friends in Karachi tried to convince me and other Westerners that this was the sort of Presidential election, quick and over with, which the people of Pakistan wanted. I found this incredible and of course unbelievable.
During the single election month of December I and both Pakistan and European friends went to the beach every weekend. The last few weekends of December we started to encounter crowds, or downright mobs of ordinary, poor, and bedraggled Pakistanis demonstrating on the single paved road to and from the beach and into the massive City of Karachi.
The last Sunday in December we encountered an outright riot underway on the highway and one of my Pakistani young Foreign Office friends directed me to drive widely around the boiling mad crowd, out into the open, flat desert, around the rioters, then onto the other side of the paved road back in to Karachi.
While I drove this quick detour around the rioters my Pakistani friend told me that these people were general trouble makers and we would be in danger of loosing our lives as we were obviously well to do Pakistanis and Westerners. I had no doubt we would have been harmed, so had no trouble obeying his request to drive around them all.
In addition to the incumbent President of Pakistan, Field Marshal Ayub Khan and Fatima Jinnah, there were two other unknown candidates with seemingly no real party backing from anywhere...but they were somehow included on the ballot on which the "basic democracies" delegates would vote. I thought perhaps the two additional candidates were merely a ruse to dilute Miss Jinnah's vote.
Incumbent President Ayub Khan openly and blatantly used the power of his office to decide all election issues of due process and related questions in his own favor. The "deck was stacked" and on 2 January 1965 Ayub Khan was re-elected and Miss Jinnah was defeated, all in the context of the 80,000 basic democracies group of electors who in turn became essentially the Electoral College of Pakistan.
Friendly pro-West native Pakistanis and Westerners then working inside Pakistan felt in general that had a direct popular presidential election been held that Miss Jinnah would have won "in a walk." But who were we to know such things as outsiders or insider pro-democracy Pakistanis?
Meanwhile during December 1964 and into late January, 1965, Pakistani Foreign Minister S. A. Bhutto, Chief of the Pakistani Army General Musa, and President Ayub Khan planned and moved into scattered military actions against Indian forces up and down the common border between then West Pakistan and Eastern India.
In the Kashmir area Pakistani soldiers dressed as locals were used to try to infiltrate and fight India forces. In the South, near the Arabian Sea Coast, in the poorly defined Rann of Kutch marsh area, regular Pakistani Army forces were sent into what they had to know was actually Indian territory. The result was small scale, then over time, episodically growing into larger scale Pakistani vs. Indian Army unit skirmishes which eventually became battles.
The Rann of Kutch was at that time being explored by a USSR Oil and Gas team on behalf of Pakistan. False rumors were spread by the USSR team/agents which contributed to the overall military clash, as the Russians falsely alleged that they had discovered huge or vast oil and natural gas deposits inside the Rann of Kutch.
An example of a Pakistani military vs. India military clash involving me and my accompanying Pakistani civilian friends. On Sunday January 30, 1965, I was a guest of two Pakistani contemporaries in a Pakistan International Airways Land Rover truck with short bed and wooden benches in the rear which we sat on facing inward, with our unloaded shot guns across our laps. A large Pakistani flag was painted on the hood of the Land Rover truck. In the front seat were the driver and two Pakistani hunting "beaters" intended to help flush wild pigs out for us to shoot. Sitting In the back of the truck on the wooden benches facing inward was me. On the opposing wooden truck bench were my hosts, first cousins, Aftab and Masoot Khan.
I had borrowed an antique single shot 10 gauge shotgun from a friend, a same age young US Foreign Service Officer at the US Embassy in Karachi. The borrowed shotgun lying across my lap was to have it's wooden stock snapped in two in the process of the shortly to be Indian tank shell knocking the oncoming truck into our Land Rover catastrophe. The breaking of the borrowed family heirloom shotgun in my lap of course led to the cracking of the femur in my left leg. A minor detail.
Seemingly out of the blue we first heard distant shots, tank or artillery firing. Then a Pakistani truck carrying scrap metal scavenged from the marsh area from times past was rushing toward us on our paved but narrow road. We could see a tank barrel coming over the top of a distant sand dune. We heard a distant report from the tank gun. Then the scrap medal carrying truck was blown into our Land Rover truck . I and the boys in the rear, my two Pakistani friends were thrown up into the air. Then I was unconscious for a while.
When I came to, the three of us who had been in the back of the truck on the benches had ended up in or on sand dunes, which apparently broke our fall somewhat. We were all badly banged up, as we had flown through the air sideways into the back of the cab wall of the Land Rover truck.
My left side was smashed by the impact of hitting the truck cab. My friends suffered right side damages, the Khan cousin closest to the rear wall of the cab taking a harder hit than his cousin, who more or less smashed into him, then up into the air and onto a sand dune.
The driver was severely wounded and bleeding badly. The other two front seat beaters were banged up and seemed to be bleeding from several parts of their bodies.
Not to go on. We simply were wounded in one of several skirmishes that were the prelude later in 1965 to a more full blown, division sized series of land and then air battles.
Very little of consequence in the way of naval actions took place, although since 1965 minor naval events on both sides, India and Pakistan, were reported but seemed badly blown out of proportion to reality.
Thus ended in 1965 what in 1964 what started out to be very good, friendly international Cold War cooperation 1964 between Pakistan and the Western world.
My next, fourth installment, of up to twelve articles about my first hand experiences in then West Pakistan from 1963-1965 will deal with a meeting that happened soon after I was wounded in early 1965 at the Karachi US Embassy with representatives from the US Embassy in New Delhi, India.
FOOTNOTE: The author is a retired Colonel, USAF, who served 6 years on active duty, then served 25 years in the active USAF Reserve from the squadron level up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff level. January 1, 1991 Colonel Singleton volunteered back on active duty to help run the entire East Coast USAF Air Lift for Desert Storm I out of Charleston AFB, SC.
Colonel Singleton is retired from the US Department of Veterans Affairs where he helped start up the National Disaster Medical System for all VA hospitals and clinics inside Alabama in conjunction with local hospitals statewide; with the Department of Defense with the then Federal Emergency Planning Agency; and with the US Public Health Service.
Singleton as a civilian had formerly worked in the Office of the US Surgeon General, US Public Health Service, in the Washington area. He likewise had served as a reservist with HQ US Special Operations Command, Office of the Chief of Staff; with HQ US Forces Command, Office of the Commanding General (then Lt. General Colin Powell, USA) at Ft. McPherson, Georgia; and with the Commander in Chief, US Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk, Va., who was then Admiral Kelso, USN, now retired.
George Singleton is also a former New York City International Banking Officer with a Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, which bank by multiple mergers is now a part of JP Morgan Chase Bank.
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