Time Magazine, 1965

[Kavin]

Asia: Ending the Suspense

At dawn one morning last week, war came to the dusty Pakistan village of Dhankeal, near Lahore. Mystère jets of the Indian air force slammed rockets into a train at the station, killing three passengers and wounding eleven. Wakened by the explosions, a young peasant named Zakaullah clambered to the roof of his mud hut. "I saw planes in the sky," he said. "And suddenly they started throwing things with fire coming from them. Then one plane started to fall. It came down with a big noise."

Near by bearded Mohammed Sharif was leaving the village mosque after morning prayer when he looked up and saw the French-built Mystères in a dogfight with U.S.-made F-86 jets of the Pakistan air force. With peasant wisdom Sharif decided, "The Indians must be losing in Kashmir. Now they are trying to bother us down here." He urged the young men of the village to arm themselves with clubs and search through the cane and cornfields for downed Indian pilots.

Smeared Dung

To the hundreds of millions of illiterate Indian and Pakistani peasants in the villages, the war may be just another disaster to add to the constant plagues of drought, flood, tornado and poverty. Not so in the cities. New Delhi crowds danced in the streets at the rumor of Indian victories. As antiaircraft guns in Amritsar opened up on Pakistani planes, citizens cheered each white puff in the blue sky, shouting "Shoot him down! Kill him! Kill, kill, kill!" Workmen put up baffle walls in offices as protection against bomb blast, shopkeepers pasted strips of paper to window panes, husbands and fathers dug slit trenches outside their homes. As hospitals were hurriedly emptied to provide beds for expected wounded, Indians queued up to donate blood. The capital's mood was reflected by a businessman who said, "We've been kicked around too often. Let us lose 200 million people if we have to, and have done with it. Our national honor is at stake."

The same air of stern determination spread through Rawalpindi. Civil servants worked round the clock, and on the desks of key officials lay a blue volume of contingency papers labeled "War Book." Auto headlights were dimmed with smears of mud and cow dung, and trucks were camouflaged with leafy branches. For three successive nights, Indian bombers struck at Karachi's harbor installations, and the wail of air-raid sirens blended with the sobbing call to prayer of muezzins atop minarets. A bitter Pakistani official said, "Let's fight it out and get it over with. Either we become slaves of India, or India accepts us as an independent state. This suspense must end."

 

[Kavin]

(2 of 10)

Shimmering Dust

The major theater of war is the broad Punjab plain, which stretches flat from horizon to horizon. It is lushly green, dotted with clumps of trees, laced by canals. The days are swelteringly hot, and dust clouds shimmer in the glaring sun. It is Rudyard Kipling country, immortalized in such books as Kim and Indian Tales. And the soldiers on both sides are very like the men Kipling so deeply revered. The officers are British-trained, and many are graduates of Sandhurst. They have the British manner, right down to clipped accents, mustaches and swagger sticks. The enlisted men are also right out of Kipling's pages—sturdy Jats and turbaned Sikhs, rawboned Pathans and sinewy Sindhis, volunteers all, whose regimental flags are inscribed with battle names ranging from Ypres and Gallipoli to El Alamein and Monte Cassino and Rangoon.

Since its army is much the larger (867,000 men to 253,000), India went on the attack in five widely separated sectors of the Punjab front—three columns aimed at encircling Lahore, Pakistan's second largest city, one thrust at Sialkot, and the last struck at Karachi via the town of Gadra. The Indians hoped to force the dispersion of the smaller but better-trained and -armed Pakistani forces and then chop them up piecemeal.

The strategy worked, at least partially. A Pakistani armored force that had driven 30 miles into Kashmir with the object of seizing Jammu city, and thus cutting off more than 100,000 Indian troops in Kashmir, slowed down before reaching its goal and detached tanks to defend Sialkot.

In the air, it was much the same story—Indian quantity and Pakistan quality. Indian pilots are flying a variety of fighters, from French Mystères and British Vampires to Russian MIG-21s and Indian-built Gnats. The Pakistanis have U.S. supersonic jets, which seem to have made a spectacular number of kills—Pakistani Air Vice Marshal Nur Khan claims that 108 Indian planes have been shot down. If true, that amounts to a fifth of the Indian air force.

At week's end, both armies were digging in along the Punjab plain, their battalions stretching 800 miles, from the Kashmir border to the Rann of Kutch on the Arabian Sea. New Delhi reported "very fierce fighting" around Lahore and Sialkot and said its tank forces had killed two Pakistani generals, but neither side was claiming major advances and the battle line appeared to be temporarily stable. No ground fighting at all was reported from East Pakistan, 1,000 miles from the Punjab front, although Shastri warned that Indian troops might move at any time. On the Indian side, there were innumerable reports of nightly drops by Pakistani paratroopers, but police and army patrols found no evidence that the reports were true.

 

[Kavin]

(8 of 10)

Closed Routes

The instrument used was the mujahid, or local warrior. Subsequent Indian interrogations of captured mujahids indicate that they are mostly inhabitants of Azad (Free) Kashmir, the Pakistan-occupied one-third of the state. As army veterans, they were given a brisk course of retraining, taught methods of sabotage. Last month they began crossing the porous cease-fire line with instructions to start an insurrection.

All in all, an estimated 3,000 mujahids made the trip. It seemed an obviously doomed operation. The Indian share of Kashmir is firmly held by 100,000 troops. Though most Kashmiri ******* would undoubtedly vote to join Pakistan, few showed any inclination to die for the cause. The infiltrators were rounded up or slain with considerable ease, but the outcries from the Indian government often made it sound as if Kashmir were being invaded by hordes of warlike Huns.

In order to "close the infiltration routes," Indians in battalion strength crossed the cease-fire line and occupied a series of abandoned Pakistani outposts. There was a pause of some days, presumably to test the Pakistani reaction. When nothing happened, the Indians moved forward two weeks ago in regimental and brigade strength. Two Pakistani hilltop positions were stormed at dawn. In the Punch-Uri sector, the Indians advanced 25 miles into Pakistani territory. A large salient in the 1949 U.N. cease-fire line that bulged toward Srinagar was swiftly erased, and India announced that the occupied ground was now Indian, as were the 5,000 dazed peasants who lived there.

By last week, the world's eyes were on Kashmir. Pakistan would either have to react strongly or abandon its claims. Within 48 hours, Ayub Khan made his military answer. A rumbling column of 70 powerful Patton tanks rolled across the Kashmir border far to the south, where the land is flat. The Indian villages of Chhamb and Dewa were swiftly taken. Backed by a brigade of infantry, and with its flanks protected by patrols of mujahids, the tanks rolled on, driving Indian defenders from village after village.

Indian jet fighters streaked from the sky to smash the armored spearhead. Fearful of losing the strategic city of Jammu, the Indian high command ordered the drive on Lahore, removing the battle from Kashmir to Pakistan proper, and changing a brush-fire war into a full-scale challenge. The escalation had increased, and the suspense was over. Whatever else Ayub Khan and Shastri accomplished last week, they had noisily reopened the question of Kashmir.

 

[Kavin]

(10 of 10)

Closer Parity

Both the Indian and Pakistan governments were also dropping public hints as to the ground rules for future fighting. Each disclaimed any intention of bombing the other's jammed, slum-packed cities, which are easily flammable and prone to panic. And seemingly, neither side intends to launch a massive, win-the-war offensive with the aim of destroying the enemy's army and occupying his land.

Most military observers thought the fighting so far had gone about as expected. In the short run, Pakistan's small, highly trained army is more than a match for the Indians. But each skirmish and each day in the field reduces the efficiency of the U.S. weapons and equipment, and brings the Pakistanis toward closer parity with the Indians.

All of the Indian drives in the Punjab seem to have been stopped cold a short distance across the border. One unit attacking Lahore was severely handled and driven back into India, where it has dug in in defense of Ferozepore. But should the war be prolonged several more weeks, military men think that the more numerous Indian army will begin to prevail.

Peking Laughter

There is one imponderable: China. Even a military demonstration on the Himalayan front would seriously weaken the Indian effort. A Chinese offensive on the scale of their last one in 1962 would be more than India could handle, for New Delhi is barely equipped for a one-enemy war. It could never deal with two at once.

Who knew how Red China would react? Ayub, no friend of Communism, had not asked for aid from that quarter. Also, the Chinese might recall that in the 1962 clash with India, Ayub made clear to Delhi that Indian troops could safely be transferred from the Pakistan frontier to the Himalayas. True, Peking has been mumbling about Indian "aggression" in the border area. But these noises began long before the present conflict, and have not been significantly renewed. At the present moment, China's interests are well served by letting its two neighbors waste their scanty substance in war against each other. As an Indian official said grimly, "They must be laughing hard in Peking."

 

[Kavin]

Asia: Silent Guns, Wary Combatants
Times, October 1, 1965

In the green and gold chamber of the U.N.'s Security Council, the eyes of the diplomats flicked back and forth from the clock on the north wall to the impassioned face of Pakistan's Foreign Minister Zulfikar AH Bhutto. Before him lay the answer to everyone's question: Would it be wider war or tempo rary peace for South Asia? Bhutto waited until the last possible moment before answering.

At one minute before 3 a.m. — the deadline — he interrupted a scorching, anti-Indian diatribe, plucked from the stack of papers before him a telegram from Pakistan's President Mohammed Ayub Khan: "In the interests of inter national peace ... I have issued the following order to the Pakistani armed forces: they will stop fighting as from 1205 hours West Pakistan time today."

Claims of Victory. Soon, the guns fell silent along 1,000 miles of battle ground between India and Pakistan. At Pakistani airbases, pilots stepped wear ily from their American-built Sabres and Starfighters. On the Plain of Sialkot, tank-recovery vehicles clanked up to the hulks of shattered Indian and Pakistani armor to drag them off for salvage. In New Delhi and Rawalpindi, Indians and Pakistanis began to count their dead and gild their battles of the last three weeks with claims of victory.

Victory, in fact, belonged to no one in last week's ceasefire. Kashmir remained divided. India still claimed 690 sq. mi. of Pakistani territory (see map), but had failed by a scant three miles to capture the strategic Sialkot plateau. Pakistan held 250 sq. mi. of Indian Kashmir and Rajasthan, but had lost —temporarily at least — half its armor. And Red China had lost that most val uable of Asian commodities: face.

Peking's stern ultimatum to India, which once sounded like the voice of certain war, was resolved in a squeaky backdown. Peking announced that the Indians had dismantled 56 outposts on Chinese territory, thus precluding the possibility of a three-cornered war. But Peking kept up the threat of future trouble by demanding the immediate return of "two kidnaped Tibetans, 800 sheep and 59 yaks." India, of course, denied everything from dismantling to yaknaping. And in New Delhi, a mob promptly marched on the Chinese Embassy, leading a herd of sheep bearing placards that read: "Eat me, but save the world."

"A New Phase." The lull in the war 'may well be short-lived, as both Pakistan's Ayub and India's Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri indicated in their-post-cease-fire speeches. "From now on we enter a new phase in our struggle to show the righteousness of our cause," said Ayub. He added warm praise for Red China, whose "moral support . . . will forever remain enshrined in our hearts," as well as for Indonesia and other Moslem nations. The U.S. understandably received no public praise from Ayub for its role in the ceasefire, though Ayub quickly called President Johnson by phone to advise L.B.J. of Pakistan's acceptance of the ceasefire. Nothing was said of the anti-American demonstrations in Karachi and Lahore the day before the ceasefire, in which mobs smashed U.S. libraries and embassy windows.

Punctured Euphoria. In New Delhi, a wave of euphoria swept the population, but not the top level of Indian leadership. Shastri took to the radio to puncture the jubilation. "Pakistan is still in a bellicose mood," he said. "I must state clearly that if Pakistan launches an attack again on the state of Jammu and Kashmir, we shall meet the challenge with full determination and full force. Let there be no miscalculations again." Shastri evidently had in mind infiltrations of Pakistani "freedom fighters," whose raids had triggered the crisis. Indeed, no sooner was the cease-fire in effect than each side accused the other of violations.

Clearly, Pakistan had little choice but to accept the U.N.'s cease-fire ultimatum. Cut off from U.S. and British arms supplies, denied Russian aid, and severely mauled by the larger Indian armed forces, Pakistan could continue the fight only by teaming up with Red China and turning its back on the U.N. To take those steps would have meant a permanent break with the West and an end to the Western aid that has so greatly stimulated Pakistan's economy. India, by contrast, is still the big gainer in the war. Shastri had united the nation as never before. Said one Western ambassador last week: "It used to be you could feed the word 'India' into the machine and it would spit out 'Maharajahs, snakes, too many babies, too many cows, spindly-legged Hindus.' Now it's apparent to everybody that India is going to emerge as an Asian power in its own right."