In a previous column in this series (IE, September 4), the narrative of the 1965 India-Pakistan War was brought up to the crucial date of September 11, 1965 when Ayub Khan, a realist for all his faults, knew that for Pakistan the war was over. Its carefully crafted counter-offensive in the Khem Karan sector had flopped totally. After a rather long interruption for reasons entirely beyond my control, let me pick up the threads.

While Ayub, with a map on his lap, was gleefully telling his confidant, biographer and alter ego, Altaf Gauhar, that Pakistani Patton tanks would soon be reaching Delhi, his military secretary burst into the room agitatedly to announce that the counter-offensive had foundered because the Indians had cut a nearby canal and inundated the battlefield. The village of Asal Uttar in the Khem Karan sector had become the graveyard of Pakistani tanks. What tormented the field marshal even more was that India’s obsolete Sherman and Centurion tanks of World War II vintage had got the better of Pakistan’s US-supplied, state-of- the-art Pattons. Yet it took him another 12 days of senseless fighting and avoidable casualties to accept the UN-sponsored cease-fire on which the Security Council was insisting every afternoon. Why?

Not only were Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his hard-line cohorts totally opposed to a cease-fire (even though they knew that Pakistan was running out of ammunition as well as spare parts) but also Ayub’s loyalists — including Gauhar — were telling him that there could be no cease-fire unless it was accompanied by some mechanism to “solve” the Kashmir dispute. When the president testily asked his acolyte: “How do I achieve this”, Gauhar replied: “Sir, you have the China card. Please play it”.

... contd.