Magnificent Delusions (19 page)

But for Ayub and his generals, supported by many civilians, this was not enough. Pakistan had to secure its rights in Kashmir before and above all else. Because the Americans were unwilling or unable to ensure that the Kashmir dispute resolved in Pakistan's favor, Pakistan would use the means available to it, including those the Americans provided ostensibly for a different enemy. The calculus in Rawalpindi was that the Indian military was relatively weak, especially after the conflict with China, and Pakistan was stronger than it would likely be in the future. American-made Patton tanks and F-86 and F-104 aircraft were superior in quality to the equipment in the Indian arsenal. If Pakistan could get “a military-induced solution to the Kashmir imbroglio,” now was the time.
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The death in 1964 of Nehru, the only prime minister India had since partition, provided Ayub with an opportunity to test his theory that India might break up within fifteen to twenty years. In what was named “Operation Gibraltar,” Pakistan helped exacerbate Muslim unrest in the Indian-controlled parts of Kashmir. Ayub's strategic minds had developed the doctrine of “irregular warfare” as a tool for “reducing the crucial nature of the initial battles of Pakistan.”
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Under this doctrine armed infiltrators were sent into Kashmir in August of 1965, hoping to ignite a wider uprising.

If everything went according to plan, Pakistan's regular forces would enter Kashmir triumphantly in “Operation Grand Slam. “The Indians would then either sue for peace or the US-led international community would force a settlement of the Kashmir dispute in favor of Pakistan. But the plan had a critical flaw: it did not take into account the possibility that India may widen the conflict along Pakistan's international borders, denying Pakistan victory in Kashmir and forcing it to defend its own territory. Ayub had also misread the likely American reaction.

Robert Komer described the situation for the US president in his usual colorful style. “Kashmir is still bubbling merrily and could blow up,” he wrote on August 29, 1965. “U Thant [the UN secretary general] fears the whole 1949 ceasefire agreement may collapse. He
wanted to report blaming the Paks for starting the mess, but the Paks threatened to withdraw from the UN if he did. Nor are the Indians too eager to take Kashmir to the UN lest the whole question of its status be reopened (which is what the Paks want).”
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The American ambassador to India, Chester Bowles, anticipated Indian retaliation and urged that the United States pressure Pakistan, “lest they be encouraged to think they are getting away with the game.” In addition, Komer referred to intelligence reports that “both the Kashmir infiltration and the earlier Rann of Kutch affair are part of a ‘well-organized plan' to force a Kashmir settlement.” The Rann of Kutch had been an India-Pakistan battleground a few months earlier, and the United States had helped refer that dispute about demarcation of borders to international arbitration. The Americans had clandestinely obtained the Pakistani military plan and knew that it had been shared with the Chinese.
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Although his advisers asked for robust intervention to prevent a full-blown India-Pakistan war, Johnson decided that it would be better for the United States to sit it out. Secretary of State Rusk shared with the president his fear of communal rioting in Kashmir and across the subcontinent. He suspected that millions could be killed and wanted the United States to make every effort to stop the fighting. “The Pakistanis had started the current affair with a massive infiltration of several thousand men,” Rusk told Johnson, adding, “Then the Indians crossed the Ceasefire Line in a mop-up operation, especially to pinch off a dangerous salient.”
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According to him, the Pakistanis had escalated the conflict by throwing in their regular army to cut the road to Srinagar.

Johnson said he wanted to be very cautious about anything the United States said. “First, both sides wanted us to threaten them so they could be martyrs,” he observed. “Second, both would use US equipment if they needed it, regardless of what we said.” His proposed solution was to ask Britain or someone else to talk to both sides while the Americans should “get behind a log and sleep a bit.” The president said he had found out over the last few months how little influence the United States had with the Pakistanis or Indians. Rusk felt that the United States had to remind both the Indians and
the Pakistanis that American arms were not for the purpose of fighting each other.
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On September 6 India retaliated by widening the war along Pakistan's international border, forcing Pakistani troops to defend the cities of Lahore, Kasur, and Sialkot. Pakistan's dreams of “liberating” Kashmir had gone up in smoke—now it was a question of defending Pakistan. In discussions with American diplomats, Ayub acknowledged that the war had begun as a result of Pakistan's forays in Kashmir, but this did not stop him from seeking American intervention on behalf of Pakistan and the Pakistanis from feeling aggrieved when its Western allies did not help it in war.
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As was often the case, the Pakistanis debated their American interlocutors, invoking history selectively. The Americans did not see this as the time to remind the Pakistanis that they had failed to fire a single bullet against any communist army, even after receiving massive military assistance ostensibly to fight communism. There was no mention of Pakistan's past refusal to provide even nonmilitary support in Korea, Laos, and Vietnam, but instead considerable discussion about America's obligations.

In a long argument Foreign Minister Bhutto told the US ambassador that the Americans had a commitment to defend Pakistan if it was attacked. Treaties bound the United States to stop India from attacking Pakistan, he argued, refusing to accept US attempts to secure a UN-sponsored cease-fire as a substitute. According to Bhutto, the United States needed to take action for a final settlement of the Kashmir issue.
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In fact, Pakistan had budged little from the stance that Ayub had repeatedly adopted during talks with American officials. In almost all his conversations with Americans he had focused exclusively on asking for military aid and demanding Western intervention on behalf of Pakistan for a Kashmir settlement. During the war a Canadian diplomat asked the Pakistani president what he wanted. He replied, “We want Kashmir but we know we can't win it by military action. If only you people would show some guts, we would have it.”
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From the US point of view there was no commitment to assist Pakistan in a war it had initiated. The United States saw itself as
doing Pakistan a favor by seeking an early end to the war. The Americans were clear that they did not want to be dragged deeper into the India-Pakistan quagmire. As soon as the war began, Rusk sent a personal message to McConaughy and Bowles, warning them that both India and Pakistan would make a major effort to gain US support, and both could be expected to cite their disappointment and resentment toward the United States.

The ambassadors and their staffs “should be ready to explain firmly but sympathetically why the U.S. is not moving in to participate in the way each might wish,” Rusk directed. The United States would ignore resentment and recrimination. “We are being asked to come in on the crash landing where we had no chance to be in on the take-off,” said the secretary of state, pointing out the futility of joining that exercise.
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The United States suspended supplies of arms to both India and Pakistan, causing disappointment in Pakistan because of the country's greater dependence on American weapons. Foreign Minister Bhutto told McConaughy that this was “an act not of an ally and not even that of a neutral. Rather, it was an act which would be of net benefit to the Indian side.”
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In an emotional plea Bhutto asked the United States to cut off economic assistance to India, including food aid, until “India terminated the aggression against Pakistan.”
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McConaughy maintained that the United States did this to preserve Pakistan as well as the subcontinent as a whole. He attempted to convey as diplomatically as possible US disenchantment with Pakistan, which had started a war in the hope of dragging in the United States without prior discussion. Ayub's finance minister, Muhammad Shuaib, conveyed the Pakistani president's desperation for a “gesture” that would enable him to reject Chinese overtures and remain an American ally. The United States' refusal to side with Pakistan against India seemed “designed to push me toward the Chinese,” Ayub was quoted as saying. “I don't want to sit in the Chinese lap, and I won't do so if it can be avoided. But if U.S. can't give me any help, I'll have no choice.” Ayub wanted “an authoritative U.S. statement attaching responsibility to India” for starting the war and
a public statement that America would use its influence to effect a Kashmir settlement in Pakistan's favor.
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Rusk's response to the plea was unequivocal: the United States would support a cease-fire and any negotiations acceptable to both parties on the cause of their conflict. “Once the firing is stopped and President Johnson is convinced that renewed US assistance will be used to help the people of Pakistan and not to support military adventures,” said the secretary of state, “close and mutually helpful relations between the U.S. and Pakistan can quickly be restored.”
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The war ended in a stalemate seventeen days after it started, denying Pakistan the military advantage it had hoped to seek. That had several consequences, each of them important for Pakistan's future. First, based on the notion that the United States had not come to Pakistan's aid despite being its ally, it bred anti-Americanism among Pakistanis. Second, it linked the Pakistani military closer to an Islamist ideology. Religious symbolism and calls to Jihad were used to build the morale of soldiers and the people. Third, it widened the gulf between East and West Pakistan, as Bengalis felt that Ayub's military strategy had left them completely unprotected. Fourth, it weakened Ayub, who lost America's confidence without being able to score a definitive victory against India.

Pakistan's state-controlled media generated a frenzy of Jihad, extolling the virtues of Pakistan's “soldiers of Islam. “There were stories of gallantry, of divine help, and of superhuman resistance. The legend of a suicide squad “of dedicated soldiers who acted as live mines to blow up the advancing Indian tanks” became popular, along with tales of “green-robed angels deflecting bombs from their targets.”
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The state told the Pakistani people that they had been victims of aggression and that the aggression had been repelled with the help of God.

Official propaganda convinced the people of Pakistan that their military had won the war. Pakistan had occupied 1,600 square miles of Indian territory, 1,300 of it in the desert, whereas India secured 350 square miles of Pakistani real estate. But the Indian-occupied Pakistani land was of greater strategic value, located near the West
Pakistani capital, Lahore, and the industrial city of Sialkot as well as in Kashmir. Moreover, although Pakistan had held its own against a larger army, it came out of the war a weakened nation.

The US-Pakistan relationship had lost its initial strength, Kashmir was still unsettled, and inattention from the central government was upsetting the Bengalis in East Pakistan more than ever. Domestic factors were also causing unrest in Sindh and Balochistan. Ayub decided to turn to the Soviet Union to host the postwar peace conference, which was eventually held in Tashkent in January 1966. He went to Washington before going to Tashkent so as to ensure that the United States would not interpret his moves as hostile. At Tashkent Ayub agreed to swap the territory both sides seized in the recent war.

Brought to believe that the war had ended in a Pakistani victory the public could not understand why Pakistan had to give up any territory it had won. Nor did the Tashkent agreement make any mention of Pakistan's demand for a plebiscite in Kashmir, and the people were led to the question why, if Pakistan had scored a military victory, there had neither been territorial gains nor the promise of a future favorable settlement. Bhutto resigned from the cabinet and led Ayub's critics to suggest that political surrender at Tashkent had converted a military victory into defeat.

The United States observed and documented the attacks on its consulates and information centers in the wake of the war. As a result, there was a general decline in support and sympathy for Pakistan throughout the US government. Meanwhile, in Pakistan conspiracy theories were on the rise. An article in London's
Telegraph
claimed that the CIA had started the India-Pakistan war to get rid of Ayub; US intelligence suspected that Bhutto had been behind that story.

In a document titled “Pakistani Gamesmanship,” Komer listed for National Security Adviser Bundy events that pointed toward an orchestration of anti-Americanism. “Our Pak friends have sent pictures to Turkey of the way the Karachi mob damaged our USIS installation (show Turks how to deal with US facilities?),” he said sarcastically. Then he pointed out that the mob in Karachi carried handbills containing the
Telegraph
article. Komer also spoke of a newspaper
story in Pakistan that the Pakistani government had placed. The story claimed that “the State Department instructed the US press to play down Indian defeats in an effort to make [US] Congress think that India could stand up to China.”
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