This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
For once, someone actually admitted that those armed tribal lashkars that try to ‘liberate’ Kashmir were actually Pakistani commandos. In 1965, they came to a sorry end when they found that the situation on the ground was quite different from the desire-driven intelligence that caused them to be sent in.
Gohar, son of President Ayub Khan, disclosed that the ‘doctored’ reports gave the strong impression that the population of valley was ready to fight Indian forces. But, he said, when Pakistani commandoes sneaked into the valley, they came to know only four districts of Muslim majority were fighting and rest of the valley was in no mood of any revolt against the occupation forces as reported.
Gohar disclosed how the-then foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had presented a report to Ayub Khan based on secret communications with Kashmiri leadership. He said Bhutto had the reports from Kashmir that Pakistani commandoes would get massive popular support once they entered the occupied territory.
Based on this report, every commando sent to Indian Kashmir was given two rifles and additional ammunition. Each commando was supposed to keep one rifle with him and distribute the other in the local population to fan a massive indigenous war against Indian occupation. [The News/Jang]As in every act of military aggression against India, Pakistan’s generals had no qualms in sacrificing lives of their soldiers to further their faulty, almost fantastic war strategy. Knowing fully well that his war-fighting capability was as short as seven-days, Field Marshal Ayub Khan opened up new fronts relieve the pressure on his commandos in Kashmir. That’s not very different from Gen Musharraf’s 1999 attempt to snatch Kashmir by getting his soldiers (also known as mujahideen) to occupy the heights of Kargil.
The similarity does not end there — when the military adventure ended in the inevitable defeat, both Ayub and Musharraf claimed that it had successfully internationalised the Kashmir issue.
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