Why Military Defeat in 1971-The Qualitative Destruction of Pakistan Army between 1955 and 1971

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Why Military Defeat in 1971-The
Qualitative Destruction of Pakistan Army
between 1955 and 1971 Major A.H Amin
(Retired)
• August 2020
• DOI:
• 10.13140/RG.2.2.26693.27362
• FROM ATLAS AND MILITARY HISTORY OF
INDO PAK WARS BY AGHA H AMIN
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Research teaching and writing were
unproductive jobs since they did not
enable a man to be a deputy collector
or barrister or doctor! It was a mad race

5. made further mad by frequent outbursts
of communal frenzy, which increased
as population increased during the
period 1890-1940. All this helped the
Britishers who had been traumatically
shaken by the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857
when a largely Hindu majority army had
rebelled under Muslim leaders! The
British were thus happier playing the
role of judges resolving Hindu Muslim
disputes rather than performing the
more unpleasant task of facing a
combined political movement of all
Indians regardless of race or religion as
in 1857, 1919 or 1922 ! This is the
basis of anti-intellectualism in the Indo-
Pak Sub-continent. It is more true for
Pakistan since the Muslims were
educationally more backward and
relatively less true, yet still true and
applicable to India too! Pakistan and

6. India have produced very few serious
military writers. In Pakistan the situation
is worse since an unofficial ban was
imposed on military writing by various
military usurpers who ruled the country
for the greater part of its
The finest summarising of the incalculable
qualitative harm inflicted on the Pakistan
Army, by the self-promoted Field Marshal of
peace, by a contemporary, was done by Major
General Fazal I Muqeem, when he described
the state of affairs of the Pakistan Army
during the period 1958-71; in the following
words: "We had been declining according to
the degree of our involvement in making and
unmaking of regimes. Gradually the officer
corps, intensely proud of its professionalism
was eroded at its apex into third class

7. politicians and administrators. Due to the
absence of a properly constituted political
government, the selection and promotion of
officers to the higher rank depended on one
man’s will. Gradually, the welfare of
institutions was sacrificed to the welfare of
personalities. To take the example of the
army, the higher command had been slowly
weakened by retiring experienced officers at a
disturbingly fine rate. Between 1955 and
November 1971, in about 17 years 40
Generals had been retired, of whom only four
had reached their superannuating age. Similar
was the case with other senior ranks. Those in
the higher ranks who showed some
independence of outlook were invariably
removed from service. Some left in sheer
disgust in this atmosphere of insecurity and
lack of the right of criticism, the two most
important privileges of an Armed Forces
officer. The extraordinary wastage of senior
officers particularly of the army denied the

8. services, of the experience and training vital to
their efficiency and welfare. Some officers
were placed in positions that they did not
deserve or had no training for" 1.
The advent of Yahya Khan and Yahya’s
Personality
Immediately after the 1965 war Major General
Yahya Khan who had commanded the 7
Division in the Grand Slam Operation was
promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General,
appointed Deputy Army C in C and C in C
designate in March 1966 2. Yahya was a
Qizilbash3 commissioned from Indian
Military Academy Dehra Dun on 15 July
1939. An infantry officer from the 4/10
Baluch Regiment, Yahya saw action during
WW II in North Africa where he was captured
by the Axis Forces in June 1942 and interned
in a prisoner of war camp in Italy from where
he escaped in the third attempt4. In 1947 he
was instrumental in not letting the Indian

9. officers shift books 5 from the famous library
of the British Indian Staff College at
Quetta,where Yahya was posted as the only
Muslim instructor at the time of partition of
India.Yahya was from a reasonably well to do
family, had a much better schooling than
Musa Khan and was directly commissioned as
an officer. Yahya unlike Musa was respected
in the officer corps for professional
competence. Yahya became a brigadier at the
age of 34 and commanded the 106 Infantry
Brigade, which was deployed on the ceasefire
line in Kashmir in 1951-52. Later Yahya as
Deputy Chief of General Staff was selected to
head the army’s planning board set up by
Ayub to modernise the Pakistan Army in
1954-57. Yahya also performed the duties of
Chief of General Staff from 1958 to 1962
from where he went on to command an
infantry division from 1962 to 1965.
Yahya was a hard drinking soldier
approaching the scale of Mustafa Kemal of

10. Turkey and had a reputation of not liking
teetotallers. Yahya liked courtesans but his
passion had more to do with listening to them
sing or watching them dance. Thus he did not
have anything of Ataturk’s practical
womanising traits. Historically speaking many
great military commanders like Khalid Bin
Waleed, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Eftikhar
Khan and Grant were accused of debauchery
and womanising. These personal habits still
did not reduce their personal efficiency and all
of them are remembered in military history as
great military commanders! The yardstick is
that as long as a military commander performs
his job as a military leader well, debauchery
drink etc is not important. Abraham Lincoln a
man of great integrity and character when told
by the typical military gossip type
commanders, found in all armies of the world
and in particular plenty in the Indo-Pak
armies, about Grants addiction to alcohol
dismissed their criticism by stating "I cannot

11. spare this man. He fights"! Indeed while the
US Civil War was being fought a remark
about Grant was attributed to Lincoln and
frequently repeated as a joke in army messes.
The story thus went that Lincoln was told
about Grant’s drinking habits, and was asked
to remove Grant from command. Lincoln
dismissed this suggestion replying "send every
general in the field a barrel of it"! Once
Lincoln heard this joke he said that he wished
very much that he had said it! 6 Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk, praised by his enemies, i.e.
the British, in the British Official History of
WW One, as one of the greatest military
commanders in world’s history was a great
consumer of alcohol and chronic womaniser!
It has been alleged that Kemal was a
homosexual (a typically Turkish pastime) too
and frequently suffered the ravages of
venereal disease! The same was true for
Petain one of the greatest military
commanders of the French Army in WW One!

12. Gul Hassan Khan who served with Yahya in
the General Headquarters in the early 1960s
described Yahya as "professionally
competent" and as a man of few words whom
always approached the point at issue without
ceremony.7 Muqeem described Yahya as
"authoritarian by nature" and "reserved by
temperament".8 Major General Sher Ali under
whom Yahya served assessed Yahya as an
officer of the "highest calibre". Shaukat Riza
writing as recently as 1986 described Yahya
as a good soldier, as a commander
distinguished for his decision making and
generous nature and one who gave his total
trust to a man whom he accepted as part of his
team or a colleague.9
Contrary to Gauhar’s judgement Yahya, at
least in 1966-69, was definitely viewed as a
professional in the army. His shortcomings in
functioning as the Supreme Commander that
became evident in the 1971 war were not
known to anyone in 1966. No evidence exists,

13. but it appears that Yahya’s sect and ethnicity
may have played a part in Ayub’s decision to
select Yahya as C in C. Musa writes in his
memoirs that Yahya was not his first choice as
Army C in C but was selected by Ayub
overruling Musa’s reservations about Yahya’s
character 10. This further proves that Ayub
selected Yahya as the army chief for reasons
other than merit. I am not implying that Yahya
was incompetent, but merely the fact that
Ayub was motivated by ulterior reasons to
select Yahya. These reasons had something to
do with Yahya’s political reliability by virtue
of belonging to a minority! Yahya was not a
Punjabi or a Pathan but belonged to a minority
ethnic group as well as a minority ethnic
group, just like Musa.This was no mere
coincidence but a deliberately planned
manoeuvre to have as army chief a man who
was not from the two ethnic groups which
dominated the officer corps, the Punjabis
being more than 60 % of the officer corps and

14. the Pathans being the second largest group
after the Punjabis!11 Altaf Gauhar Ayub’s
close confidant inadvertently proves this fact
once he quite uncharitably, and for reasons,
other than dispassionate objective historical
considerations, described Yahya as one "
selected…in preference to some other
generals, because Yahya, who had come to hit
the bottle hard, had no time for politics and
was considered a harmless and loyal
person".12
Selection of Army C in C
Foreign readers may note that almost all army
chiefs of Pakistan Army were selected
primarily because they were perceived as
reliable as well as pliable! In Addition ethnic
factors Vis a Vis prevalent political
considerations played a part in their selection.
Thus Liaquat the first premier selected a non
Punjabi as the army’s first C in C since in
1950 Liaquat was involved in a political

15. confrontation with Punjabi politicians of the
Muslim League and had established a
Hindustani-Pathan-Bengali alliance to sideline
the Punjabi Muslims. Thus the most obvious
nominee for the appointment of C in C i.e.
Major General Raza, a Punjabi Muslim was
not selected. Instead Ayub an ethnic Pathan,
and one who already had been superseded and
sidelined, and with a poor war record was
selected as the first Pakistani Muslim army C
in C. Similarly Ayub selected Musa simply
because Musa was perceived as loyal despite
not being competent! Yahya as Gauhar
Ayub’s closest adviser and confidant admits,
as earlier mentioned, was selected because he
had hit the bottle hard; i.e. was harmless, and
was loyal, and thus no danger to Ayub! In
other words Gauhar advances a theory that
Ayub selected Yahya (Gauhar’s subjective
judgement) simply because it was politically
expedient for Ayub to have this particular type
of man as army chief! Gauhar judgement of

16. Yahya has little value since it was highly
subjective but Ayub’s reasons for selecting his
army chief, as Gauhar describes it speaks
volumes for the character of Ayub and I
would say the orientation of all Pakistani
politicians, both civilian and military! In third
world countries every army chief is a military
politician! The process was carried on and
continues to date but this chapter deals with
only 1965-1971, so more of this later!
The same was true for extensions given to the
army chiefs. Ayub got three extensions since
Iskandar Mirza perceived him as a reliable
tool. He booted out Mirza, his benefactor,
after the last extension in 1958! Ayub gave
Musa an extension of four years in 1962 since
he perceived Musa as reliable and politically
docile, and thus no threat to Ayub’s
authoritarian government. Since 1962 when
Musa got his extension of service by one
additional term of four years, which prolonged
his service from 1962 to 196613, no Pakistani

17. army chief was given an extension beyond his
three or four year term. The situation however
was still worse since Yahya took over power
in 1969 and thus automatically extended his
term as C in C till December 1971. Zia
usurped power in 1977 and thus gave himself
a nine year extension as Army Chief till he
was removed to the army and the country’s
great relief in August 1988 by Divine Design!
Beg attempted to get an extension by floating
the idea of being appointed as Supreme
Commander of Armed Forces14 but was
outmanoeuvred by his own army corps
commanders, who gave a lukewarm response
to the idea and by Ghulam Ishaq who was a
powerful president and had a deep
understanding of the military mind by virtue
of having loyally and successfully served
three military dictators.
Yahya Khan as Army Chief-1966-1971

18. Yahya energetically started reorganising the
Pakistan Army in 1965. Today this has been
forgotten while Yahya is repeatedly
condemned for only his negative qualities (a
subjective word which has little relevance to
generalship as proved in military history)! The
post 1965 situation saw major organisational
as well as technical changes in the Pakistan
Army. Till 1965 it was thought that divisions
could function effectively while getting orders
directly from the army’s GHQ. This idea
failed miserably in the 1965 war and the need
to have intermediate corps headquarters in
between the GHQ and the fighting combat
divisions was recognised as a foremost
operational necessity after the 1965 war. In
1965 war the Pakistan Army had only one
corps headquarter i.e the 1 Corps
Headquarters. Soon after the war had started
the US had imposed an embargo on military
aid on both India and Pakistan. This embargo
did not affect the Indian Army but produced

19. major changes in the Pakistan Army’s
technical composition. US Secretary of State
Dean Rusk well summed it up when he
said, "Well if you are going to fight, go ahead
and fight, but we’re not going to pay for
it"!15 Pakistan now turned to China and for
military aid and Chinese tank T-59 started
replacing the US M-47/48 tanks as the
Pakistan Army’s MBT (Main Battle Tank)
from 1966. 80 tanks, the first batch of T-59s, a
low-grade version of the Russian T-54/55
series were delivered to Pakistan in 1965-66.
The first batch was displayed in the Joint
Services Day Parade on 23 March 196616.
The 1965 War had proved that Pakistan
Army’s tank infantry ratio was lopsided and
more infantry was required. Three more
infantry divisions (9, 16 and 17 Divisions)
largely equipped with Chinese equipment and
popularly referred to by the rank and file as
"The China Divisions" were raised by the
beginning of 196817. Two more corps

20. headquarters i.e. 2 Corps Headquarters
(Jhelum-Ravi Corridor) and 4 Corps
Headquarters (Ravi-Sutlej Corridor) were
raised.
In the 1965 War India had not attacked East
Pakistan which was defended by a weak two-
infantry brigade division (14 Division)
without any tank support. Yahya correctly
appreciated that geographical, as well as
operational situation demanded an entirely
independent command set up in East Pakistan.
14 Division’s infantry strength was increased
and a new tank regiment was raised and
stationed in East Pakistan. A new Corps
Headquarters was raised in East Pakistan and
was designated as Headquarters Eastern
Command.18 It was realised by the Pakistani
GHQ that the next war would be different and
East Pakistan badly required a new command
set up.

21. Major General Sahibzada Yaqub Khan took
over as the army’s Chief of General Staff and
thus Principal Staff Officer to the C in C soon
after the 1965 war. Yaqub was an aristocrat
from a Hindustani Pathan background and was
altogether different from the typical north of
Chenab breed in depth of intellect, general
outlook and strategic perception! In words of
Fazal Muqeem a sharp observer and one who
was not lavish in praising anyone "planning
had taken a turn for the better when Major
General Yaqub Khan became the Chief of
General Staff”.19
In other words Muqeem was implying that
planning level in the army was relatively poor
before Yaqub became the Chief of General
Staff.

22. But Muqeem went further and stated that the
army’s war plans in the post 1965 era were
still vague about "what action should be taken
in West Pakistan if an attack was mounted
against East Pakistan".20
We will discuss more of this later.
Promotions and Appointments
Selection and assessment of officers for higher
ranks had depended on one man’s will and his
personal likes and dislikes since 1950.
Initially it was Ayub from 1950 to 1969 and
Yahya from 1969 to 1971.
Irshad responsible as DMI for greatest
intelligence failure of 1965 was promoted two
star and later three star and played havoc with
1 Corps in 1971 war.
Dictators fear all around them and this was the
principal tragedy of the Pakistan Army.

23. Selection and assessment of men was not a
plus point in Yahya’s personality. It appears
that either Yahya was not a good judge of
men. In this regard Yahya continued Ayub’s
policy of sidelining talented officers who had
the potential of becoming a rival at a later
stage! We will first deal with selection for
higher ranks vis-a-vis war performance.
Almost no one, who had blundered, except
Brigadier Sardar Ismail the acting divisional
commander of 15 Division, was really taken
to task for having failed in the discharge of his
military duties!21
On the other hand Major General Abrar, who
had proved himself as the finest military
commander, at the divisional level, at least by
sub continental standards, was sidelined and
ultimately retired in the same rank!22

24. Lieutenant Colonel Nisar of 25 Cavalry who
had saved Pakistan’s territorial integrity from
being seriously compromised at a strategic
level at Gadgor on the 8th of September 1965
was sidelined. This may be gauged from the
fact that at the time of outbreak of the 1971
War Nisar although promoted to brigadier
rank, was only commanding the Armoured
corps recruit training centre, a poor
appointment for a man who had distinguished
himself as a tank regiment commander in
stopping the main Indian attack.
A man whose unit’s performance was
described by the enemy opposing him as one
"which was certainly creditable because it
alone stood between the 1st Indian Armoured
Division and its objective"23 was considered
by the Pakistani General Headquarters
pedantic officers as fit only to command a
recruit training centre .

25. Brigadier Qayyum Sher who had
distinguished himself as a brigade commander
in 10 Division area in Lahore was also not
promoted! Qayyum Sher was one of the few
brigade commanders of the army who had led
from the front. Major General Shaukat Riza
who rarely praised anyone had the following
to say about Sher’s conduct while leading the
Pakistan army’s most important infantry
brigade counter attack on Lahore Front as a
result of which the Indian 15 Division despite
considerable numerical superiority was
completely thrown off balance.
Shaukat stated that "Brigadier Qayyum Sher,
in his command jeep, moved from unit to unit
and then personally led the advance, star plate
and pennant visible. This was something no
troops worth their salt could ignore".24 but
the Army’s Selection Boards ignored Qayyum
Sher once his turn for promotion came!

26. Qayyum Sher did well in war and was
awarded the Pakistani D.S.O i.e. the HJ!
But war performance or even performance in
peacetime training manoeuvres was, and still
is, no criteria for promotion in the Pakistan
Army! Qayyum retired as a brigadier,
remembered by those who fought under him
as a brave and resolute commander, who was
not given an opportunity to rise to a higher
rank, which Qayyum had deserved, more than
any brigadier of the Pakistan Army did.
Analysis and reappraisal after the 1965
War
The 1965 War was rich in lessons and many
lessons were learned; however the army’s
reorganisation was badly affected by the
political events of 1968-71. The two major
areas of improvement after the war were in the
realm of military organisation and military

27. plans. It was realised finally that infantry and
armoured divisions could not be effectively
employed till they were organised as corps
with areas of responsibility based on terrain
realities.
The post 1965 army saw major changes in
terms of creation of corps headquarters. On
the other side no major doctrinal reappraisal
was done after the 1965 War except raising
new divisions and corps no major reform was
undertaken to produce a major qualitative
change in the army’s tactical and operational
orientation. Today this is a much criticised
subject. The events of 1965-71 however must
be taken as a whole. When one does so a
slightly different picture emerges. A major
start was taken soon after 1965 after Yahya
had been nominated as the deputy army chief,
towards improving higher organisation and
corps were created, but this process was
retarded by the much more ominous political
developments which increasingly diverted the

28. army chiefs energies into political decision
making from 1969 onwards.
The 1965 War was a failure in higher
leadership. This was true for both sides.
However, qualitative superiority by virtue of
superior doctrine strategic orientation and
operational preparedness became relatively far
more important for the Pakistan Army than
the Indians.
The Indians had already embarked on a
programme of rapid expansion since the Sino-
Indian conflict of 1962. The material and
numerical gap between the Indian and
Pakistan armies started widening from 1962
and after 1965 it reached dangerous
proportions! Further because of the 1965 War
the Indians got an opportunity to improve
their command and control procedures. The
Indians the reader must note were already one
step ahead of the Pakistanis in higher
organisation since their army was organised to

29. fight as corps since 1947-48 while the
Pakistan Army had fought the 1965 War
organised in divisions.
The Indians had failed to make good use of
their considerable numerical superiority in
infantry in 1965 but, they had learned many
lessons which. This meant that in the next war
the Indians could employ their numerically
superior forces in a relatively better manner
than in 1965. Further Pakistan had lost its
major arms supplier the USA which had
imposed an arms embargo on Pakistan. Thus
the technical superiority in equipment which
Pakistan had enjoyed in 1965 was nullified
after 1965. On the other hand India had a
much larger economy and thus far greater
potential to buy from the open market than
Pakistan. All these factors demanded a major
qualitative change. One that would ensure that
Pakistan could survive another war with
India.It was an entirely new situation.

30. The year 1965 was a watershed in Pakistani
military history. Till 1965 Pakistani planners
thought in terms of liberating the Pakistani
Alsace Lorraine i.e. Kashmir! The issue in the
next war was no longer adding more territory
but merely preserving the country’s territorial
integrity! The country was in the grip of
serious internal and external crisis. The
Internal crisis stemmed out of 11 years of
military rule which had sharply polarised the
country into two wings i.e the Eastern and the
Western Wing and even within the Western
Wing the bulk of the populace was alienated
with the Ayub regime. It appears that this
major change in the overall geostrategic
position was not grasped by those at the
highest level. It appears that till December
1971 no one in the Pakistani GHQ seriously
thought that the Indians would overrun East
Pakistan. Too much hope was based on US or
Chinese intervention. The Chinese could not
possibly have intervened since all Himalayan

31. passes were snowbound in Nov-Dec 1971.
The United States on the other hand made no
serious effort to pressurise India into not
attacking East Pakistan. To make things
further complicated the country’s internal
cohesion was seriously weakened by the
political conflict between the East and West
Pakistan Provinces and the countrywide anti
Ayub agitation which finally led to the exit of
the self promoted Field Marshal Ayub from
power in March 1969. The situation was
extremely delicate, complicated and only a
truly great leader at both civil and military
level could have remedied the situation.
Unfortunately for the Pakistan Army and the
country there was no such man to steer the
country’s ship out of troubled waters.
It appears that 1965 war was not rationally
analysed in Pakistan at all. In this regard the
Pakistani military decision-makers were swept
away in the emotional stream of their own
propaganda! The fact that the Pakistan Army

32. was in a position to inflict a decisive defeat on
the Indians in the war, but failed due to
primarily poor leadership at and beyond
brigade level, and due to doctrinal and
organisational deficiencies at the higher level
was not accepted! It was a natural result of the
fact that Pakistan functioned as a pseudo
democracy under one man! This in turn had
led to a ban on frank and open analysis of the
army’s performance and role! On the other
hand the Indian Army’s poor performance was
openly and frankly analysed and the Indian
critics did not spare the Indian C in C General
Chaudri.25 It would not be wrong to say that
the Indians thanks to a democratic system in
which the army was not a sacred cow, unlike
Pakistan, analysed their failings in 1965 in a
more positive and concrete manner. Shaukat
Riza the officially sponsored historian of the
Pakistan Army admitted this fact. Shaukat
thus observed, while briefly analysing the
Commander in Chief’s General Training

33. Directive of 1968, that "We admitted that the
enemy would have better resources in number
of troops, quality of equipment, research,
development and indigenous production. In
face of superiority we were relying solely on
quality of our troops to win a war against
India. But there was nothing in our satchel of
organisation, tactical doctrine or even quality
of professional leadership, which could
substantiate this confidence. This was self-
hypnosis where we were not really
hypnotised”.26 It may be noted that the
General Training Directive identified the
enemy threat relatively realistically only in an
extremely vague and rudimentary sense but
gave no solution or tangible doctrine to
combat it except, operations on broad front for
all formations except those in Kashmir,
Mountain Warfare for formations in Kashmir
and Baluchistan, Snow Warfare for troops in
the Northern Areas, Desert Warfare for
formations located in Sind Baluchistan and

34. Bahawalpur, Jungle and Riverine Warfare for
formations in East Pakistan and Frontier
Warfare for all formations in NWFP and
Baluchistan!27 It was a piece of extreme
naivety and was probably drafted by a staff
officer after reading the recommendations of
the last two years training directives and was
merely signed by the army chief 28. The 1969
training directive dealt with attack by
infiltration and anti infiltration measures29,
something, which was just a whimsical fancy
in a staff officer’s mind! Infiltration was
buried soon and in 1971!
Strategic and Operational Dilemmas
Fazal Muqeem quite correctly described the
adverse strategic situation in the post 1965
period in the following words, "with the
almost daily expansion of the Indian Armed
Forces since the 1965 war, it had become
economically impossible for Pakistan to keep
pace with her. The policy of matching Indian

35. strength with even 1/3 or _ in numbers had
gradually gone overboard. Under these
circumstances all that Pakistan could do was
to avoid war with India and to strive to resolve
her disputes through political and diplomatic
means”.30 The only problem with this quote
is the fact that, at that time i.e. the period
1965-71 no one at the helm of affairs was
ready to think so realistically and rationally!
Fazal’s wisdom is the wisdom of hindsight,
expressed some two years after Pakistan Army
had fought the disaster and humiliating war in
its history and Pakistan was dismembered into
two countries. The Pakistani nation had been
fed on propaganda about martial superiority of
their army! Brigadier A.R Siddiqi who served
in the army’s propaganda/media management
wing known as the ISPR (Inter Services
Public Relations Directorate) states that "the
1965 war had exalted the military image to
mythical heights”. 31 The common man drew
false conclusions and to compound things

36. further, the 1965 war was viewed differently
in West and East Pakistan. The West Pakistani
populace and particularly the majority West
Pakistani ethnic groups i.e. the Punjabis saw
the war as a triumph of a preponderantly
Punjabi Muslim army over a numerically
larger Hindu army! The East Pakistanis
viewed the war as a war fought by a West
Pakistani dominated army to protect West
Pakistan, where some 90 % of the army was
stationed! The Indians had not attacked
Pakistan deliberately since their strategy was
based on the fact that in case the bulk of
Pakistan Army in the West Pakistan provinces
northern half i.e. Punjab was destroyed
Pakistan would automatically sue for peace or
collapse! Thus they had concentrated the bulk
of their army against West Pakistan in the
1965 War. On the Eastern Front the Indians
outnumbered the Pakistani troops defending
East Pakistan by more than three to one but
did not attack East Pakistan out of fear of

37. Chinese Army the bulk of which was
concentrated opposite India’s Assam Province
and the North East Frontier Agency. Later
after the 1965 war the Indians with the benefit
of hindsight painted this timid action in not
attacking East Pakistan as an act of grand
strategic dimensions. In any case the harm
was done as far as East Pakistani perceptions
about the war were concerned. The East
Pakistanis increasingly started viewing the
army as a west Pakistani entity created to
defend only West Pakistan. The seeds of
secession were firmly sown as a result of the
1965 War.
The strategic and operational dilemmas faced
by the Pakistan Army can only be understood
in terms of the complicated political situation
in the period 1969-1971. Yahya Khan
attempted to solve two highly complicated
political problems that he had inherited from
his predecessor and who were also the father
and architect of both the problems. These

38. were restoration of democracy and resolving
the acute sense of deprivation which had been
created in the East Pakistan province as a
result of various perceived or real injustices
during the period 1958-1969. Secessionist
tendencies had emerged in the East Pakistan
province where the people viewed Pakistan’s
federal government with its capital in the
West Pakistan as a West Pakistani elite
dominated affair. A government which was
Muslim in name but West Pakistani (Punjabi,
Pathan and Hindustani in order of merit)32
dominated in essence and which had been
exploiting the East Pakistan province like a
colony since 1947! We will not examine the
details of this perception since it is beyond the
scope of this book. We are only concerned
with the fact that this perception made things
very complicated for the Pakistan Army. The
bulk of the army was concentrated in the West
Pakistan province in line with the strategic
doctrine that defence of East Pakistan lay in

39. West Pakistan. The likely political danger
now lay in the fact that the East Pakistanis
were increasingly viewing the army as a
foreign and hostile entity. This perception
could make things difficult for the lone
infantry division of the Pakistan Army in East
Pakistan. The Indian Army had been rapidly
expanded since 1965 and the Indians now
possessed a military capability to overrun East
Pakistan while part of its army kept the bulk
of the Pakistan Army stationed in the West
wing in check. The situation was made yet
more complex by fears in West Pakistan about
the East Pakistani majority leader Mujeeb’s
intention to reduce the army in case he won
the 1970 elections that Yahya had promised.
Further Mujeeb’s "Six Point Formula" if
enforced would have led to virtual
disintegration of Pakistan since it envisaged a
confedral system with a very high level of
provincial autonomy. What would happen in
case a civil war started in the East wing after

40. the 1970 elections and India decided to take
advantage of the adverse internal political
situation by invading East Pakistan. The
military planners in the GHQ knew clearly
that in case an armed insurrection broke out in
the East Pakistan province one infantry
division would not be control it. In case troops
were sent from the West wing to reinforce the
East Pakistan garrison, the war plans in the
West Wing would be compromised. These
were serious questions, which no one in the
GHQ could answer in 1969. No one exactly
knew what would happen in the first general
elections of Pakistan. How could anyone
know? This basic right had been denied to the
common man in both the wings since 1946!
Yahya Khan and the Political Situation-
1969-1971
Now a word on Pakistan’s internal political
situation in 1969 and its negative effects on
the Pakistan Army. It appears that, had not

41. Ayub Khan alienated the East Wing by his pro
West Pakistani elite policies and also had not
alienated the West Pakistani and East
Pakistani populace by his self-serving
policies, there would have been no East
Pakistan problem which resulted in Pakistan’s
break-up in 1971 or any anti-Ayub agitation in
both the country’s provinces of East and West
Pakistan that finally led to the fall of the
Ayubian system of government in March
1969. The foreign readers may note that the
East wing versus West wing rivalry had been
constitutionally resolved through the passing
of the 1956 Constitution, once the
representatives of the East wing had most
large heartedly accepted the principal of 50 %
parity in the country’s legislature despite the
fact that their actual ratio in the country’s
population entitled them to 54 % seats in the
assembly! Both the wings now started coming
closer since issues were settled inside the
parliament rather than by subversion or

42. agitation. However Ayub in league with the
president Iskandar Mirza repeatedly conspired
to derail democracy and in league with
Iskandar Mirza finally usurped power in the
country by imposing the first Martial Law in
October 1958. He sidelined Mirza in less than
a month and imposed a one-man rule on the
country. Ayub despised the East Pakistanis
and as Army C in C had stopped more raisings
of infantry battalions of East Pakistanis. The
East Pakistanis on the other hand were anti-
Ayub and resented Ayub’s policies of
allocating a predominantly large part the
resources of the country on the development
of the West Wing. Further during the Ayub
era, the strategic doctrine that defence of East
Pakistan lay in concentrating the bulk of the
Pakistan Army in the West wing was
developed. This further alienated the East
wingers since there was an unofficial ban on
recruitment of Bengalis in the fighting arms of
the army and the expanded army increasingly

43. became a West Pakistani army, instead of
being a national army.33
Once Ayub handed over power to Yahya
Khan on 25 March 1969 Yahya inherited a
two-decade constitutional problem of inter
provincial ethnic rivalry between the Punjabi-
Pathan-Mohajir dominated West Pakistan
province and the ethnically Bengali Muslim
East Pakistan province. In addition Yahya also
inherited an eleven-year-old problem of
transforming an essentially one-man ruled
country to a democratic country, which was
the ideological basis of the anti Ayub
movement of 1968-69. Herein lies the key to
Yahya’s dilemma. As an Army Chief Yahya
had all the capabilities, qualifications and
potential. But Yahya inherited an extremely
complex problem and was forced to perform
the multiple roles of caretaker head of the
country, drafter of a provisional constitution,
resolving the One Unit question 34, satisfying
the frustrations and the sense of exploitation

44. and discrimination successively created in the
East Wing by a series of government policies
since 1948. All these were complex problems
and the seeds of Pakistan Army’s defeat and
humiliation in December 1971 lay in the fact
that Yahya Khan blundered unwittingly into
the thankless task of cleaning dirt in
Pakistan’s political and administrative system
which had been accumulating for twenty years
and had its actual origins in the pre 1947
British policies towards the Bengali Muslims.
The American author Ziring well summed it
up when he observed that, "Yahya Khan has
been widely portrayed as a ruthless
uncompromising insensitive and grossly inept
leader…While Yahya cannot escape
responsibility for these tragic events, it is also
on record that he did not act alone…All the
major actors of the period were creatures of a
historic legacy and a psycho-political milieu
which did not lend itself to accommodation
and compromise, to bargaining and a

45. reasonable settlement. Nurtured on conspiracy
theories, they were all conditioned to act in a
manner that neglected agreeable solutions and
promoted violent judgements”. 35
The irrefutable conclusion is that Yahya failed
as an Army Chief not because he lacked the
inherent capabilities but because he tried to do
too many things at the same time. This as we
earlier discussed was the prime reason for
failure of the Pakistan Army to develop and
function as a dynamic entity beyond unit level
in the 1965 war and in the pre 1965 era.
In all fairness one cannot but admit that,
Yahya Khan, sincerely attempted to solve
Pakistan’s constitutional and inter
provincial/regional rivalry problems once he
took over power from Ayub in March 1969.
The tragedy of the whole affair was the fact
that all actions that Yahya took, although
correct in principle, were too late in timing,
and served only to further intensify the

46. political polarisation between the East and
West wings. He dissolved the one unit
restoring the pre 1955 provinces of West
Pakistan, promised free direct, one man one
vote, fair elections on adult franchise, a basic
human right which had been denied to the
Pakistani people since the pre independence
1946 elections by political inefficiency,
double play and intrigue, by civilian
governments, from 1947 to 1958 and by
Ayub’s one man rule from 1958 to 1969.
However dissolution of one unit did not lead
to the positive results that it might have lead
to in case "One Unit" was dissolved earlier.
Yahya also made an attempt to accommodate
the East Pakistanis by abolishing the principle
of parity, thereby hoping that greater share in
the assembly would redress their wounded
ethnic regional pride and ensure the integrity
of Pakistan. Instead of satisfying the Bengalis
it intensified their separatism, since they felt
that the west wing had politically suppressed

47. them since 1958. Thus the rise of anti West
Wing sentiment in the East Wing, thanks to
Ayub Khan’s anti East Wing policies, had
however reached such tremendous proportions
that each of Yahya’s concessions did not
reduce the East West tension. Yahya
announced in his broadcast to the nation on 28
July 1969, his firm intention to redress
Bengali grievances, the first major step in this
direction being, the doubling of Bengali quota
in the defence services 36. It may be noted
that at this time there were just seven infantry
battalions of the East Pakistanis. Yahya’s
announcement although made with the noblest
and most generous intentions in mind was late
by about twenty years!
Yahya cannot be blamed for the muck that had
been accumulating for more than two decades.
Yahya’s intention to raise more pure Bengali
battalions was opposed by Major General
Khadim Hussain Raja, the General Officer
Commanding 14 Division in East Pakistan,

48. since the General felt that instead of raising
new purely Bengali battalions, Bengali troops
should be mixed with existing infantry
battalions comprising of Punjabi and Pathan
troops.37 Such was the strength of conviction
of General Khadim about not raising more
pure Bengali battalions that once he came to
know about Yahya’s orders to raise more East
Pakistani regiments, he flew to the General
Headquarters in Rawalpindi to remonstrate
against the sagacity of raising more pure
Bengali units. Khadim’s advice that Bengali
troops could not be relied upon in crisis
situations should have been an eye opener for
all in the GHQ. No one at least at that time
took his advice seriously. It appears that the
generals were convinced that the Bengali was
too meek to ever challenge the martial Punjabi
or Pathan Muslim
The Bengalis were despised as non martial by
all West Pakistanis. However much later an
interesting controversy developed in which

49. the Punjabis and Hindustanis blamed each
other for doing so! The Hindustanis blaming
Aziz Ahmad etc and the Punjabis blaming
many Hindustani ICS old foxes of the 1950s!
There is no doubt that this exercise in Bengali
degrading was neither totally or exclusively
Punjabi led but a a true for all West Pakistanis
business!
The foreign reader may note that Bengalis
were despised as a non martial race from the
British times. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan a
Hindustani Muslim and an eminent Muslim
leader of the North Indian Muslims in late
19th century made open fun of Bengalis in his
various speeches, notably the one delivered at
Lucknow in 1887. I.H Qureshi another
prominent Hindustani Muslim and a post 1947
cabinet minister declared in a roundabout
manner that the Bengalis were an inferior
race. Ayub made various remarks implying
that the Bengalis were an inferior race in his
memoirs written in 1967.38

50. Inflated Perceptions about Pakistani
military effectiveness
The essence of the whole business was the
fact that the Pakistani GHQ placed entire
reliance on the “Superior Valour and Martial
Qualities of the Pakistani (Punjabi and Pathan
Muslim soldier) vis a vis the Hindu Indian
soldier, as proved in 1965 war” and felt that
somehow, in the next war to miracles would
occur and the Pakistan Army would do well!
The tangible military facts of the Indo Pak
politico-military scenario were not analysed in
their true dimension! It was a classic case of
perceptual distortion and losing sight of
reality. Eric Berne an eminent psychologist
defined "adjustment" as "ability to change
one’s images to correspond to a new reality”.
Berne rephrases "adjustment" as "flexibility"
which he defines as " ability to change your
images as they should be changed according
to reality". This in Berne’s view is more
important than intelligence. Berne thus

51. concluded that ‘the successful man is the one
whose images correspond most closely to
reality, because then his actions will lead to
the results, which he imagines".39 This as a
matter of fact are one of the prime functions
of a military and political leader. The success
of the western democracies lay in the fact that
one man was never totally in command but
civil and military functions were divided and
shared between various appointment holders
aided by a host of staff officers and research
Organisations. This sadly was not Pakistan’s
case where one man from 1958 wielded all
power, both civil and military onwards. The
situation was not so complicated till 1965
since Pakistan enjoyed material and technical
superiority till 1965 and because the troop
ratio between Pakistan and India was
relatively manageable40. Unfortunately in
Pakistan after 1971 all blame was heaped on
Yahya’s shoulders. The fact that the psychosis
that had afflicted the Pakistani decision

52. makers in the period 1966-1971 and finally
led to the great humiliation of 1971, had a
close connection with the nature of Pakistan’s
experiences as a nation in the period 1947-
1971 was not accepted and instead Yahya was
made a scapegoat for all that had gone wrong.
We will analyse more of this in the next
chapter. I will quote Berne once again to
define greatness or the lack of it in Pakistan
during the period 1947-1971. But before we
do it we must understand that man is not fully
autonomous but is a prisoner of historical
environmental and physiological
circumstances. There are very few truly great
men who act more autonomously than the
multitude. Berne thus defined individual
human greatness as " A great man is the one
who either helps to find out what the world is
really like or else tries to change the world to
match his image. In both cases he is trying to
bring images and reality closer together by
changing one or the other”. In the period

53. 1966-1971 Pakistan did not have the resources
to change the world to match its images nor
great men who had the depth of character and
intellect to find out what the world is really
like and changing their images!
Many Pakistani intellectuals with the naivety
of a provincial farm maiden try to heap the
whole blame on liquor and Yahya or on liquor
alone! This unfortunately is too simplistic a
view! The Pakistanis as a nation were forming
wrong and unrealistic images right from 1947!
Too much faith was based on ideology (Islam)
to unite two entirely diverse regions of East
and West Pakistan! Even Shauakat Riza a pro
establishment historian, commenting on
religion as a common factor between the East
and West wings caustically noted that
“Twenty four years is too long to gamble on
one card”41 History was distorted to show
that the Muslims were ruling the timid Hindu
when the British snatched power from the
brave Muslims by treachery! This was sadly

54. not the case! In reality the Muslims were
saved from total defeat by the British advent
in India! A false image was formed by official
propaganda right from 1947 that the Muslims
were more martial than the timid Hindus
were! It was a poor modification of the
"Martial Races Theory" of the British, which
was a purely imperialist theory to "Divide and
Rule" India! But once Pakistan was defeated
in 1971, all blame was heaped on Yahya and
liquor, disregarding the fact that Yahya was
merely the tip of the iceberg, and the
irrefutable fact that many great commanders
in history were absolutely incorrigible and
compulsive womanisers and drinkers!
This fact was noted by some officers soon
after 1965 but the majority were victims of the
psychosis of Islamic Martial Military
superiority that overwhelmed the West
Pakistani psyche during the period 1966-
1971! Brigadier A.R Siddiqi in his book on
the Pakistan Army’s press image thus narrated

55. a thought-provoking incident soon after the
war. Siddiqi met Brigadier Qayyum Sher who
as just discussed had distinguished himself as
an infantry brigade commander in the battle
opposite Lahore. Qayyum Sher was unhappy
about the unrealistic expectations and myths
that were being created as a result of the
official propaganda. Qayyum Sher told
Siddiqi, "Miracles he mused, ‘may indeed
have happened, but they happen only once.
Let me tell you that your press chaps are
doing a lot of harm to the soldier
psychologically by publishing all those foolish
stories. I wonder what they are really trying to
tell the world. That the Pakistani soldier can
fight his war only with the help of his celestial
allies. That he is facing an enemy inferior to
him in all respects. I admit God’s help is of
the utmost importance but it’s no substitute
for one’s own performance. It would be quite
stupid to forget that the Indian soldier is as
much of a professional as his Pakistani

56. counterpart. He has been trained in similar
military systems and institutions and fights
like hell when he has to. The only reason why
the Pakistani soldier put up a comparatively
better performance in this war was that he
fought largely on his own home ground as a
defender”. Siddiqi further noted that "The
Pakistani image makers, however, had little
use for such sterile talk. They had their own
mental picture of the war and regarded it as
the only correct one. Anybody who dared to
speak of the war more realistically simply
betrayed a ‘diffident and defeatist mentality’
…The merest suggestion of the criticism of
the military performance became a
taboo”.42 Sher was not alone in entertaining
these views. Major General Tajammul
Hussain Malik who very ably commanded the
3rd Baluch opposite Lahore on the BRB states
in his memoirs that the Indian superiority
opposite Lahore was not as overwhelming as
later portrayed in the Pakistani official

57. propaganda. Tajammul thus stated, "We
had Patton Tanks whereas Indians had
mostly Sherman Tanks which were
comparatively much inferior. Similarly our
artillery guns out ranged the Indian
artillery guns. They had an overall
superiority of infantry, perhaps of about 1
to 2 but most of their divisions were
comparatively ill equipped and untrained
and they had to guard a much bigger
frontier”. 43
Many years earlier one of the greatest thinkers
of this world Sigmund Freud rightly noted
that "the irrational forces in man’s nature are
so strong that the rational forces have little
chance of success against them”. Freud thus
concluded that "a small minority might be
able to live a life of reason but most men are
comfortable living with their delusions and
superstitions rather than with the truth". As a
matter of fact whole nations can be victims of
delusions. This has happened many times in

58. history. The same was true for the Pakistani
nation, or the predominantly West Pakistani
elite!
Sultan Khan who served as Pakistan’s Foreign
Secretary with Yahya during the fateful year
of 1971 noted at many places in his
memoirs that most Pakistani generals
thought that the Pakistani soldier was more
martial and would somehow emerge
successfully through the East Pakistan War.
Gul Hassan, Sultan thus noted, was one of
them and firmly believed in the power of
bayonet to solve all problems! The tragedy is
that after the war all the blame was heaped on
Yahya and the fact that the whole elite and all
those who mattered were under influence of
highly irrational ideas was deliberately
suppressed. Till this day in presentations and
studies carried out in Pakistan Army’s schools
and colleges of instruction, Yahya is made the
scapegoat for the entire 1971 fiasco and the

59. fact that the whole of West Pakistani was
under influence of a psychotic state is ignored.
Historical Background of Superiority
Complex in the Pakistan Army
It is necessary to examine the historical
reasons for this false feeling of superiority in
the Pakistan Army in 1969-71. It may be
noted that the vast bulk of Muslims, just like
the vast bulk of Hindus of the Indo Pak Sub
Continent were caught in a vicious square of
"ethnicity” "ideology" "exploitation by feudal
and capitalist classes" and above all "British
Colonial rule" during the period 1858-1947. In
1857 the common soldiers (sepoys), both
Hindu (some three fourth) and Muslims
(around one fourth) from modern UP province
attempted a rebellion against the British. This
rebellion was crushed by the Britishers using
European as well as Punjabi (largely Muslim
and relatively less Sikh and Hindu) Pathan
(less in number than Punjabis) Gurkha and

60. Madrasi troops. The rebellion’s end in 1858
marked a major turn in British policy in India.
Till 1857 British policy as executed by
various Viceroys of the private English East
India Company was markedly egalitarian and
anti feudal. A major policy change was
introduced from 1858 onwards once the
British crown took over the governance of
India. Feudals who were viewed as
unnecessary anachronisms by Dalhousie were
now viewed as allies against future rebels
while ethnic/religious factors which were not
important in army recruitment before 1857,
now became a matter of careful policy, since
the pre 1857 was largely one in which soldiers
were mixed down to platoon level regardless
of race or religion. The British policy now
changed since the Hindustani44 Hindus and
Muslims regardless of race or religion had
jointly rebelled. Thus from 1858 onwards the
British introduced the concept of One class
companies with soldiers from one religious as

61. well as ethnic class in any single infantry
company or cavalry troop. Due to various
reasons discussed in detail in the previous
volume of this history the British actively
followed a policy of Punjabising from 1858 to
1911. As a result by 1911 the Indian Army
was largely a Punjabi although not a Punjabi
Muslim dominated army45.
The reader may note that during the period
1885—1911 when the ethnic composition of
the British Indian Army changed from a
Hindustani majority/Hindu/Non Muslim
dominated army to a Punjabi
Majority/Punjabi Muslim heavy army in
1911; no major war took place; that could
prove that Punjabi troops or Punjabi
Muslim troops were better than Hindu
troops or the Hindustani troops, and the
concept that the British changed the ethnic
composition based on proven fighting
ability in actual combat; has no connection
with any reality of military history. Thus

62. the “Martial Races Theory” was based
more on political considerations than on
any tangible or concrete military
effectiveness or relative combat
effectiveness in any war! In any case the
pre 1947 Indian Army was never a Muslim
majority army at any stage of its history.
Many Britishers were crystal clear about
the situational or historical relativity of the
so called martial effectiveness even in the
first half of the nineteenth century. Henry
Lawrence a Civil Servant of the English
East India Company thus summed up the
whole business about martial effectiveness
once he said “Courage goes much by
opinion; and many a man behaves as a hero
or a coward, according as he considers he
is expected to behave. Once two Roman
Legions held Britain; now as many Britons
might hold Italy". On the other hand , the
reasons why the British preferred the Punjabis
in the army in preference to other races were

63. rationalised by many Britishers by stating that
the British preferred the Indian Army to be
composed of “Martial Races”46.
The "Martial Races Theory" in reality was an
Imperial gimmick to boost the ego of the
cannon fodder. Various British writers like
Philip Mason frankly admitted that the real
reason for selective recruitment was political
reliability in crisis situations which the
Punjabis had exhibited during the 1857-58
Bengal Army rebellion.47 Another British
officer thought that "Martial Races Theory"
had a more sentimental and administrative
basis rather than anything to do with real
martial superiority. C.C Trench thus
wrote, “Reasons for preferring northerners
were largely racial. To Kiplings
contemporaries, the taller and fairer a
native, the better man he was likely to
be…There was a general preference for the
wild over the half educated native as being
less addicted to unwholesome political

64. thinking…Brahmins had been prominent
in the mutiny, and their diet and prejudices
made difficulties on active service48. The
“Special Commission appointed by the
Viceroy” to enquire into the organisation of
Indian Army was more blunt in outlining the
political reliability factor once it stated that
"lower stratum of the Mohammadan urban
population, the dispossessed landholders
(many of them, off course, Muslims), the
predatory classes, and perhaps the cadets of
the old Muhammadan families (as)… the only
people who really dislike British rule” 49 .
The reason why the Punjabis whether Sikh
Hindu or Muslim were more loyal to the
British at least till 1919 lay in complex socio-
political background of the province and the
complex relationship between the Sikhs
Hindus and Muslims of the province. Its
discussion is beyond the scope of this work.
The fact remains that in the first world war the
Punjabi case for priority race for recruitment

65. to the army was once again reinforced when
the Punjabi soldiers, Sikh Muslim and Hindu
loyally served the British in France
Mesopotamia Egypt Palestine and Gallipoli.
Philip Mason thus wrote that the "Punjabi
Muslims were steady as a rock” while “a faint
question mark hung over the Pathans” 50.
Such was the difference in reliability within
the units that when two Pathan squadrons of
15 Lancers passively refused to fight against
the Turks in Mesopotamia, the Punjabi
Squadrons remained staunch and the Pathan
squadrons were disbanded and replaced by
Hindustani Hindu Jat Squadrons from 14th
Murray Jat Lancers! The Hindustani/Ranghar
Muslims were also further discredited once
the 5th Light Infantry a pure
Hindustani/Ranghar Muslim unit composed of
Delhi region Hindustani Pathans, and Ranghar
Muslims rebelled and seized Singapore for
about a day in 1915.51 It was more a question
of political reliability than being more martial

66. that led to further Punjabisation of the army
after the first world war. Thus in 1929 as per
the “Report of the Statutory Commission on
Indian Constitutional Advancement”, military
ability was not evenly distributed in the entire
population and, the capacity to fight was
confined to the martial races! The commission
ignored the fact that recruitment was done to
fill ethnic quotas as decided by the Indian
government and was not open to all classes!
As per this commission’s report some 86,000
or some 54.36% Indian Army combatants out
of a total of 158,200 were from Punjab
province. These did include some Ranghar
Muslims who were administratively Punjabi
although Hindustani ethnically/culturally, but
there is no doubt that the vast bulk of these
men were ethnically Punjabi. The important
part of the whole business was the fact that
once 19,000 Nepali Gurkhas, who were in
reality foreigners, included in the above
mentioned total of 158,200 men are excluded

67. the Punjabi share in Indian Army rose to
61.8%. The Pathans thanks to their political
record in the First World War had been
reduced to just 5,600 men 52 or just 4.02%
out of which at least a thousand were non
Pathans!
The same state of affairs continued till the
outbreak of the Second World War with the
major change being the Punjabi Sikhs who
became relatively less reliable politically
because of being under communist influences
53. However the reader may note, so as not to
be led astray by any false claims that in 1939
the Indian Army was only 37% Muslim, the
rest being non Muslim including about 12.8 %
Sikhs 10.9% Hindu Gurkhas and 37.6% other
Hindus54. Immense demands of WW Two
forced the British to diversify the recruitment
pattern of the Indian Army and although
Punjab remained the top contributor of
recruits, it provided about 754,551 out of a
total of 24,61,446, or 30.65% recruits to the

68. Indian Army between 3rd September 1939
and 31 August 1945. 55 The reader may note
that some 314,356 or a total of 41.66% from
the Punjab contribution and 12.77% recruits
were Punjabi Muslims56. Thus although
Punjab led positionwise as a province in
recruitment, there never was any Punjabi
Muslim majority or even Punjabi Muslim
majority or even near majority in recruitment
to the Indian Army in WW Two. However a
myth was widely propagated in Pakistan that
the Punjabi Muslims were the most martial
race and the Pathan Muslims were the second
most martial race57. I may add that I heard
this ridiculous and irrational myth thousands
of times in the course of my 13 years service
in Pakistan Army. On the other hand the
knowledge of historical knowledge may be
gauged from the fact that as late as 1992 in a
book written and published in the staff college
a brigadier made the Mughal Emperor

69. Humayun fight the second battle of Panipat, at
a time when Humayun was already dead!
In August 1947 the British Indian Army was
divided into the Pakistan and Indian armies.
Two divergent recruitment policies were
followed in both the armies. The Indians
broadened their army’s recruitment base,
officially declaring that recruitment was open
to all Indian nationals.58 Thus the post 1947
Indian Army drifted away from being the pre
1939 Punjabised army. In Pakistan, Mr Jinnah
the politician-statesmen who created Pakistan
almost single-handedly, as the country’s first
Head of State, adopted a sensible policy, to
make the army a national army. Jinnah
ordered immediate raising of two infantry
battalions of Bengali Muslims in 1948
reversing the anti Bengali policy of the pre
1947 British colonial government.59 Jinnah’s
far sighted as well as just policy of bringing
Bengalis in the fighting arms of the Pakistan
Army was discontinued by General Ayub

70. Khan who was the first Pakistani Muslim C in
C of the Pakistan Army and became the Army
Chief in January 1951. Ayub although
allegedly guilty of tactical timidity in the WW
Two in Burma60 had a low opinion61 about
the Bengalis and discontinued the expansion
of the East Bengal Infantry Regiment from
1951 to 1966. Thus by 1966 the Pakistan
Army was a predominantly West Pakistani
(Punjabi dominated) army. In addition the vast
bulk of it except one infantry division was
stationed in West Pakistan in line with the
strategic concept evolved in Ayub’s time that
the defence of East Pakistan lay in West
Pakistan. Thus the “Martial Races Theory”
was carried on till 1971 and in 1971 the vast
bulk of West Pakistanis really felt that they
were a martial race. This superiority complex
played a major part in the wishful thinking in
the Pakistani High Command that somehow
the Indians would not invade East Pakistan in
strength or even if they did so, the troops of

71. this martial race (which was subdued by an 8
% Sikh minority from 1799 to 1849, till it was
liberated by the English East India Company!)
would frustrate the Indian Army, despite all
the tangible numerical and material Pakistani
inferiority. Foreign Secretary Sultan Khan’s
memoirs are full of the existence of this
irrational belief in the Pakistani High
Command. Whatever the case at least the
1971 War proved that the real reason for the
Indian Army’s martial fervour or relatively
better performance was the British factor,
keeping in mind the net total available
resources of British Empire or its allies in the
two world wars.
New Raisings – 1966-1971 and the army’s
operational plans
New raisings as discussed earlier were done
right from 1965-66 onwards. The Pakistani
high command correctly assessed that lack of
infantry played a major role in the failure of

72. Pakistani armour to translate its convincing
material and technical superiority into a major
operational or strategic success. New raisings
became more essential since US military aid,
which had enabled Pakistan Army to function
relatively more effectively as compared to the
Indians, was no longer available because of
the US ban on arms exports to both India and
Pakistan.
EXISTING DIVISIONS AND NEW
RAISINGS FROM 1965 TO DECEMBER
197162
SE
R
N
O
196
5
REMAR
KS
196
6-
196
8
REMA
RKS
196
8-
197
1
REMARK
S
1 7
DIV
Peshawar
Part of
2
Corps.
Reserve
Division to
Support 1
Armd
Div Operat

73. ions in
Bahawalna
gar area.
2 8
DIV
Sialkot. 1
Corps
Part of
1 Corps
Defence of
Shakargarh
Bulge. Und
er 1 Corps
3
10
DIV
Lahore 1
Corps
Part of
4
Corps.
Defence of
Ravi-Sutlej
Corridor. P
art of 4
Corps
4 11
DIV
Ditto
Part of
4
Corps.
5
12
DIV
Headquart
ers In
Murree
Defence of
Azad
Kashmir
6
14
DIV
East
Pakistan
Defence of
East
Pakistan
7 15 Sialkot Part of Defence of

74. DIV 1
Corps.
Sialkot
Sector.Und
er 1 Corps
8
1
AR
MD
DIV
Multan 1
Corps
Part of
2
Corps.
Strategic
Reserve.St
ationed at
Multan. Un
der 2
Corps.
9
6
AR
MD
DIV
Kharian 1
Corps
Part of
1
Corps.
Strategic
Reserve.St
ationed at
Kharian. U
nder 1
Corps.
1
0
9
DI
V
Reserv
e Div.
Raising
comple
ted at
Kharia
n by
Airlifted to
E.Pak in
March
1971

75. 1968.
1
1
16
DI
V
Reserv
e Div.
Quetta.
Raising
comple
te by
1968.
Ditto
1
2
17
DI
V
Kharia
n.
Raising
comple
te by
1968.
Reserv
e
Divisio
n
To support
6
Armoured
Division
operations
1
3
18
DI
V
Raised at
Hyderabad
in June-

76. July
1971 for
defence of
560 miles
area
from Rahi
myar Khan
to Rann of
Katch.
1
4
23
DI
V
Raised at
Jhelum in
June-July
1971 for
Chhamb-
Dewa
Sector
previously
in area of
12 Div.
1
5
33
DI
V
Raised in
December
1971.Reser

77. ve Division
of 2 Corps
later split
between
Shakargarh
Bulge and
Sindh in
the war.
1
6
37
DI
V
Raised in
Dec- 71
Jan-72.
The table of raisings above is self-
explanatory. The most important
organisational changes which occurred in the
army till the 1971 war were as following.
Firstly the army was organised into three
corps i.e the 1 Corps, 2 Corps and 4 Corps and
12 18 and 23 Divisions. The 1 corps
headquarter was designated to command four
divisions i.e 8, 15, 17 InfantryDivisions and 6
Armoured Division63. 15 and 8 Infantry

78. Divisions were responsible for defence of
Sialkot Sector and the Shakargarh Bulge
respectively while 17 Infantry Division and 6
Armoured Division were the strike force of
the corps and also part of Pakistan Army’s
strategic reserves. In addition the 1 Corps also
had an independent armoured brigade
(8Armoured Brigade). 4 Corps consisting of
10 and 11 Infantry Divisions, 105 Independent
Infantry Brigade and 3rd Independent
Armoured Brigade was responsible for the
area between Ravi River and Bahawalpur. The
2 Corps with its headquarters at Multan was a
strategic reserve corps. This corps consisted of
the 1st Armoured Division (Multan), 7
Infantry Division and later 33 Infantry
Division. Three infantry divisions i.e the 12,
23 and 18 Infantry Divisions were directly
under GHQ and responsible for defence of
Azad Kashmir, Chhamb-Dewa Sector and
Sind-Rahimyar Khan respectively.

79. Tangibles and Intangibles - The Pakistan
and Indian Army’s military worth by
January 1971
By January 1971 the Pakistan Army was a
reasonable military machine. Its main battle
tank was the Chinese T-59 which was almost
as good as any Indian tank.Its strategic
reserves had the potential to deter any Indian
aggressive military move. It was on its way to
becoming a really national army since
Yahya’s announcement of 1969 to allow
recruitment of Bengalis in the fighting arms.
Organisationally the command was coherently
and logically distributed in corps and divisions
and the organisational imbalances of 1965 had
been totally removed. Yahya Khan had not
failed as the C in C.
The Indian Army was numerically larger but
the advantage was not overwhelming since the
Indian Army was divided between the Chinese
Border West Pakistan and East Pakistan.

80. Technically the Indians had relatively better
Soviet tanks but numerically the Pakistani
armour was larger than Indian armour and
possessed more higher organisational
flexibility by virtue of having two full fledged
armoured divisions as against one Indian
armoured division.
Later events of 1971 clouded our perception
and we in Pakistan tend to view things as
entirely simple for the Indian military
planners. The Indian military dilemma was a
possible three front war with the Indian Army
divided between West Pakistan East Pakistan
and the Indo Chinese border. The Pakistani
defence problem was a two front war with its
army divided into two parts i.e one defending
the East Pakistan and the major part defending
West Pakistan. The Pakistani planners had
evolved a clear-cut strategy to overcome this
dilemma. The Indian strategy as it was later
applied in 1971 war was based on a choice of
time which reduced the likely threats that it

81. faced from three to two since the December
snow effectively nullified chances of Chinese
intervention and enabled release of Indian
Mountain Divisions earmarked for the
Chinese Border to participate in a war against
Pakistan. Even then the final Indian plan was
a gamble and would have failed if Pakistan
had launched a pre-emptive attack in October
1971. The C in C Indian Western Command
admitted this fact. General Candeth who was
C in C Western Command states in his book
that “the most critical period was between 8
and 26 October when 1 Corps and 1
Armoured Division were still outside Western
Command. Had Pakistan put in a pre-emptive
attack during that period the consequences
would have been too dreadful to contemplate
and all our efforts would have been trying to
correct the adverse situation forced on us”.64
There were however major shortcomings in
both the armies at the higher leadership level.
These pertained to the "Intangible aspects of

82. military leadership". The mercenary origins of
the pre 1947 Indian Army had resulted in the
creation of an orders oriented machine! This
was true for both Indian and Pakistani Armies.
These shortcomings had their origin in the pre
1947 British era and were common with the
post 1947 Indian Army. The Indian Army’s
military worth was retarded and downgraded
because of a civilian leadership which viewed
the army as a reactionary entity consisting of
mercenaries who had collaborated with the
British rulers. This attitude was revised once
India suffered serious loss of prestige in the
Sino-Indian Border War of 1962. However
changes in military spirit of an army occur
very slowly and by 1971 Indian Army was
still trying to recover from many teething
problems. The Pakistan Army in 1947 had
consisted of relatively talented as well as
spirited officers. The Rawalpindi Conspiracy
of 1951 had however started a witch-hunt and
many dynamic officers were removed or

83. sidelined. This conspiracy against originality
and boldness had intensified when Ayub Khan
started manipulating extensions from
politicians and the army was reduced to a
personal fiefdom of Ayub during the period
1951-1969! In the process the Pakistan Army
lost the services of many more experienced
officers simply because they were sidelined
through political supersession or were retired.
The gap between the two Indo Pak armies in
quality of experience may be gauged from the
fact that the first Indian C in C was eight years
senior to Ayub in service and the course mate
of Musa, the second Muslim C in C of the
Pakistan Army i.e Manekshaw became the
Indian C in C eleven years after Musa! This
may have worked positively for the Pakistan
Army had Musa been a man with an
independent outlook! Musa on the other hand
as Gul Hassan’s memoirs revealed lacked
independent judgement dynamism or talent!
The Pakistan army during the period 1951-71

84. became a highly orders oriented machine!
Smart on the drill square, tactically sound but
strategically barren and lacking in operational
vision! One whose first Pakistani C in C was
more interested in political intrigue and
industrial ventures than in the basics of higher
military organisation or operational strategy!
The reader must bear in mind that the only
major difference despite all other differences
between the Indian and Pakistan Armies was
that the Indian Army was numerically larger
than the Pakistan Army was. In quality of
higher military leadership both the armies by
virtue of being chips of one pre 1947 block
were little different from each other! Both the
Indian and Pakistan Armies of 1971 were like
the Austro-Hungarian armies of 1809. They
consisted of perhaps equally brave junior
leaders but were severely handicapped since
rapid expansion since the Sino-Indian war of
1962 and since the 1965 war. Having more
corps and division despite being impressive on

85. paper had not made the Indian or Pakistani
military machine really effective because of
poor training at divisional and brigade level.
Both numerically larger than they were in
1965, but were organisationally ineffective
beyond battalion level, having dashing young
leaders but tactically and operationally inept
brigade divisional and corps commanders
from the older pre 1947 commissioned
generation whom were initially supposed not
to go beyond company level, had the transfer
of power not taken place in 1947. The strike
corps was a new concept and the Indian 1
Corps which was shortly created before the
1965 war was a newly raised formation whose
corps commander and armoured divisional
commanders were about to retire in 1965
when war broke out. The Indian commanders
beyond unit level, as was the case with
Pakistan Army, consisted of men who had
experience of infantry biased operations in
WW Two and did not understand the real

86. essence of armoured warfare. It was this lack
of understanding that led to the failures in
achieving a decisive armour breakthrough in
both sides. It was a failure of command as
well as staff system where even the staff
officers on both sides were too slow for
armoured warfare and worked on yards and
furlongs rather than miles. Their orientation
was position oriented rather than mobility
oriented and their idea of a battlefield was a
typical linear battlefield. Their Burma or
North African experience where the Japanese
and Germans frequently appeared in their rear
had made them extra sensitive about their
flanks. These were men who thought in terms
of security rather than speed. Conformity
rather than unorthodox dynamism, having
been trained in the slavish colonial orders
oriented British Indian Army was the cardinal
script of their life. It was this British system in
which every senior commander was more
interested in doing the job of those one step

87. junior to him that led to the lack of dash and
initiative at brigade and battalion level. They
were trained that way and there behaviour as
far as the timidity at brigade and divisional
level has to be taken in this context. Yahya
was not a superman who could clean up the
Pakistani political system and reform Pakistan
Army within an year or two! He started the
job of reorganising and reforming the Pakistan
Army but had to leave it half way once he was
forced to clean up the political mess in 1969.
He made an admirable attempt to clean the
political garbage which had accumulated since
1948 but was over taken by the tide of history
which in 1971 was too powerful to be
manipulated by any single man!
The Indian Army of 1971 was much larger
than the Indian Army of 1965! It was many
times superior strategically and operationally
to the 1965 Indian Army in terms of material
strength, technological strength and numerical
strength. The Pakistani defence problem was

88. far more complex in 1971 than in 1965. Even
in terms of foreign policy Pakistan had just
been ditched by one superpower in 1965. The
situation in 1971 was far more worse since
India had been adopted by another superpower
which, unlike the Naive half hearted,
American Village maiden, was resolutely
poised to go with India through thick and thin!
Yahya made unique and brilliant moves to
bring the USA and China together and vainly
hoped that the Americans would help him!
Unfortunately the US betrayed a country
which had been loyally served US interests
since 1954! Foreign Secretary Sultan Khan’s
memoirs recognise Yahya’s contributions and
dismiss many myths about Yahya having gone
out of his way to annoy the Soviets. This
aspect is however beyond the scope of this
article.
CONCLUSION

89. The Pakistan Army and Yahya inherited a
complex historical problem, which had many
fathers, at least half of whom were civilians
and politicians! The Bengali alienation started
from 1948 over the language question, was
increased through Liaquat’s political intrigues
to sideline Suharwardy and delay constitution
making and thus holding elections which held
a threat of a Bengali prime minister
challenging the Hindustani-Punjabi
dominance of Muslim politics! The first sin
was committed once Suharwardy was
sidelined! This was followed by coercion and
intrigue to force parity on the Bengalis! They
even accepted this unjust formula in 1956!
Ask the Punjabis today to agree to a 50%
parity as against all three provinces and then
evaluate the generosity and magnanimity of
the Bengalis! The death verdict of Pakistan’s
unity came in 1958 when Ayub took over and
allied with the West Pakistan civil-military-
feudal-industrialist clique to sideline the

90. Bengalis for eternity from the corridors of
power! Familiar names , and a familiar
combination constituted the ruling clique! A
Punjabi financial wizard, one Dawood, some
generals, some civil servants, some
Hindustani specialists, one old fox who knew
how to twist the law, then young, and some
younger whiz kids constituted the ruling
clique! They took Pakistan back to 1864 or
even 1804! Local bodies, two huge provinces
like the Bengal and Bombay Presidency etc!
The seeds of the division were laid between
1958 and 1969! Yahya Khan whatever his
faults was a greater man than Liaquat or
Ayub! He held the first ever general elections
based on adult franchise! Something that the
so called Quaid e Millat had failed to hold for
four long years, not withstanding all hollow
rhetoric by his admirers that he was going to
make a great announcement on 16 October
1951, the original D-Day in 1999 too! Yahya
restored provincial autonomy, brought the

91. Bengalis in the army, and reorganised the
army! He did everything that was right but it
was too late! He was fighting against the tide
of history! The Pakistan Army was tossed into
a volcano whose architect enjoyed total power
for eleven years and retired peacefully to
enjoy his hard earned wealth. Ayub’s son has
remained in the corridors of power in one
form or another and is still a running horse!
Yahya Khan is much criticised for problems
with which he had nothing to do! For having
done a job which Liaquat should have done in
1950! The Pakistan Army was a relatively
good fighting machine in 1971! Great reforms
were made in organisation, education and
training! It was recovering from the curse of
one-man rule! The cyclone of 1970 in words
of an Indian general destroyed everything!
Yes there was a far more dangerous intangible
and invisible cyclone that had been building
up since 1948! This cyclone had four great
fathers! Yahya Khan was not one of these four

92. great men! The "Martial Races Theory" that
played a major role in Pakistani
overconfidence in 1971 before actual
operations had many fathers and dated from
British times.These British officers had in
1930s described Jews as non martial!
Compare the four Arab-Israeli wars with this
attitude! The military action in 1971 was
widely hailed in West Pakistan! Yet in
December 1971 only Yahya was blamed!
Yahya was not the architect of the problems
that destroyed the united Pakistan of 1971! He
paid for the sins of all that ruled Pakistan from
1947 to 1969! He could do little more than
what a midwife can do in birth of a child as
far as the child’s genetic codes are concerned!
The failure of 1971 was not an individuals
failure but failure of a system with flawed
constitutional geographic philosophic and
military organisational and conceptual
foundations! I find nothing better to repeat
once again the saying that “Success surely has

93. many fathers and failure is an orphan! We
must however not forget that the failure of
1971 had roots that go back to 150 years of
history!
References and Explanatory Notes
1Page-258 & 259- Pakistan’s Crisis in
Leadership-Major General Fazal Muqeem
Khan (Retired)-National Book Foundation-
Ferozsons-Rawalpindi-1973--Fazal I Muqeem
was a sycophant, but a clever one in the sense
that once he wrote his first book "The Story of
the Pakistan Army", he was in the run for
promotion and naturally had to play the
sycophant which most men who rise to higher
positions do! In 1973 Fazal was a retired man
and under no external motivation to please
Ayub! Any dispassionate reader can gauge
Fazal’s calibre as a writer from reading both
his books. It was certainly much higher than
Shaukat Riza whose three books on the

94. Pakistan Army in some ways are harder to
decipher than the Dead Sea Scrolls!
2Page-125- The Military in Pakistan-Image
and Reality –Brigadier A.R Siddiqi (Retired)-
Vanguard-Lahore-1996.
3 Qizilbash is a Persian speaking tribe of
Turkish origin employed as mercenary
soldiers by Safavid kings of Iran and by Nadir
Shah who himself was a Turk but not a Shia
unlike the Qizilbashes. Once Ahmad Shah
Abdali became the first king of Afghanistan
after its independence many Qizilbashes
entered his service and were based in Kandahr
and later Kabul. Many Qizilbash nobles were
posted in Peshawar as Nadir Shah’s officials
once Nadir Shah invaded India in 1739. In
addition many Qizilbashes were granted
estates by Ahmad Shah Abdali and some
came and settled in Lahore after the First
Afghan War. The Qizilbash were Shia by sect
and Persian speaking. Yahya Khan was from

95. the Peshawar branch of Qizilbashes. Those
living in Peshawar identified themselves as
Pathans and spoke Pashto as a second
language but were distinct from Pathans as an
ethnic group. Yahya’s father was from the
Indian Police Service and served in various
appointments as a police officer during the
British Raj. Yahya’s brother was also in the
Police Service of Pakistan and later served as
Director Intelligence Bureau.
4 Page-122- The Pakistan Army-War 1965 –
Major General Shaukat Riza (Retired)-Army
Education Press-Rawalpindi-1984.
5 The Indians deny this assertion but this is
something which is accepted in Pakistan as an
irrevocable fact of history. It is of little
military bearing since few officers make use
of libraries anyway! This career profile may
not be very accurate since I do not have access
to official records. These details are based on
various references to Yahya’s military career.

96. Refers—Page-111- Memoirs of Lt. Gen. Gul
Hassan Khan-Lieutenant General Gul Hassan
Khan -Oxford University Press-Karachi-1993.
Pages-131 & 144- The Story of the Pakistan
Army- Major General Fazal I Muqeem Khan-
Oxford University Press-Lahore-1963. Pages-
47 & 122- Shaukat Riza-Op Cit. Page-37 Brig
A.R Siddiqi-Op Cit.
6Pages-192 & 194- Partners in Command- –
Joseph.T.Glatthaar- The Free Press-New
York-1994.
7Page-238-Gul Hassan Khan-Op Cit.
8 Page-28-Fazal Muqeem-Crisis in
Leadership--Op Cit.
9Page-154-The Story of Soldiering and
Politics in India and Pakistan-Major General
Sher Ali (Retired)-First Printed-1976-Third
Edition-Syed Mobin Mahmud and Company-
Lahore-1988. Page-122-Shaukat Riza-1965-
Op Cit.

97. 10 Page-187-Jawan to General—General
Mohammad Musa- East and West Publishing
Company-Karachi-1984.
11The Punjabis as an ethnic community were
the largest community in the officer corps of
the pre 1947 Indian Army. No exact statistics
exist but by and large the Sikh/Hindus of
Punjab were the largest group in the officer
community followed by Punjabi Muslims
survey of Indian officer cadets done in 1954-
56 showed that majority of the officer cadets
were from Indian Punjab or from Delhi which
was a Punjabi majority city (Indian Parliament
Estimates Committee-1956-57-Sixty Third
Report-Ministry of Defence Training
Institutes-New Delhi-Lok Sabha Secretariat-
Appendix-Seven--Quoted by Stephen Cohen-
Page-183-The Indian Army-Stephen.P.Cohen-
Oxford University Press-New Delhi-1991)
after 1947 The Punjabi Muslims were
however denied the top slots in the army
during the period 1947-72, Ayub being a

98. Hindko speaking Pathan, Musa being a
Persian speaking Mongol-Hazara and Yahya
being a Persian speaking Qizilbash. Tikka was
the first Punjabi chief of the army.In my
course of stay in the army I had various
discussions with old officers and almost all
agreed that there were groupings in most units
on parochial lines which were mostly Punjabi
and Pathan groups. The Punjabis of areas
north of Chenab river tended to be more
clannish with stress on district or sub regional
groupings like Sargodha, Chakwal, Pindi,
Attock Khushab etc. The Punjabis of areas
south of Chenab river which were more
economically prosperous and more
educationally advanced were by and large not
parochial having acquired the big city or
urban mentality. These tended to look down
upon groupings based on caste and district
lines and operated more on relations based on
personal rapport than kinship on village and
district basis. There was definitely a strong

99. feeling in Punjabi officers (something which
was most natural) of the pre 1971 era that the
army was Pathan dominated.Both Ayub and
Yahya although not Pashto speaking were
viewed as Pathans by Punjabi officers. Musa
was viewed as a rubber stamp and as a mere
shadow of Ayub. The Hindustani Muslims
the third largest but relatively better educated
group (although not distinguished for any
unique operational talent) were not united
because they were mostly from urban
backgrounds and had like the Punjabis from
big cities south of Chenab the selfish or self
centred big city mentality. Thus
as individuals the Hindustani Muslims like
the urban Punjabis did well but were not
parochial like the Pathans or the Punjabis
from north of Chenab river. They were
viewed as politically more reliable by virtue
of being an ethnic minority but were sidelined
from higher ranks in most cases. The most
glaring of all was the case of Major General

100. Abrar Hussain who was not promoted despite
outstanding war performance at
Chawinda.Sahibzada Yaqub who later refused
to agree to military action in East Pakistan
was also a Hindustani Muslim. Yahya’s circle
was not based on ethnicity on the principles of
companionship. Thus Peerzada was from
Bombay, while Umar and Hameed were
Punjabis. Bilgrami another close associate
was Hindustani. Lieutenant General Chishti
described Yahya’s attitude towards selecting
officers for higher command ranks the
following words; “Do you see this. I told you,
we do not need educated people in the Army”
(Quoted by Lieut. Gen. F.A Chishti- Betrayals
of Another Kind-Lieutenant General Faiz Ali
Chishti-Asia Publishing House-London-
1989). It is not possible to cross check
Chishti’s statement and it may be an
exaggeration.Yahya however did promote
some ex rankers and known Yes Men with
extremely limited intellect like Tikka and

101. Niazi. Chishti was not an ex ranker. His book
on the Zia era is thought provoking and is
compulsory reading for anyone who wishes to
understand the post 1971 Pakistan Army.
Chishti is one of the few generals from the Zia
era who did not establish huge business
empires like sons of the ex ISI Chief Akhtar
Abdul Rahman etc. Chishti’s book contains
valuable insights into the sycophantic nature
of Zia!
12Page-407 & 408- Ayub Khan-Pakistan’s
First Military Ruler –Altaf Gauhar-Sang –I-
Meel Publications-Lahore-1993.Altaf Gauhar
had the reputation of a “Sycophant Par
Excellence" while serving with Ayub as
“Information Secretary”. Gauhar a civil
servant who had joined the coveted "Civil
Service of Pakistan" without sitting in the
Indian Civil Service Competitive
Examination, having initially been inducted as
a Finance Officer, was the man principally
responsible as Ayub’s information man for

102. destroying Pakistan’s free press. He was
Yahya’s rival and harboured political
ambitions. His biography of Ayub is a defence
of his benefactor and an attempt to portray
Ayub in a favourable light and one who was
led astray by evil minded advisors like Bhutto
who was again Gauhar’s rival in sycophancy
with Ayub, and was far more talented than
Guahar. Gauhar was instrumental in the
personality assassination campaign of Ayub
against Bhutto when Bhutto fell out with
Ayub. Later when Bhutto became Prime
Minister, Gauhar was booked under law and
prosecuted for having the copy of an old "Play
Boy" Magazine and half a bottle of Whiskey!
13Page-115-Brigadier A.R Siddiqi-Op Cit.
14This was in 1991 while this scribe was
serving in the army and a letter from GHQ
was circulated to all headquarters for
comments on the proposal of having the

103. appointment of supreme commander of the
armed forces.
15Page-239-India and the United States-
Estranged Democracies – Dennis Kux-
National Defense University Press-
Washington D.C-June 1993.
16Arms Trade Register-Arms Trade with
Third World-Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute- (SIPRI)-1975 and Page-
120-Brig A.R Siddiqi-Op Cit.
17Page-148-Fazal Muqeem-Op Cit. It may be
noted that during the 1965 war and
immediately after cease fire two infantry
battalions were raised and added to each
existing infantry division. In addition soon
after the war one infantry division and two
independent infantry brigades wee raised.
(Refers-Page-147-Ibid). A new corps
headquarter i.e. 4 Corps Headquarters at
Lahore was also raised

104. 18Till 1965 East Pakistan was defended by a
two brigade infantry division known as 14
Infantry Division. This division had no tank
regiment.
19Page-106-Fazal Muqeem-Ibid. Lieutenant
General Sahibzada Yaqub Khan was born in
1920 and commissioned in 1940 he served in
the Middle East Theatre in WW Two where
he saw action in North Africa and became a
German/Italian prisoner of war like Sahibzada
Yaqub Tikka and Yahya (who later
successfully escaped) and later commanded 6
Lancers and 11 Cavalry. He graduated from
Command and Staff College Quetta in 1949
and Ecole Superieure de Guerre, Paris and
Imperial Defence College London later.
Appointed the Vice-Chief of General Staff in
1958, Yaqub was at Staff College Quetta
when the 1965 War started. He was sent to
Headquarter 1 Corps in order to supply the
Headquarters with badly needed Grey matter
and was appointed the Deputy Corps

105. Commander of 1 Corps. He later commanded
the 1st Armoured Division and later appointed
Corps Commander and Commander Eastern
Command, from where he was sacked by
Yahya in March 1971 following Yaqub’s
refusal to carry out a military action against
the population of East Bengal. Yaqub was
later appointed as an ambassador of Pakistan
to France was in February 1972 and to the
USA in December 1973. He later served as
Ambassador to the USSR in 1979-1980 and
later as Foreign ministers during the Zia
regime from 1980 to 1985. Yaqub was a
Hindustani Pathan from Rohailkhand. His
ancestors were Yusufzai Pathans, from the
Kabul river valley of present NWF Province
of Pakistan and had settled in Rohailkhand in
modern UP in the 18th century. Yaqub was a
fourth generation aristocrat from a family with
considerable landed wealth. He was serving in
Viceroy’s Bodyguard at the time of partition
and later served with Mr. Jinnah as the first

106. Pakistani Muslim Commandant of the
Governor General’s Body guard. The unit is
now known as President’s bodyguard and is
now commanded by a lieutenant colonel.
20Ibid.
21Ismail was not as guilty as his corps
commander i.e. Lieutenant General Bakhtiar
Rana, but was penalised, and sacked. Ismail
was sacked because of the Jassar Bridge crisis
and replaced by Major General Tikka Khan as
General Officer Commanding 15 Division on
the afternoon of 8th September 1965. (Refers-
Page-153-Shaukat Riza-1965-Op Cit).
Brigadier Sardar Ismail Khan was an Army
Service Corps Officer and should not have
been placed as an infantry division
commander in the first place .It is a tribute to
General Musa’s intellect that a non fighting
arm officer from the services was acting
divisional commander of one of the most
crucial divisions of the Pakistan Army!

107. 22Many were promoted despite known
military incompetence in the 1965 war at
brigade level. These included one Brigadier
Bashir. Bashir was commanding the 5
Armoured Brigade of the 1st Armoured
Division in Khem Karan area in the 1965
War, and was responsible for its poor handling
on 7th 8th and 9th September. Gul a seasoned
armour officer squarely condemned Bashir for
inefficiency and inaction as commander 5
Armoured Brigade. Gul described Bashir’s
conduct as that of one who had "drifted into
stupour", one who was not in command of his
faculties, and one who did not prod his staff
into action! (Refers-Page-214-Gul Hassan
Khan-Op Cit). Gul highlighted the
deficiencies in Bashir and expressed wonder
as to why a career officer who had served as
an instructor at the command and Staff
College performed so poorly! (See Page-210-
Ibid). Bashir was a Kaimkhani Rajput from
Rajhastan and had attended the Army War

108. Course in 1964. (Page-35-- National Defence
College-Rawalpindi-Alumni Directory—
Research Cell-National Defence College-
Rawalpindi-May 1992) It appeared that Bashir
had a good rapport with Yahya and Hamid
and survived the Khem Karan fiasco. He
became a major general and commanded the
6th Armoured Division, the newly raised 23
Division and the newly raised 37 Division.
Bashir was retired in 1972 by Tikka since he
was perceived as one close to Yahya. He
became a Minister in the Zia era. Lieutenant
General Yusuf presently serving in the GHQ
is a relation of Bashir.
23Page-395- The Indian Armour-History of
the Indian Armoured Corps-1941-1971–Major
General Gurcharan Singh Sandhu-Vision
Books-Delhi-1994.
24Page-203-Shaukat Riza-1965 War –Op Cit.
25Pages-116 & 117-Brig A .R Siddiqi-Op Cit.

109. 26Page-67-The Pakistan Army-1966-1971–
Major General Shaukat Riza (Retired)–Wajid
Ali’s Private Limited-Lahore-Services Book
Club-1990. This was the last book in Shaukat
Riza’s trilogy. The book is poorly written but
extremely valuable in terms of basic facts
about organisation, order of battle, and names
of commander’s etc. It has occasional flashes
of insight, which came to Shaukat Riza, and
which escaped the simpleton and pedantic
although extremely narrow scrutiny of the
pedants in the Military Intelligence
Directorate, though relatively infrequently.
The readers may note that all articles
published in the army journals are vetted in
some manner by the Military Intelligence
Directorate. The book is not reliable in terms
of battle accounts, has extremely poor battle
maps and does not even give the total
casualties of the army. However, due
allowance must be given to the author who
was not in the prime of his health and was

110. forced to write the book according to the
GHQ’s myopic and petty requirements.
27 Page-66-Ibid.
28 This is the standard practice in units,
headquarter and schools of instruction. The
clerical staffs are such experts that they bring
a Solomon’s Solution based on an old letter
written in a similar situation, as DFA (Draft
for Approval) and the concerned officer signs
it with minor alterations! I am sure that the
Indians must be operating similarly!
29Page-67-Shaukat Riza-1966-1971-Op Cit.
30Page-111-Fazal Muqeem Khan-Op Cit.
31Page-121-Brig A.R Siddiqi-Op Cit.
32The East wingers viewed everyone from the
West Wing as a Punjabi. Punjabi was more of
a term to describe all non-East Pakistanis or to
be more precise all non-Bengalis. It may be
noted that Ayub who ruled the country from

111. 1958-1969 was not a Punjabi, nor was Yahya,
nor Bhutto, who was later accused by many to
be the principal culprit in 1971 of creating the
political crisis which finally led to the March
1971 military crackdown in East Pakistan and
finally the 1971 war.
33See Page-136- Sher Ali –Op Cit, for the
development of the strategy "defence of East
Pakistan lies in West Pakistan". In 1963 the
Bengali representation in the army was
just 7.4% in the rank and file and 5.0% in the
officer corps. (Refers-Government of
Pakistan, National Assembly of
Pakistan,Debates,March 8, 1963 as reported
on pages-30 & 31- Pakistan Observer- Dacca-
Issue dated 27 June 1964.
34The “One Unit” was an absurd
administrative arrangement legalised in the
1956 constitution and resented by the smaller
provinces of West Pakistan. “One Unit” meant
the concentration of the previously four

112. provinces, states and territories into one huge
monster of a province known as West
Pakistan disregarded the huge differences
between the old provinces/territories/states in
terms of ethnicity language social and cultural
differences and distribution of resources. The
“One Unit” was viewed as an instrument of
imposing Punjabi domination on the
population wise old smaller
provinces/states/regions/commissionerates of
Sind Baluchistan NWFP Bahawlpur etc.
35Page-104-Pakistan-The Enigma of Political
Development – Lawrence Ziring—William
Dawson and Sons –Kent –England—1980.
36Page-9- Witness to Surrender – Siddiq
Salik—First Published—1977—Third
Impression-Oxford University Press-Karachi-
1998.
37Siddiq Salik has dealt with the issue in
considerable detail and has described Yahya’s
final compromise decision of, mixing

113. Bengalis with West Pakistani troops in
existing infantry battalions and also raising
more purely Bengali battalions of the East
Bengal Regiment, as the decision of an
indecisive commander. Salik says that Yahya
ordered raising of two more battalions
(Refers Pages-9 & 10-Siddiq Salik-Op Cit)
but Shaukat Riza states that Yahya ordered
raising of three more battalions (Refers Page-
79-Shaukat Riza-1966-1971-Op Cit). This as
per Shaukat Riza happened "some time in
1970" (all praise to staff officers who assisted
Shaukat in terms of preciseness of simple
facts like dates!!!!!). (Refers-Ibid.).
38The reader must note that Shaukat and
Siddiq Salik criticised Yahya’s decision to
raise more pure Bengali units with the benefit
of hindsight; i.e. Salik doing it eight years
after the war and Shaukat leisurely doing so
some twenty years later. I remember as a
school student in the period 1969-70 in Quetta
where my father was a grade two staff officer

114. of operations in the 16 Division in Quetta, that
even schoolchildren (most of them being sons
of army officers, Quetta being a very large
garrison town) used to joke about Bengalis,
bragging that one Punjabi/Pathan was equal to
ten Bengalis! This was common thinking at
that time and what was later branded as
Yahya’s blunder, much later after the 1971
fiasco, was an indisputable assertion believed
as a common fact in 1970 ! The foreign reader
may note that Bengalis were despised as a non
martial race from the British times . For Sir
Syed Ahmad Khan’s anti Bengali views see
Page-308-Aligarh’s First Generation – David
Lelyveld- Oxford University Press-New
Delhi-1978 . For I.H Qureshi’s views see
Page-28-Ethnicity and politics in Pakistan-Dr
Feroz Ahmad-Oxford University Press-
Karachi-1999. For Ayub’s remarks see Page-
187-Friends not Masters- Ayub Khan-Oxford
University Press-Karachi-1967.