1965 War: fabulous or terrible chapter? -by Arshad Mahmood
Source: Daily AajKal
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Tags: hypocrisy, Military Establishment, Pakistan India Relations, Religious extremism & fundamentalism & radicalism
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Uuhhhh… Dumb Idea.
Operation Gibraltar anyone?
Uuhhhh… Dumb Idea.
Operation Gibraltar anyone?
And never learning from Operation Gibraltar, we (Mush, his three generals and Nawaz Sahib, and us for passively sitting there) launched a more high altitude version of Operation Gibraltar.
All these facts are true. Gen. Ayub was perhaps the first person who sowed the seeds of hate. Educational textbooks were purposely altered to disseminate widespread hatred against India. The main aim was to justify the war of 1965. This emotionalism kept on building up and now we see a nation full of emotions of religious fervor and blindly following what an Army General taught them to do.
War of 1965 was the watershed of our history.
We were closest at that time to solving the Kashmir problem for good. An un-warranted change of command by Ayub Khan at the decisive stage of the operation changed the fate of war and Kashmir for ever. Since then we have been losing control of the Kashmir dispute more and more and India has been the gainer.
Pak-India enmity reached its peak and we paid heavily a few years later when India took advantage of the situation in East Pakistan and helped create Bangladesh in 1971.
Yahya Khan was the illegitimate child of 1965 war. Debacle of 1971 was the result of misdeeds and poor handling of the politico-diplomatic situation at home as well as at the world level by Yahya Khan.
ZAB was the illegitimate child of the elections of 1970 held under Yahya Khan (legitimate one was Mujeeb ur Rehman). ZAB’s feudal style of governance produced another illegitimate figure in the shape of Zia ul Haq, who gave us the gifts of Afghan Mohajreen,heroin and Kalashnikov culture, and religious extremism leading to terrorism and suicide bombings of today.
Nobody knows where this chain of events which started off with the 1965 war, is going to end for Pakistan and its peaceful quiet majority of citizens.