By the first week of June, the crisis had subsided. To this day, historians are divided on whether or not war was indeed likely, whether or not it could have evolved into a nuclear conflict, and what effect foreign intervention had. In the same year, however, the United States concluded that Pakistan had crossed key thresholds in the nuclear weapon production process. Consequently, in October 1990, President George H. W. Bush informed the US Congress, per the requirements of the 1985 Pressler Amendment, that he could not certify that Pakistan did not possess nuclear weapons. Subsequently, the United States terminated all economic and military assistance (including sales of military equipment). A year earlier, in 1989, Bush carefully chose his words in his annual certification letter to the US Congress, writing that Pakistan does not “now possess a nuclear explosive device” but that it “has continued its efforts to develop its unsafeguarded nuclear program” (Gordon 1989). This deliberative process conferred to Pakistan a crude nuclear capability. India, because of its 1974 test and subsequent developments, was also assumed to have some form of nuclear weapons capability (Chari et al. 2001).
The third significant crisis was the Indo-Pakistani crisis of 2001–2002. A few months after 9/11, on December 13, 2001, Pakistan-based and-backed Islamist militants associated with the Jaish-e-Mohammad attacked the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. India quickly placed the blame on Pakistani militants and ordered a full-scale mobilization under the name of Operation Parakram (valor). Despite Pakistani denials of any knowledge of the attack, India insisted that Pakistan cease to support cross-border terrorism and hand over some 20 criminals wanted in India. India stopped all communication between the two countries. By Christmas 2001, it appeared that war was imminent. The prospect was deeply disconcerting to the United States, which was depending on Pakistan to maintain its forces in the west of the country to support US operations in Afghanistan. As India mobilized its largest force since the 1971 war, Pakistan moved its forces from the west to the east. By January, tensions relaxed somewhat, as it became evident to most observers that India would not attack, but forces were not redeployed to their peacetime positions (Nayak and Krepon 2012).
In May 2002, militants associated with the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which like Jaish-e-Mohammad is based in Pakistan and receives Pakistani military and intelligence support, massacred the wives and children of army personnel at Kaluchak in Kashmir. It again seemed that war was imminent, but by the end of June tensions had subsided in the face of significant international pressure on both states: the United States pressed Pakistan to cease its support for cross-border terrorism while encouraging India to avoid further escalation. The crisis formally ended in October 2002. (India wanted to maintain its forces in place until after the October 2002 elections in Kashmir as a deterrent to any Pakistani state or state-sponsored adventurism.)
From India’s point of view, it was able to achieve its aims, at least temporarily, by putting pressure on Pakistan via the United States to stop supporting cross-border terrorism. Indian officials that I have interviewed since 2002 concede that Pakistani infiltration has not since reached its pre-2002 levels (although there are numerous explanations for this). While India concluded that its “coercive diplomacy” is what influenced Pakistan, Pakistan surmised that its nuclear arsenal had deterred India from attacking (Chari et al. 2001; Nayak and Krepon 2006). Notably, for reasons that are beyond the scope of this effort, the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror attack in Mumbai in 2008 did not have the military dimensions of the 2001–2002 crisis (Nayak and Krepon 2012).
THE 1947–1948 INDO-PAKISTAN WAR OVER KASHMIR
The 1947–1948 war began in October 1947, when thousands of Pakistani tribal lashkars (militia members), with extensive assistance from Pakistan’s new civilian government and elements in the military leadership, invaded the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan was growing anxious because the Hindu king, Maharaja Hari Singh, had delayed the decision to join either India or Pakistan and appeared to be holding out for independence. Pakistan believed that the inclusion of Kashmir (which was represented by the letter “k” in the word Pakistan) was essential to fulfilling its destiny as the homeland for South Asia’s Muslims, as the two-nation theory demanded. The maharaja’s forces were unable to defend against the intruders, and he resorted to asking for Indian assistance. India obliged, but under the condition that Kashmir would accede to India.
Under the terms of the British transfer of power, the maharaja was vested with the full legal power to join India. However, Jawaharlal Nehru was concerned about the legitimacy, as well as the legality, of the accession and requested that Kashmiri nationalist leader Sheikh Abdullah give his consent as well, which he did (Ganguly 2001; Nawaz 2008a, 2008b; Whitehead 2007). India airlifted troops to defend what was now Indian territory.1 Indian and Pakistani troops fought pitched battles throughout fall and early winter 1947, and both sides sustained significant losses. The conflict ended on January 1, 1948, with a United Nations (UN)–sponsored ceasefire whose line divided the territory into Indian and Pakistani administrative zones, with India retaining the important Muslim-majority valley of Kashmir.
India was first to take the conflict to the UN, invoking Articles 34 and 35 of its charter, which deal with threats to international peace and security. India’s principal complaint concerned Pakistani nationals attacking Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan denied these claims, questioned the validity of Kashmir’s accession, and argued that India was committing atrocities in Kashmir. In January 1948, the UN Security Council (UNSC) passed Resolutions 38 and 39, which called for both states to avoid making the conflict worse and established a commission to help resolve the dispute. The commission’s remit was expanded by another resolution (Resolution 47, April 1948), which also laid out three sequential steps essential to implementing a fair and impartial plebiscite on the question of accession. A close examination of this resolution is extremely important to understanding Pakistani and Indian narratives about the nature of the dispute.
First, Pakistan was to “secure the withdrawal from the State of Jammu and Kashmir of tribesmen and Pakistani nationals not normally resident therein who have entered the State for the purpose of fighting” (UNSC 1948). In addition, Pakistan was to “to prevent any intrusion into the State of such elements and any furnishing of material aid to those fighting in the State” (ibid.). Second, when the commission had determined to its satisfaction that “tribesmen are withdrawing and that arrangements for the cessation of the fighting have become effective,” India was to “put into operation in consultation with the Commission a plan for with-drawing their own forces from Jammu and Kashmir and reducing them progressively to the minimum strength required for the support of the civil power in the maintenance of law and order” (ibid.). Third, when both of these conditions had been met, the plebiscite would be held under guidelines laid out by the commission (ibid.).
While it is true that for a number of reasons India tried to avoid the plebiscite, it is also the case that Pakistan never fulfilled the first requirement, to demilitarize, on which the rest of this process hinged (Ganguly 2001; Nawaz 2008a, 2008b; Whitehead 2007). Oddly, while many Pakistanis continue to insist today that the plebiscite be held, Pakistan was not enthusiastic about the idea when India first suggested it in 1948 (Wirsing 1998). Equally important, most contemporary Pakistani commentators have either forgotten (or simply choose to ignore) that Pakistan—not India—failed to fulfill the first, necessary (if insufficient) condition for the now much desired plebiscite, making Pakistan unable to blame India alone for its failure to meet subsequent obligations. It should be noted that in my varied interactions with Pakistanis in and out of uniform, I have never met a single individual who can recount what UNSCR 47 actually demanded of both states even though many Pakistanis continue to insist on its implementation.2
India has long held that the plebiscite has been made redundant by the ratification of Kashmir’s accession to India by Kashmir’s provincial constituent assembly and the numerous elections held
in the state since then. Pakistan continues to decry Indian excesses in Kashmir and its mismanagement of the state and has generally remained wedded to the plebiscite, raising all of these issues when it deems expedient. In 2003, Pakistan made a historic—if fleeting—change to its position when the Pervez Musharraf government announced that it would no longer insist on the plebiscite. In 2004, however, Musharraf backtracked, again raising the demand for the plebiscite (Outlook India 2004). There have been no subsequent indications that Pakistan will relent in its demand for the plebiscite, despite the fact that Pakistan undermined the plebiscite’s prospects in the first place.
THE 1965 INDO-PAKISTAN WAR OVER KASHMIR
As discussed in previous chapters, the 1965 war had two components. The first, which lasted from late 1964 into early 1965, was a series of clashes between forward-deployed Pakistani and Indian patrols operating in the Rann of Kutch. Indian and Pakistani accounts of the incident vary, with each inevitably accusing the other of being the aggressor. Undisputed is that India’s response was tepid, partly owing to the geography of the area and the seasonal rains that made sustained ground conflict on the marshy terrain difficult. The Pakistanis interpreted India’s less than robust response to mean that India did not have the stomach for vigorous combat, thus reinforcing Pakistan’s beliefs about the pusillanimity of Hindu Indians. Pakistan was also growing frustrated with Indian efforts to integrate Kashmir into India and by its own inability to bring international pressure to bear on India to grant some concession to Pakistan. Fearing that it would lose the opportunity to redraw the map in Kashmir, Pakistan took advantage of the civil disturbance that arose in Srinagar when a holy relic (a hair of the Prophet Muhammad) disappeared in late 1963. Pakistan believed that the time was ripe to exploit inflamed local sentiments and stoke an insurgency that would free Kashmir from India’s grasp. As a result, in spring 1965 Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar with the goal of “defreezing” the Kashmir issue (Khan 1993).3
As noted briefly in Chapter 4, the plan called for mustering several thousand irregulars, called mujahideen, with training and support by regular Pakistan military officers; estimates of the size of the force range between 3,000 and 30,000 militants (Nawaz 2008a). The fighters were tasked with sabotage activities and initiating a sustained civil war in Kashmir. Operation Gibraltar was to be followed by Operation Grand Slam, in which Pakistani regular forces would cross the ceasefire line and head toward Akhnur to cut Indian forces off from the rest of Kashmir. Pakistan’s defense writings tend to assert that the driving forces behind Grand Slam were then foreign minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his foreign secretary, Aziz Ahmed, who allegedly met strong resistance from the Pakistani military leadership, including Gen. Ayub Khan, who was the chief of army staff at that time. Pakistan’s leadership was certainly overconfident of its ability both to control escalation of the conflict and to defeat India, partly because of India’s milquetoast response in the Rann of Kutch and partly because of its assessment of India’s capabilities and will to fight in the wake of India’s devastating defeat in its 1962 war with China (Ganguly 2001; Nawaz 2008a). For a very critical account of the 1965 war fiasco, see Khan (1993) and Ahmed (2002).
Infiltration across the ceasefire line began in August 1965. Not only did the intruders fail to foment a rebellion, but local Kashmiris also alerted the authorities to the intrusion. Despite its loss of the element of surprise, Pakistan continued with the planned operations, launching Grand Slam at the end of August (Nawaz 2008a; Ganguly 2001). But the Indian response surprised Pakistan. First, India was neither unprepared nor unwilling to fight Pakistan: in fact, India’s prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, had already approved “military action against Pakistan at a time and place to be chosen by the Army, and General Chaudhuri [the army chief] had indicated that the offensive operations could start by 10 May” (Nawaz 2008a, 209). The Indians decided that Jammu and Kashmir’s terrain was not suitable for major offensive operations and instead opened up a new front along the international border, launching their counteroffensive against the key Punjabi cities of Lahore and Sialkot. Most of the subsequent conflict took place in the Punjab, with very little action in East Pakistan. On September 20, 1965, with the war rapidly approaching a stalemate, the UNSC passed a resolution calling for a cessation of hostilities. India conceded, but on political, not military, grounds: it could have sustained the conflict and turned the stalemate into an outright victory (Raghavan 2009). Pakistan was even more willing to settle: military setbacks had cost Ayub his will to continue fighting (Ganguly 2001; Nawaz 2008a).4 Despite the historical facts that the 1965 war began with Pakistani aggression, Pakistan instituted Defense of Pakistan Day, to be celebrated on September 6 to commemorate the day when “Indian forces sneaked [sic] into the Wagah border and the Pakistan armed forces, when alerted, put up a valiant defence of the motherland and drove them back, thus taking its name as the Defence of Pakistan Day” (Nation 2012).
The United States had grown wary of attempting to resolve the Indo-Pakistan conflict and was unwilling to devote further resources to the problem. The Soviet Union stepped into the breach and facilitated the postwar settlement between the two combatants. Under the terms of the agreement, both sides gave up any captured territory, returned to the status quo ante, and agreed to settle future disputes peacefully. Pakistan claimed that it had seized 1,617 square miles of Indian territory and that India had seized 446 square miles of Pakistani territory. India, for its part, claimed that Pakistan seized 210 square miles of Indian territory and that it seized 740 square miles of Pakistani territory (Nawaz 2008a). Whatever the actual figures, Pakistan’s actions in Kashmir had precipitated a war in which Pakistan achieved no permanent gains other than to simply keep the conflict alive. Ayub was livid, reportedly proclaiming that never again would Pakistan “risk 100 million Pakistanis for 5 million Kashmiris” (Nawaz 2008a, 240). Worse still, East Pakistanis concluded that Pakistan had no real plans for defending them from Indian aggression. This conviction added to an evolving inventory of grievances that set the stage for the next war.
THE 1971 INDO-PAKISTAN WAR AND THE EMERGENCE OF BANGLADESH FROM EAST PAKISTAN
East Pakistan, unlike West Pakistan, was dominated by a single ethnic group: Bengalis. While most Bengalis in East Pakistan were Muslim, many were Hindus, and after Partition a large Hindu minority of some 12 million remained in East Pakistan, alongside 32 million Muslims (Lambert 1950).5 At the time of Pakistan’s independence, the population of East Pakistan exceeded that of West Pakistan, which was also divided among several ethnic groups (Khan 1960). Under the principle of one man, one vote, the Bengalis of East Pakistan would have been able to dominate the politics of the new state. However, the predominantly Punjabi and Muhajir political elites of West Pakistan were committed to preventing such an outcome.
The West Pakistani political and military elites looked down on the Bengalis for a number of reasons. First, they were not among the so-called martial races and thus were nearly entirely excluded from military service. Second, their mother tongue was Bengali, and they had from the beginning objected to the imposition of Urdu as the national language. Bengalis were aggrieved to find that their language was relegated to second-class status even though they composed the largest portion of Pakistanis. Urdu was not the native tongue of any part of Pakistan; it was the language of the north Indian immigrant population. But both Hindu and Muslim Bengalis used the same Sanskrit-derived script and vocabulary to write their shared language.6 West Pakistanis thus found the use of Bengali to be distastefully redolent of Hinduism and sought to discourage it. They tried to persuade Bengali Muslims to use the Perso-Arabic script and to replace Sanskrit-based vocabulary items with Persian or Arabic words. Bengalis, whose nationalism has often been expressed through their language and literature, would not stand for it. Instead, they mobilized to obtain national status for their language (Jaffrelot 2002a).
Third, many West Pakistanis believed that their Bengali compatriots were lesser
Muslims on account of their cultural, linguistic, historical, and social proximity to Hindu Bengalis, with whom they had more in common than with the ethnic groups of West Pakistan. In fact, the Muslims of East Pakistan seemed to have only one thing in common with their West Pakistani compatriots: Islam. But many West Pakistanis were convinced that the Islam practiced in Bengal was “contaminated” by its long exposure to Hindu social and cultural practices (Jaffrelot 2002a). Some West Pakistani religious leaders argued for the need to “purify” East Pakistanis citizens of these Hindu recrudescences, if not vestiges that never vanished in the first instance (Haqqani 2005, 62). West Pakistani racism toward their East Pakistani citizens was not even hidden: elites often dismissed Bengalis as “black bastards” (Salik 1997, 29).
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