by Dilip Hiro
Consolidation in Kashmir
Following the truce on January 1, 1949, the Azad Kashmir government became the administrative authority for the territory west of the cease-fire line, including Gilgit Agency—composed of Gilgit, Hunza, and Nagar—and Baltistan. Later in 1949, Pakistan imposed direct rule on Gilgit Agency and Baltistan after merging them and named the new entity Northern Areas. Next year it issued an ordinance, “Rules of Business of the Azad Kashmir Government,” which served as the basic law for the territory. The supreme head of this government functioned under the watchful eyes of the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs. Pakistan retained control of defense, foreign policy, and dealings with the United Nations, while Azad Kashmir authorities continued to administer the territory and develop it economically.
In March 1950 the UNCIP gave way to the UN representative charged with the task of bringing about demilitarization in both parts of Kashmir. The first such representative, Australian judge Owen Dixon, reported that since Delhi would never agree to demilitarization, two other alternatives should be considered. One: hold four regional plebiscites—in Jammu, Kashmir Valley, Ladakh, and the Northern Areas. Two: partition the state, with some areas to India and others to Pakistan, and hold a plebiscite only in the Kashmir Valley.
Nehru showed interest, but Ali Khan rejected Dixon’s proposals. He insisted on a plebiscite to decide the fate of all of Jammu and Kashmir, confident that its Muslim majority would opt for accession to Pakistan. This was the earliest of several missed opportunities to peacefully resolve the dispute, which has since then proved intractable.
Forced by Delhi, Maharaja Sir Hari Singh abdicated in favor of his eighteen-year-old son, Karan Singh, in 1949, while Shaikh Muhammad Abdullah remained the state’s chief executive. Article 370 in the secular Indian constitution accorded Kashmir the right to have its own constitution. Elections for the 75-member Constituent Assembly were scheduled for August through September 1951. In the end polls were held only in four constituencies because those opposing Abdullah’s National Conference, concentrated in the Jammu region, were told that they had all filled their nomination papers “incorrectly” and could therefore not contest the election! Such tactics were the staple of a one-party dictatorship rather than a multiparty democratic entity.
By so doing, Abdullah accentuated the traditional animosity that had existed between the Hindus in Jammu who had identified with the maharaja and the Muslims in Kashmir who loathed the Hindu ruler. Now the Hindus in Jammu began protesting against “Kashmiri domination” and demanding closer ties with India. Abdullah agreed to give the Indian president power to “declare state of emergency” in Jammu and Kashmir in the event of external aggression. This did not satisfy the staunchly pro-India elements in Jammu. Led by the communalist Bharatiya Jan Sangh (Hindi: Indian People’s Union), they launched an agitation for “One constitution, one flag, and one president” in late 1952. This caused apprehension among Kashmiri Muslims, who saw in this a threat to the special status conferred on the state by the Indian constitution.
It was in this atmosphere of escalating tension and suspicion in the state that a plan to arrest Abdullah was hatched in Delhi by a Nehru-guided cabal, which included Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad, deputy of Abdullah; Durga Prasad Dhar, a Hindu colleague of Abdullah; and Karan Singh. What spurred them into action was the letter by President Prasad to Nehru on July 14, 1953, in which he wrote that on his return from a visit to Kashmir, Vice President Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan told him that “even Shaikh Abdullah thought that we would lose in a plebiscite.”11
On August 9, 1953, on the order of Karan Singh, Abdullah was arrested under the state’s Public Security Act and detained “for the time being.”12 His incarceration ended briefly in January 1958.
Much changed during the intervening period in Pakistan, domestically and externally.
Pakistan in Washington’s Orbit
The Eisenhower-Dulles duo set out to build a ring of containment around the Sino-Soviet bloc, and Pakistan was a key part of that ring. Washington viewed Pakistan as a strategically located country with “a volunteer army of 300,000,” which was “not neutral but [was] anti-communist.” It was “extremely well-disciplined, professional, well trained armed forces whose morale and bravery are unquestionable.”13
Muhammad Ali Bogra, the prime minister of Pakistan, had previously served as his country’s ambassador to the United States from February 1952 to April 1953. On April 2, 1954, the United States signed a Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement with Pakistan, capped by a separate pact to meet Congressional requirements on May 19.
“I send you this personal message because I want you to know about my decision to extend military aid to Pakistan before it is public knowledge, and also because I want you to know directly from me that this step does not in any way affect the friendship we feel for India,” wrote Eisenhower to Nehru on February 24.
What we are proposing to do, and what Pakistan is agreeing to, is not directed in any way against India. I am confirming publicly that if our aid to any country, including Pakistan, is misused and directed against another in aggression I will undertake immediately . . . appropriate action, both within and without the U.N., to thwart such aggression. . . . We also believe that it is in the interest of the free world that India should have a strong military defense capability, and have admired the effective way in which your government has administered your military establishments. If your government should conclude that circumstances require military aid of a type contemplated by our mutual security legislation, please be assured that your request would receive my most sympathetic consideration.14
Nehru declined Eisenhower’s offer. “You are, however, aware of the views of my Government and our people in regard to the matter,” replied Nehru on March 1. “Those views and policy which we have pursued after most careful thought are based on our desire to help in the furtherance of peace and freedom. We shall continue to pursue that policy.” By making this suggestion, he observed, “the President has done less than justice to us or to himself. If we object to military aid being given to Pakistan, we would be hypocrites and unprincipled opportunists to accept such aid ourselves.”15
On that day Nehru publicly denounced Washington’s military assistance to Pakistan as “intervention” in Indo-Pakistan affairs. As such, his government was no longer prepared to accept the American members of the UN observers’ team in Kashmir as neutral. Domestically, by leading the denunciation of the Pakistan-US pact in its demonstrations and rallies, the Congress Party preempted any chances of the right-wing Bharatiya Jan Sangh or the Communist Party of India exploiting the issue to shore up its popular following.
Before Nehru’s open disagreement with Eisenhower, his administration had made use of its neutrality to end the war in Korea. During his spring 1953 global tour, Dulles visited Delhi, where he paid tribute to “India’s efforts at the UN to end the war in Korea.” He also said that Washington would aid India’s First Five Year Plan for economic development.16
When the negotiations for a cease-fire in the Korean War became deadlocked on the issue of the repatriation of prisoners of war, a solution was found in establishing the Neutral Nations Repatriations Commission, headed by India. It was mandated to interview in a neutral setting individual prisoners who refused repatriation and have them choose their side. That process finally led to the signing of the truce on July 27, 1953.
By strange coincidence, it was during that month that, overriding America’s objections, India went ahead with a shipment of thorium nitrate—a substance with potential for use in nuclear industry—to Communist China. To qualify for receiving any aid from the United States, Delhi had to abide by its End User Agreement, which incorporated its Export Control Act of 1949. That act restricted export of certain strategic or military items to the Soviet bloc and covered a wide range of materials needed for the production of weapons, with particular focus on anything that could aid atomic weapons research and
construction. In 1953, when Washington learned of India’s impending export of thorium nitrate to Communist China, which it considered part of the Soviet bloc, it pointed to its acts to abort the shipment. Keen to assert his country’s newly won independence, Nehru refused to accept any US-imposed restrictions on India’s trade. Breach of the US law would have led to the termination of aid by Washington. Realizing that cutting off all aid to India would do more harm than good, Dulles negotiated a compromise whereby India agreed to send only one shipment to Communist China.17
This minor concession to India left untouched the Eisenhower-Dulles strategy to cordon off the Sino-Soviet bloc. Four months after signing the Mutual Security Assistance Agreement, Pakistan attended a meeting of eight nations in Manila to form the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).18 This was followed by Pakistan joining Iran, ruled by the shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, and Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to form the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in 1955.
After the signing of the US-Pakistan military pact, hundreds of Pakistani officers were sent to the Pentagon’s military academies for advanced training. The US Military Assistance Advisory Group set up its office at Pakistan’s Army Headquarters in Rawalpindi.
With US military aid of $266 million in 1955 rocketing to $1.086 billion the following year,19 the budget and the popular standing of Pakistan’s armed forces rose sharply. By contrast, the prestige of politicians sank ever lower.
In the March 1951 elections in Punjab during Ali Khan’s premiership, the Muslim League fared well. But it failed to repeat the performance in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) election in December. Its achievement in the legislative election in Sindh in May 1953 was lackluster. And in the populous East Pakistan in March 1954 it suffered a humiliating defeat by the United Front of Bengali nationalists.
Reflecting this dramatic development, Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad dissolved the Constituent Assembly on October 24, 1954, saying it had become unrepresentative. This in turn led Bogra to form a new cabinet. He appointed Major-General Iskander (also spelled Sikander) Ali Mirza to be his interior minister and the chief of army staff, Major-General Muhammad Ayub Khan, as his defense minister, a post held until then by civilian premiers. When the ailing Muhammad spent two months in Britain for medical treatment, Mirza served as the acting governor-general.
A month later Bogra announced a plan to merge the western wing’s four provinces, former princely states and tribal agencies into one unit, to be called West Pakistan. It came into being in October 1955. A new Constituent Assembly of 80, with its members divided equally between West and East Pakistan, was elected by the members of their respective legislatures in April.
When the terminally ill Muhammad resigned as governor-general in August 1955, Major-General Mirza succeeded him, a sign of the ascending power of the military in administering Pakistan. As an ethnic Bengali, he considered it politically unwise to have another Bengali, Bogra, continue as the prime minister. So he dispatched him back to Washington as Pakistan’s ambassador.
Pakistan Loses Its Constitution and Gains a Military Ruler
Mirza called on Chaudhri (also spelled Chaudhry) Muhammad Ali, a Punjabi bureaucrat turned Muslim League leader, to form the next government. Thanks to his determined push, the new Constituent Assembly adopted a republican constitution with a provision for universal suffrage on February 29, 1956. It prescribed a parliamentary form of government, with Islam as the state religion and Urdu, English, and Bengali as the state languages. However, objecting to the absence of regional autonomy, the sixteen members of the East Pakistan-based Awami League, led by Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardy, walked out. The constitution came into force on March 23, 1956—the sixteenth anniversary of the Lahore Resolution of the All India Muslim League—with Major-General Mirza unanimously elected as the first president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan by its National Assembly.
With its republican constitution, Pakistan caught up with India. But by having a retired major-general as its president, Pakistan set itself apart from its bigger neighbor, where all power rested with elected civilians. Moreover, the constitutional article in Pakistan that “the ministers shall serve at the pleasure of the president” accorded the president a most powerful lever. Mirza used this authority freely to dismiss ministries at the center and in the provinces. He constantly misused his clout to promote political intrigue and horse-trading.
When the Muslim League group in the National Assembly split and the defectors joined other politicians to form the Republican Party, Muhammad Ali resigned in September 1956. He was followed by Suhrawardy, who led a coalition of his Awami League and the Republican Party. He was married to Vera Tiscenko, a Moscow-born Russian actress who had found refuge for herself and her infant son from the impending war in Europe by moving from Rome to Calcutta in the late 1930s. As a result Suhrawardy had become keenly interested in international affairs.
Within weeks of becoming the premier and defense minister, Suhrawardy, accompanied by his foreign minister, Firoz Khan Noon, visited Beijing. They told Prime Minister Zhou Enlai (Chou Enlai) that Pakistan had made its choice to stand with the United States, and hoped Communist China would move toward more friendly relations with Pakistan as well as America.20 Zhou lent them a sympathetic ear. He paid a return visit to Karachi in December. By happenstance, during that month Nehru visited Eisenhower at his Gettysburg Farm.
The coveted prize for Suhrawardy was a meeting with Eisenhower. This materialized on July 10, 1957, at the White House. In return for US civilian and military aid to Pakistan of $2.142 billion in the previous year, Eisenhower asked for secret intelligence and military facilities on the Pakistani soil. Suhrawardy agreed, according to Syed Amjad Ali, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington.21 The United States was allowed to fly its high altitude U-2 reconnaissance planes over the Soviet Union from the Pakistani Air Force’s section of the Peshawar airport. In return Eisenhower agreed to include F-104 fighter jets and Patton tanks, both superior to India’s weapons, in Washington’s arms shipments.
After lengthy negotiations, the two governments signed a ten-year agreement in July 1958. It provided the six-year-old US National Security Agency (NSA) a base at Badaber, ten miles from Peshawar.
The agency’s task was to monitor communications at the sites of ballistic missiles and nuclear tests in Soviet Central Asia, and other related exchanges.22
At home Suhrawardy came under pressure to confirm March 1958 as the date for the general election under the new constitution. Arguing that he needed two years to implement his program, he advanced that date to the end of 1958. President Mirza feared that Suhrawardy’s success as premier would weaken his hand. So he fired Suhrawardy in October. He called on Ismail Ibrahim Chundrigar, a Gujarati-speaking contemporary of Jinnah, to head the new government. Chundrigar failed to assemble a cabinet.
Mirza’s next choice fell on Noon, a Punjabi feudal lord and leader of the Republican Party. Noon headed a coalition of five groups, including the Muslim League, which assumed office in mid-December 1957. It was during Noon’s tenure that the NSA started building the Peshawar Air Base complex, with Washington’s overgenerous aid to Pakistan running at $1.5 billion annually.23 Known locally as Little America, the completed Badaber complex included technical infrastructure, residential quarters, and sports facilities, with access to it controlled by the United States.
Domestically, Mirza reveled in political intrigue. As a result the Muslim League withdrew from the coalition. On September 28, 1958, its leaders threatened to dislodge Noon’s government through extraconstitutional means, if necessary.
That gave Mirza a convenient rationale to scrap the constitution on October 7, 1958. He claimed it was unworkable because of dangerous compromises. He dismissed the national and provincial cabinets, dissolved the national and provincial legislatures, and banned all political parties. He imposed martial law and appointed Major-Gene
ral Ayub Khan as the chief martial law administrator.24
When he and Ayub Khan could not work out the modalities of power sharing, Mirza unilaterally appointed Ayub Khan prime minister and selected a cabinet of technocrats for him. Ayub Khan protested Mirza’s high-handedness. An arch manipulator, Mirza tried to gain support of Ayub Khan’s rivals within the military. Informed of Mirza’s chicanery, Ayub Khan, backed by the high command, dispatched three generals to the presidential residence in the middle of the night on October 26–27 to put Mirza on a plane to London. Ayub Khan became the sole ruler. By abolishing the post of prime minister, he became the president.
He explained to the nation that Pakistan needed stability that could only be achieved by turning out “the inefficient and rascally” politicians responsible for political instability and letting the army play a central role in administering the republic. Since day-to-day administration remained with civil servants, it led to an alliance between the upper ranks of bureaucracy and the military.
With that an era ended in Pakistan. It now stood starkly apart from India, where the second general election in 1957 had returned the Congress Party and Nehru to power. By then the stances of the two neighbors on Kashmir had become unbridgeable.
Military ties between Karachi and Washington were reinforced as a consequence of the Joint Resolution to Promote Peace and Stability in the Middle East passed by the US Congress in March 1957. It authorized the president to use the armed forces to assist any nation or group of nations in the Middle East against armed aggression from any country “controlled by international communism.”25 Washington treated Pakistan as part of the Middle East by virtue of its defense alliance with Iran and Turkey under CENTO.
Kashmir Issue Hardening
In the wake of their bilateral meeting in London during the Commonwealth prime ministers’ conference in June 1953, Bogra and Nehru decided to continue their dialogue on Kashmir and other issues. During his three-day visit to Karachi toward the end of July, Nehru was received warmly at the official and popular levels, with Bogra repeatedly referring to him as “my elder brother.” They parted with an agreement to meet in Delhi in October.