Muhammadhassanmiraj's Blog

Ayub Khan’s Appointment by Riaz Shahid published in Daily Times of Saturday, March, 06, 2010

muhammadhassanmiraj — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:42:33 +0000

This is in response to Mr Gohar Ayub Khan’s rejoinder ‘Clarification’,published in the ‘Letters to the Editor’ section (Daily Times,February18, 2010) in response to my article ‘Reassessing Liaquat Ali Khan’s role’ (Daily Times, February15, 2010). In my article, I had deliberately not discussed Ayub Khan’s appointment as Pakistan’s first
native army chief as these details are quite painful, not to mention controversial. Now that Gohar Ayub Khan has decided to challenge my assertions, I have no choice but to bring all the facts to light.

Mr Gohar Ayub admits that Ayub Khan was a colonel in 1947. He gives the example of General JN Chaudhuri who was also a colonel in 1947 and went on to become the Indian army chief. The fact is that General JN Chaudhri did become the Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army, but on November 19, 1962, full 11 years and 11 months after Ayub Khan became Pakistan’s army chief! In his memoirs Glimpses into the Corridors of Power, Mr Gohar Ayub admits that his father was of the opinion that the rank of a full colonel was the most he could attain during British control.

The promotion from colonel to general in less than four years for Ayub Khan had strategic consequences for Pakistan, as Ayub Khan had neither attained the experience or the gravitas needed to do justice to the office of the Commander-in- Chief of Pakistan Army. His shortcomings became apparent during the 1965 War into which he had led the country,
thanks to the ill thought and badly executed ‘Operation Gibraltar’.
Compare this to the Indian Army. Field Marshal Kodandera ‘Kipper’ Madappa Cariappa, who was its first native army chief, was the senior most Hindu officer serving in the British Indian Army on partition. He was the first Indian officer to be given command of a unit (by the British in 1942) in 200 years of the British Raj. For his military exploits against the Japanese as division commander of the 26th Division, Cariappa was given the Order of the British Empire (OBE).
Ayub Khan had the honour of serving under him as a colonel in the Frontier Brigade Group in 1946.

Gohar Ayub considers participation in Kashmir was inconsequential, deeming my assertion that Ayub Khan did not participate in the Kashmir war as ‘ridiculous’. The Indians, however, think otherwise. Cariappa, as general officer commanding-in- chief of the Western Command in 1947-48, captured Zojilla, Dras, Kargil and Leh for India, and to this day the Indians worship him for that. On the other hand, what does Pakistan’s first native commander-in- chief have to show for him in terms of gallantry awards or mention in despatches?

The fact that Pakistan got a person to lead its army who had no experience of commanding division level operations and had not participated in the Kashmir war ensured that during an actual battle, Pakistan Army’s performance would be below the optimum and that operations in the Kashmir sector would be badly botched up. And that is exactly what happened during the 1965 War. The Indians, however, were lucky to get an army chief under whom the Indian Army had gotten its first baptism of fire.

What very few people know is that Ayub Khan was so junior at the time of independence that he was given Pakistan Army No10 (PA10) and was not selected to represent Pakistan in the partition council that was set up to divide the assets of the British Indian Army between the Pakistani and Indian armies. There were nine officers senior to him on
August 14, 1947, amongst which there were at least five full brigadiers (Mohammad Akbar Khan, Muhammed Iftikhar Khan, Faiz Muhammad, Fazal-ur-Rehman Kallue, Nawabzada Agha Mohammad Raza). In his memoirs Friends Not Masters, Ayub clearly states, “A Council was then set up to divide the armed forces. We had Raza, Akbar and Latif
on this council representing Pakistan…I had little direct connection ith the division of the armed forces” (page 20).

Mr Gohar Ayub denies that the British gave Ayub Khan a horrible Annual Confidential Report (ACR) for timidity and refusal to participate in combat in Burma in World War II. Furthermore, he states, “Ayub Khan commanded 1st Assam Regiment from January 4 to December 27, 1945 in the Burma Campaign during which the battalion participated in heavy fighting till the Japanese surrender in mid-1945.”

Both of the above claims made by him are false and untrue. Ayub Khan’s timidity and refusal to participate in combat in World War II is an established fact. AH Amin and Dr Ayesha Siddiqa Agha, who are the only defence analysts and military historians in Pakistan of international stature, testify to this. Reviewing Shuja Nawaz’s book on Pakistan
Army, Crossed Swords, in Newsline magazine in August 2008, Dr Ayesha states, “In fact, he completely ignores the information that Ayub Khan had received a bad ACR from his bosses prior to the partition of India and had become a general through machination.” Furthermore, there are written testimonies in this regard from Lieutenant Colonel Parson and Lieutenant Colonel Mohatram who served in the same unit as Ayub Khan in Burma. The former in his presentation, ‘Battle of Kohima’, in 1984 categorically stated that, “Ayub Khan refused to command the regiment
on the grounds that its men were no longer fit to carry on the battle and that he requested that he be sent back to India.” Lieutenant Colonel Parson’s revelations were published in the Daily Telegraph of Calcutta as well in Daily News of Karachi on April 28, 1984. From here the story gets really weird. Major General Joginder Singh, who was Ayub Khan’s battalion mate, asserts in his book Behind the Scenes (1993) that Ayub Khan was not considered fit to command his parent Punjab Regiment and was relegated to serving in Chamar Regiment, which was disbanded after the war ended. The point is that Ayub Khan did not serve in the prestigious Assam Regiment, which Gohar Ayub claims he did! For more on this issue and on Quaid-e-Azam’s order to transfer and freeze Ayub Khan’s career, I recommend the readers to read Major General Sher Ali’s The Story of Soldiering and Politics in India and Pakistan, Air Commodore Sajjad Haider’s Flight of the Falcon and Hasan Abbas’s Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism.

I hope that these facts set the record straight for the benefit of Daily Times’ readers.

The Dictatorship

muhammadhassanmiraj — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:03:05 +0000

1.   They all stood silent as the standards were lowered. It was 23rd Day of October in 42 BC and the battle of Philippe had just ended. Lying ahead of the impeccably formed up legions, was the purple mantle wrapped body of one of the greatest men Rome ever produced. “He was the noblest Roman of them all”. Mark Antony said as he paid homage to Marcus Junius Brutus, commonly known in the historical world as Brutus. The fame brought to Brutus is attributed towards his role in assassination of his trusted friend and mentor, Julius Caesar, the Counsel of Rome. Fewer could see that he did this to save his Republic. A larger than life cause for Romans, perhaps their alternative for religion. Brutus feared that given Caesar s autocratic nature, Rome would soon turn into a monarchy and will be deprived of her Republic soul. He was, of all others, brave and courageous enough to stand against it and act in time. Time proved, he did it right.
2.   In the five thousand years history of mankind, his wish to rule others have seldom receded. With the development of society and its metamorphosis to monarchy, the one man rule always suited and served the purpose. The system, however failed , miserably with the massive awareness that has, since, surfaced. The second half of 19th century saw the advent of a new political system known as colonialism which formally ended the age old monarch system. The demise of colonialism was proclaimed by many public political system , democracy, socialism, communism and capitalism. Regardless of their divergent nature, these system had one common enemy. The Martial Law.
3.   Martial Law, Coup détente, Purge and Junta are the words that belong to one family generally called undemocratic rule. The means and methodology may differ from South America to Africa and Middle east to Far East but largely the fall outs remain the same. These are the worst forms of governance and leave a legacy of hate and internal displacement. The dark rule may also deliver in certain cases (as the decade of development in our case(a view generally held by the disillusioned rightist intelligentsia)), but the wounds inflicted by this mode of public administration are hard to heal. The scars of deprivation are often so deep rooted that any attempt to impart unity or vows of welfare meet the distrust. The civil society ends up being fragmented because of inherent division of haves and have-nots. The instrument of execution (normally the armed forces) earns hatred and loses credibility. The metamorphosis of Youth is most painful of all as it transforms itself from a vocal being to the indifferent silent selfish mob. The public office is a routing of abuse and corruption and merit is the largest sacrifice on the alter of personal gain of one individual or a group of few.
4.   The chaos associated with these forms of governments erodes so badly the thinking patterns that even the intelligentsia is unable to make the difference between right and wrong. The viable solution of this elongated anarchy is often an overhauling or recycling of entire system. The recycling may take toll and society might be a subject to an ugly circumstances but what really matters is the post recycling situation. The years of submission and suppression blinds the righteousness of decision makers . The sons of revolution are often hard to handle.. They may be Kronstadt sailors in Russian Revolution or the learned men like Maximilien Robespierre from French Revolution. The other courses to negotiate are steadier in nature and may not deliver immediately, but it merits few other essentials. The steadier path requires a string of honest leaders, which is a lot hard to find given the preceded rule of nepotism and cronyism.
5.   The immunity to this system normally comes from the corporate sector. The dictators across the world are darlings of famous consumer brands, newest of them is Media. Their unchallengeable authority provides the business houses to have their way at the cost of consumers. In the absence of a strong judicial system (which is a secondary causality of this arrangement), nothing called the consumer rights, exists. The business activity booms but the trickle down effect(a term, favorite of the financial proxies of Junta) are never visible. The society rather descends into an immoral desensitization, where the malls are amassed with food on shelves, that would expire but will never reach to people in the neighboring slums, dying of hunger. The cost of life increases owing to inflation. Though Micro credit system makes a sense in this scenario and keeps the middle class alive but the Banks control the lives of majority.
6.   The other immunity is normally drawn from the religion, which for the sadder part , has always been misused. The champion of Islamic causes are often found in marriages of conveniences with highly unislamic (according to them) entities. The example is Mard e Momin, a Fort Bragg (US) trained military ruler, who, just years before waging Jihad and bringing Islam to the land of Pure, was busy suppressing the Palestinian uprising for Hashemite monarchy of Jordan. By all sensible means, one can conclude that the lives of public should always be controlled by the public in a manner called Democracy.