Indo-Pakistani War of 1965: Kashmir and the Tashkent Agreement

The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 was a short but intense conflict between India and Pakistan fought mainly from August to 23 September 1965. It began in Kashmir, spread to the international border in the Punjab, saw some of the largest tank battles since the Second World War and ended in a stalemate confirmed by the Soviet-brokered Tashkent Declaration.

Background: Kashmir after partition

The roots of the war lay in the Partition of India in 1947. The princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, with a Muslim-majority population and a Hindu ruler, acceded to India, and the First Kashmir War left the territory divided along a UN-monitored ceasefire line. Pakistan never accepted the arrangement, and promised plebiscites never took place.

By the mid-1960s several factors encouraged Pakistan’s leaders to act. India had been defeated by China in the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and was rearming. Pakistan, under President Ayub Khan, had received modern American equipment, including M47 and M48 Patton tanks and F-86 Sabre jets. Unrest in the Kashmir valley in 1963–64 suggested to some in Rawalpindi that the population might rise against Indian rule.

A first clash came in the Rann of Kutch, a salt marsh on the southern border, in April 1965. The fighting there was limited and ended in a British-mediated ceasefire, with the dispute later referred to an international tribunal. To many Pakistani planners, the episode suggested that India’s army was hesitant.

Operation Gibraltar

In early August 1965 Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar. Several thousand armed infiltrators, drawn largely from irregular forces and Pakistani-administered Kashmir and led by regular officers, crossed the ceasefire line in small groups. Their task was to sabotage communications, attack Indian posts and trigger a popular revolt.

The revolt did not happen. Many villagers informed Indian authorities about the infiltrators, and Indian forces hunted them down. India then went on the offensive across the ceasefire line, capturing the strategic Haji Pir Pass on 28 August 1965 and cutting infiltration routes.

Pakistan answered on 1 September with Operation Grand Slam, an armoured thrust in the Chhamb sector aimed at the town of Akhnur. Its capture would have threatened the road linking Jammu to the Kashmir valley. The attack made progress but stalled, partly because of a change of command in the middle of the operation.

War on the Punjab front

On 6 September 1965 India widened the war by crossing the international border towards Lahore, Pakistan’s second city. Indian columns reached the Ichhogil (BRB) Canal on the city’s eastern edge but did not take Lahore. A second Indian offensive opened in the Sialkot sector on 8 September.

Pakistan counter-attacked with its 1st Armoured Division towards Khem Karan inside India. At the Battle of Asal Uttar, around 8–10 September, Indian troops flooded fields and laid ambushes, and the Pakistani armoured thrust was defeated with heavy tank losses. In the Sialkot sector, fighting around Phillora and Chawinda in mid-September became one of the largest tank battles fought since 1945; the Indian advance was halted short of Chawinda.

Both air forces struck airfields and supported ground troops. The Pakistan Air Force raided Indian bases such as Pathankot on 6 September, and the Indian Air Force attacked targets in Pakistan. Claims of aircraft destroyed differ sharply between the two sides and remain disputed.

Ceasefire and the Tashkent Declaration

The United States and Britain suspended arms supplies to both countries, which hurt Pakistan, dependent on American equipment, in particular. China issued threats to India in support of Pakistan, raising fears of a wider war. On 20 September the UN Security Council passed Resolution 211 demanding a ceasefire, which both sides accepted; it took effect on 23 September 1965.

The Soviet Union then offered to mediate. Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri of India and President Ayub Khan of Pakistan met in Tashkent, in Soviet Uzbekistan, with Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin as host. On 10 January 1966 they signed the Tashkent Declaration, agreeing to withdraw forces by 25 February 1966 to positions held before 5 August 1965 and to restore normal relations. Shastri died of a heart attack in Tashkent the following night.

By the numbers

Consequences

Militarily the war was inconclusive. Pakistan failed to take Kashmir, and India failed to take Lahore or Sialkot. When the ceasefire came, each side held some of the other’s territory, all of which was returned under the Tashkent agreement.

Politically the effects were larger. In Pakistan many people felt the war had been lost at the negotiating table, and foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto broke with Ayub Khan and founded the Pakistan Peoples Party in 1967. Ayub Khan resigned in 1969 after mass protests. In East Pakistan, the war deepened a sense that the eastern wing had been left undefended, feeding grievances that exploded in the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.

In India, the war restored confidence in the army after 1962. Shastri’s death led to Indira Gandhi becoming prime minister in January 1966. Both countries drew closer to new partners: Pakistan to China, and India, gradually, to the Soviet Union.

Timeline

• 1965, April: Clashes in the Rann of Kutch; a ceasefire follows on 30 June.
• 1965, early August: Pakistan launches Operation Gibraltar in Kashmir.
• 1965, 28 August: Indian forces capture the Haji Pir Pass.
• 1965, 1 September: Pakistan launches Operation Grand Slam towards Akhnur.
• 1965, 6 September: India crosses the international border towards Lahore.
• 1965, 8–10 September: Pakistani armoured thrust defeated at Asal Uttar.
• 1965, 20 September: UN Security Council Resolution 211 demands a ceasefire.
• 1965, 23 September: The ceasefire takes effect.
• 1966, 10 January: Shastri and Ayub Khan sign the Tashkent Declaration.

Why it matters

The 1965 war showed that the Kashmir dispute could drag India and Pakistan into full-scale war, and that outside powers would intervene to stop it. It changed both countries’ politics, set Pakistan on the road to the crisis of 1971, and left the Kashmir question exactly where it had been.