ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's Air Marshal during the 1965 war with India, Nur Khan, has said that not only the war was forced on India by Pakistan but that it was unnecessary and completely unplanned.

In startling disclosures in an interview to the English daily, Dawn, Air Marshal (retd.) Khan has said barring a few top generals in the Army, the war plan was not shared with other wings of the armed forces, which forced him to contemplate resignation in protest.

Air Marshal (retd.) Asghar Khan, while handing over the command to Nur Khan had not briefed him about any impending war because he was not aware of it himself. So, in order to double check, Nur Khan called on the then Commander-in-Chief, General Musa Khan.

When questioned, Gen. Musa admitted that something was afoot.

A still highly sceptical Nur Khan was then asked to meet Lt. Gen. Akhtar Hasan Malik, GOC Kashmir, the man in charge of "Operation Gibraltar," for further details.

The plan

Gen. Malik told him not to worry, "because the plan to send in some 800,000 infiltrators inside the occupied territory to throw out the Indian troops with the help of the local population," was so designed that the Indians would not be able to retaliate; therefore the air force need not get into the war mode.

"The performance of the Army did not match that of the PAF mainly because the leadership was not as professional. They had planned `Operation Gibraltar' for self-glory rather than in the national interest. It was a wrong war. And they misled the nation with a big lie that India rather than Pakistan had provoked the war and that we were the victims of Indian aggression," Air Marshal Khan said.

Air Marshal Khan said the Generals who blundered in the 1965 war should have been brought to book.

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