The Avowal
Pakistan Army’s chief Gen Asim Munir declared: “We have fought three wars for Kashmir, and if necessary, we will fight ten more”. In this declaration Gen Syed Asim Munir has once again proved that despite all the embarrassment that it has caused, Rawalpindi’s congenital ‘foot-in-the-mouth’ disease still persists. It also reflects the deep sense of frustration prevalent within the Pakistan Army due to its abysmal failure to set right what former army chief Gen Raheel Sharif referred to a decade ago as the “unfinished agenda of Partition.” Hence, Gen Munir’s angst though misplaced is nevertheless understandable since it stems from his deep sense of hopelessness in fructifying Rawalpindi’s unfulfilled Kashmir dream.
Lost Opportunity
It was the Pakistan Army that prevailed over the country’s legislature to opt for the military option to seize J&K in 1947; it was the Pakistan Army’s mammoth military blunder of allowing its tribal proxies led by army regulars who had reached within an earshot of Srinagar on October 26, 1947 to temporarily halt their advance and pillage Baramulla instead of pushing ahead and completing their assigned task of seizing J&K’s summer capital. This inexplicable delay cost the Pakistan Army dear! Brig [later Maj Gen] Akbar Khan, the architect of this operation [codenamed Operation Gulmarg] in his book Raiders in Kashmir, admits that “The tribesmen had reached here [Baramulla] on the 26th. Until then Kashmir had not acceded to India and Indian troops had not been flown in. The State troops, thoroughly demoralised, had retreated in disorder. Only 35 more miles remained of level road and virtually no resistance. The tribesmen had a barely two hour journey left—and before them lay Srinagar, trembling, seemingly at their mercy. But the tribesmen had not moved forward that day, nor [the] next day.” [Emphasis added]
While Akbar Khan has questioned “… why had two crucial days been wasted at Baramula [sic]?” and rightly inferred that “It is more than probable that if these two days had not been lost, the story of Kashmir would be an entirely different one.” [Emphasis added]. However, in true traditions of the Pakistan Army, he has conveniently avoided revealing the truth by concluding that “There was No authentic answer to be found.”
So, even though Rawalpindi refuses to accept its dismal failure to remedy its so-called “unfinished agenda of Partition,” the guilt of having failed the nation due to its inability to annex Kashmir in 1947 is but natural. This feeling gets more intense because even though “Only 35 more miles remained of level road and virtually no resistance,” and “The tribesmen had a barely two hour journey left—and before them lay Srinagar, trembling, seemingly at their mercy,” the Pakistan Army regulars leading them joined in the indescribable orgy of murder, loot and rape. Thus this unpardonable military debacle obviously continues to afflict the rank and file of the Pakistan Army.
Second Failure
In 1965, Pakistan Army made repeated attempts to annex J&K by infiltrating regulars disguised as razakars [civilian volunteers] to orchestrate an insurrection by inciting locals. This attempt [codenamed Operation Gibraltar] too ended in a fiasco thanks to the strong response by the Indian army and refusal of the locals to side with Pakistan and take up arms against New Delhi. Rawalpindi’s reckless decision triggered a full scale war that further wrecked Pakistan’s already tottering economy.
UN resolutions envisage a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir issue. However, by using force to resolve the Kashmir issue in its favour, the then military dictator Gen [later Field Marshal] Ayub Khan forfeited Pakistan’s right to invoke UN resolutions on Kashmir. Thus, from the Pakistanis’ point of view, Rawalpindi is not only guilty of failing to annex Kashmir but also responsible for depriving Islamabad the moral right to demand implementation of these UN resolutions.
Shameful Retreat
The Pakistan Army’s planned infiltration across the Line of Control [LoC] in the Kargil sector of J&K during 1999 ended in its biggest humiliation. While the infiltrators suffered heavy casualties and were forced to retreat, Rawalpindi did the unthinkable by refusing to accept the dead bodies of its soldiers killed on the battlefield, which is definitely a first in the annals of modern day warfare.
Besides shaming the Pakistan Army, the then army chief Gen Pervez Musharraf’s grand illusion that the international community would not object to the violation of LoC by the Pakistan Army on the grounds that J&K was “disputed territory” was explicitly dispelled. So, Rawalpindi has to its credit the ignominy of having delivered a telling body blow to Pakistan’s incredulous Kashmir narrative woven around its derisory “disputed territory” hypothesis.
Sounding War Bugles
By manipulating the 2025 General Elections to put a pliant government in place, Gen Munir has adroitly emerged as Pakistan’s de facto ruler; hence what he says unquestionably becomes the nation’s final word. Accordingly, his statement on the Pakistan Army’s willingness to repeatedly wage wars to grab Kashmir can neither be dismissed nor discounted by New Delhi, especially since it’s both an incriminating admission as well as a live threat.
The Way Forward
Gen Munir’s accepting the fact that “Pakistan has already fought three wars for Kashmir,” once again exposes Islamabad’s appalling duplicity on Kashmir, and New Delhi would be well advised to highlight the repeated and unprovoked use of force by Pakistan during debates on Kashmir at the UN as well in international forums. Coming from the horse’s mouth, this admission is indisputable proof of Pakistan’s brazen rejection of UN resolutions on Kashmir- both in letter and spirit. Next, by declaring that “if 10 more wars are required, Pakistan will fight them,” the Pakistan Army chief has made it abundantly clear that instead of using peaceful means to resolve the Kashmir issue as stipulated by the UN and endorsed by the international community, Pakistan still wants to settle the same through the force of arms. And Gen Munir’s presumptuous assertion that someday “Kashmir will become Pakistan” further reinforces Rawalpindi’s war-obsessed mindset hell bent on pursuing the
unachievable dream of forcefully appropriating Kashmir.
Furthermore, coming from the most powerful person of a country that many don’t believe is a ‘responsible’ nuclear power, such irresponsible utterances don’t bode well for regional peace. Therefore, the international community needs to be cautioned about Gen Munir’s gung-ho attitude towards war, as ignoring such a perverse outlook will only further embolden the Pakistan Army chief, who under severe domestic pressure and out of sheer desperation could well plunge the nation into war.
Notwithstanding the brave face that Gen Munir is putting up, the fact of the matter is that Rawalpindi knows very well that annexing Kashmir is a mere illusion. Isn’t this is evident from the fact that after the Pakistan Army’s monumental 1999 Kargil fiasco, the then army chief Gen Pervez Musharraf gave up on chasing the illusion of taking the so-called “unfinished agenda of Partition” to its logical end and instead settled down for status quo ante by proposing a ‘four point formula’ that essentially advocated the conversion of the LoC into the international Indo-Pak border?
So, instead of fantasising, to wake up and smell the coffee would definitely do Gen Munir [and in turn Pakistan] a lot of good. In this regard the serenity prayer reproduced below may help:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.”