Three Indian blunders in the 1971 war
by Colonel Dr Anil Athale
http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/s ... 111212.htm
The move of USS Enterprise and American threats of retaliation as well as Russian caution possibly saved Pakistan.
India's three strategic blunders:
1. In 1971 India lost a golden opportunity to sever the Sino-Pak communications by land and threaten the Karakoram highway.
Kashmir was not an issue at all in that war.
Later at the Simla Peace Conference, India brought in the Kashmir issue. The conversion of the Cease Fire Line (agreed as per the Karachi agreement of 1949) was converted to the LOC or Line of Control, a sort of half-way house between the Cease Fire Line and the international border.
If India had plans to retain the captured territory in Jammu and Kashmir a major thrust towards Skardu or Gilgit could have threatened the land access between Pakistan and China.
The second blunder was the explicit recognition that India gave to the 'Kashmir dispute' in the Simla Agreement.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto came to Simla as the head of a defeated nation with nothing to bargain. 93,000 Pakistani prisoners were in India and the tehsil of Shakargarh as well as large tracts of desert were under Indian occupation.
The Pakistani State itself was tottering and the only card Bhutto had was to play on the Indian need to have a viable Pakistan survive. Using his weakness dexterously, Bhutto made sure that India could never drive a hard bargain.
All that Pakistan conceded at Simla was that it would not use force to solve the Kashmir problem and it would deal with the issue bilaterally. It is indeed astonishing that a militarily weak and defeated nation promising 'non use of force' against another country ten times its size, being seen as a concession.
The acceptance of the disputed status of Kashmir was a major diplomatic blunder and India continues to pay a heavy price for it. In the words of a sports commentator, India snatched diplomatic defeat from the jaws of victory.
Third and the greatest blunder was to let the Pakistani army get away with its 'genocide' in Bangladesh.
There is massive evidence of Pakistani army brutality in Bangladesh. The evidence is from Pakistani sources itself, the Justice Hamidur Rehman Commission Report. Some of the testimony in that report makes very chilling reading, even 40 years after the event.