More Salt Than Pepper by Karan Thapar

Author:Karan Thapar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2012-05-30T04:00:00+00:00

23 December 2000

Secrets from the Past

I had no idea a diary could be so fascinating. To be honest, I’ve never kept one, I haven’t read many and I didn’t finish Anne Frank’s. But at the moment I’m engrossed in Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s. It’s a 599-page book sent by his son Gohar. Even though it’s published thirty-three years after Ayub’s death, I have to admit I’m hooked.

Let’s start with the pictures. There are 110 but what stands out in each and every one is how dashing, well-dressed and suave Ayub was. These days few officers are gentlemen or vice-versa but Ayub was definitely both. My favourites are of him shaking hands with Mao, standing in a shark’s skin dinner jacket beside Ike, sitting at the Elysee with de Gaulle, striding out with Jackie Kennedy and patting Lyndon Johnson on the cheek. As a general’s son I can tell you they don’t make them like this any more!

However, it’s the political revelations that are spellbinding. Although I’m still skimming through the book I’ve already come across seven different references to intelligence leaks from India. If they’re credible – and why would a man lie to his diary, particularly if what he’s confiding is not for immediate publication – India, it would seem, was a leaky sieve.

Read the entry for 1 July 1967: ‘We are now in full possession of India’s plans of attack against East and West Pakistan.’ Or this from 12 April 1968: ‘The Director of Military Intelligence came to see me and showed a copy of the latest Indian plan of attack … (its) well-made and is designed to bring overwhelming force against us … we shall have a hard task in meeting this challenge.’ And then, a few months later, on 16 July: ‘(General) Akbar showed me a copy of the offensive plan of the 1st India Corps against West Pakistan. It has been marked out in great detail, right down to the battalion, especially the crossings and bridges over the Ravi.’

Even when India discovered that Pakistan had details of its war plans, Ayub’s diaries show that Pakistan found this out as well. This is what the field marshal writes on 11 October 1967: ‘The Director of Intelligence brought me certain documents indicating that the Indians had become suspicious that we have some inkling of their plan of attack on West Pakistan. They had, therefore, changed their plan, but told their commanders to continue simulating the original plan for the purpose of deception’. It seems our defence ministry and army headquarters were riddled with Pakistani spies!

Two years ago, Ayub’s son, Gohar, claimed his father had given him the name of an Indian director of military operations from the 1950s who had sold the country’s war plans to the Pakistanis for 20,000 rupees. At the time this was dismissed as a silly, if not pathetic, lie. However, a few journalists like me tried to take Gohar Ayub Khan seriously. We quizzed him about the six officers who had served as DMO in that decade.

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