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INDIA-PAKISTAN CONFLICT: RECORDS OF THE U.S. STATE

DEPARTMENT, FEBRUARY 1963-1966

Over 16,000 pages of State Department Central Files on India and

Pakistan from 1963 through 1966 make this collection a standard
documentary resource for the study of the political relations between
India and Pakistan during a crucial period in the Cold War and the
shifting alliances and alignments in South Asia.

Date Range: 1963-1966

Content: 15,387 images

Source Library: U.S. National Archives

Detailed Description:

Relations with Pakistan have demanded a high proportion of India’s international energies
and undoubtedly will continue to do so. India and Pakistan have divergent national ideologies
and have been unable to establish a mutually acceptable power equation in South Asia.
The national ideologies of pluralism, democracy, and secularism for India and of Islam for
Pakistan grew out of the pre-independence struggle between the Congress and the All-India
Muslim League, and in the early 1990s the line between domestic and foreign politics in
India’s relations with Pakistan remained blurred. Because great-power competition—between
the United States and the Soviet Union and between the Soviet Union and China—became
intertwined with the conflicts between India and Pakistan, India was unable to attain its goal
of insulating South Asia from global rivalries. This superpower involvement enabled Pakistan
to use external force in the face of India’s superior endowments of population and resources.

The most difficult problem in relations between India and Pakistan since partition in August
1947 has been their dispute over Kashmir. Pakistan’s leaders did not accept the legality of
the Instrument of Accession of Kashmir to India, and undeclared war broke out in October
1947. It was the first of three conflicts between the two countries. Pakistan’s representatives
ever since have argued that the people of Kashmir should be allowed to exercise their
right to self-determination through a plebiscite, as promised by Nehru and required by
UN Security Council resolutions in 1948 and 1949. The inconclusive fighting led to a UN-

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arranged cease-fire starting on January 1, 1949. On July 18, 1949, the two sides signed
the Karachi Agreement establishing a cease-fire line that was to be supervised by the UN.
The demarcation left Srinagar and almost 139,000 square kilometers under Indian control
and 83,807 square kilometers under Pakistani control. Of these two areas, China occupied
37,555 square kilometers in India’s Ladakh District (part of which is known as Aksai Chin) in
1962 and Pakistan ceded, in effect, 5,180 square kilometers in the Karakoram area to China
when the two countries demarcated their common border in 1961-65, leaving India with
101,387 square kilometers and Pakistan with 78,387 square kilometers. Starting in January
1949 and still in place in 1995, the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan was
tasked with supervising the cease-fire in Kashmir. The group comprises thirty-eight observers
—from Belgium, Chile, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Uruguay—who rotate
their headquarters every six months between Srinagar (summer) and Rawalpindi, Pakistan
(winter).

In 1952 the elected and overwhelmingly Muslim Constituent Assembly of Jammu and
Kashmir, led by the popular Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, voted in favor of confirming
accession to India. Thereafter, India regarded this vote as an adequate expression of popular
will and demurred on holding a plebiscite. After 1953 Jammu and Kashmir was identified
as standing for the secular, pluralistic, and democratic principles of the Indian polity. Nehru
refused to discuss the subject bilaterally until 1963, when India, under pressure from the
United States and Britain, engaged in six rounds of secret talks with Pakistan on "Kashmir
and other related issues." These negotiations failed, as did the 1964 attempt at mediation
made by Abdullah, who recently had been released from a long detention by the Indian
government because of his objections to Indian control.

Armed infiltrators from Pakistan crossed the cease-fire line, and the number of skirmishes
between Indian and Pakistani troops increased in the summer of 1965. Starting on August
5, 1965, India alleged, Pakistani forces began to infiltrate the Indian-controlled portion of
Jammu and Kashmir. India made a countermove in late August, and by September 1, 1965,
the second conflict had fully erupted as Pakistan launched an attack across the international
line of control in southwest Jammu and Kashmir. Indian forces retaliated on September 6 in
Pakistan’s Punjab Province and prevailed over Pakistan’s apparent superiority in tanks and
aircraft. A cease-fire called by the UN Security Council on September 23 was observed by
both sides. At Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in January 1966, the belligerents agreed to restore the
status quo ante and to resolve outstanding issues by negotiation.

The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965

In mid-1965 Pakistan sent guerrilla forces into the Indian part of Kashmir in the hope of
stirring up a rebellion that would either oust the Indians or at least force the issue back onto
the international agenda. Pakistani forces did not find as much support among the Kashmiri
population as they had hoped, but fighting spread by August, and a process of escalation
culminated in a full-scale Indian offensive toward Lahore on September 6. Fighting, frequently
very bitter, continued until a UN-sponsored cease-fire took hold on September 23. Both sides
had tacitly agreed not to let the war spread to the East Wing of Pakistan.

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The war was militarily inconclusive’ each side held prisoners and some territory belonging
to the other. Losses were relatively heavy—on the Pakistani side, twenty aircraft, 200
tanks, and 3,800 troops. Pakistan’s army had been able to withstand Indian pressure, but
a continuation of the fighting would only have led to further losses and ultimate defeat for
Pakistan. Most Pakistanis, schooled in the belief of their own martial prowess, refused to
accept the possibility of their country’s military defeat by "Hindu India" and were, instead,
quick to blame their failure to attain their military aims on what they considered to be the
ineptitude of Ayub Khan and his government.

Pakistan was rudely shocked by the reaction of the United States to the war. Judging the
matter to be largely Pakistan s fault, the United States not only refused to come to Pakistan
s aid under the terms of the Agreement of Cooperation, but issued a statement declaring
its neutrality while also cutting off military supplies. The Pakistanis were embittered at what
they considered a friend’s betrayal, and the experience taught them to avoid relying on any
single source of support. For its part, the United States was disillusioned by a war in which
both sides used United States-supplied equipment. The war brought other repercussions for
the security relationship as well. The United States withdrew its military assistance advisory
group in July 1967. In response to these events, Pakistan declined to renew the lease on the
Peshawar military facility, which ended in 1969. Eventually, United States-Pakistan relations
grew measurably weaker as the United States became more deeply involved in Vietnam and
as its broader interest in the security of South Asia waned.

Iran, Indonesia, and especially China gave political support to Pakistan during the war,
thus suggesting new directions in Pakistan that might translate into support for its security
concerns. Most striking was the attitude of the Soviet Union. Its post-Khrushchev leadership,
rather than rallying reflexively to India’s side, adopted a neutral position and ultimately
provided the good offices at Tashkent, which led to the January 1966 Tashkent Declaration
that restored the status quo ante.

The aftermath of the 1965 war saw a dramatic shift in Pakistan’s security environment.
Instead of a single alignment with the United States against China and the Soviet Union,
Pakistan found itself cut off from United States military support, on increasingly warm terms
with China, and treated equitably by the Soviet Union. Unchanged was the enmity with which
India and Pakistan regarded each other over Kashmir. The result was the elaboration of a
new security approach, called by Ayub Khan the "triangular tightrope"—a tricky endeavor
to maintain good ties with the United States while cultivating China and the Soviet Union.
Support from other developing nations was also welcome. None of the new relationships
carried the weight of previous ties with the United States, but, taken together, they at least
provided Pakistan with a political counterbalance to India.

U.S. State Department Central Files

The U.S. State Department Central Files are the definitive source of American diplomatic
reporting on political, military, social, and economic developments throughout the world
in the 20th century. Each part of the Central Files contains a wide range of materials from
U.S. diplomats in foreign countries: special reports on political and military affairs’ studies

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and statistics on socioeconomic matters’ interviews and minutes of meetings with foreign
government officials’ full texts of important letters, instructions, and cables sent and received
by U.S. diplomatic personnel’ voluminous reports and translations from foreign journals and
newspapers’ and countless translations of high-level foreign government documents.

Over 16,000 pages of State Department Central Files on India and Pakistan from 1963
through 1966 make this collection a standard documentary resource for the study of the
political relations between India and Pakistan during a crucial period in the Cold War and the
shifting alliances and alignments in South Asia.

There are thousands of pages arranged topically and chronologically on crucial

subjects: political parties and elections, unrest and revolution, human rights, government
administration, fiscal and monetary issues, national defense, foreign policy-making, wars
and alliances, religion, culture, trade, industry, natural resources, and more. The files of
the American ambassadors to India and Pakistan during this time and their staffs provide
convenient access to thousands of official records on the conflict and competition between
India and Pakistan during a key period in the Cold War era.