HOW THE 1965 WAR STARTED-Some Myths and Some Truths 1 Who started the war or to put it more palatably – how did the war start ?? Just as it would be na�ve for the Indians to keep repeating that the ‘71 war was started by Pakistan it would be extremely myopic to continue haranguing now, almost half a century after that war, that India was the aggressor in 1965. In 1971 Indian regular troops were already making forays across the IB in what was then East Pakistan. All that happened was that Pakistan pre-empted the planned Indian offensive by commencing hostilities along the Western front on 03 December whereas the Indians had planned to launch their offensive for 04 December. 2 The genesis of the '65 war can actually be traced back to the Kutch crisis. Hassan Abbas (Pakistan's Drift Into Extremism: Allah, The Army, And America's War On Terror) says , quote ,' When the Pakistan Army inflicted a short, sharp reverse on the Indians in the Rann of Kutch in mid-1965, Ayub’s spirits got a boost. More important, the international arbitration that followed the Kutch dispute (resulting in favor of Pakistan) put Pakistan under the assumption that if the Kashmir problem was to be solved, the Rann of Kutch route would have to be replicated - a limited clash in Kashmir leading to a threat of all-out war, and then an intervention and arbitration by the great powers', unquote. Emboldened by the rather timid and weak response of the Indian politico-militar
