Immoral or not, India’s aggression against East Pakistan succeeded resoundingly and the subsequent capture of some 59,000 Pakistani soldiers was a shock equally demoralising for Pakistan’s armed forces and its civil population. Even though cool reflection should have made it apparent that the eventual defeat in East Pakistan was almost certainly a consequence of West Pakistan’s failure to launch a hard hitting offensive into Indian territory, the shock of the surrender was, nevertheless intense. In the western theatre too, the soldiers, sailors and airmen were bitterly angry at the abject failure to retaliate and redeem. At cease-fire in 17 December a bewildered nation, together with the younger officers of the three services who had little inkling of the little situation, demanded explanations for the debacle.

It would be a full seven months before the Hamoodur Rahman Commission submitted its first findings in July 72, but the high commands of all three services had held their own inquests very soon after the cease fire. To a large extent the maturer minds prevailed, factual conclusions regarding operational weaknesses were sensibly drawn, and immediate corrective actions introduced. But in those emotionally charged days of inquiries and analyses, the instinctive defensive mechanism of human nature often took over, and the normally healthy spirit of inter-service rivalry sometimes degenerated into an unseemly rush to find excuses and alibis.

Defeat is a perpetual orphan and many egos and reputations had to be protected by finding alternative reasons for failure in battle. And unfortunately, as always, a part of the blame was passed on to the one quarter in which it could be made to look feasible if not factual. Though never convincingly, some senior elements of the army and navy attempted to lay the blame for their own failures at the PAF’s door. Sadly, before these officers retired and passed into history, they succeeded in creating a number of doubts about the PAF in the minds of the younger officers of those days.

Why this should have happened has been in part explained earlier in this journal: air forces of most countries have been major role to perform in support of their armies and navies in war without any scope for reciprocity in such an arrangement. This sometimes led to an element human tendency to ‘reward’ the supporting arm with the scapegoat role, without running the risk of retaliation in kind.