The Irreversible Course of War
"I cannot resign at once, because the Staff has no settled successor," Prasad said, his voice low, a man wholly unlike the aggressive figure of a moment before, seeming to have taken a step back.
"That you need not worry about; we have many fine officers fit for the post," Singh said, with no intention of taking back the personnel matter he had raised. Prasad was the general he most disliked, and the foulest, hardest stumbling block; today he had at last torn face and shaken him off. Though the Prime Minister would be hard to satisfy (PM Kahan, out of political calculation, did not wish to replace senior generals in wartime), in the long run Singh believed his own judgement was absolutely right.
"You mean Lieutenant General Sipanga?" Prasad said, glancing scornfully at Sipanga. "He does not even have the seniority of a command-level officer. How can a corps commander..."
"That is no concern of yours, General. The new military transformation needs new blood; our army has too many stale ideas. This is no longer the age of a colonial army; these old notions must be broken, and we cannot set too much store by seniority and origins," Singh said. This was his true mind; he most detested these senior generals prating of seniority, and he knew too that behind his back they called him nothing but an ambitious lieutenant colonel.
"Since we are on origins, I hold that a man born in a region that esteems blood-feud vengeance is not well suited to be supreme commander. Lieutenant General Sipanga has just suffered the loss of a son, and I fear he cannot, with a clear head..."1
"Chief of Staff, I will not take up the post of Chief of Army Staff. What I want to do is command only a spearhead assault group," Sipanga cut in suddenly. Both Prasad and Singh were startled, for his words took everyone by surprise. This drove Prasad into a further disadvantage; Sipanga's declaration made his own words a moment ago look a little like the small-mindedness of a mean spirit. Prasad fell silent a moment, then went on rebutting. "However that may be, their communications are still clear; militarily speaking, your brilliant plan is already wholly exposed before the enemy, and there is no surprise left in it. Now every Pakistani army commander who can read a map knows your whole operational design, and the enemy will surely take precautions."
"Perhaps that is no bad thing," Sipanga said coldly, seeming not at all provoked by what Prasad had just implied. He had to show himself steadier now; those present were all great figures, and if they were to see that his purpose truly was, as the former Chief of Staff hinted, that in drawing up the plan he had mixed in the thought of avenging his son, then without doubt they would come to doubt this plan of his.
"The longer it drags, the more forces they can move up near Islamabad. I have just had word that they are massing XII Corps in the area of Quetta and Mastung. You all know this is Pakistan's strategic reserve. Everything has already begun, irreversibly."2
"They are indeed massing their last regular formation, and even integrating other paramilitary and reserve units at Quetta and Spezand; but you do not yet know from where these divisions will move. Perhaps they will be moved to the very region where you do not wish them to appear," Prasad said.
"It will be clear within a few days. However it goes, from the standpoint of the contest, every Indian army commander who can read a map should understand that the enemy has all but laid his cards on the table, and that to us their confusion is now wholly exposed," Sipanga answered with much restraint, keeping to the surface the strict form of rank between senior and junior, neither servile nor overbearing; but his mention of the officers who "can read a map" seemed to carry a barb aimed straight at the former Chief of Staff.
Singh had not yet had the news of Pakistan massing its last strategic reserve; it had to be counted a piece of tremendous good fortune. He walked straight to the map and, without much trouble, found Quetta. This had originally been the garrison of the 41st Infantry Division's headquarters, with several other divisions and independent brigades scattered around it; from the movements of this force over the coming days one could read the Pakistani army's thinking very well, and see whether they had walked into the trap.
"Perhaps we can bomb the Quetta-Karachi railway, so they cannot move in time," Singh said, unable to wait.3 He no longer cared that many senior officers called him, behind his back, a "rash tank-regiment colonel"; he had grown used to pointing and directing before senior officers, for in fact everyone here had to listen to him. (Though administratively, for a Defence Minister to reach into command was indeed improper.)
"Minister, perhaps we should not now expose our intent to the other side, so we might suitably strike the Quetta-Sukkur railway instead," Sipanga said, standing behind the minister, overruling the minister's fine idea.
"Show the false as true? Muddle their heads? Brilliant. Mm, we'll do just that," Singh said, not in the least annoyed, but clapping and cheering flippantly instead; his attitude, so utterly different toward Sipanga than toward the former Chief of Staff, chilled the hearts of some of the older Eastern Command officers here.
"Perhaps I have one last question," Prasad said.
"Please."
"If the Minister is set on launching so vast an offensive, then how many divisions do you mean to draw off from Northeastern Command?" Prasad need not have asked this, for Singh would surely break the old agreement to move only two divisions; but he cared too much for that region's defence, and could not help asking it out.
"The several mountain divisions of the northeast can be used to pin the main force on the Islamabad axis..." Sipanga said. But his words were at once cut off by Singh.
"Sipanga is right; but I guarantee that by the end of September, that is, before the Chinese might take action there, these divisions will certainly return to their original defensive sectors in Assam, of that you need have no doubt. And by that time our geographic position will be very different; perhaps by then the Chinese will give up all thought of attacking Southern Tibet entirely, because our army will already hold the whole of Kashmir, and our guns may well appear opposite Khunjerab."4
Prasad shook his head, seeming to want to speak and yet to hold back; the general had meant to ask once more about the deployment of the campaign, but Singh's arrogant declaration killed that thought in him entirely.
The operations conference went on a whole day, and that day the battlefield was fairly quiet, almost the fewest aircraft the Indian air force had put up since the war began; the rumour within the Pakistan Air Force was that the Indian air force had grown afraid. Besides that, the intelligence services had learned, through secret channels, a fresh piece of news, that the Indian Defence Minister Singh, in the midst of an operations conference, had in a great rage dismissed a general of quite high rank; though the name was not yet known, the intelligence services guessed it was very likely Air Chief Marshal Bifrata, on account of the disastrous defeat the day before.
The news of this personnel change was partly borne out, because the attacks on the Jhelum dam suddenly stopped; that day the Indian air force, apart from continuing to put up a limited few aircraft in the north for a toothless attack on the military airfields near Islamabad, made no large moves in any other direction. The dam on the Jhelum was not struck by even a single bomb; but the volume of water gushing from the great crack in its face was gradually increasing, and many signs showed that even if the Indian air force dropped no more bombs, this once-mighty dam would collapse in the flood peak of the rainy season.
1. Prasad's jab at Sipanga: The Chief of Staff attacks Sipanga on two fronts, that he comes from a region that prizes blood-feud vengeance, and that, having just lost a son at Mumbai, he cannot plan with a clear head. The insinuation is that the offensive is a father's revenge dressed as strategy; Sipanga's calm refusal of the top job, wanting only to lead the spearhead, is what turns the barb back on Prasad and makes it look like spite. ↩
2. XII Corps, Quetta, and Mastung: XII Corps is Pakistan's Quetta-based corps and, in the novel, its last strategic reserve; Mastung is a town just south of Quetta, and the 41st Infantry Division's headquarters sat at Quetta. Whether this reserve moves, and where, is the tell Sipanga is waiting for to know if Pakistan has taken his bait. The chapter's title, "the irreversible course of war," is his phrase for the moment the mobilisation can no longer be undone. ↩
3. The railway deception: Singh would cut the Quetta-Karachi line to strand the reserve; Sipanga overrules him, urging a strike on the Quetta-Sukkur line instead, so as not to betray that the real thrust runs toward Sukkur in the south. Spezand, named a moment earlier, is the real junction just south of Quetta where the lines to Sukkur and to the coast divide. ↩
4. Khunjerab and the September deadline: Singh's horizon: to hold all of Kashmir and place Indian guns opposite the Khunjerab Pass, the China-Pakistan border crossing on the Karakoram Highway, before the end of September, when he fears China might move. The source writes 红旗拉普, a variant of the standard 红其拉甫 (Khunjerab). It is the same strategic logic Lin has been tracking from the Chinese side: the dam, the southern thrust, and the corridor to China. ↩