MULLAHS AND MISSILES 185sonnel carriers and the entire brigade supply train was destroyed. How-
ever, of the ten T-62 tanks that escaped, one was that of the brigade
commander. With casualties like that, if the brigade commander had been
leading from the front, as a good brigade commander should, the chances
of his being in one of the surviving tanks is nil. He was obviously “lead-
ing” from the rear.
In contrast, the Israeli 188th Armored Brigade, which faced the over-
whelming assault of the Syrians on the Golan Heights, suffered 90 percent
officer casualties, including the brigade commander and his deputy. The
contrast between the Israeli 188th and the Egyptian 25th Armored Bri-
gades is striking.
The Arabs’ second major failing was the inability of the Egyptian and
Syrian tank divisions to conduct mobile, aggressive, and fast-moving tank
warfare. The Arab infantry was solid in its defensive role, but the armor
was tied to the Soviet doctrine that made them rigid, inflexible, and oc-
casionally unimaginative. The combination of bad Soviet doctrine with
only modest training was not a happy one.
The individual Arab soldiers had, during this campaign, dissipated the
myth that they were unable to attack and fight in a sophisticated environ-
ment. Their performance was far and above that of their predecessors in
the 1967, 1956, and 1948 campaigns, who were poorly trained and in-
competently led.
The second great theater of war for a new Islamic nation was in the
subcontinent. Soon the new governments of Muslim Pakistan and India
would come to blows.
As India worked out its internal problems after the withdrawal of the
British Raj, severe strife broke out and developed into a civil war as the
forces of Azad Kashmir and India engaged in open conflict. Alarmed,
the Pakistani government mobilized its army and began infiltrating forces
into Kashmir to support the Kashmiri rebels. Soon a full-scale war erupted
and continued with no substantial results until January 1, 1949. In the
peace treaty, signed on July 27, 1949, a cease-fire line was drawn through
the state of Jammu and Kashmir that split it into areas controlled, one by
Pakistan and the other by India. The peace proved unstable, as Muslim
Pakistan believed that Kashmir should be a state of their Islamic govern-
ment, and not one of the Hindu minority.
In May 1965, the Pakistan government began sending in men to support
uprisings in Kashmir. This action was known as Operation Gibraltar.
These incursions provoked great tension between the Indian and Pakistani
governments, and regular military forces began to clash along the cease-
fire line. Many artillery skirmishes took place. In one such skirmish, forty