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Ayub Khan
President of Pakistan and Field Marshal
"Kashmir must be liberated, and the hour is now."
Biography
The military ruler who had seized power in 1958, Field Marshal Ayub Khan presided over Pakistan during the 1965 war. Persuaded by hawks in his government — above all his foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto — that a bold stroke could wrest Kashmir from India while India was still weak after its 1962 defeat by China, he approved Operation Gibraltar, the infiltration that ignited the war. The gamble failed: the Kashmiris did not rise, the war became a costly stalemate, and Pakistan's American-armed forces could not achieve the hoped-for breakthrough. Ayub signed the Tashkent Declaration in 1966, a settlement that returned to the status quo and was widely seen in Pakistan as squandering the army's sacrifices — a disillusionment that damaged his prestige and contributed to his fall from power in 1969.
Did you know?
He promoted himself to the rank of Field Marshal in 1959 — the only person in Pakistan's history to hold the five-star rank until much later.
Key Battles
Operation Gibraltar
India victoryAugust 1965 · 5,000 total casualties
The failure of Operation Gibraltar to ignite a revolt — and India's decision to retaliate across the ceasefire line — turned a covert operation into the open war of 1965, on which Pakistan had gambled and lost.
The Ceasefire and Tashkent Declaration
September 1965 – January 1966 · 0 total casualties
The 1965 war ended in stalemate and a return to the status quo, settling nothing — a costly draw that left the Kashmir dispute exactly where it began and set the stage for the far larger war of 1971 and the Kargil conflict decades later.
Life Journey
Timeline
May 14, 1907
🌅 Birth
Born in Hazara
1965
📍 Posting
Approves Operation Gibraltar and leads Pakistan in the war
April 19, 1974
✝️ Death
Dies in Islamabad