Qais-543

Qais Hussain, a former PAF pilot, had shot down an Indian civilian aircraft during the 1965 war. In the April 2011 issue of the Defense Journal of Pakistan, Air. Cdre. Kaiser Tufail story brought to fore some hard facts about the incident. Following the feedback, in August 2011, Hussain offered condolences to the families of the crew who died in the Gujarat Beechcraft incident. His compassionate gesture was returned in kind by the family of the deceased pilot. In an exclusive interview with Dawn.com, Hussain shares his personal and professional life and how he looks at the incident four decades on.

I met Qais Hussain, a former PAF flying officer, on a not-so-warm and rainy Saturday afternoon at his house in Lahore. Touching seventy-one, sporting a short beard and a moustache, both almost white, and dressed casually in jeans and a dark T-shirt, he did not appear a day above sixty. I waited in a small guest room, which was simply but tastefully decorated. Some souvenirs from his travels and a couple of landscapes adorned the room. War memorabilia was conspicuously absent. A book shelf revealed his interests ranging from Western philosophy, Qur’anic interpretation, Islamic Law, Siyaasat-daanon ki Qalaabaaziyan, Anna Pasternak’s Princess in Love, Obama’s Audacity of Hope, Clinton’s My Life, Tennis’s Björn Borg, Cricket’s Viv Richards, Gardening, Pakistan and regional politics.

He came in after about ten minutes. “I am sorry Aurangzeb. I had to deal with another party who were supposed to be here about forty minutes ago. I called them seven minutes after their appointed time and they hadn’t even started,” Hussain politely explained. His principled and courteous mannerism impressed me. As we conversed, I realised that childhood dreams had caught up with him sooner than later in his life. First time he became fascinated with planes was when an Army L19 did an emergency landing in his school’s football field in Khanpur.

He was then in class five or six. Once he matriculated, he wanted to join the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) along with some of his class-fellows but upon his father’s advice postponed any major career decisions until he had graduated from FC College Lahore. The fire rekindled when he attended the passing out of a cousin from the PAF Academy Risalpur.

“My mother was not very keen. My father could not say anything because he had given me his word,” Hussain recalled. “I joined the air force because I had an adventurous, go-getter, kind of personality, but discipline was natural to me.” Until two years ago he was still driving by road to Karachi and back.

Hussain was a natural flyer. That did not take away the teaching pains. He suffered altitude sickness on his first flights, as he recalled, both in Pakistan and in the US, where he also trained. “That happens to the best of us. In the US, I had to clean my own cockpit afterwards.”

Junior but one of the best that he was, as vouched by a superior officer, “great kid this Qais, good poking and aggressive fighter pilot,” he was chosen to fly missions superseding some senior pilots during the 1965 war.

On a fateful afternoon in September he was scrambled from Mauripur Base near Karachi to intercept an Indian aircraft flying over a sensitive area along the Pakistani border. The aircraft was suspected of collecting reconnaissance data which could be used by India to open another war front in the Runn of Kutch area. Upon interception, it was clear that a small civilian plane – a Beechcraft – had gone considerably off-course. Its pilot Jahangir Engineer confirmed this by waggling his wings. Hussain didn’t want to shoot at an unarmed plane so he communicated the situation to his ground controllers. There was a deliberation of about 3-4 minutes. The controllers decided that it was too risky to let the plane escape. He carried out his orders and shot it down.

“When I shot down the aircraft, we (the Radar Controllers and our superiors) thought that it was on a Recce mission and was carrying sensitive border information for the Indian Army to open a new front in the south or possibly dropping troops on Runn of Kutch border. Please keep in mind that during the earlier part of 65 (April onwards for about 3 months), tensions were high in the Rann of Kutchh and both sides were on high alert. So there was a back ground to our sensitivity. I was very satisfied and it would not be farfetched if I say that I was very proud that I had single-handedly thwarted the Indian Army from opening a new front.”