Obituary
Major General Zia ul Haq
By
Major Agha H Amin (Retired)
Major General Zia ul Haq , Punjab Regiment left this mortal world for his heavenly abode a few days back .
It is unusual for a cavalry officer to write an obituary of an infantry officer ! But fate brought this scribe and the late general together for some 14 months in Okara Cantonment from September 1992 to November 1993.
I had joined 5 Independent Squadron in Okara Cantonment from the Tank School known as Armour School after having been an instructor at the Tactical Wing and having stood second in Armour Officers Mid Career Course.
He was my immediate commanding officer with no colonel or brigadier in between as I was commanding 5 Independent Armoured Squadron which was directly under his command .
I had not known General Zia ul Haq when he was posted to command 14 Division in Okara.
On our first meeting , a visit to my squadron he asked me if there was anything that I wanted in the realm of training.I requested him that the squadron be allowed to proceed to Cholistan for training , since the division was not going for training !
He immediately agreed and off we went to Khairpur Tamewali a place I had fallen in love with in September 1985,the first time I saw that beautiful semi desert ! The Rohi of Sufi poets !
He was known to be a religious man but he never imposed his religious views on anyone !
In early 1993 we started preparing for the corps tank sub caliber firing competition .Major General Zia ul Haq visited the firing ranges where our tanks were practicing.He asked me if he could do anything to assist in our preparations ! I requested him for extra ammunition and he on the spot sanctioned 50,000 rounds !
When my squadron won the corps competition defeating many eminent units of the tank corps ,General Zia was the happiest man in Okara Cantonment !
I requested him that armour should not be in Okara but in Tamewali,Sulaimanke or Bahwalnagar in writing in August 1993.He immediately agreed and intimated the General Headquarters that his divisional armour will be located in Bahawalnagar !
We had such unique professionals in the Military Operations Directorate (then Major General Tauqir Zia) who (never met him or came across him while serving in the army from 1981 to December 1993) were visualising raising new tank regiments in infantry divisions while strictly for sake of good training tank regiments are raised in tank divisions ! (I was suprised what kind of persons were serving in MO Directorate ?)
Unfortunately before we could move my independent squadron was converted as per orders received from the GHQ into the new 14 Lancers and the 14 Lancers officers who came to Okara did their best to stay in Okara rather than Bahawalnagar but Major General Zia ul Haq remained solid as a rock and told them that it was Bahawalnagar where they had to go !
We had such unique professionals in the Military Operations Directorate (then Major General Tauqir Zia) who (never met him or came across him while serving in the army from 1981 to December 1993) were visualising raising new tank regiments in infantry divisions while strictly for sake of good training tank regiments are raised in tank divisions ! (I was suprised what kind of persons were serving in MO Directorate ?)
Unfortunately before we could move my independent squadron was converted as per orders received from the GHQ into the new 14 Lancers and the 14 Lancers officers who came to Okara did their best to stay in Okara rather than Bahawalnagar but Major General Zia ul Haq remained solid as a rock and told them that it was Bahawalnagar where they had to go !
He graded me quite high and fit for promotion in the two annual confidential reports that he gave me and graded me fit for future promotion and command !
However the typical whimsical manner in which third world armies are run , fate had a different direction for this scribe !
Pakistan Army unfortunately after the untimely death of General Asif Nawaz Janjua in January 1993 , suddenly started being run on highly personalized , parochial and whimsical lines !
The new army chief Kakars mindset may be imagined from the fact that he as corps commander Quetta , as per his guard battalion commander Lieut Col Javed Feroz from the FF Regiment (conversation with this scribe in Okara Squash courts in 1993 June) was counting cherries in his garden to check if the guards had eaten any !
In the 1990s corps commander Quetta was normally the most mediocre in three stars as Quetta corps had near zero operational role ! However the Pakistan Army was blessed with this character because the president at that time in conflict with a Punjabi prime minister wanted a fellow Pashtun (with a deep Hindko mentality) and was convinced by his relative Major General Ali Quli who as per General Khwaja Ziauddin (interview with this scribe in 2009) specially lobbied for Kakar !
The fact that Kakar was parochial and biased has been given legality and historical accuracy when a person no less than General Pervez Musharraf recorded the fact in his book stating forthrightly that General Abdul Waheed Kakar was a parochial man with strong biases.
The new army chief Kakars mindset may be imagined from the fact that he as corps commander Quetta , as per his guard battalion commander Lieut Col Javed Feroz from the FF Regiment (conversation with this scribe in Okara Squash courts in 1993 June) was counting cherries in his garden to check if the guards had eaten any !
In the 1990s corps commander Quetta was normally the most mediocre in three stars as Quetta corps had near zero operational role ! However the Pakistan Army was blessed with this character because the president at that time in conflict with a Punjabi prime minister wanted a fellow Pashtun (with a deep Hindko mentality) and was convinced by his relative Major General Ali Quli who as per General Khwaja Ziauddin (interview with this scribe in 2009) specially lobbied for Kakar !
The fact that Kakar was parochial and biased has been given legality and historical accuracy when a person no less than General Pervez Musharraf recorded the fact in his book stating forthrightly that General Abdul Waheed Kakar was a parochial man with strong biases.
Major General Zia ul Haq left for Quetta to take over Frontier Corps Balochistan as its Inspector General and I received my retirement orders !
The most unkindest cut of all was that my commanding officer Colonel Munawar Hussain was also retired without any reason prematurely by the Neo Mughal Sipah Salaars of the army of the pure !
The most unkindest cut of all was that my commanding officer Colonel Munawar Hussain was also retired without any reason prematurely by the Neo Mughal Sipah Salaars of the army of the pure !
The myopic and petty mentality of the so called commanders may be imagined from the fact that my commanding officer Colonel Munawar Hussain (picture below) an outstanding officer who had refused to downgrade my annual report was prematurely retired without any reason while he was serving as colonel staff of 41 Divison Quetta having been promoted to full colonel rank just an year ago !
A commanding officer who had spine and dared to differ with his seniors in rank was regarded as a bad officer ! Munawar Hussain all along his career had been outstanding ! He was retired just because he had been upright ! God had it that he was immediately selected by the ISI as their civilian colonel staff and served there for five years with flying colours as a colonel staff.He later served equally outstandingly at the DHA Karachi and now in the PARCO.
I had first met Major Munawar Hussain in September 1985 and we served in the same regiment for almost two years and eight months ! I did not encounter a more professional and more honest officer than Munawar in my entire military service !
If compared with the likes of yusuf , ahsan saleem hayat and many others in the armoured corps munwar should have been a three or four star general ! But his misfortune was being born in a thirdrate , third world failed state called Pakistan ! Pakistan in order to be destroyed does not need Indians,USA or anyone ! It is most being destroyed by internal sabotage, by decisions being taken on personal likes and dislikes !
This is not a simply Pakistan army phenomena ! We have ethnically biased judges like despicable anwar ul haq and naseem hassan shah sentencing a sindhi prime minister ZAB , we have naseem hassan shah supporting his punjabi kashmiri prime minister nawaz sharif just becausehe is a punjabi kashmiri ! we have iftikhar chaudhry acting as vanguard against zardari just because zardari is a sindhi ! while iftikhar chaudhry forgets crooks like chaudhry shujaat and chaudhry pervez illahi !
I am ashamed that I was born in Pakistan ! A failed state run entirely on ethnicity and personal likes and dislikes !
My contribution to the Pakistan Army continued at the strategic and intellectual level ! My article recommending major higher command changes in the armys strategic grouping was published by the Citadel Journal of Command and Staff College Quetta in mid 1998 and my recommendations regarding creating army commands were actually implemented by the Pakistani military in 2005 or so !
This was at least an intellectual vindication of the fact that my motivation to serve was not material but purely internally motivated which continued even many years after retirement from an institution which pays only 7000 Rupees pension to a major ! Soldiering is a profession far superior to counting cherries in the garden or in removing elected prime ministers by coercion !
This is just to illustrate how third world armies are run ! Where your fate is decided by where you are from or who dislikes you or that you took a stand even though a righteous one.
Having topped most of the courses in his career , having been a brigade major , having served illustriously in the Pakistani military mission to Iraq in 1982-85 did not save Munawar from being arbitrarily retired ! Mind you he is just one of many hundreds !
General Kakars parochial mindset may never have been exposed if General Musharraf had not exposed it in his autobiography !
Had General Musharraf not made this assertion a historical fact by referring to kakar all this may have been dismissed as hearsay.
In 1994 Major General Ejaz Amjad who I knew since 1987 also confirmed the assertions about the ham handed way in which the army was run after General Asif Nawazs tragic and sudden death.
A commanding officer who had spine and dared to differ with his seniors in rank was regarded as a bad officer ! Munawar Hussain all along his career had been outstanding ! He was retired just because he had been upright ! God had it that he was immediately selected by the ISI as their civilian colonel staff and served there for five years with flying colours as a colonel staff.He later served equally outstandingly at the DHA Karachi and now in the PARCO.
I had first met Major Munawar Hussain in September 1985 and we served in the same regiment for almost two years and eight months ! I did not encounter a more professional and more honest officer than Munawar in my entire military service !
If compared with the likes of yusuf , ahsan saleem hayat and many others in the armoured corps munwar should have been a three or four star general ! But his misfortune was being born in a thirdrate , third world failed state called Pakistan ! Pakistan in order to be destroyed does not need Indians,USA or anyone ! It is most being destroyed by internal sabotage, by decisions being taken on personal likes and dislikes !
This is not a simply Pakistan army phenomena ! We have ethnically biased judges like despicable anwar ul haq and naseem hassan shah sentencing a sindhi prime minister ZAB , we have naseem hassan shah supporting his punjabi kashmiri prime minister nawaz sharif just becausehe is a punjabi kashmiri ! we have iftikhar chaudhry acting as vanguard against zardari just because zardari is a sindhi ! while iftikhar chaudhry forgets crooks like chaudhry shujaat and chaudhry pervez illahi !
Brigadier Shafiullah Qureshi in 1993 stated that I am going to Musharraf because its all ethnic and he is my leader ! I did not agree with him , because I saw Major General Zia ul Haq as a role model !
Alas when I see now how it was all run ,all was ethnic and biased and whimsical !
I am ashamed that I was born in Pakistan ! A failed state run entirely on ethnicity and personal likes and dislikes !
My contribution to the Pakistan Army continued at the strategic and intellectual level ! My article recommending major higher command changes in the armys strategic grouping was published by the Citadel Journal of Command and Staff College Quetta in mid 1998 and my recommendations regarding creating army commands were actually implemented by the Pakistani military in 2005 or so !
This was at least an intellectual vindication of the fact that my motivation to serve was not material but purely internally motivated which continued even many years after retirement from an institution which pays only 7000 Rupees pension to a major ! Soldiering is a profession far superior to counting cherries in the garden or in removing elected prime ministers by coercion !
This is just to illustrate how third world armies are run ! Where your fate is decided by where you are from or who dislikes you or that you took a stand even though a righteous one.
Having topped most of the courses in his career , having been a brigade major , having served illustriously in the Pakistani military mission to Iraq in 1982-85 did not save Munawar from being arbitrarily retired ! Mind you he is just one of many hundreds !
General Kakars parochial mindset may never have been exposed if General Musharraf had not exposed it in his autobiography !
Had General Musharraf not made this assertion a historical fact by referring to kakar all this may have been dismissed as hearsay.
In 1994 Major General Ejaz Amjad who I knew since 1987 also confirmed the assertions about the ham handed way in which the army was run after General Asif Nawazs tragic and sudden death.
I did meet two fellow officers Lieutenant Colonel Majid Hassan , 46th Long Course a great friend and Captain Khurram the Aide De Campe and son in law of late Rao Sikandar Zaman.Both were serving with him in his staff at Quetta .Both the officers who had been serving with him in Okara described him as doing extremely well as IG FC .
I did not see him again after November 1993 but his death still came as a matter of personal grief to me !
This obituary is to record my personal grief for a man who is no relative of mine but one who was honest , forthright , fair and equal with every one in his professional conduct , regardless of the fact that the person in front was a fellow Gujjar of his or not !
I pray with all my strength that Allah may bless his soul and he is granted a place in the paradise !
--
Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." --
Albert Einstein !!!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22151765/History-of-Pakistan-Army-from-1757-to-1971
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21693873/Indo-Pak-Wars-1947-71-A-STRATEGIC-AND-OPERATIONAL-ANALYSIS-BY-A-H-AMIN
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21686885/TALIBAN-WAR-IN-AFGHANISTAN
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22455178/Letters-to-Command-and-Staff-College-Quetta-Citadel-Journal
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23150027/Pakistan-Army-through-eyes-of-Pakistani-Generals
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23701412/War-of-Independence-of-1857
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22457862/Pakistan-Army-Journal-The-Citadel
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21952758/1971-India-Pakistan-War
http://www.scribd.com/doc/25171703/BOOK-REVIEWS-BY-AGHA-H-AMIN
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