Yahya Khan
Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan (February 4 1917 – August 10 1980) was the President of Pakistan from 1969 to 1971, following the resignation of Ayub Khan who has promoted him rapidly through the ranks of the army and hand-picked him as his successor.
He has one son, Ali Yahya and one daughter, Yasmeen KhanCite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag[1] in 1917 to an ethnic Shia Muslim Qizilbash family of Persian descent who could trace their military links to the time of Nadir Shah.
Nadir Shah was killed in a revolution and some members of his family escaped from Iran to Northern Pakistan area. The story is that after Qizilbash family escaped bare handed the family jewels and little treasure they carried were enough to buy them villages and maintain royal life style. Qizilbash family entered military profession and produced many high level government officials and generals[citation needed].
He attended Punjab University and finished first in his class. He then joined the British Army, and served in World War II as an officer in the 4th Infantry Division (India). He served in Iraq, Italy, and North Africa.
Though culturally Pashtun, Yahya was a Shia Qizilbash commissioned from Indian Military Academy Dehra Dun on 15 July 1939. An infantry officer from the 4/10 Baluch Regiment, Yahya saw action during WW II in North Africa where he was captured by the Axis Forces in June 1942 and interned in a prisoner of war camp in Italy from where he escaped in the third attempt.
Career before becoming Chief of Army Staff (COAS)
In 1947 he was instrumental in not letting the Indian officers shift books from the famous library of the British Indian Staff College at Quetta, where Yahya was posted as the only Muslim instructor at the time of partition of India.
Yahya became a brigadier at the age of 34 and commanded the 106 Infantry Brigade, which was deployed on the ceasefire line in Kashmir in 1951-52. Later Yahya, as Deputy Chief of General Staff, was selected to head the army’s planning board set up by Ayub to modernize the Pakistan Army in 1954-57. Yahya also performed the duties of Chief of General Staff from 1958 to 1962 from where he went on to command an infantry division from 1962 to 1965.
Upon the formation of Pakistan, Khan helped set up an officer's school in Quetta, and commanded an infantry division during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. Immediately after the 1965 war Major General Yahya Khan who had commanded the 7th Division in Operation Grand Slam was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General, appointed Deputy Army Commander in Chief and Commander in Chief designate in March 1966.
As Chief of Army Staff (COAS)
Yahya energetically started reorganizing the Pakistan Army in 1965. The post 1965 situation saw major organizational as well as technical changes in the Pakistan Army. Till 1965 it was thought that divisions could function effectively while getting orders directly from the army’s GHQ. This idea failed miserably in the 1965 war and the need to have intermediate corps headquarters in between the GHQ and the fighting combat divisions was recognised as a foremost operational necessity after the 1965 war. In 1965 war the Pakistan Army had only one corps headquarter (i.e. the 1st Corps Headquarters).
Soon after the war had started the U.S. had imposed an embargo on military aid on both India and Pakistan. This embargo did not affect the Indian Army but produced major changes in the Pakistan Army’s technical composition. US Secretary of State Dean Rusk well summed it up when he said, "Well if you are going to fight, go ahead and fight, but we’re not going to pay for it".[2]
Pakistan now turned to China for military aid and the Chinese tank T-59 started replacing the US M-47/48 tanks as the Pakistan Army’s MBT (Main Battle Tank) from 1966. 80 tanks, the first batch of T-59s, a low-grade version of the Russian T-54/55 series were delivered to Pakistan in 1965-66. The first batch was displayed in the Joint Services Day Parade on 23 March 1966. The 1965 War had proved that Pakistan Army’s tank infantry ratio was lopsided and more infantry was required. Three more infantry divisions (9, 16 and 17 Divisions) largely equipped with Chinese equipment and popularly referred to by the rank and file as "The China Divisions" were raised by the beginning of 1968. Two more corps headquarters i.e. 2nd Corps Headquarters (Jhelum-Ravi Corridor) and 4th Corps Headquarters (Ravi-Sutlej Corridor) were raised.
In the 1965 War India had not attacked East Pakistan which was defended by a weak two-infantry brigade division (14 Division) without any tank support. Yahya correctly appreciated that the geographical as well as operational situation demanded an entirely independent command set up in East Pakistan. 14 Division’s infantry strength was increased and a new tank regiment was raised and stationed in East Pakistan. A new Corps Headquarters was raised in East Pakistan and was designated as Headquarters Eastern Command. It was realised by the Pakistani GHQ that the next war would be different and East Pakistan badly required a new command set up.
President of Pakistan
Ayub Khan was President of Pakistan for most of the 1960s, but by the end of the decade, popular resentment had boiled over against him. Pakistan had fallen into a state of disarray, and he handed over power to Yahya Khan, who immediately imposed martial law. Once Ayub handed over power to Yahya Khan on 25 March 1969 Yahya inherited a two-decade constitutional problem of inter-provincial ethnic rivalry between the Punjabi-Pashtun-Mohajir dominated West Pakistan province and the ethnically Bengali Muslim East Pakistan province. In addition Yahya also inherited an 11 year old problem of transforming an essentially one man ruled country to a democratic country, which was the ideological basis of the anti-Ayub movement of 1968-69. Herein lies the key to Yahya’s dilemma. As an Army Chief Yahya had all the capabilities, qualifications and potential. But Yahya inherited an extremely complex problem and was forced to perform the multiple roles of caretaker head of the country, drafter of a provisional constitution, resolving the One Unit question, satisfying the frustrations and the sense of exploitation and discrimination successively created in the East Wing by a series of government policies since 1948. All these were complex problems and the seeds of Pakistan Army’s defeat and humiliation in December 1971 lay in the fact that Yahya Khan blundered unwittingly into the thankless task of fixing the problems of Pakistan’s political and administrative system which had been accumulating for 20 years and had their actual origins in the pre-1947 British policies towards the Bengali Muslims.
The American author Ziring observed that, "Yahya Khan has been widely portrayed as a ruthless uncompromising insensitive and grossly inept leader…While Yahya cannot escape responsibility for these tragic events, it is also on record that he did not act alone … All the major actors of the period were creatures of a historic legacy and a psycho-political milieu which did not lend itself to accommodation and compromise, to bargaining and a reasonable settlement. Nurtured on conspiracy theories, they were all conditioned to act in a manner that neglected agreeable solutions and promoted violent judgements”.Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag
Fall from power
Later overwhelming public anger over Pakistan's humiliating defeat by India, a genocide in east Pakistan which killed over 3 million people and the division of Pakistan into two parts boiled into street demonstrations throughout Pakistan, rumours of an impending coup d'état by younger army officers against the government of President Mohammed Agha Yahya Khan swept the country. Yahya became the highest-ranking casualty of the war: to forestall further unrest, on December 20, 1971 he hastily surrendered his powers to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, age 43, the ambitious leader of West Pakistan's powerful People's Party.
On the same day that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto released Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and saw him off to London, Pakistan President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in a supreme irony, ordered the house arrest of his predecessor, Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan, the man who imprisoned Mujib in the first place. Both actions produced headlines round the world. But in Pakistan they were almost overshadowed by what Bhutto grandly called "the first steps toward an economic and social revolution."
Death
Yahya Khan died in August 1980, in Rawalpindi.
Notes
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Bhutto, Benazir. 2008. Reconciliation: Islam, democracy, and the West. New York: Harper. ISBN 9780061567582
- Burki, H. K. 2004. Tales of a sorry dominion: Pakistan 1947-2003. Islamabad: Alhamra. ISBN 9789695161425
- Einfeld, Jann. 2004. Pakistan. San Diego: Greenhaven Press. ISBN 9780737720433
- Khan, Hamid. 2001. Constitutional and political history of Pakistan. Karachi: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195793413
- Ziring, Lawrence. 1997 Pakistan in the twentieth century: a political history. Karachi, Oxford, New York, Delhi: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-577815-2
| Military offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by: ?? |
Chief of General Staff 1957 - 1962 |
Succeeded by: Major General Sher Bahadur |
| Preceded by: General Musa Khan |
Commander in Chief of the Pakistan Army 1966–1971 |
Succeeded by: Lt General Gul Hassan Khan |
Template:PakistaniPresidents Template:1971 Indo-Pak War
Rahman, Tahir (2007). We Came in Peace for all Mankind- the Untold Story of the Apollo 11 Silicon Disc. Leathers Publishing. ISBN 978-1585974412.
External links
- Good Soldier Yahya Khan----TIME
- YAHYA KHAN AND BANGLADESH
- Chronicles Of Pakistan
- Henry Kissinger and PM China discussed Yahya Khan and 1971 loss
- Yahya Khan Is Arrested In Pakistan----Washington Post
kk:Яхья-хан, Аға Мұхаммед ur:یحیٰی خان
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