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Musharraf Reshuffles the Pack
From Pakistan Today, an article by B. Raman
As expected, President General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan announced a major reshuffle of the senior officers of the Pakistan Army of the rank of Generals and Lt.Generals on October 2 and 3,2004. The reshuffle was necessitated by the impending retirement of Gen.Mohammad Aziz Khan, as the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, and Gen.Muhammad Yusuf Khan as the Vice-Chief of the Army Staff, both on October 7,2004.

The details of the promotions and postings announced by Musharraf are given in the annexure available from the RHS bar.. With the retirement of Gen.Mohammad Aziz Khan, a Kashmiri belonging to the Sudan tribe, from the Army, the Pakistan Army does not have any identified fundamentalist officers in the rank of Lt.Gen./Gen. When Musharraf seized power on October 12, 1999, the Army had two identified "fundos" in the rank of Lt.Gen.-- Lt.Gen. Mohammad Aziz Khan, who was then the Chief of the General Staff (CGS), and Lt.Gen.Muzaffar Usmani, the then Corps Commander, Karachi.

Subsequently, Musharraf appointed Mohammad Aziz Khan as the Commander of one of the two Corps in Lahore and Lt.Gen.Usmani as the Deputy Chief of the Army Staff. It was the triumvirate of Lt.Gen. Usmani as Corps Commander, Karachi,, Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz Khan as the CGS and Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, as the then Corps Commander of Rawalpindi, which had staged the coup against Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister, in the absence of Musharraf from the country and paved the way for his installation as the military dictator with the designation of Chief Executive. They refused to accept Nawaz's order dismissing Musharraf as the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) and appointing Lt.Gen.Ziauddin, the then Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence ISI), in his place. They had both Nawaz and Ziauddin arrested.

After taking over, Musharraf appointed Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed as the DG of the ISI. After the 9/11 terrorist strikes, the US reportedly exercised pressure on Musharraf to ease out all the three from the sensitive posts held by them before the US military operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban started on October 7,2001. The US did not trust Usmani and Mohammad Aziz Khan because of their close proximity to the Islamic fundamentalist parties and it was annoyed with Mahmood Ahmed because of his failure to pressure Mulla Mohammad Omer, the Amir of the Taliban, to hand over Osama bin Laden to the US.
Many more details about the reorganization, ending with this conclusion:
The new promotions and postings mark the climbing up the professional ladder of a new generation of officers, who distinguished themselves not in battles against India over Kashmir or in the covert jihad against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan ostensibly to protect Islam, but in the so-called war against Al Qaeda to protect American lives and promote US interests. The fact that they did well in this war might be a good performance in the eyes of the US political leadership and policy-makers, but not in the eyes of large sections of Pakistani public opinion.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-10-12
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=45760