General Raheel Sharif

He was born in Quetta on 16 June 1956 to Major and Mrs. Muhammad Sharif. He is younger brother of Major Shabir Sharif, NH, SJ and Capt Mumtaz Sharif Sbt. He is an alumnus of Govt College Lahore, and Pakistan Military Academy from where he passed out with 54th PMA Long Course. He was commissioned in Oct 1976 in the battle hardened and renowned 6th Battalion the Frontier Force Regiment in which his elder brother had embraced Shahadat appointed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on 29 November 2013. He is due to retire on 29 November 2016. He belongs to a Rajpot family with roots in Punjab in the town of Kunjah Gujrat. He has a prominent military background and is the son of (late) Major Rana Muhammad Sharif. His eldest brother Major Rana Shabbir Sharif was declared as the martyr of Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 by Pakistan and received Pakistan's highest military award Nishan-e-Haider posthumously. He is the youngest sibling among three brothers and two sisters. His other brother Captain Mumtaz Sharif also bravely served in Pakistan army and for his bravery he was awarded Sitara-e- Basalat but got an early retirement due to medical reasons. From his mother's side he is nephew of Major Raja Aziz Bhatti another Nishan-e-Haider recipient, who was declared as the martyr of Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 by Pakistan. He is married and has three children two sons and a daughter. He is an avid reader and enjoys hunting and swimming. In June barely a week after the Karachi Airport attack General Sharif did something no one could expect: he changed the security paradigm under which the Army had so far compelled Pakistan to live. Instead of supporting the government’s peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban he decided to attack the safe havens of the Pakistani Taliban and their local and foreign affiliates. Operation Zarb-e-Azb took the war to North Waziristan where elements friendly to Pakistan trained with those not so friendly to it. Since the country’s foreign and domestic security policies are run by the Army the Foreign Office firmly tethered to GHQ, had a hard time detaching its thinking from General Sharif’s predecessor Gen. Ashfaq Kayani. North Waziristan marked a clear departure: it deviated from the received wisdom that any assault on the Taliban in the north would trigger a backlash in the south, where cities were already vulnerable to suicide-bombings and targeted assassinations. It also shook the kaleidoscope of regional and global politics out of pattern the operation pleased Afghanistan and India who feared cross-border proxy attacks and the Western alliance led by the United States always asking Pakistan to do more in other words eliminate the Pakistani Taliban and their Afghan counterparts attacking U.S and NATO troops in Afghanistan. There is little doubt that the June change was not properly digested by the Pakistani insiders set in their thinking that the Army was soft on the Taliban and tough on the U.S. for encouraging India to do mischief inside Pakistan. General Kayani had been hounding American diplomats on roads and hunting Black water and CIA agents snooping on organizations the world had declared terrorists. One big miscalculation based on this belated grasp of paradigm shift was the regime change through agitation activated by two parties counting on the Army chief to be the arbiter who would ask Prime Minister Sharif to pack up. The antigovernment protests by Imran Khan Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri Pakistan Awami Tehreek kicked off in August and besieged Islamabad but failed to get General Sharif to bite. Can one say that the civil-military equation saved Nawaz Sharif from being toppled? Given that the Khan-Qadri duo and their campaign planners failed to incline General Sharif to act against a prime minister he didn’t quite get along with one has to assume that the defense paradigm shift was too radical and too restricted to a group of officers close to the new Army chief to be properly understood. In hindsight one can understand why General Sharif plumped for Prime Minister Sharif staying in power and avoided supporting Khan whose stance was blamelessly pro-Taliban and anti-America as it was absorbed from the Army in the first place. General Sharif wanted to reverse the policy and for once do more. Prime Minister Sharif wholeheartedly backed the policy reset on the western border. But a part of the Foreign Office led by Sartaj Aziz the prime minister’s advisor had to do a double take in November to overcome their laggard grasp of what was happening. Even after the resumption of U.S drone strikes on Haqqani network targets in mid October most commentators in Washington simply refused to believe Zarb-e-Azb would get anywhere while the displacement of nearly 2 million civilians from North Waziristan made it too brittle to last. By November the world had woken up to Operation Zarb-e-Azb conducted by nearly 30,000 troops who had killed almost 1,200 terrorists. U.S drones struck in lockstep, even as Islamabad condemned them as a violation of its sovereignty. Other factors also came into the reckoning, such as The Xinjiangistan Connection noted in July by Foreign Policy which said the security needs of China probably proved more important than the U.S Congress in Islamabad’s calculations. This being a reference to the ETIM (East Turkistan Islamic Movement) terrorists from China’s western province training in North Waziristan. There was a quick revision of stance in Washington. General Sharif’s tough statements about how he would spare no one doing terrorism inside Pakistan whether friendly or unfriendly were allowed to sink in despite resistance developed to Pakistan’s doublespeak under General Kayani. The change in Washington was probably just as sudden as in the Foreign Office in Islamabad. In October the Pentagon’s report to the U.S. Congress Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan had indicted Pakistan as an agent of proxy wars Afghan and Indian focused militants continue to operate from Pakistani territory to the detriment of Afghan and regional stability. Pakistan uses these proxy forces to hedge against the loss of influence in Afghanistan and to counter India’s superior military. These relationships run counter to Pakistan’s public commitment to support Afghan-led reconciliation. Such groups continue to act as the primary irritant in Afghan Pakistan bilateral relations. Before General Sharif took off for Washington in November on an unexpectedly successful and long visit he received the new Afghan president Ashraf Ghani at GHQ on Nov 14 Ghani who in 1986 had done fieldwork on Pakistani madrassahs on a Fulbright grant was unusually effusive after his interactions in Rawalpindi and Islamabad We will not permit the past to destroy the future he said. We have overcome obstacles of 13 years in three days. The relationship between the two countries will be a replication of the equation between France and Germany. In the U.S much enthusiasm was shown for General Sharif the first Army chief of Pakistan to visit since 2010. He had become important after his visit to Kabul where he had given his gruff word that he would stop cross border incursions of the Taliban no matter who did it. He was followed by the new ISI chief Lt Gen Rizwan Akhtar whose fresh approach to terrorism in Pakistan must have reassured both the much harassed Kabul government and a Pentagon worried about post-drawdown Afghanistan. To cap the week of reconciliation President Barack Obama rang Prime Minister Sharif to take the latter into confidence about his visit to New Delhi to attend India’s Republic Day celebrations in January as chief guest. Hardly had General Sharif returned home when contrary signs began to manifest themselves. His visit had strengthened the elected government facing agitational challenge on the one hand and being forced into coexistence with legalized jihadists on the other. In late November Hafiz Saeed the powerful leader of Jamat-ud-Dawah with a $10 million U.S bounty on his head called for jihad against India to safeguard the right of Kashmiris to self determination. Whatever the confused repercussions from it the change of tack on terrorism by General Sharif marked a departure from the thinking of his predecessor General Kayani who publicly admitted to backing the interventionist strategic depth doctrine in Afghanistan and explained his assessment of India as based not on its declared intent but its state of military preparedness. Kayani had also asserted at one stage that attacking terrorists in their safe havens in the tribal areas would be counterproductive because of the blowback expected in the shape of bombings from Peshawar to Karachi. At one point Imran Khan declared that his own pro Taliban stance owed to Kayani blowback theory. But the retired Army chief countered this declaration by saying that Khan had got me wrong. As a Young Officer he performed his duties in Gilgit in an Infantry Brigade and also served as Adjutant of Pakistan Military Academy. He did Company Commander's Course from Germany and subsequently served in the prestigious School of Infantry and Tactics as an instructor. He attended the Command and Staff College Canada graduating with distinction. He has been the General Officer Commanding of an Infantry Division and the Commandant of prestigious Pakistan Military Academy. As a Lieutenant General he served as Corps Commander 30 Corps for two years before taking over as Inspector General Training and Evaluation in which capacity he oversaw the training of Pakistan Army. His stewardship resulted in fructification of Pakistan Army's operational thought and doctrinal response to the much vaunted Cold Start doctrine of Indian Army. The general is married and has two sons and a daughter. He is an avid reader and enjoys hunting and swimming. General Raheel Sharif Nishan-i-Imtiaz (Military), Hilal-i-Imtiaz (Military) hails from a martial stock.