Ayub Khan

**Ayub Khan**

Date of birth:	May 14 1907
Date of death:	April 19 1974
President of Pakistan
Tenure order:	2nd President
Tenure:	October 27 1958–1969
Predecessor:	Iskander Mirza
Successor:	Yahya Khan
Chiefs of Army Staff, Pakistan
Tenure order:	3rd Chief of the Army Staff
Tenure:	1958–1969
Predecessor:	Gen. Sir Douglas David Gracey
Successor:	Gen. Musa Khan

Not to be confused with Ayub Khan (Afghan commander), (1857-1914).

Muhammad Ayub Khan (Urdu: محمد ايوب خان ) (May 14, 1907 – April 19, 1974) was a Field Marshal during the mid-1960s, and the political leader of Pakistan from 1958 to 1969. He became Pakistan's first native Commander in Chief in 1951, and was the youngest full-rank general and self-appointed field marshal in Pakistan's military history. He was also the first Pakistani military general to seize power through a coup.

Early years

Khan was born in the village of Rehana near Haripur Hazara to a Hindko speaking Pashtun family of the Tareen tribe, the first child of the second wife of Mir Dad Khan, who was a Risaldar Major in Hodson's Horse. For his basic education, he was enrolled in a school in Sarai Saleh, which was about 4 miles from his village. He used to go to school on a mule's back. Later he was shifted to a school in Haripur, where he started living with his grandmother. He enrolled at Aligarh University in 1922, but never completed his studies, as he was accepted into the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He did well at Sandhurst, and was given an officer's post in the British Indian Army and then joined the 1st Battalion of the 14 Punjab regiment (Sherdils), later known as 5 Punjab Regiment. During World War II he served as a captain and later as a major on the Burma front.Following the war, he joined the fledgling Pakistani Army as the 10th ranking senior officer (his Pakistan Army number was 10). He was promoted to Brigadier and commanded a brigade in Waziristan and then was sent initially with the local rank of Major General to East Pakistan as General Officer Commanding a division that was responsible for the whole East Wing of Pakistan in 1948 from where he returned in November 1949 as Adjutant General and then briefly was named Deputy Commander-in-Chief.

Ayub Khan was made Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army on January 17, 1951, succeeding General Sir Douglas Gracey, thus becoming the first native Pakistani general to hold that position. He would later go on to serve in the second cabinet (1954) of Muhammad Ali Bogra as Defence Minister, and when Iskander Mirza declared martial law on October 7 1958, Khan was made its chief martial law administrator. This would be the first of many instances in the history of Pakistan of the military becoming directly involved in politics.

President of Pakistan (1958–1969)

As a result of his differences with Mirza, Khan gained more and more power, and became President of Pakistan after deposing Mirza on October 27 in a bloodless coup. This was actually welcomed in Pakistan, since the nation had experienced a very unstable political climate since independence. Khan soon adopted the titles of Hilal-e-Pakistan, and the rank of Field Marshal. He was to be Pakistan's second field marshal, if the first is regarded as Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck (1884-1981), supreme commander of military forces in India and Pakistan in the lead-up to independence in 1947 and a vocal opponent of Partition.

Khan moved to have a constitution created, and this was done in 1961. The Constitution called for elections, which took place in 1962, when martial law was lifted. Khan's main opponent was Fatima Jinnah, the sister of Pakistan's founding father. Despite Jinnah's immense popularity, Khan won the majority of the vote; whether or not this was done without corruption is debatable.

As President, Ayub Khan allied Pakistan with the global U.S. military alliance against the Soviet Union. This in turn led to major economic aid from the U.S. and European nations, and the industrial sector of Pakistan grew very rapidly, and this in turn improved the economy, as did Khan's educational and land reforms. It was under Ayub Khan that the capital was moved from Karachi to Rawalpindi, in anticipation of the construction of a new capital: Islamabad. In 1960, Khan's government signed the Indus Waters Treaty with archrival India to resolve disputes regarding the sharing of the waters of the six rivers in the Punjab doab that flow between the two countries. Khan's administration also built a major network of irrigation canals, high-water dams and thermal and hydroelectric power stations.

Despite the treaty, Khan maintained icy relations with India. Khan established close political and military ties with Communist China, exploiting its differences with Soviet Russia and its 1962 war with India. To this day, China remains a strong economic, political and military ally of Pakistan.

The turning point in Khan's rule was the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, which despite a military stalemate, resulted in higher personnel losses for Pakistan than India. The war ended in the settlement that was reached by Khan at Tashkent Declaration. The settlement led Bhutto to resign his post and take up opposition to Khan. The war also adversely affected Pakistan's economy. Government corruption and nepotism, in addition to an environment of repression of free speech and political freedoms increased unrest. With publications like Zeb-un-Nissa Hamidullah's Mirror criticising his regime vociferously, Khan began to increase censorship and his control over the nation even more. These actions only served to further agitate the Pakistani population, which fell into a disarray of protests, strikes and riots, and soon required the presence of the army in the cities. Bhutto used this to his political advantage, while the Awami League also made great political gains in East Pakistan. Attacked both in the press and in cities and villages across both wings of the nation, Khan began to lose both power and popularity.

During Ayub Khan's rule the price of 1 kg sugar was increased by 1 rupee and the whole population took to streets. As Ayub's popularity plummeted, he decided to give up rule. Ironically, this was just what Zeb-un-Nissa Hamidullah, one of the journalists who criticised his rule greatly, said he should do. In 1969 he turned over control of Pakistan to General Yahya Khan, whom he had previously appointed chief martial law administrator.

Books

An autobiography entitled Friends Not Masters was written by Ayub Khan.

External links

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Ayub Khan

Early years

President of Pakistan (1958–1969)

Books

See also

External links