Mirza Aslam Beg

Mirza Aslam Beg
Allegiance	Pakistan
Service / branch	Pakistan Army (PA – 4064)
Years of service	1952 – 1991
Rank	General
Unit	Infantry (Baloch Regiment)
Commands	Chief of General Staff (CGS) XI Corps, Peshawar Vice Chief of Army Staff Chief of Army Staff
Battles / wars	Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 Indo-Pakistan War of 1971 Siachen conflict
Awards	Sitara-e-Basalat Hilal-e-Imtiaz (Military) Nishan-e-Imtiaz (Military)

General (retd) Mirza Aslam Beg, NI(M), SBt, afwc, psc (Template:Lang-ur) (born 2 August, 1931) Mirza Aslam Beg was born in Muslimpatti a small village in the district of Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh.was the Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistan Army succeeding General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, after the latter died in the air crash on August 17, 1988. He continued to hold the powerful post of Army Chief till 1991, when his political ambitions forced the then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan to nominate General Asif Nawaz as the new Army chief three months prior to Gen Beg’s retirement.

Chief of Army Staff

General Beg was commissioned in the 6th PMA Long Course in the Infantry's Baloch Regiment on 23 August, 1952. As a Major, Beg commanded an SSG company in 1960 to remove the Nawab of Dir in Chitral in the northern part of NWFP. Later in his career, he served as the Chief of General Staff (CGS) of the Pakistan Army during the 1984 Operation Meghdoot. Later, he was the commander of the XI Corps at Peshawar from 1985 to 1987.

By March 1987, Beg was promoted to four-star general and took over as Vice Chief of Army Staff in General Zia-ul-Haq's military administration. After Zia's death in a plane crash on 17 August, 1988, Beg was Army chief. Soon thereafter, general elections followed, resulting in a transfer of government to the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) with Benazir Bhutto as the premier. Beg, however, remained a powerful chief of army staff until 1991, when he was replaced by General Asif Nawaz. He retired from army on 16 August, 1991 after completing 39 years of military service.

Controversies

Mehran Bank scandal

After his retirement Beg remained a controversial figure, both for his alleged role in a Bank scandal and the nuclear proliferation issue. Former Air Marshal Asghar Khan filed a petition in the Supreme Court (HRC 19/96) against the retired General Mirza Aslam Beg, the former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief retired Lt General Asad Durrani and Younis Habib of Mehran Bank (merged with NBP in 1995), relating to the disbursement of public money and its misuse for political purposes, which is still pending hearing by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. According to one of the Pakistani newspaper editorial, General Durrani who had distributed Rs 140 million to win over the “for-sale” politicians never felt ashamed of his role or offered an apology.

The case was initiated by Air Marshal Asghar Khan after Benazir Bhutto's interior minister, another retired general, Naseerullah Babar, had disclosed in the National Assembly in 1994 how the ISI had disbursed funds to purchase the loyalty of politicians and public figures so as to manipulate the 1990 elections and bring about the defeat of the PPP. Aslam Beg managed to get Rs 140 million from Younis Habib and deposited in the Survey Section 202 account of Military Intelligence, then headed by Major General Javed Ashraf Qazi. From there, Rs 6 crore was paid to President Ghulam Ishaq Khan's election cellmates (Lt General Syed Refaqat, Roedad Khan, and Ijlal Haider Zaidi), and Rs 8 crore transferred to the ISI account.

Nuclear Proliferation with Iran

Khaled Ahmed, the consulting editor of The Friday Times contends that after taking over as army chief, General Aslam Beg began talking about “selling” nuclear technology as a part of his “strategy of defiance” of the United States. He knew that such a nuclear cooperation with Iran was popular and that, within an increasingly anti-American army Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf Arabs were less popular as American clients in the region. The speed with which he declared the new nuclear policy leads one to speculate whether he simply wanted the “obstacle” of General Zia to disappear from the scene. Zia was close to the Arabs, especially to Saudi Arabia, that had built a grand multi-million dollar mosque in Islamabad, the Faisal Mosque, where he was appropriately buried after his death.

Accusation of role in Zia's death

It is also claimed in the above mentioned article that Aslam Beg's strategy was much in-sync with Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, about bringing Iran into the fold of nuclear prowess much to the annoyance of his boss, General Zia-ul-Haq. Therefore, fueling the contention of Zia's son Muhammad Ijaz-ul-Haq, that Beg was behind the death of his father. Even the Shafiur Rehman Commission that was to establish the cause of the crash of Zia's plane concluded that because of Army's obstruction in the investigation, real perpetrators behind the attack cannot be brought forward. However, it is also known in proper that the US of A also lost its officials, never mentioning an investigation or perhaps he might have been not the sole player in the conspiracy, if he ever did.

Playing politics as the Army chief

Najam Sethi, the editor of Daily Times sharply rebukes General Beg for his past misadventures into the domain of politics in a recent editorial. He asks the former general to apologize for warning the then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto off a large area of internal and external policy in 1988. He has also got to apologize to the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for violating an agreed foreign policy decision to send Pakistani troops to Saudi Arabia when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.

In the same article Sethi contents that General Aslam Beg has to also "apologise for bringing the Supreme Court in contempt when he admitted that he had influenced the chief justice. When confronted with challenging a general, the Supreme Court under Justice Muhammad Afzal Zullah forgivably got cold feet and let General Beg go Scot free."

Post-Army Career

Founding FRIENDS think-tank

After retirement General Beg founded a policy think-tank called Friends and the non-political Awami Qaiyadat Party (National Leadership Party) and continued to be a powerful part of Pakistan's ruling oligarchs. He also gave many interviews and appeared on some respectable channels posing as the political and military analyst, most recent being the appearance on PBS FRONTLINE/World's "Pakistan: On a Razor's Edge."

Solidarity with Osama bin Laden

According to Zahid Hussain, in his book Frontline Pakistan, General (retd) Mirza Beg and former ISI chief Lt. Gen. (retd) Hamid Gul were part of the 9 January, 2001 Darul Uloom Haqqania Islamic conference held near Peshawar, which was also attended by 300 leaders representing various radical Islamic groups. In the meeting, they declared it a religious duty of Muslims all over the world to protect the Taliban government, and the Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden it was hosting, whom they considered as a 'great Muslim warrior.'

Relations with President Musharraf

President General Pervez Musharraf served under both Beg and Gul, and apparently had high respect for them, but after September 11, 2001, they gradually drifted apart. Their differences surfaced for the first time when in a press conference Musharraf spoke about the negative role of a few generals and called them "pseudo-intellectuals."

Later in January 2008, General Aslam Beg being part of Pakistan Ex-Servicemen Society urged President Musharraf to voluntarily step down in the greater interests of Pakistan.

External links

• Official profile at Pakistan Army website

Bibliography

• Zahid Hussain. Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam, New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.