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Chief of Army Staff | General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

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a move we must grudgingly, yet open heartedly accept.

desperate times call for such measures; it was an honourable decision on his part, as many of our comrades are in dire need of assistance


I wonder what steps are being taken by the democratically selected government in order to promote fiscal austerity and re-routing of badly needed resources?
 
Terror Sanctuaries Harboured in Afghanistan‏: General Kayani
August 12, 2010

Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has called for adequate steps to purge Afghanistan of the terrorists’ havens.

General Kayani made this demand during the daylong 31st meeting of the Tripartite Commission held in Kabul on August 9.

“Such a demand from the Pakistan Army has come for the first time since inception of the Commission comprising USA-led ISAF, Afghanistan and Pakistan,” well-placed sources privy to the meeting informed TheNation on Wednesday.

According to the informed sources, General Kayani emphasised the need for elimination of safe sanctuaries being used by the terrorist groups inside Afghanistan.

Sources said General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Chief of Army Staff, General David H Petreaus, Commander International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and General Sher Muhammad Kirmi, Chief of General Staff of Afghan National Army, who headed the respective delegations, attended the meeting.

Sources were of the view that General Kayani called upon the allied commanders of ISAF and ANA for elimination of the terrorists’ hideouts on Afghan soil, as they were equally creating problems for Pakistan through illegal border crossing.

Sources said that General Kayani regretted that despite massive resources both in terms of men and material ISAF and ANA had failed to curb illegal border crossing and infiltration of militants into Pakistan.

He also pointed out the measures taken by the Pakistan Army on the Pak-Afghan border to curb the illegal border crossing, but he was disappointed over the lack of adequate security checkpoint on the Afghan side of the border.

General Kayani, the informed sources said, also expressed his disappointment over the Western media’s allegations about existence of the terrorists’ sanctuaries in Pakistani territory bordering Afghanistan.

He had also taken serious exception to the baseless criticism against the ISI by the so-called independent Western media, and brushed aside the unfounded and baseless allegations against Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency.

The meeting agreed to further enhance coordination to improve the security on Pak-Afghan border.

Kayani gets tough over terrorist havens in Afghanistan | Pakistan | News | Newspaper | Daily | English | Online
 
For the Armed Forces, this calamity is no less than a war being waged on Pakistan. There is a real concern on the impact of these floods on the country from an economic, social and security perspective thus the Army is really in full gear. Although I agree with the gist of Farzana Shaikh's points, my thought is that the Army is not doing this to score political points over the PPP or any other political party. This reaction is an ingrained one within the Army as the guarantor of Pakistan's security and the need for it to play a key role in any disaster like situations. Due to the flooding, the Armed Forces have also registered damages and losses, yet the concern right now is to help out folks as quickly as possible and rehabilitate them before the impact of this massive and continued exodus is felt across the country.

As a Pakistani, my sole request is for all the Pakistani members to make dua and then help out monetarily and materially, as much as possible. There could not be a better calling in the month of Ramzan than this.
 
General Kayani chairs special Corps Commanders’ Conference to review flood situation

RAWALPINDI, August 12 (APP): A special Corps Commanders’ Conference was held today at General Headquarters to review flood situation in the Country and ongoing relief and rescue activities by the Army. Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani chaired the meeting.

Participants took comprehensive overview of the flood situation and ongoing relief and rescue operations by the Army. The COAS expressed deep sorrow over loss of precious lives and damages caused to private property and public infrastructure by the unprecedented floods. He directed the formations to continue reaching out to the marooned people and emphasized that the dearth of resources must be overcome through personal sacrifices and smart management. He announced that Army functions on 14th August and 6th September will not be held this year and savings thus accrued will be utilized for relief activities.

The Army Chief appreciated the assiduous efforts of all field formations and Army Aviation in-particular. He stated that Army will continue to work round the clock and at full capacity to assist the civil administration and National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in providing relief to the affected countrymen. He expressed his full faith and commitment that through a joint National effort, Pakistan will successfully surmount this challenge.
 
Pakistani Army Chief Grapples With Monumental Challenges

August 13, 2010
By Abubakar Siddique

As the people of Pakistan struggle to overcome a calamity of massive proportions, one man has emerged to inspire confidence in the country's flood-recovery efforts: top military commander General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

Kayani has taken the lead since unrelenting monsoon rains brought on a natural disaster that has so far left 1,600 dead, 2 million homeless, and disrupted the lives of up to 18 million more. Images of Kayani helicoptering around Pakistan taking stock of the tragedy provided a stark contrast to those of President Asif Ali Zardari helicoptering to his chateau in France as floodwaters swelled, adding to the perception that the civilian government was failing its people.

Despite his role as chief of the world's largest Muslim army, however, little is known about the 58-year-old, chain-smoking general.

Quick Starter


Admirers describe Kayani as a man of few words who has largely remained in the shadows even as he has risen quickly through the ranks -- from second lieutenant (or junior commissioned officer), to head of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), to General Pervez Musharraf's successor as the country's top military man.
Septuagenarian General Talat Masood, who served in the army for nearly four decades and is now an influential analyst, says Kayani is perhaps the best military chief in the nation's checkered 63-year history.

Over that time, four military dictators trampled elected governments and ruled the country for more than three decades. Masood, who has been consulted by Kayani at times, sees key differences in the approach used by this military commander.

"He does a lot of reflection and intellectually he is very profound," Masood says. "I think he goes at the best of the problem and has a much better understanding of the world and the region as a whole. And I would say that his understanding of national affairs, in comparison to his predecessors, and of the regional affairs is far more pragmatic and [he] has a greater depth in his understanding."

The son of a military man, Kayani enjoys a reputation as a "soldier's soldier" who garners the respect of his troops and Western contemporaries alike. A father of two, he was born in Gujjar Khan, a region close to the military headquarters near Islamabad that is known for providing generals and "jawans" (soldiers) to the military. During various stages of his nearly four-decade military career, Kayani attended training in some of the finest U.S. military institutions, and is considered a good listener with a keen understanding of his surroundings whether in the political arena or on the battlefield.
Upon taking over from military dictator Musharraf in November 2007, he set about modernizing and overhauling a military force deeply entangled in national politics and regional rivalries.

His performance was impressive enough to lead Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to hand him an unprecedented three-year extension earlier this year, keeping him in his post until 2013.

His continued presence is generally seen as a good omen for stability and democracy in Pakistan. His recent success in delivering aid and rescuing people in remote regions has led some to speculate about whether his leadership might be an improvement over the current government. At a minimum, analysts say, his success will further cement the military's traditional hold on politics.

Kayani, who saw treacherous Pakistani politics up close as late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's deputy military secretary in her first government in 1988, has since taken pains to distance himself from politics. In 2008, for example, he oversaw what were widely regarded as fair national elections after which he ordered subordinates to break off all contacts with politicians. Since then, the military has refrained from micromanaging domestic politics or policy making, choosing to step in only when its own interests are at stake.

Complex Juggling Act

Kayani's main strategic focus since taking command has been the complex Al-Qaeda-inspired Islamist insurgency, a daunting task that led him to take the popular step of ordering all military officers back from their civilian administrative jobs to ready for the battlefield.

He has taken the fight to the insurgents, launching large-scale military operations in the Pashtun northwest. But those maneuvers have also led to retaliation, with militants increasingly targeting the central Punjabi heartland where some militants' networks are deeply entrenched. Meanwhile, a separate secessionist Baluchi insurgency lurks as a less violent but nonetheless major domestic threat.

Even as he has enjoyed success overseeing flood-recovery efforts, the escalating crisis threatens to derail Kayani's plans to build up Pakistani security forces in areas where the military only recently gained toeholds. The northwestern Swat district and parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where 150,000 soldiers conducted successful military operations in 2009, have been severely battered by floods. Anger against the civilian government's inept response is high, leading to concerns that insurgents could capitalize and emerge even stronger.

Across Pakistan's eastern border lies a much bigger nuclear-armed military threat, making India a major focus for Kayani. To the west, his relationship with allies is complicated. Western leaders periodically express concerns about Islamabad's perceived support for the Afghan Taliban and question Pakistan's reluctance to go after India-centric Islamist militant groups instrumental in a two-decade old insurgency in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

Haider Mullick, a fellow at the U.S. Joint Special Operations University, cites the immense challenges that lie before Kayani.

"[Kayani must] come up with a new relationship with India [while] at the same time balancing the relationship with China and the United States and being able to achieve [Pakistani] national security objectives inside Afghanistan -- that is, an Afghanistan that is not perceived to be pro-India and at the same time is not harboring Al-Qaeda," Mullick says. "But everything between that is very gray and it remains to be seen. He has some things that are working for him and other things that are not, and there are serious grave challenges and also great opportunities for him to change the security calculus of that region and his own army."

Mullick, who recently made several trips to Pakistan to study counterinsurgency under Kayani's leadership, describes him as an "innovative revolutionary" who inspires confidence in his ranks.

Kayani's Way

Such confidence appears to derive from his steely commitment to doing things on his own terms while keeping the focus on duty by maintaining separation between the government and military.

He has pulled off tricky juggling acts of interests that could prove to be the downfall of others in his position. For example, Mullick says, Kayani has managed to push out those in his intelligence services who were not on board in the war against the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (Movement of the Pakistani Taliban) and Al-Qaeda.

Kayani has also proven to be an adept navigator in his dealings with the United States, which, as former U.S. diplomat in Islamabad Larry Robinson explains, are no easy task.

"There is the suspicion of anything Pakistan does and certainly anything Pakistan army does on the part of most Afghans and many Americans," Robinson says. "And then the claims within Pakistan that all this fighting is unnecessary and is only done at the behest of those same Afghans and the Americans who are completely ungrateful for Pakistan's sacrifices. I don't think you get much more challenging than that."

But at the risk of being seen as being too cozy with Washington, Kayani's relationships with U.S. military leaders Admiral Mike Mullen and General David Petraeus have provided him with a steady supply of much-needed training and equipment.

While accepting the challenge thrown down by the United States to root militants out of their long-standing safe havens in Pakistan's northwest, Kayani has stubbornly resisted moving into the country's most dangerous militant hotbeds, such as the western North Waziristan tribal district on the Afghan border, considered the regional headquarters of Pakistani, Afghan, Central Asian, and Al-Qaeda militants.

And although he has been open to discussion with outsiders, he has by no means been overeager.

Even as his relationship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai has flowered, for instance, they differ on reconciliation with Pakistan-based Afghan insurgent networks. And while many in Kabul and Washington oppose power-sharing with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani -- two hard-line Afghan Islamist leaders -- Kayani has made clear that Islamabad would not mind seeing the two in a post-reconciliation Afghan government.

Domestically, he has resisted calls by some Pakistanis who want him to move against Al-Qaeda-allied sectarian militias targeting his Punjabi home base, from where most of his officers and soldiers are recruited.

Mullick suggests that Kayani has promised "piecemeal" operations against all militants, but that his priority is to concentrate his efforts on those who jeopardize Pakistani security.

Political Minefield

In times of high uncertainty, Kayani potentially faces another minefield -- Pakistani politics. Hamid Hussain, a New York-based analyst of Pakistani security affairs, says that Kayani might be dragged into domestic politics.

A confrontation between the increasingly assertive Pakistani Supreme Court and coalition civilian administration looms after the court scrapped Pervez Musharraf's political amnesty in 2007, causing major embarrassment to the government and led to the reopening of many corruption cases against ministers. Zardari to this point has been spared intense scrutiny into alleged corruption due to presidential immunity.

Hussain says an open confrontation between the two state institutions would almost certainly push Kayani, as leader of the most powerful institution in the country, to intervene.

"If the Supreme Court decided to go after the president and if a crisis occurs then he may have to come in," Hussain says. "And depending on his own inclination, whether he sides with the judiciary to let the president get out of that place, that's the only crisis I potentially see. [One] in which, he has to come in and arbitrate with different players."

Already, Kayani's behind-the-scenes maneuvers have been credited with the reinstatement in 2009 of current Pakistan Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who was twice sacked by Musharraf.

Given the military's tremendous clout, its disagreements with the civilian leaders are not inevitable. An example is a less pronounced disagreement over the way forward in the FATA, which currently is the biggest theater for Pakistani military. In August 2009, Pakistani President Zardari announced reforms of its century-old, British colonial-era legal and administrative regime. But the military vetoed the announcement, according to senior politicians who see Kayani as loyal to the army's political interests.

The current desperate humanitarian crisis at home might prompt calls for a more direct political role for the military. In that light, Kayani's biggest challenge yet could prove to be continuing to buck tradition by supporting the civilian government and ensuring that the political system remains on course.

With a clean break from the legacies of his predecessors, Kayani's military brilliance could serve Pakistan well as it continues down a path of democracy.

Pakistani Army Chief Grapples With Monumental Challenges - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty 2010
 
Kayani is a powerful political factor in Pak: US

Pakistan's Army Chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani is a powerful political factor in his country, Obama Administration's point man for Afghanistan and Pakistan has said.

"He (Kayani) is an enormously powerful political factor in the country. And we have extensive discussions with him," Special US Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke told the popular Charlie Rose Show in an interview.

"General Kayani, first of all, he's a very powerful person and a very important fact never this equation," he said. "He was head of the ISI. He also went to Fort Leavenworth Command and Control College and is proud to say he is a member of the Fort Leavenworth Hall of Fame (in Kansas).

Among general officers I've known, he's a remarkable strategic thinker. He's very smart," Holbrooke said in response to a question.

Kayani is a powerful political factor in Pak: US | Pakistan | News | Newspaper | Daily | English | Online
 
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Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Tariq Majid alongwith other senior Army officers offering Namaz-e-Jinaza of Major General Asif Nawaz today at Chaklala Rawalpindi (15-8-2010) – Photo ISPR
 
Army Chief calls on President

ISLAMABAD, Aug 16 (APP): Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani called on President Asif Ali Zardari here on Monday and discussed matters relating to security situation in the country.

The meeting held at Aiwan-e-Sadr, the activities of Pak Army regarding relief and rescue operations in the flood-affected areas were also discussed.
 
No PR330/2010-ISPR
Rawalpindi - August 16, 2010:

H.E Mr Babur Hizlan, Ambassador of Republic of Turkey called on Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani at General Headquarters today.

The visiting dignitary remained with him for some time and discussed the matters of mutual interest.


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Mr Babur Hizlan, Ambassador of Republic of Turkey called on Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani at General Headquarters on Monday.
 
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Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani called on President Asif Ali Zardari at Aiwan-e-Sadr.
 
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Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Tariq Majid alongwith other senior Army officers offering Namaz-e-Jinaza of Major General Asif Nawaz today at Chaklala Rawalpindi (15-8-2010) – Photo ISPR

what happened here! pardon my ignorance!
 
General Kayani visits Balochistan’s flood affect areas

QUETTA , Aug 17 (APP): Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Pervaiz Kyani on Tuesday visited flood affected areas of Balochistan.

He visited Army Medical Camps and also met flood victims in Dera Murad Jamali. He also conducted aerial inspection of the flood affected areas. He noted that Army would continue playing its role for its flood affected brothers and sisters.

He also discussed flood related problems with former prime minister Mir Zafrullah Khan Jamali and Balochistan minister for works and communication Mir Sadiq Umrani.

Senior Army officials were also present on this occasion.
 
No PR333/2010-ISPR
Rawalpindi - August 17, 2010:

Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani visited the flood affected areas of Balochistan, Southern Punjab and Sindh today, to monitor the flood situation and relief efforts by the Army.

COAS flew over the flood affected areas and visited relief camps established at Multan, Dera Murad Jamali and Dadu, and witnessed relief activity. He appreciated the rescue and relief operations being conducted by the Army troops by reaching out to the people in affected areas.

COAS urged the Army formations to assist Civil Administration and utilize available resources in the best possible way by decentralized execution of the relief effort. COAS directed to send over hundred additional doctors, including the Final Year students of Army Medical College, beside additional Nursing Staff, to augment the medical facilities in flood affected areas. He also directed to ensure adequate preventive measures against the spread of any epidemic in affected areas. He pledged that Army will do everything possible for its affected countrymen in this hour of distress.

COAS also appreciated the support given by friendly countries, especially in term of rescue helicopters.

On the way back, COAS also met Chief Minister of Punjab at Lahore and discussed flood relief operations.
 
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