Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, November 26
The appointment of Lt Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa as the next Pakistan army chief to replace Gen Raheel Sharif has kicked up social media traffic, with speculation in some quarters that his family may have old ties with the Sikh Bajwa families in India.
While many Indians bearing the Bajwa surname and those who are members of “Bajwa” groups on the social media have been receiving congratulatory messages, some of them have clarified that people bearing the Bajwa surname on both sides of the border originally come from the same clan, from the Sialkot-Narowal belt.
All were originally Hindus before they conversion to Sikhism or Islam began a few hundred years ago. Some Pakistani Bajwa families also claim that they converted from Sikhism. In fact, majority of the Sikh Bajwa families migrated to India after Partition and some of them who chose to stay back in Pakistan are said to have converted to Islam later. There are several surnames common to Sikhs and Muslims.
Though little is publicly known about the ancestry of Gen Bajwa, he is said to be a Jat belonging to the Punjabi Muslim stock. This also has a coincidence with
Nawaz Sharif’s choices for new Pakistan Army Chief: Who are in the race, and why
“Sources close to the civilian Sharif are saying the PM has already decided the name in consultation with his younger brother and Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif and his close aide Home Minister Chaudhary Nisar. These men are his only advisers when it comes to matters regarding the military,” she says.
In a country that has been ruled by the Army for more than half its life, the buzz around the announcement is understandable. In any case, with the experience of having chosen five Chiefs as Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif is more suited than anyone else to take the call.
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Besides the Army Chief, PM Sharif has to pick another top general for the Pakistan military on the same day. The post of Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) also falls vacant on November Theoretically, the CJCSC is the seniormost four-star officer of the Pakistani military. The post is ceremonial — but the incumbent has a say in the deployment and use of nuclear weapons. The Army thus wants to keep the post with itself, and it is not expected that a general who is significantly j
Opinion Raja Mandala: Sharif versus Sharif
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It is not clear if General Sharif is leaving unconditionally or a deal has been struck between the army chief and the PM in which the latter had to give some to make sure General Sharif walks out of the door. We are also not sure if General Sharif is fading away into real retirement or might have some rewards awaiting him.
A year ago, General Sharif grandly announced that he is not seeking an extension of his term at the end of November. That won him many kudos among those in the West who propagated the idea that he was a no-nonsense professional soldier — not interested in politics but only in promoting the interests of Pakistan. But then they said it about all of General Sharif’s recent predecessors, including Pervez Musharraf and Ashfaq Kayani. Musharraf stayed in power for nearly a decade and it took much pressure from Washington to make him shed the uniform in Kayani stuck around and got a second term of three years under President Asif Ali Zardari in
That General Sharif was not really keen to step down was evident in the mysterious public campaign demanding his extension. For cynics,
While driving towards Kunjah, about 10 kilometres to the west of Gujrat city, it is difficult to miss the change in scale; towns and villages, roads, shops and tea stalls, everything looks smaller than it does on the Grand Trunk Road that links Gujrat with Rawalpindi, to the north, and Lahore to the south. Within Kunjah, the scale shifts again — from small to narrow: bazaars are narrow, streets even narrower. It is hard to imagine that this is the native town of Raheel Sharif, arguably the most important, most powerful person in Pakistan.
In this old town of about 50, people, a labyrinth of narrow lanes leads to a blind alley where a dilapidated two-storey locked house wears the same aura of mystery that all empty spaces acquire after their occupants have left long ago. This is where Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif’s grandfather, Mehtabud Din, lived — as did the general’s father, Major Muhammad Sharif. It was also in this house that his elder brother Shabbir Sharif was born and raised until he joined the Pakistan Army in the early s.
During the war with India, Shabbir Sharif was posted near Okara as a major. He died fighting there and won the highest military award
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