Ghulam Jilani Khan

Lieutenant general
Ghulam Jilani Khan
14th Governor of Punjab, Pakistan
In office
1 May 1980 – 30 December 1985
President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq
Preceded by Sawar Khan
Succeeded by Sajjad Hussain Qureshi
Secretary General, Ministry of Defence
In office
6 October 1977 – 4 April 1980
President General Zia-ul-Haq
Preceded by Ghulam Ishaq Khan
Succeeded by Muhammad Riaz
5th Director-General of Inter-Services Intelligence
In office
16 December 1971 – 16 September 1978
Preceded by Akbar Khan
Succeeded by Muhammad Riaz
Personal details
Born Ghulam Jilani Khan, Urdu: غلام جيلانى خان‎
1925
British Indian Empire
Died 1999
Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Nationality  British India
 Pakistan
Children Shaukat Jilani Khan, Usman Jilani Khan, Saulat Jilani Khan, Omer Jilani Khan and Sadia Jilani Khan
Alma mater Indian Military Academy
Occupation Soldier and military administrator
Cabinet Zia military government
Awards Sitara-e-Jurat
Military service
Allegiance  British India
 Pakistan
Service/branch  British Indian Army
 Pakistan Army
Years of service 1944–1985
Rank Lieutenant-General
Unit 10th Baluch Regiment
Military Intelligence Corps
Commands Military Intelligence (MI)
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
Battles/wars Second World War
Indo-Pakistani War of 1965
Indo-Pakistani War of 1971
Other work Founder, Chand Bagh School

Ghulam Jilani Khan (1925–1999), Urdu: غلام جيلانى خان‎, more widely known as Ghulam Jillani, was a three-star lieutenant general officer in the Pakistan Army who served as the fourteenth Governor of Punjab Province and eleventh Defence Secretary of Pakistan in the military government of President General Zia-ul-Haq.

Jilani was a junior officer in the Indian Army and served with distinction in the Second World War, then with the independence of 1947 opted for Pakistan and took a leave of absence to join the fighting in Kashmir as an irregular. He joined the Military Intelligence Directorate and commanded field operations in the 1965 and 1971 wars against India. In 1971 he assumed the directorship of the Directorate-General for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). After six years there, he assisted General Zia in the operation code-named Fair Play to remove Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, subsequently joining Zia's military administration as Secretary General at the Ministry of Defence. In 1980 he was appointed martial law administrator and Governor of the Punjab Province, which he governed until 1985.

In retirement he was the principal Founder of Chand Bagh School.

Early life and military career

Educated at the Doon School, Dehradun,[1] and the Indian Military Academy, Jilani was commissioned into the Indian Army in 1944 in the 2/13 Frontier Force Rifles as an infantry officer.[2] In that role, he served three Pakistani governments, those headed successively by Yahya Khan, Z. A. Bhutto, and Zia-ul-Haq.[3] In 1976, when Tikka Khan retired as Chief of Army Staff, Jilani was the fifth most senior army officer. Tikka Khan considered those in the first, second and fourth positions unsuitable to replace him, so recommended the third most senior officer, Akbar Khan, to Prime Minister and Defence Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. In the event, Bhutto ignored this recommendation and chose instead General Zia-ul-Haq, seventh in the list of seniority. Jilani, who lacked the experience of combat formation command above higher than an infantry Battalion, was thus passed over, but in fact he had lobbied Bhutto to appoint Zia, and Bhutto later wrote that he had been influenced in the matter by General Jilani Khan.[4]

In April 1976, and again in October, Jilani sent reports to Bhutto which recommended the holding of fresh elections sooner rather than later, and Bhutto agreed with this advice.[5] The 1977 general election had been expected in the second half of the year, but on 7 January Bhutto announced that the election would be held on 7 March.[6] When he was later awaiting execution, Bhutto hinted that he might have been trapped in a conspiracy.[5]

Public life

In October 1977, a few months after Zia-ul-Haq's "Operation Fair Play" coup d'état had removed Bhutto and his government from office, with Zia himself becoming Chief Martial Law Administrator, Jilani joined Zia's government as Secretary General at the Ministry of Defence.[7] In February 1979, he led a Military Goodwill Delegation to the People's Republic of China, where he had discussions with Chairman Hua Guofeng and Vice Premier Li Xiannian.[8][9] Jilani remained at the Ministry of Defence until 1 May 1980, when he was appointed to succeed General Sawar Khan as Governor of the Punjab Province,[7] a powerful post which he retained until the end of the Military administration in December 1985.[10]

Unlike Zia-ul-Haq, Jilani was not particularly pietistic in his private life.[11] In political life, he became well known for his conviction that most of Pakistan's political troubles were due to feudal influences, which he was anxious to weaken. He was suspicious of most politicians from rural areas, so he attempted to encourage and promote new urban leaders. Among these was Nawaz Sharif, an industrialist to whom Jilani gave his first political appointment, as Finance Minister in the Punjab provincial government. In 1985 he nominated Sharif as Chief Minister of the Punjab, and Sharif went on to become Prime Minister of Pakistan.[12]

When the Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang visited Pakistan for talks in June 1981 it was Jillani who greeted him at Lahore airport.[13] On 31 July 1981 an express train from Karachi to Peshawar crashed near Bahawalpur with more than thirty dead, and Jilani announced the same day that he suspected sabotage.[14] In 1983 Jilani issued a directive which created the Marghzar College for Women of the University of Gujrat.[15] In January 1984, as Governor of the Punjab, Jilani was concerned by intelligence that refugees from Afghanistan were buying land in Pakistan and gave instructions to his district administrators to prevent such sales.[16] On 30 December 1985 he stood down as Governor of the Punjab, to be succeeded by Makhdoom Muhammad Sajjad Hussain Qureshi.[10]

Retirement

In retirement, Jilani took up the cause of the proposed new independent Chand Bagh School, to be a Pakistani boarding school inspired by his own alma mater, the Doon School.[1] After several years of effort, he succeeded in founding the new school, which opened at Muridke in September 1998.[17]

Jillani occasionally wrote on military subjects, and on 5 June 1999, not long before his death, the newspaper Pakistan published an article under his name which analysed the conflict in Kashmir in terms of the region's strategic roads.[18]

Legacy

Ghulam Jilani Khan is honoured every year at the Chand Bagh School's Founder's Day celebrations. At the ninth such occasion, on 26 February 2011, the main speaker was Yousaf Raza Gillani, Prime Minister of Pakistan, who said

I salute the vision of the School's founder late General Ghulam Jilani Khan, which created opportunities for the deserving students of the less privileged sections to acquire quality education in the school like Chand Bagh.[19]

Jilani's son Major Shaukat Jilani Khan is now the President of the Chand Bagh Foundation,[19] while his nephew Lieutenant-General Zia Ullah Khan eventually followed him as head of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence.[20]

Notes

  1. 1 2 Neena Sharma, Doscos to celebrate 75th anniversary from The Tribune dated 18 October 2010, at tribuneindia.com, Retrieved 24 March 2012: "Old-timers will happily tell you that the school inspired old Doscos from Pakistan to establish a similar school in their country “The Chand Bagh school is inspired by the Doon and was founded by Lt Gen Ghulam Jilani Khan (retd) in 1998 in Lahore,” said Piyush Malviya, Public Relations officer, Doon School."
  2. ↑ Sabir Shah, Lieutenant General Zaheer 18th DG ISI since 1959 dated 10 March 2012, at thenews.com.pk, Retrieved 24 March 2012: "The 17 Pakistan army officials who have headed the ISI to date, are: Brigadier Riaz Hussain (1959 to 1966), Major General (then Brig) Mohammad Akbar Khan (1966 to 1971), Lieutenant General (then Major General) Ghulam Jilani Khan (1971 to 1978)..."
  3. ↑ Ashok Kapur, Pakistan in Crisis (Routledge, 2002), p. 128
  4. ↑ Ḥusain Ḥaqqānī, Pakistan: between Mosque and Military (Carnegie Endowment, 2005), pp. 111, 112
  5. 1 2 Ḥaqqānī (2005), p. 114
  6. ↑ Surendra Nath Kaushik, Pakistan under Bhutto's leadership (1985), p. 259: "Bhutto stated in the National Assembly on January 7, 1977 that general elections in Pakistan would be held on March 7, 1977."
  7. 1 2
  8. ↑ Peter Cheng, Chronology of the People's Republic of China, 1970–1979 (Scarecrow Press, 1986), p. 486
  9. ↑ Beijing Review, vol. 22, no. 7, dated 16 February 1979, p. 142
  10. 1 2 Punjab Assembly, 1988–90 (Punjab Provincial Assembly, 1990), p. 27: "19. Lt. General Ghulam Jilani Khan 1-5-1980 30-12-1985"
  11. ↑ Ḥaqqānī (2005), p. 112
  12. ↑ Aminullah Chaudry, 'The Army in Pakistan's Politics' in Hijacking from the Ground: The Bizarre Story of PK 805 (2009), p. 14
  13. ↑ Daily Report: People's Republic of China, issues 104–114 (United States Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 1981), p. 61
  14. ↑ Hasan Akhtar, 'Sabotage may have caused rail crash which killed 30' in The Times, issue 60995 dated 1 August 1981, p. 5, col. A
  15. ↑ Marghzar College for Women at uog.edu.pk, Retrieved 24 March 2012
  16. ↑ Michael Hamlyn & Hasan Akhtar, Fifth year of Afghan war: Kabul security fails to stop guerrillas in The Times, issue 61729 dated 4 January 1984, p. 5, col. A
  17. ↑ Nauman Tasleem, Punjab govt donates Rs 60m to an elite school from Pakistan Today dated 17 June 2011 online at pakistantoday.com.pk, Retrieved 24 March 2012
  18. ↑ Summary of world broadcasts: Asia, Pacific, issues 3549–3561 (British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring Service, 1999), p. A-4
  19. 1 2 Speech of Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani, Prime Minister of Pakistan, On the occasion of 9th Founder's Day of Chand Bagh School at infopak.gov.pk, accessed 25 March 2012
  20. ↑ Ziauddin Butt at isi.org.pk, accessed 8 April 2012

His nephews name was Lt. GEN(retd) Zia Ullah Khan

Political offices
Preceded by
Sawar Khan		 Governor of Punjab
1 May 1980 - 30 Dec 1985 		Succeeded by
Sajjad Hussain Qureshi
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