Syed Shahid Hamid

Syed Shahid Hamid ( Urdu سید شاہد حامد) ( September 17, 1910 in Lucknow - March 12, 1993 in Rawalpindi) was a major general in the Pakistani Army and the first director of Inter-Services Intelligence , the secret service of the Pakistani armed forces.

Life

Hamid attended Colvin Taluqdars' College in Lucknow, Aligarh Muslim University and then the Royal Military College . He was commissioned in 1933 with the Guides Cavalry . During World War II he served on the Burmese front (see Burma Campaign ) and as an instructor at the Command and Staff College in Quetta . In 1947 he became the private secretary of the last Commander in Chief of the British - Indian Army , Claude Auchinleck . At the partition of India he held the rank of lieutenant colonel and opted for Pakistan. Immediately after the division of the subcontinent, with the help of friends and family, he founded the military intelligence service Inter-Services Intelligence, which initially only had a small office in Karachi . Still, he was relatively successful in pursuing his goal of counter-espionage against India . He was replaced as head of the ISI in 1950, but was promoted to the youngest general in the Pakistani army in 1951. He retired in 1964 and then worked as a businessman. In 1978, President Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq , who had come to power through a coup d'état (see Operation Fair Play ) , brought him into his cabinet for another three years.

He married Tahira Butt in 1940; the couple had two sons and two daughters. He wrote numerous books, in particular on the partition of India, which he followed from the center of power as private secretary Claude Auchinlecks, and on the northern regions of Pakistan, today's Gilgit-Baltistan . He died on March 12, 1993 in Rawalpindi .

Sources and web links

1. ↑ Obituary: Maj-Gen Syed Shahid Hamid , Ahmed Rashid, The Independent, March 15, 1993 (English).
2. ↑ Who Controls Pakistan's Security Forces? , Shuja Nawaz, United States Institute for Peace, Special Report 297, December 2011.