General Agha Muhammed Yahya Khan

General Agha Muhammed Yahya Khan was a Pakistani military officer and politician who served as the third president of Pakistan from 1969 to 1971. He also served as the commander-in-chief of the Pakistan Army from 1966 to 1971. He was born in Peshawar in 1917 to a wealthy family of landowners. He graduated from the Indian Military Academy and was commissioned to the British Indian Army in 1939. He fought in the Second World War in the Mediterranean theatre against the Axis powers and rose to major military positions in the British infantry division. Following the creation of Pakistan in 1947, he was promoted to several ranks in the Pakistan Army. In 1951, he became the commander-in-chief, succeeding General Douglas Gracey. From 1954 to 1958, he served in the civilian government as Defence and Home Minister and supported president Iskandar Ali Mirza's decision to impose martial law against prime minister Feroze Khan's administration on 7 October 1958. Soon after, Yahya had himself declared president, and Mirza was exiled. Yahya reorganized the administration and acted to restore the economy through agrarian reforms and stimulation of industry. Foreign investment was also encouraged. Yahya introduced the system of "basic democracies" in 1960. It consisted of a network of local self-governing bodies to provide a link between the government and the people. A national referendum among all those elected confirmed Yahya as president. He was reelected under this system in 1965, against a strong challenge from an opposition united behind Fatima Jinnah, the sister of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. When the United States began to rearm India after China's invasion of northern India in 1962, Yahya established close relations with China and received substantial military aid from it. In the meantime, Pakistan's dispute with India over Jammu and Kashmir worsened, culminating in the outbreak of war in 1965. After the Tashkent Declaration ended hostilities, he fell out with Khan and was sacked from government, and in December 1967 he founded the PPP. Bhutto denounced the Yahya Khan regime as a dictatorship and was subsequently imprisoned (1968–69). After the overthrow of the Ayub Khan regime by Gen. Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, national elections were held in 1970. Although Bhutto and his party won a sweeping electoral victory in West Pakistan, the biggest election winner was the Awami League, an East Pakistan-based party that had campaigned for full autonomy for East Pakistan. Bhutto refused to form a government with this separatist party, causing a nullification of the election. The widespread rioting that followed degenerated into civil war, after which East Pakistan, with the help of India, emerged as the independent state of Bangladesh. Yahya resigned from his office in 1971 and was replaced by his foreign minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who put him under house arrest. He died of heart failure in 1980. [1]