An officer and a gentleman

Remembering Sahabzada Yaqub Khan

Sahabzada Yaqub Khan, perhaps one of the most accomplished diplomat, general and iconic legend of his era, breathed his last on January 26, 2016, at the ripe age of 95. Born into royalty, his father Sahabzada Sir Abdus Samad Khan Bahadur, a statesman and diplomat, served as Prime Minister of the princely state of Rampur and British India’s representative to the League of Nations. Having been educated at Prince of Wales Royal Indian Military College, Dehradun, Yaqub was commissioned on 22 December, 1940, and attached to the elite 18^th King Edward’s Own Cavalry, part of 3^rd Indian Motor Brigade. He served in North Africa during World War II with the British Indian Army, taking part in the Siege of Tobruk.

On May 27, 1942, Lieutenant Yaqub Khan was taken prisoner of war by the Italians. During captivity, Yaqub Khan learnt to speak fluent Italian, a feat which would hold him in good stead when he managed to escape from the POW camp and later in his diplomatic life. Unfortunately, before he could reach Allied Lines, Yaqub Khan was captured by the Germans. His compatriots in the POW camp were Captains Yahya Khan and Tikka Khan; their fates were intertwined and would later play out in East Pakistan but that comes later.

After spending the next three years in an Axis POW camp, where Yaqub Khan also learnt to speak fluent German, he was repatriated at the end of the war. In 1947, Major Sahabzada Yaqub Khan opted to join Pakistan Army, while his elder brother Major Yunus Khan opted to remain in the Indian Army. It is a quirk of fate that both brothers faced each other on opposing sides in the Kashmir War of 1947-48.

Sahabzada Yaqub Khan was a thinking general and tried to inculcate the habits of reading and writing in Pakistan Army. As commandant of the illustrious Command and Staff College, Quetta, he revamped the entire syllabus as well as the system of war games to introduce realism and practicality. Later, he was instrumental in establishing the National Defence College, now the National Defence University, instituted to develop the art of thinking, planning and executing strategy in future commanders of the armed forces as well as the bureaucracy.

In 1971, General Yahya Khan, the Army Chief and President, sent Yaqub Khan to East Pakistan, where he was Commander Eastern Command and later Governor. Yaqub Khan learnt fluent Bengali and endeared himself to the East Pakistanis in those turbulent times because he would address them in their native Bengali language. As military commander of the Eastern Front, Yaqub Khan recommended strategic placement of the forces to defend against an attack by India and strongly advocated against the alienation of the Bengalis. Yahya Khan instead ordered Yaqub Khan to quell the insurgency in East Pakistan with brute force. Because he was a man of principles, Sahabzada Yaqub Khan refused, rendered his resignation and was relieved of his command to be succeeded by General Tikka Khan whose brutality still brings shudders to those who witnessed it. Reduced in rank, his character being assassinated, Sahabzada Yaqub Khan bore the vicissitude in grace and patience.

Fate had more glories for him in store. The perceptive foreign policy expert, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, recognising the diplomatic skills and true mettle of Sahabzada Yaqub Khan, offered him to embark upon a career as a diplomat. The general gracefully accepted and discharged his duties with such diligence and skill that he achieved international fame. Yaqub Khan served as Ambassador to France, the United States and Soviet Union from 1972 to 1982. While posted in US, he also played a major role in the resolution of the 1977 Hanafi Siege in Washington, DC, On March 9-11, 1977, when three buildings in Washington, DC, were seized by 12 Muslim gunmen, led by Hamas Abdul Khaalis, who had broken from the Nation of Islam because he blamed them for murder. They took 149 hostages and killed a radio journalist. According to Time magazine of March 21, 1977, after a 39-hour standoff, owing to the courageous intervention and negotiation skills of three ambassadors, Pakistan’s Sahabzada Yaqub Khan, Egypt’s Ashraf Ghorbal and Iran’s Ardeshir Zahedi, the gunmen surrendered and all remaining hostages were released from the three buildings.

He was held in such high esteem that S Abbas Raza, a close friend of Yaqub Khan’s son Samad Khan, in his column ‘Monday’s musings’ in 3QuarksDaily, June 27, 2005, quotes from a letter written by US President Nixon to Yaqub Khan: “It was a pleasure meeting you and spending some time talking to you. Alexander Haig had told me that you are probably the most astute geopolitical thinker alive today. Having met you, I believe this was an understatement.”

This scribe’s first meeting with him was in 1978 when he was serving as Pakistan’s ambassador to US and was visiting Islamabad. Air Headquarters was then located at Peshawar and the Air Chief wanted to send a confidential note to be personally delivered to the general. I was the Duty Officer of the day and the task was entrusted to me. On a wet monsoon evening, I located him, rang the bell of General Raza, then Foreign Secretary, at whose residence he was staying, and was ushered in. Being in uniform, I saluted the general and handed over the letter. Instead of brushing me off, he seated me, offered a very welcome hot cup of coffee, read the letter, smiled and said to tell the Air Chief the needful would be pursued. Perhaps the letter pertained to Air Chief Marshal Anwar Shamim’s quest for acquiring F-16s from the US.

Beyond 1982, Sahabzada Yaqub Khan served as an indispensible Foreign Minister under Pakistan’s seven different regimes. His command over ten different languages, gave him an advantageous edge over his contemporaries. He played a central role in the UN-sanctioned negotiations to end the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, and also took part to end the civil war in Nicaragua. From 1992 until 1997, Yaqub Khan was the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Representative for the Western Sahara. Sahabzada Yaqub Khan is the founding chairman of the Aga Khan University Board of Trustees, which he chaired for almost two decades until his retirement in 2001. He was a commissioner in the now retired Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict.

I continued meeting Sahabzada Yaqub Khan after his retirement and his musings on literature, philosophy and current affairs would continue to amaze me, and I would listen to him spellbound. With his demise ends an iconic legend. Rest in peace, mon général!