SPY EYES

Lieutenant General Khalid Rabbani would assume the charge of Corps Commander Peshawar following the scheduled retirement of incumbent corps commander earlier next month, it is learnt.

The Corps Commander Peshawar Lieutenant General Asif Yasin is due to retire on December 3, 2011, according to sources. Lieutenant General Khalid Rabbani is presently the Commandant Command and Staff College Quetta.

An internal announcement to this effect has reportedly been made within the relevant ranks in the senior hierarchy of Pakistan Army but the Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani would officially declare Rabbani as new corps commander on December 3.

Lieutenant General Asif Yasin Malik is last in the line of Pakistan Armys’ lieutenant generals who have reached superannuation this year. As many as seven lieutenant generals have been retired from the military in the ongoing year that has seen the elevation of some eight senior army officers from major generals to lieutenant generals and that of 19 brigadiers to major generals.

The seven retired lieutenant generals include Javed Zia, Shujaat Zamir, Tahir Mehmood, Naeem Khalid Lodhi, Nadeem Taj, Mohsin Kamal and Jamil Haider.

In addition, Lt-Gen Malik would be the third corps commander to have stood retired this year after the retirements of Corps Commander Bahawalpur Naeem Lodhi and that of Gujranwala, Jamil Haider. The eight major generals that were given promotions by General Kayani this year include Ahsan Iqbal, Javed Iqbal, Asif Sajjad, Abid Pervaiz, Ijaz Chaudhry, Nasir Janjua, Tariq Nadeem Gilani and Naveed Zaman. Some other significant military organisational developments that took place in the ongoing year include one-year extension given to Director General Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt-Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha and appointment of Major General Ashfaq Nadeem as DG Military Operations (MO).

Lt-Gen Asif took over as Corps Commander Peshawar on April 10, 2010. As operational chief of Pakistan Army in the North Western region, he directly supervised military offensives launched in tribal agencies including Mohmand, South Waziristan, Bajaur and Kurram agencies besides Chitral, Upper and Lower Dir.

The ongoing military offensive in Khyber Agency’s Bara town and search operations in North Waziristan are also conducted under his direct command. Nearly 2000 families were displaced and moved to the Jalozai Camp in Nowshera after Frontier Corps, a paramilitary wing of Pakistan Army launched Bara operation last month. The operation coincided with that of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Afghanistan’s Paktia, Paktika, Khost, Nuristan and Kunar provinces. These operations predominantly focus on averting cross-border incursions from both the sides.

The arrival of a new corps commander amid the ongoing military offensive is seen as being not without challenges. Recently, General Kayani and the US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief General James Mattis were reported to have decided to continue military cooperation and fixing mutual responsibility for averting cross-border incursions.

This implies that the military offensives would continue till the desired targets are achieved, thus bringing in a plethora of challenges for the new corps commander Peshawar.

According to military sources, the repatriation of displaced families at Jalozai Camp before the recently passed Eid-ul-Azha was on the cards but the plan was postponed following fresh attacks on security agencies in Khyber Agency and adjoining areas resulting in several causalities. Assistant Political Agent Bara Rehan Gul Khattak confirmed this piece of information saying that the repatriation would be carried out once the region was fully cleared of miscreants. “It might take another few weeks. We don’t want to take any risk,” he told TheNation.