Ex-spy master General (r) Hamid Gul passes away in CMH Murree

Lahore: Ex-spy master General (r) Hamid Gul passes away in CMH Murree at the age of 78 years.

Former PM Ch Shujaat Hussain,Deputy PM Ch Pervaiz Elahi,Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif,Dr Tahir ul Qadri,Ch Moonis Elahi, MQM Quaid Altaf Hussain, have expressed deep sense of sorrow and grief over the sad demise of General (R) Hamid Gul.

In a condolence message, they expressed sympathies with the bereaved family and prayed that may Allah Almighty rest the departed soul in eternal peace and grant courage and strength to the members of the bereaved family to bear the irreparable loss with fortitude.

Hamid Gul was born 20 November 1936  to Muhammad Khan in the Sargodha District of Punjab in what was then British India but now Pakistan and passed away on 15 August 2015 .

Hameed gul’s family was originally from Swat,Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and then migrated to Lahore and after a few years they settled in Sargodha.Hameed Gul belongs to Momand tribe of Pashtuns. He got his early education from a school in his village. He briefly got admission in Government College Lahore, before reporting to Pakistan Military Academy Kakul.

Hamid Gul was commissioned in the Pakistan Army in October 1956 with the 18th PMA Long Course in the 19th Lancers regiment of the Armoured Corps. He was a squadron commander during the 1965 war with India. He attended the Command and Staff College Quetta in 1968-69. During 1972–1976, Gul directly served under General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq as a battalion commander, and then as Staff Colonel, when General Zia was GOC, 1st Armoured Division and Commander, II Corps at Multan. Thus, Gul had already cemented his ties with General Zia by serving under him when both were officers in the Armoured regiments of the II Corps. Gul was promoted to Brigadier in 1978 and steadily rose to be the Martial Law Administrator of Bahawalpur and then the Commander of the 1st Armoured Division, Multan in 1982, his appointments expressly wished by Zia himself.

General Hamid Gul had served as former DG ISI, DGMI (Military Intelligence) and President Pakistan Ex-Servicemen Society (PESS).Lieutenant-General (r) Hamid Gul HI, SBt, was a retired high-ranking general officer in the Pakistan Army, and famous for serving as the Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, between 1987 and 1989 during the late stages of and post-stages of the Soviet war in Afghanistan..

Hamid Gul is widely credited for pressing the hard-line policies on India after starting the insurgency in Kashmir against India in 1989 by diverting the Mujahideen who participated in the Soviet war to Indian-held Kashmir. Gul was also instrumental in the establishment of the Taliban and was once known as the “father of the Taliban”. Apart from the Kashmir militancy in India and the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, Gul is also accused by the United States of having ties to Islamic terrorist organisations such as the Al Qaeda.

Gul’s tenure as the director of the ISI coincided with Benazir Bhutto‘s term as the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Later, Gul established the Islamic Democratic Alliance (IDA).

During his tenure as ISI chief in 1988, General Gul successfully gathered right-wing politicians and helped them create Islami Jamhoori Ittehad, a religio-political conservative coalition against the left-leaning liberal Pakistan Peoples Party. He has recently acknowledged this fact in various interviews and for this he was harshly rebuked in one of editorials of a major Pakistani newspaper, which asked the general to apologise first to the PPP for having done the sordid deed and after that, apologising for lack of wits because the IJI could not maintain its two-thirds majority for long.

General Gul worked closely with the CIA during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan when he was the ISI chief. But, he became passionately anti-American after the United States turned its back on Afghanistan following the 1989 Soviet withdrawal, as the United States had promised to help build a prosperous Afghanistan.He was further disconcerted when the USA began punishing Pakistan with economic and military sanctions for its secret nuclear program. General Gul then went on to declare that “the Muslim world must stand united to confront the U.S. in its so-called War on Terrorism, which is in reality a war against Muslims. Let’s destroy America wherever its troops are trapped.”

General Gul personally met Osama Bin Laden in 1993 and refused to label him a terrorist unless and until irrefutable evidence was provided linking him to alleged acts of terrorism.

According to Zahid Hussain, in his book Frontline Pakistan, Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul and former Army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg were part of the 9 January 2001Darul Uloom Haqqania Islamic conference held near Peshawar, which was also attended by 300 leaders representing various Islamic groups. The meeting declared it a religious duty of Muslims all over the world to protect the Taliban government, and the Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden it was hosting, whom they considered as a ‘great Muslim warrior.’ He has since gone on to praise Pakistan for hiding Bin Laden for nine years, in a television interview with Times Now.