Iftikhar Khan

Muhammad Iftikhar Khan
Major General Mohammad Iftikhar Khan's official portray
Allegiance	Pakistan
Service/branch	Pakistan Army British India
Years of service	1920–1949
Rank	Major General
Battles/wars	Indo-Pakistani War of 1947

Major General Muhammed Iftikhar Khan was an officer inherited by the Pakistan Army from British India. He had been nominated to become the first local Commander in Chief (C-in-C) of the Pakistan Army after General Douglas David Gracey's retirement. However, his death in a tragic plane crash in 1949 was a disaster for the newly formed country.

Hassan Abbas, in his book, “Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism”, in Chapter 2, page 26, describes a watershed incident that occurred in 1949 that had “a huge impact on the military and political history of Pakistan, but is often ignored by historians”. The incident reported was the plane crash at Jungshahi which had on board the designated next Commander-in-Chief of Pakistan, Major General Iftikhar Khan. According to Major General Sher Ali, the history of Pakistan would have been different if Major General Iftikhar Khan had become C-in-C of the Pakistan Army, because he would never have allowed the army to be used for political purposes and would never have used his position as a doorway to political power.

References

• The army officer corps and Military modernisation in later colonial India by Pradeep Barua.
• Nationalisation of the Indian army by Lt Col. Gautam Sharma.

External links

• The Quaid: Pakistan’s Tom Paine or Thomas Jefferson? By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry [1]