General Asim Munir, who is currently the Chief of Army Staff in Pakistan, has been made a Field Marshal, the nation’s top military rank. With his recent rise to become the chief of the army, Munir is now only the second person to hold the prestigious rank in Pakistan, since Field Marshal Muhammad Ayub Khan.
Munir’s post has been filled at a tense time between India and Pakistan, just days after a terror attack on April 22 in Pahalgam left 26 people dead. India’s answer to the attack was the powerful Operation Sindoor, which made relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors even more uncertain.
Its rarity and its interesting historical background have aroused public attention. Only one other person, Ayub Khan, was made Field Marshal in Pakistan. When political instability and corruption were growing in October 1958, President Iskander Mirza imposed martial law and chose General Ayub Khan to be Chief Martial Law Administrator in order to stop chaos.
Only twenty days later, Ayub Khan organized a coup against the president, which caused Mirza to step down and then go into exile. After Ayub Khan took over as President, he declared himself Pakistan’s first Field Marshal a year later in 1959. The introduction of military takeovers into the country’s story started during his rule. Khan ruled the country for 11 years, but his popularity suffered in the years after the 1965 Indo-Pak war. By the end of the 1960s, vast demonstrations resulted in Lee’s resignation from the government.
Although some see General Asim Munir promotion as purely symbolic, the link to Ayub Khan’s period has caused many to question how much influence Pakistan’s military has on politics, especially with so much unrest currently.
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