Sahibzada Yaqub Khan was appointed commander Eastern Command in the dark and dismal days of 1970, when the Eastern Wing of the country was up in arms and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the uncrowned king of East Pakistan and his Six Point program was the demand of almost every Bengali. Under immense public pressure, the military regime of General Yahya Khan agreed to induct a greater number of Bengali youth into the armed forces. A new battalion of the East Bengal Regiment was raised and the newly appointed Commander of Eastern Command was tasked to present the regimental colours to the new battalion.
Sahibzada Yaqub decided to hold the ceremony not in the military cantonment but in Paltan Maidan in Dhaka. The Awami League workers and diehard Bengali nationalists armed with lathis and other lethal weapons crowded the venue and it was decided that if the General spoke in Urdu or English, they would not allow the ceremony to proceed.
Sahibzada Yaqub drove up in his jeep and walked to the podium. There was pin drop silence and the crowd waited with bated breath for the general to start his speech. Yaqub khan stood at the podium and began his speech in idiomatic classical Bengali! The crowd was stunned and the air was immediately filled with full throated slogans of “Pakistan Jindabad!” This scribe was an eyewitness to this event.
Later on, when the insurgency launched by the Awami League was becoming unmanageable, Yaqub was asked by Yahya Khan to come to the GHQ and brief the army high command about the situation in East Pakistan. The General flew to Rawalpindi and gave a detailed and comprehensive briefing to the military high command. After coming out of the conference room in the GHQ, he was met by another general who asked “How did it go? Did the generals agree with your point of view?” Sahibzada Yaqub Khan smiled and recited a couplet from Dagh Dehlvi:
“Nahin khel ay Dagh yaron se kah do
ke aati hai Urdu zaban aatay aatay”
Sahibzada Yaqub Khan was a legend: fiercely patriotic, a scholar, a linguist and a thorough gentleman of the old school. During the fateful days of 1970/71, negotiations with the Awami League failed again and again. At that time, Yaqub Khan and the Governor Admiral Ahsan both advocated a policy of a political solution with the Awami League and were strictly opposed to any military solution to solve the problem. General Yahya and the ruling military coterie of the time were hellbent on army action to teach the Bengali insurgents a lesson and establish their writ in East Pakistan. He resigned rather than be a part of it. His letter of resignation dated 05 March 1971 and his prescient analyses have been published in Anwar Dil’s Strategy, Diplomacy, Humanity: Life and Work of Sahabzada Yaqub-Khan. The rest, as they say, is history. After his exit, General Tikka Khan took over and Operation Searchlight was launched – which proved to be the last nail in the coffin of a united Pakistan. Many decades later, after the bifurcation of the country, it can now be said with confidence that Sahibzada Yaqub was correct in his assessment of the situation.
Yaqub Khan was a scion of the royal family of Rampur, the princely state in British India founded in 1774 by Nawab Faizullah Khan of the Rohilla tribe – who had migrated from the Pashto-speaking areas of North India during the last days of the Mughal Empire. Under the British the state of Rampur was one of the richest states in India and extremely well managed along modern lines by the ruling family of the Nawabs of Rampur. Yaqub Khan’s father was Sahibzada Sir Abdus Samad and his grandfather Nawab Abu Salam Khan was a renowned bibliophile. The latter owned a vast collection of books on every subject under the sun, and so a love of books and learning was inherited by Yaqub Khan from his ancestors.
Yaqub was born on 23 December 1920. The other siblings that he had were two brothers and three sisters. His childhood was definitely like being born with a silver spoon in the mouth: it was comfortable, or rather luxurious. Childhood was filled with activities such as riding, swimming, shooting and shikar of big game. He was intelligent and exhibited qualities of leadership, but his only ambition in life was to join the army and accomplish deeds of valour. He had inherited a very refined taste in dress – and remained a very well-dressed person throughout his life. He had a penchant for Urdu literature and poetry, and was a great admirer of that great romantic poet of Urdu, Mirza Ghalib.
Later on in life, he discovered a passion for languages and became quite fluent in French, German, Italian, Russian, and of course, Bengali. He was perhaps the most well-read general in the Pakistan Army, with a phenomenal knowledge of history and world affairs. He studied at the Prince of Wales Royal Indian Military College (now the Rashtriya Indian Military College) in Dehradun, India. Yaqub Khan joined the Indian Military academy in 1939 and was commissioned as an officer in December 1940, when his course was cut short due to the impending war in Europe and he was allotted the Indian Army Number IC-365. He proceeded to Rawalpindi and joined the 18th cavalry, King Edwards Own.
The Second World War was already raging in full fury in Europe and Britain was fighting a desperate battle against the ferocious onslaught of the Nazi forces. His regiment was dispatched to North Africa in January, where he had a taste of combat during the famous battles of that theatre of operations. He was taken prisoner by the German forces and during captivity he took up the study of German language. After the end of the war, he was repatriated to India and opted to join the Pakistan Army after 14 August 1947.
He served with distinction in the 1965 war. In 1973, he was inducted into the Foreign Service of Pakistan and served as the Pakistani ambassador in the USA, Paris and Moscow and later as a foreign minister under General Zia in 1982. As foreign minister, he played a major role during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan 1979-89. He was reappointed foreign minister under Benazir Bhutto.
Yaqub retired from diplomatic service in 1997 and spent his life in Islamabad until his death in 2016, but ironically, he never wrote a book. As a diplomat, Yaqub was a legend and an important part of the US Pakistan relationship.
His death at the age of 95 leaves Pakistan a poorer place and a less colourful country. His long service to the country as a soldier and as a diplomat is definitely a saga of memorable events and historical narratives.
A couple of Yaqub’s official visits to Washington provided unforgettable moments. He sometimes had a tough brief. In September 1990, the United States had concluded that Pakistan’s nuclear program had reached the point where the large American assistance program would have to be terminated. Yaqub was dispatched to talk Washington out of the aid cutoff. In his meeting with Secretary of State Baker— Teresita (Tezi) Currie Schaffer was taking notes—he argued his case with skill and style. He never conceded that the United States was correct in its assessment, and never quite denied it either. Instead he argued what was undoubtedly the point most important to his government: that Pakistan felt its future existence was at stake. The aid cutoff happened despite his best efforts, but he walked out with his reputation intact, along with the respect in which he was held by Washington, and specifically by Baker.
Yaqub paid his farewell visit to Lawrence Eagleburger, then deputy Secretary of State, and displayed his sterling qualities of a thinker and gentleman. And here, too, Tezi was the note-taker for the meeting. This was the summer of 1991 when the USSR was disintegrating and coming apart at the seams. Yaqub and Eagleburger had compared notes on Russia many times before, so the subject was nothing new for them. At this meeting, Yaqub looked at the host and said “Don’t you think the real problem is philosophical? China wants perestroika without glasnost, and Russia wants glasnost without perestroika!”
Howard (Howie) Bruner Schaffer recalls taking notes at two very different meetings between Yaqub and U.S. Secretaries of State. The first came during the brief period when General Alexander Haig presided over Foggy Bottom. The Syrian and Israeli air forces had just engaged in a large-scale firefight over the Golan Heights, with the Israelis’ F-16s getting much the better of their inept enemies who flew Soviet-made equipment.
The Pakistanis had a love affair with the F-16, which had become for them a potent symbol of Washington’s friendship and support. Secretary Haig no doubt had this in mind when he rhapsodised about how the Israelis had shot the Syrian planes out of the sky, with little or no damage to their own aircraft. Howie recalls the secretary’s hands moving swiftly as he mimicked the Israeli F-16s winning their devastating victory.
What Secretary Haig seemed to have forgotten was that he was talking to one of the world’s leading Muslim statesmen, and a retired general at that. This tale was about the crushing defeat of the air force of a Muslim power by a Zionist state that successive Pakistani governments had never failed to revile as an enemy of their faith. As anyone who knew him would have expected, Sahibzada kept his sophisticated cool during Secretary Haig’s frenzied account.
The strange episode never made its way into the official account of Yaqub’s meeting with Haig, and historians poring over future volumes of The Foreign Relations of the United States will find no reference to it there. For this, the credit goes to Nick Veliotes, who as Assistant Secretary for Near East and South Asia Affairs was Howie’s boss and sat in on the conversation. As Howie began to scribble his account of the secretary’s enthusiastic outburst, Veliotes whispered frantically: “For God’s sake, don’t write that down.” And he hasn’t, until now.
Howie’s next encounter with the Sahibzada on the seventh floor of the State Department came when James Baker was secretary. By this time, Yaqub’s reputation as a sophisticated and insightful analyst of world affairs had solidified and spread. If diplomatic conversation can be spellbinding, which it rarely is, it was widely agreed that perhaps more than any other practicing foreign policymaker Yaqub could make it so.
Howie Schaffer recalls taking notes at two very different meetings between Yaqub and U.S. secretaries of state. The first came during the brief period when General Alexander Haig presided over Foggy Bottom. The Syrian and Israeli air forces had just engaged in a large-scale fire-fight over the Golan Heights, with the Israelis’ F-16s getting much the better of their inept enemies who flew Soviet-made equipment.
The Pakistanis had a love affair with the F-16, which had become for them a potent symbol of Washington’s friendship and support. Secretary Haig no doubt had this in mind when he rhapsodized about how the Israelis had shot the Syrian planes out of the Mideast sky, with little or no damage to their own aircraft. Howie recalls the secretary’s hands moving swiftly as he mimicked the Israeli F-16s winning their devastating victory.
What Secretary Haig seemed to have forgotten was that he was relating to one of the world’s leading Muslim statesmen, and a retired general at that, this tale of the crushing defeat of the air force of an Islamic power by a Zionist state that successive Pakistani governments had never failed to revile as an enemy of their faith. As anyone who knew him would have expected, Sahibzada kept his sophisticated cool during Secretary Haig’s frenzied account.
The strange episode never made its way into the official account of Yaqub’s meeting with Haig, and historians poring over future volumes of “The Foreign Relations of the United States” will find no reference to it there. For this, the credit goes to Nick Veliotes, who as assistant secretary for Near East and South Asia affairs was Howie’s boss and sat in on the conversation. As Howie began to scribble his account of the secretary’s enthusiastic outburst, Veliotes whispered frantically: “For God’s sake don’t write that down.” And he hasn’t, until now.
Howie’s next encounter with the Sahibzada on the seventh floor of the State Department came when James Baker was secretary. By this time, Yaqub’s reputation as a sophisticated and insightful analyst of world affairs had solidified and spread. If diplomatic conversation can be spellbinding, which it rarely is, it was widely agreed that perhaps more than any other practicing foreign policymaker Yaqub could make it so.
Normally, the concerned geographic bureau in the State Department prepares background information for such meetings, along with a list of subjects the visitor might want to discuss, and talking points for the secretary. Howie had learned from sources in the Pakistan Embassy that Yaqub had no particular agenda; he just wanted to offer Secretary Baker his thoughtful views of the state of the world. Under these circumstances, Howie thought there was no particular need to labour over an agenda and talking points that would probably never be used. So, he decided to recommend—most unusually—that the department dispense with all the paperwork and instead let Yaqub be Yaqub. He was confident that Secretary Baker would likewise be Secretary Baker, and would come away both enlightened and pleased. Howie was surprised when this outlandish approach was approved. He was not at all surprised when the session went off exceedingly well.
Lt. Gen. Sahibzada Yaqub Khan military commander, diplomat, scholar and a perfect gentleman left for his heavenly abode at the age of 95 in Islamabad in 2016. His passing away was announced by the Agha Khan University. He was the founding chairman of the University’s board of trustees, serving for 16 years until his demise.
This extraordinary man was the public face of Pakistan in international affairs for almost 30 years. General Yaqub Khan had helped facilitate President Richard M. Nixon’s overture to China in 1972. In the late 1980s, as a United Nations-sanctioned envoy, he helped negotiate the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the windup of the civil war in Nicaragua.
In 1999, William Safire, the New York Times op-ed columnist, described him as “the most skillful diplomat in the world today.”
Sahibzada Yaqub decided to hold the ceremony not in the military cantonment but in Paltan Maidan in Dhaka. The Awami League workers and diehard Bengali nationalists armed with lathis and other lethal weapons crowded the venue and it was decided that if the General spoke in Urdu or English, they would not allow the ceremony to proceed.
Sahibzada Yaqub drove up in his jeep and walked to the podium. There was pin drop silence and the crowd waited with bated breath for the general to start his speech. Yaqub khan stood at the podium and began his speech in idiomatic classical Bengali! The crowd was stunned and the air was immediately filled with full throated slogans of “Pakistan Jindabad!” This scribe was an eyewitness to this event.
Later on, when the insurgency launched by the Awami League was becoming unmanageable, Yaqub was asked by Yahya Khan to come to the GHQ and brief the army high command about the situation in East Pakistan. The General flew to Rawalpindi and gave a detailed and comprehensive briefing to the military high command. After coming out of the conference room in the GHQ, he was met by another general who asked “How did it go? Did the generals agree with your point of view?” Sahibzada Yaqub Khan smiled and recited a couplet from Dagh Dehlvi:
“Nahin khel ay Dagh yaron se kah do
ke aati hai Urdu zaban aatay aatay”
Sahibzada Yaqub Khan was a legend: fiercely patriotic, a scholar, a linguist and a thorough gentleman of the old school. During the fateful days of 1970/71, negotiations with the Awami League failed again and again. At that time, Yaqub Khan and the Governor Admiral Ahsan both advocated a policy of a political solution with the Awami League and were strictly opposed to any military solution to solve the problem. General Yahya and the ruling military coterie of the time were hellbent on army action to teach the Bengali insurgents a lesson and establish their writ in East Pakistan. He resigned rather than be a part of it. His letter of resignation dated 05 March 1971 and his prescient analyses have been published in Anwar Dil’s Strategy, Diplomacy, Humanity: Life and Work of Sahabzada Yaqub-Khan. The rest, as they say, is history. After his exit, General Tikka Khan took over and Operation Searchlight was launched – which proved to be the last nail in the coffin of a united Pakistan. Many decades later, after the bifurcation of the country, it can now be said with confidence that Sahibzada Yaqub was correct in his assessment of the situation.
Yaqub Khan was a scion of the royal family of Rampur, the princely state in British India founded in 1774 by Nawab Faizullah Khan of the Rohilla tribe – who had migrated from the Pashto-speaking areas of North India during the last days of the Mughal Empire. Under the British the state of Rampur was one of the richest states in India and extremely well managed along modern lines by the ruling family of the Nawabs of Rampur. Yaqub Khan’s father was Sahibzada Sir Abdus Samad and his grandfather Nawab Abu Salam Khan was a renowned bibliophile. The latter owned a vast collection of books on every subject under the sun, and so a love of books and learning was inherited by Yaqub Khan from his ancestors.
Yaqub was born on 23 December 1920. The other siblings that he had were two brothers and three sisters. His childhood was definitely like being born with a silver spoon in the mouth: it was comfortable, or rather luxurious. Childhood was filled with activities such as riding, swimming, shooting and shikar of big game. He was intelligent and exhibited qualities of leadership, but his only ambition in life was to join the army and accomplish deeds of valour. He had inherited a very refined taste in dress – and remained a very well-dressed person throughout his life. He had a penchant for Urdu literature and poetry, and was a great admirer of that great romantic poet of Urdu, Mirza Ghalib.Later on in life, he discovered a passion for languages and became quite fluent in French, German, Italian, Russian, and of course, Bengali. He was perhaps the most well-read general in the Pakistan Army, with a phenomenal knowledge of history and world affairs. He studied at the Prince of Wales Royal Indian Military College (now the Rashtriya Indian Military College) in Dehradun, India. Yaqub Khan joined the Indian Military academy in 1939 and was commissioned as an officer in December 1940, when his course was cut short due to the impending war in Europe and he was allotted the Indian Army Number IC-365. He proceeded to Rawalpindi and joined the 18th cavalry, King Edwards Own.
The Second World War was already raging in full fury in Europe and Britain was fighting a desperate battle against the ferocious onslaught of the Nazi forces. His regiment was dispatched to North Africa in January, where he had a taste of combat during the famous battles of that theatre of operations. He was taken prisoner by the German forces and during captivity he took up the study of German language. After the end of the war, he was repatriated to India and opted to join the Pakistan Army after 14 August 1947.
He served with distinction in the 1965 war. In 1973, he was inducted into the Foreign Service of Pakistan and served as the Pakistani ambassador in the USA, Paris and Moscow and later as a foreign minister under General Zia in 1982. As foreign minister, he played a major role during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan 1979-89. He was reappointed foreign minister under Benazir Bhutto.
Yaqub retired from diplomatic service in 1997 and spent his life in Islamabad until his death in 2016, but ironically, he never wrote a book. As a diplomat, Yaqub was a legend and an important part of the US Pakistan relationship.
His death at the age of 95 leaves Pakistan a poorer place and a less colourful country. His long service to the country as a soldier and as a diplomat is definitely a saga of memorable events and historical narratives.
After coming out of the conference room in the GHQ, he was met by another general who asked “How did it go? Did the generals agree with your point of view?” Sahibzada Yaqub Khan smiled and recited a couplet from Dagh Dehlvi
A couple of Yaqub’s official visits to Washington provided unforgettable moments. He sometimes had a tough brief. In September 1990, the United States had concluded that Pakistan’s nuclear program had reached the point where the large American assistance program would have to be terminated. Yaqub was dispatched to talk Washington out of the aid cutoff. In his meeting with Secretary of State Baker— Teresita (Tezi) Currie Schaffer was taking notes—he argued his case with skill and style. He never conceded that the United States was correct in its assessment, and never quite denied it either. Instead he argued what was undoubtedly the point most important to his government: that Pakistan felt its future existence was at stake. The aid cutoff happened despite his best efforts, but he walked out with his reputation intact, along with the respect in which he was held by Washington, and specifically by Baker.
Yaqub paid his farewell visit to Lawrence Eagleburger, then deputy Secretary of State, and displayed his sterling qualities of a thinker and gentleman. And here, too, Tezi was the note-taker for the meeting. This was the summer of 1991 when the USSR was disintegrating and coming apart at the seams. Yaqub and Eagleburger had compared notes on Russia many times before, so the subject was nothing new for them. At this meeting, Yaqub looked at the host and said “Don’t you think the real problem is philosophical? China wants perestroika without glasnost, and Russia wants glasnost without perestroika!”
Howard (Howie) Bruner Schaffer recalls taking notes at two very different meetings between Yaqub and U.S. Secretaries of State. The first came during the brief period when General Alexander Haig presided over Foggy Bottom. The Syrian and Israeli air forces had just engaged in a large-scale firefight over the Golan Heights, with the Israelis’ F-16s getting much the better of their inept enemies who flew Soviet-made equipment.
The Pakistanis had a love affair with the F-16, which had become for them a potent symbol of Washington’s friendship and support. Secretary Haig no doubt had this in mind when he rhapsodised about how the Israelis had shot the Syrian planes out of the sky, with little or no damage to their own aircraft. Howie recalls the secretary’s hands moving swiftly as he mimicked the Israeli F-16s winning their devastating victory.
What Secretary Haig seemed to have forgotten was that he was talking to one of the world’s leading Muslim statesmen, and a retired general at that. This tale was about the crushing defeat of the air force of a Muslim power by a Zionist state that successive Pakistani governments had never failed to revile as an enemy of their faith. As anyone who knew him would have expected, Sahibzada kept his sophisticated cool during Secretary Haig’s frenzied account.
The strange episode never made its way into the official account of Yaqub’s meeting with Haig, and historians poring over future volumes of The Foreign Relations of the United States will find no reference to it there. For this, the credit goes to Nick Veliotes, who as Assistant Secretary for Near East and South Asia Affairs was Howie’s boss and sat in on the conversation. As Howie began to scribble his account of the secretary’s enthusiastic outburst, Veliotes whispered frantically: “For God’s sake, don’t write that down.” And he hasn’t, until now.
General Yahya and the ruling military coterie of the time were hellbent on army action to teach the Bengali insurgents a lesson and establish their writ in East Pakistan. Sahibzada Yaqub resigned rather than be a part of it
Howie’s next encounter with the Sahibzada on the seventh floor of the State Department came when James Baker was secretary. By this time, Yaqub’s reputation as a sophisticated and insightful analyst of world affairs had solidified and spread. If diplomatic conversation can be spellbinding, which it rarely is, it was widely agreed that perhaps more than any other practicing foreign policymaker Yaqub could make it so.
Howie Schaffer recalls taking notes at two very different meetings between Yaqub and U.S. secretaries of state. The first came during the brief period when General Alexander Haig presided over Foggy Bottom. The Syrian and Israeli air forces had just engaged in a large-scale fire-fight over the Golan Heights, with the Israelis’ F-16s getting much the better of their inept enemies who flew Soviet-made equipment.
The Pakistanis had a love affair with the F-16, which had become for them a potent symbol of Washington’s friendship and support. Secretary Haig no doubt had this in mind when he rhapsodized about how the Israelis had shot the Syrian planes out of the Mideast sky, with little or no damage to their own aircraft. Howie recalls the secretary’s hands moving swiftly as he mimicked the Israeli F-16s winning their devastating victory.
What Secretary Haig seemed to have forgotten was that he was relating to one of the world’s leading Muslim statesmen, and a retired general at that, this tale of the crushing defeat of the air force of an Islamic power by a Zionist state that successive Pakistani governments had never failed to revile as an enemy of their faith. As anyone who knew him would have expected, Sahibzada kept his sophisticated cool during Secretary Haig’s frenzied account.
The strange episode never made its way into the official account of Yaqub’s meeting with Haig, and historians poring over future volumes of “The Foreign Relations of the United States” will find no reference to it there. For this, the credit goes to Nick Veliotes, who as assistant secretary for Near East and South Asia affairs was Howie’s boss and sat in on the conversation. As Howie began to scribble his account of the secretary’s enthusiastic outburst, Veliotes whispered frantically: “For God’s sake don’t write that down.” And he hasn’t, until now.
In 1999, William Safire, the New York Times op-ed columnist, described him as “the most skillful diplomat in the world today”
Howie’s next encounter with the Sahibzada on the seventh floor of the State Department came when James Baker was secretary. By this time, Yaqub’s reputation as a sophisticated and insightful analyst of world affairs had solidified and spread. If diplomatic conversation can be spellbinding, which it rarely is, it was widely agreed that perhaps more than any other practicing foreign policymaker Yaqub could make it so.
Normally, the concerned geographic bureau in the State Department prepares background information for such meetings, along with a list of subjects the visitor might want to discuss, and talking points for the secretary. Howie had learned from sources in the Pakistan Embassy that Yaqub had no particular agenda; he just wanted to offer Secretary Baker his thoughtful views of the state of the world. Under these circumstances, Howie thought there was no particular need to labour over an agenda and talking points that would probably never be used. So, he decided to recommend—most unusually—that the department dispense with all the paperwork and instead let Yaqub be Yaqub. He was confident that Secretary Baker would likewise be Secretary Baker, and would come away both enlightened and pleased. Howie was surprised when this outlandish approach was approved. He was not at all surprised when the session went off exceedingly well.
Lt. Gen. Sahibzada Yaqub Khan military commander, diplomat, scholar and a perfect gentleman left for his heavenly abode at the age of 95 in Islamabad in 2016. His passing away was announced by the Agha Khan University. He was the founding chairman of the University’s board of trustees, serving for 16 years until his demise.
This extraordinary man was the public face of Pakistan in international affairs for almost 30 years. General Yaqub Khan had helped facilitate President Richard M. Nixon’s overture to China in 1972. In the late 1980s, as a United Nations-sanctioned envoy, he helped negotiate the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the windup of the civil war in Nicaragua.
In 1999, William Safire, the New York Times op-ed columnist, described him as “the most skillful diplomat in the world today.”