Former top Pakistani military officer ‘killed in Afghanistan’

A member of former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf's inner circle who served as the country’s Director General Military Operations and headed its anti-corruption watchdog has been killed in Afghanistan, local media reports said.

Lt Gen (retd) Shahid Aziz wanted to compensate for what he had done in favour of the US troops, and therefore, he was in Afghanistan serving in some capacity where he was killed, the reports said. It is believed he was working with militant groups.

While the reports cited certain family members, Aziz’s son reportedly described the accounts of his death as ‘fake news’.

The former chairman of the National Accountability Bureau had written a book in which he spoke of the involvement of Pakistani Army’s regular troops in the Kargil war against India.

While launching his book in 2013, Aziz said he had been guilty of self-deception during his career but fear of Judgement Day had made him speak up.

“I want the young generation to learn from my mistakes,” Aziz said.

He said he thought it necessary to write his book to expose the Kargil crisis because he could not bear to witness the falling standards of the Pakistani Army.

Aziz was head of the analysis wing of Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence, during the Kargil war and DGMO during the 1999 military coup that saw Musharraf ousting the government of Nawaz Sharif.

Aziz, who retired in 2005 , had been criticised for not raising his voice before, but he defended himself by saying that “nothing would have changed” if he had quit the army.

He admitted that at the time of the coup d’état against Sharif, he had supported the decision for a military takeover. “The Constitution was not being followed,” he said of the democratically elected government back then. “The consequences of this (military takeover) were not evident upon me at that time.”

Recently in a statement, Musharraf had claimed that Aziz “had lost his mind, had grown a beard and gone to Syria,” and according to some people, he had been killed there.

Aziz served in Pakistani Army for 37 years, and was also the chief of general staff and Lahore corps commander.

After his retirement, he was appointed the NAB chairman in November 2005 by Musharraf.

But he quit that post after two years when he was asked to close all cases against former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari amid back-channel negotiations between Musharraf and Bhutto prior to the passing of the National Reconciliation Ordinance.