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Muhammad Ayub Khan 1928.
Muhammad Ayub Khan was born on
14th May 1907 in the Hazara region of
India. Selected for officer training, he
was commissioned from Sandhurst in
1928 into the 1st Battalion of the 14th
Punjab Regiment of the British Indian
Army. He was promoted to colonel and
commanded his regiment in the Burma
campaign of 1944, but his career stalled
when he was removed from command.
A number of peacetime appointments saw him eventually promoted to command a brigade in Waziristan on the North-West Frontier and, when India was partitioned in 1947, he elected to join the army of the newly created state of Pakistan. He was the tenth most senior officer in the new army, with the army number PA-010 and, in 1948, was promoted to command the 14th Division.
The Pakistani army was initially headed by British officers and, in 1951, the commander-in-chief, General Sir Douglas Gracey, retired. A Pakistani successor was proposed, but General Iftikhar Khan was killed in a plane crash and the defence minister, Iskander Mirza, successfully lobbied for his fellow Sandhurst alumnus. Ayub Khan steered the army away from its British tradition, inviting US advisers and forging close ties with Turkey. However, in 1954, Mirza was promoted to home minister; Ayub replaced him, and the two consolidated their power base, resulting in Mirza becoming the first president of Pakistan in 1956.
In early October 1958, threatened with civilian opposition to his rule, Mirza mobilised the armed forces, declared martial law and suspended the constitution, appointing his right-hand man, Ayub, as chief martial law administrator. This was a decision he almost immediately regretted as he had, in effect, made Ayub more powerful than himself. Sure enough, two weeks later, Mirza was deposed, sent into exile in England, and Ayub Khan became president.
After appointing a new army commander, Ayub promoted himself to field marshal and set about consolidating his position with a population sick of the disruption and uncertainty that had followed independence. A new constitution was introduced
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