Mahmud Ahmed

Lieutenant General Mahmud Ahmed HI(M) (b. 1944) is a retired Pakistani three-star rank army general who served as the Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence from 1999 to 2001.

Mahmud Ahmed was born in 1944 in Ludhiana, Punjab in India, and joined the Pakistan Army in 1964 where he did his combat duty, first participating in second war with India in 1965.

His family emigrated from India to Bhaiwala, Faisalabad Pakistan after India's partition on 14/15 August 1947.

He secured his graduation from the Lawrence College in Murree before attending Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul in 1965.

He participated in the third war with India on the western front, and he was very critical of defence spending by the Ayub administration after 1965.

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He passed out from the PMA Kakul in 1966 where he commissioned as 2nd-Lt in the 16th Self-Propelled (SP) in the Corps of Artillery.

Lieutenant Ahmed was the regimental colleague of then army Captain Pervez Musharraf.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Ahmed served in the ISI where he worked under Lt-Gen. Hamid Gul.

In 1994–95, Major-General Ahmed commanded the 23rd Infantry Division as its GOC, stationed in Jhelum in Punjab, Pakistan.

His career in the military is mostly spent in the military intelligence and became the Director-General of the Military Intelligence (DG MI), when he took it over from then-Maj-Gen. Ali Kuli Khan in October 1995.

In June 1998, Maj-Gen. Ahmed was promoted to three-star rank, Lieutenant-General and was moved the President of the National Defence University (NDU) in Islamabad by then-Chairman joint chiefs Gen. Jehangir Karamat.

In October 1998, -Chairman joint chiefs Gen. Pervez Musharraf appointed Lt-Gen. Ahmed as the field commander of the X Corps, and as soon as he was appointed to command the X Corps the planning of the covert infiltration in Indian Kashmir begin to implemented under Lt-Gen.

Aziz Khan, the CGS under Gen. Musharraf in Rawalpindi.

In the military, Lt-Gen.

Ahmed was described as ultraconservative, professional and kind to his subordinates though some found him to be control minded with a very short-temper.

Lt-Gen.

Ahmed greatly aided in providing the tactical support of mass troop infiltration, starting first by closely and micromanaging the troop deployment near the LoC.

He played a crucial role in sponsorship of armed insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir and commanded the X Corps against the Indian Army during the Kargil War in 1999, and was identified as one of the four army generals who helped initiate the 1999 Pakistani coup d'état against the civilian government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, also in 1999.

In July 1999, he provided the briefing to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif over the troop deployments, eventually giving a go-ahead for the military operation.

After the Kargil war, the Pakistani Investigative journalist news reports identified that there were four army generals who were in much control of the area contingency plans in Kargil including Lt-Gen.

Aziz Khan, the CGS under Gen. Musharraf, Lt-Gen.

Shahid Aziz of ISI's Analysis Wing, and Lt-Gen.

Jan Orakzai, commanding the XI Corps, besides Lt-Gen.

Mahmud.

There were no official military inquiries into this incident nor there were any subsequent evidence that led to the punishments of those responsible for such incidents.

On 12 October 1999, Lt-Gen.

Ahmed refused to accept to follow the orders of new chain of command set up by then-army chief Gen. Ziauddin Butt and ordered his X Corps to seize the control of the Prime Minister's Secretariat while Lt-Gen.

Aziz Khan, the CGS under Gen. Musharraf, took control of the Jinnah Terminal in Karachi.

After the martial law in 1999, Lt-Gen.

Ahmed was subsequently appointed as the Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and his tenureship was marked with alleged terror financing of al-Qaeda and sponsoring the Talibans in Afghanistan.

As the DG ISI, Mahmud actively supported the sponsorship of the Islamic fundamentalism by endorsing the Talibans in Afghanistan under its emir Mullah Omar in 2000.

Despite being responsible of stabilizing Gen. Pervez Musharraf's control over the civilian government and later his presidency, Lt-Gen.

Ahmad was notably forced to retire from his commission when his involvement surfaced in alleged financing of the Hamburg cell led by Mohamed Atta, an al-Qaeda operative in 2000-01.

On 17 March 2001, Lt-Gen.

Ahmad was appointed as the Colonel commandant of the Corps of Artillery at the Artillery Regimental Center on 17 March 2001.

In 2001, Lt-Gen.

Ahmad regularly visited the United States where he consulted with The Pentagon and CIA officials in the Bush administration in the weeks before and after terrorist attacks took place in New York on 11 September 2001.

In fact, he was with U.S. Republican Congressman Porter Goss and U.S. Democratic Senator Bob Graham in Washington, D.C., discussing Osama bin Laden over breakfast, when the attacks of September 11, 2001 took place in New York, United States.

Mahmud was later replaced by Lt General Khalid Kidwai as the colonel commandant on 13 October 2004.