General Nadeem Raza has assumed charge as Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) at the Joint Staff Headquarters, the military’s media wing said on Wednesday. Gen Nadeem was appointed to the slot as four-star General Zubair Mahmood Hayat’s retirement was due this week. The post in theory is the highest military position since the CJCSC is technically head of the three armed forces.
For the post of the CJCSC, there were three contenders: Gen Nadeem, Lt Gen Sarfraz Sattar, the head of Strategic Plans Division (SPD), and Lt Gen Hamyun Aziz, the Karachi Corps Commander.
However, unlike many other countries, in Pakistan the army chief is the most powerful while the CJCSC acts for promoting better coordination among the three forces. The CJCSC also advises the government on the issues of national security and defence. In the past, the CJCSC was also picked from the navy and the air force but that practice has been discontinued long ago. Gen Nadeem was corps commander Rawalpindi before being appointed as the chief of general staff (CGS) at the GHQ, considered the most important position after the army chief, in August last year.
As the CGS, who heads both intelligence and operational wings of the army, he worked closely with the army chief. He was commissioned in 1985 and is from infantry’s 10 Sindh Regiment. He is a graduate of Command and Staff College Quetta and the National Defence University (NDU) Islamabad.
