Present Army Chief General Raheel Sharif is due to retire on November 28, 2016, and if anything dramatic does not happen, General Ishfaq Nadeem Ahmed is one of the strongest contender to be the next Army Chief.
If chosen to replace present chief, General Ishfaq Nadeem Ahmed would be the 16th Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Pakistan.
Appointed as Chief of the General Staff (CGS) by Gen Raheel in 2013, Gen Ishfaq Nadeem is currently serving as Corps Commander Multan and ranks fourth in the seniority list.
Belonging to 34-AK, Lt Gen Ishfaq commanded a strike infantry division and led successful military operation in Swat.
He was also Chief of Staff of strike Corps Mangla as Brigadier and is rated as one of the finest soldiers in today’s Army.
Gen. Ishfaq Nadeem hails from Nila (Chakwal). He was born in the family of highly respected Ahmed Khan Qureshi, who was on the engineering side of Radio Pakistan until his retirement.
His two brothers are Dr Irfan Salim Ahmed (now Executive Director at the Centre of Nanotechnology in the University of Illinois, US) and Imran Naeem Ahmed (a journalist par excellence).
Ishfaq has completed Staff College Camberley and is an outstanding officer with exceptional grades.
He passed matriculation along with two brothers from St Mary’s School in Rawalpindi. Ishfaq was JCB-I and belonged to 62-Long Course of Pakistan Military Academy.
Gen. Ishfaq was promoted to the three-star General rank on August 8 this year along with three other Major Generals, Qamar Javed Bajwa, Zamir-ul-Hassan and Javed Iqbal.
He was not assigned any posting. This, according to military sources, was so because Ishfaq Nadeem had gone abroad on a professional training course, which he has topped.
Gen Ishfaq Nadeem was Director General Military Operations (DG MO) at the time of promotion. He was replaced by Maj-Gen Aamer Riaz.
Zamir-ul-Hassan Shah was Commander Army Air Defence Command (AADC), Qamar Javed Bajwa, Commandant School of Infantry and Tactics (Quetta) and Javed Iqbal, Chief Instructor B-Division at National Defence University (NDU) Islamabad.
After promotions, Lt. Gen Qamar Bajwa was appointed Corps Commander Rawalpindi, Lt-Gen Zamir-ul-Hassan Commander AADC and Lt-Gen Javed Iqbal was appointed President NDU.
Most probably, 16th COAS will be announced in last week of November, which will lead Pakistan army, sixth largest military force in world and second in South Asia, handling eastern and western borders, along with fighting manic of terrorism which killed 60,000 people since 2002 and cost the economy $ 118 billion.
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