Abdul Waheed Kakar

Abdul Waheed Kakar was born on 23 March 1937 into a Pashtun family of the Kakar tribe. Sources differ on his birthplace: his family's roots were in Zhob in Balochistan, and the family later settled in Peshawar. His uncle was Abdur Rab Nishtar, one of the founding figures of Pakistan, who later served as Governor of Punjab and president of the Pakistan Muslim League.

After finishing school in 1955 he studied at Edwardes College in Peshawar. He joined the Pakistan Army in 1956 and trained at the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul, where he was held back for a six month term, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Frontier Force Regiment in 1959.

Kakar saw combat in the 1965 war with India in the fighting around Chawinda in Sialkot district, and in the 1971 war as brigade major of an independent infantry brigade in the Sulemanki sector. After the war he attended the Command and Staff College in Canada, where he stood first in the examinations, and later graduated in war studies from the Armed Forces War College of the National Defence University. He commanded the 27th Azad Kashmir Regiment as a lieutenant colonel.

As a brigadier he was chief of staff of II Corps in Multan from 1976 to 1978 under Lieutenant General Rahimuddin Khan. In 1984 he took command of the 16th Infantry Division in Quetta, and from 1987 to 1989 he was Adjutant General at General Headquarters, where he is recorded as refusing a presidential order to admit three students to the Army Medical College who did not meet the entry criteria. In 1989 he was promoted to lieutenant general and given command of XII Corps in Quetta.

In January 1993, after General Asif Nawaz died suddenly in office, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan appointed Kakar Chief of Army Staff. He had been due to retire, and his promotion passed over several more senior generals. As the feud between the president and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif deepened during 1993, Kakar persuaded both men to resign in July. Senate chairman Wasim Sajjad became acting president, a caretaker government under Moeenuddin Ahmad Qureshi organised elections in October 1993, and Benazir Bhutto returned as prime minister. During his tenure he also backed funding for the Shaheen missile programme. In September 1995 a plot by a group of officers led by Major General Zahirul Islam Abbasi, linked to the militant group Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, was uncovered and its members arrested. Kakar retired in January 1996 at the end of his three year term and was succeeded by General Jehangir Karamat.

Kakar spoke Pashto and was known in the army as a keen horseman and mountaineer, and was described by writers as an imposing figure with a no nonsense manner. After retiring in 1996 he withdrew completely from public life and lived quietly in Rawalpindi, rarely if ever appearing in public. Few details of his family life have been published.

Abdul Waheed Kakar died in Rawalpindi on Monday 26 October 2026, aged 89. The death was announced by Inter-Services Public Relations, the military's media wing. The cause of death was not made public in the first reports.

President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defence Forces, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, expressed deep sorrow and offered condolences to his family. The ISPR said the army paid tribute to the late general's distinguished military career, leadership and invaluable services to the Pakistan Army. Funeral arrangements had not been reported at the time of writing.

Kakar is remembered above all for the way he handled the 1993 crisis. Rather than imposing martial law, as earlier army chiefs had done, he used the army's influence to bring about the resignations of both the president and the prime minister and handed the country to a caretaker government and the ballot box. Commentators such as the defence analyst Ikram Sehgal later called this the "Kakar model" and held it up as an example of the army stepping in to avert a breakdown without taking power. His decision to retire on time in 1996, and his silence afterwards, added to his reputation as a soldier who kept out of politics.