Best Information Of General Raheel Sharif | Beautiful Photos Of Raheel Sharif 2017 | Latest Pak Army Photos | Pakistan Army Photos
While driving Towards Kunjah, about 10 kilometres to the west of Gujrat City, it is Difficult to miss the change in scale; towns and villages, roads, shops and tea stalls, everything looks smaller than it does on the Grand Trunk Road that Links Gujrat With Rawalpindi, to the North, and Lahore to the south. Within Kunjah, the scale shifts again — from small to narrow: bazaars are narrow, streets even narrower. It is hard to imagine that this is the Native town of Raheel Sharif, arguably the most important, most powerful person in Pakistan.
In this old town of about 50,000 people, a labyrinth of narrow lanes leads to a blind alley where a dilapidated two-storey locked house wears the same aura of mystery that all empty spaces acquire after their occupants have left long ago. This is where Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif’s Grandfather, Mehtabud Din, lived — as did the general’s father, Major Muhammad Sharif. It was also in this house that his elder brother Shabbir Sharif was born and raised until he joined the Pakistan Army in the early 1960s.
During the 1971 war with India, Shabbir Sharif was posted near Okara as a major. He died fighting there and won the highest military award, Nishan-e-Haider, for his gallantry. People in Kunjah are proud of him and, therefore, regard his ancestral home as a historic place.
Raheel Sharif, who is 13 years junior to Shabbir Sharif, spent most of his early life in the shadow of his illustrious brother. “At the Pakistan Military Academy [Kakul] and later in the army, there were always people, especially close friends of Shabbir Sharif, who had high expectations of Raheel Sharif. He had to work hard to come up to their expectations,” reminisces an old friend of the general in Lahore. “Being Shabbir Sharif’s brother was a heavy burden on his shoulders,” says the man who in 1974 shared a room at the military academy with Raheel Sharif and later served with him in the same platoon. “It was only slowly and gradually that Raheel Sharif was able to create his own identity and place in the army.”
Also read: Should the military fight crime or dispense justice
Raheel Sharif could see any of his elder brother’s army friends, including Pervez Musharraf, whenever he needed to. Being on such close, personal terms with one’s seniors could be a Big advantage for a junior officer. They may help one get prized postings and quicker promotions. “Such suggestions always hurt him Deeply, though they did not stop him from calling on his brother’s friends,” says his Lahore-based friend.
Raheel Sharif was not born in Kunjah. No one there has any memory of having seen him in town. He was born in Quetta where his father was posted as a major in the army. The family, indeed, had left Kunjah much earlier than Raheel Sharif’s birth in 1956. Only a few old people in the town can claim having known and interacted with his father and elder brother.
One of them is Haji Abdul Ghani, a retired soldier. He remembers Raheel Sharif’s father as someone who would always “help the people from Kunjah”. Even though Muhammad Sharif never returned to his home town once he left for wherever his army career took him, he continued helping local residents – including Ghani – to get into the army.
Ghani has never seen Raheel Sharif in person but he says the general, like his father, has a “soft spot for Kunjah and its residents”. Why else would he call Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and ask him to upgrade the Shabbir Shaheed Rural Health Centre in Kunjah? “When some people from our town met [Raheel Sharif] to condole the death of his mother in 2014, they complained to him about inadequate public healthcare here,” Ghani says. That promptly occasioned the call to the chief minister.
Raheel Sharif, like his predecessors, considers it his obligation to do “what he thinks is right regardless of its constitutional or democratic appropriateness.”
The general comes from a religious family. His grandfather, after whom their home street is named as Koocha Mehtabud Din, was a known religious scholar in the area, whose forefathers had settled in Kunjah in 1840. A younger cousin of Raheel Sharif who still lives in Kunjah knows the general as a friendly person who does not let anyone feel insignificant in his presence. “He knows how to give respect to others and how to command respect from them,” the cousin says without wanting to be named. Raheel Sharif also loves driving cars and hunting game, according to his cousin. “Being a chain-smoker, he looks out of his element when he cannot smoke.”
Within the military, says one of his old friends, Raheel Sharif is known from his early days in uniform as a man of strong character and steely resolve. “I remember a boxing game at the academy in which Bobby [Raheel Sharif] was pitted against a tough opponent. I do not remember who won the contest but he bravely took all the punches from his opponent, with the same expressionless face you see on television channels, and never left the fight.”
Raheel Sharif is also considered to be one of the most popular army chiefs in recent times. “His ability to inspire confidence and love in the troops is quite remarkable,” says his friend from the military academy.
