Ikram Sehgal

Ikram Sehgal
Born 18 July 1938
Allegiance  Pakistan
Service/branch  Pakistan Army
Years of service 1963–79
Rank Major
Unit Pakistan Army Corps of Aviation
Battles/wars Indo-Pakistani War of 1965
Bangladesh Liberation War
Indo-Pakistani War of 1971
Operation in Balochistan 1973–79
Other work Businessman, Defence analyst on Pakistan television news shows
military writer in newspapers[1]

Ikram Sehgal (Urdu: اکرام سہگل‬‎; Bengali: ইকরাম সেহগাল) is a Pakistani defence analyst and security expert. He is a retired Pakistan Army officer.[2]

Personal life

Sehgal was born to a Punjabi father and an Urdu-speaking Bengali mother.[2] On his mother's side, Bengali politicians Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and J.A. Rahim were his grandmother's first cousins.[2]

Military career

Ikram Sehgal graduated from the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA), Kakul, in October 1965. Commissioned into 2E Bengal (Junior Tigers), he served the regiment till 1968, before qualifying as a pilot in Army Aviation, where he served from 1968–1971.[2]

He became a Prisoner of War (POW) in April 1971, while serving in the former East Pakistan and was sent to the Panagarh POW Camp in India. In July 1971, Sehgal escaped from the prison.[3] He became the first Pakistani Prisoner of War to escape from an Indian POW camp.[2]

Sehgal was posted to 44 Punjab (now 4 Sindh) in November 1971. He saw action as Company Commander in the Thar Desert, receiving a ‘battlefield promotion’ to the rank of Major on 13 December 1971. He took part in counter–guerrilla operations in Balochistan in 1973.[2] He later worked as a commercial pilot.

Business career

He set up a business in 1977, specializing in trading and counter trade. He is currently Chairman, Pathfinder Group Pakistan, which includes two of the country's largest private security companies.

Leadership

Sehgal is also involved in national and international organizations. He is a Member of the World Economic Forum (WEF); International Organization for Migration (IOM); Director, East West Institute (EWI), a US-based think-tank; and Member, WEF Global Agenda Council (GAC) for counter-terrorism.

Khalid Ahmad wrote in The Express Tribune that he held "outspoken views" on the conduct of the armed forces during the Bangladesh Liberation War, which ultimately led to the secession of East Pakistan.[2]

When soldiers make war on women and children, they cease to be soldiers. That is why in the final analysis, when it came to real combat, they could not face up to bullets which is their actual job as soldiers … the terror that was unleashed by them in East Pakistan between March and November 1971 is simply inexcusable.

— Ikram Sehgal, [2]

However, India Today noted that he had written only in 1998:

The army action in East Pakistan was professionally correct and it was carried out with surgical precision... The major part of the army behaved as professional soldiers.

— Ikram Sehgal, [4]

That was before the Hamoodur Rahman Commission report became public.[4]

Later life

He is a regular contributor of articles in newspapers that include: The News and the Urdu daily Jang. He appears regularly on current affairs programs on television as a ‘defense and security analyst’.[1][5]

References

  1. 1 2 90 minutes in an hour of crisis, an article by Ikram Sehgal on Media Monitors Network website, Published 22 January 2002, Retrieved 26 April 2017
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Ahmed, Khaled (13 October 2012). "Ikram Sehgal's great escape". The Express Tribune newspaper. Retrieved 26 April 2017.
  3. ↑ Gill, Adnan (16 July 2009). "An American and A Pakistani". Asian Tribune. Retrieved 11 April 2017.
  4. 1 2 Behind Pakistan's Defeat, India Today, 2000-08-21.
  5. ↑ Ikram Sehgal at EastWest Institute
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