Rahimuddin Khan

As Chairman Joint Chiefs, Rahimuddin was asked to approve the military plan for an offensive in Kargil, Kashmir in 1986.[2] The plan was authored by Commander I Corps. Both Rahimuddin and Air Chief Marshal Jamal A. Khan rejected it as untenable, citing the harsh conditions, strategy, and concurrent conflict with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.[2] The plan was later approved by General Pervez Musharraf, leading to the Kargil war in 1998.

A military operation against separatists was commenced in Balochistan by Prime Minister Bhutto led by army chief Tikka Khan in 1973, claiming thousands of lives.[13] Rahimuddin was appointed Governor of Balochistan on 16 September 1978. He declared an end to the operation, and announced a general amnesty for fighters willing to give up arms. Army withdrawal was completed by 1979. The Baloch separatist movement came to a standstill.[14][15] Under Rahimuddin, Foreign Policy Centre held that "the province's tribal sardars were taken out of the pale of politics for the first time."[16] He was known for clean reputation during corrupt regimes.[17]

Rahimuddin opened the Sui gas field to provide gas directly to Quetta and other Baloch towns for the first time. Electricity expansion from Quetta to Loralai converted vast areas with sub-soil water into fertile ones.[18] He also consolidated the then-contentious integration of Gwadar into Balochistan, notified as a district in 1977. Despite opposition from finance minister Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Rahimuddin heavily promoted large-scale manufacturing and investment in infrastructure, leading to provincial GDP growth rising to the highest in Balochistan's history.[19] Addressing the province's literacy rate, the lowest in the country,[20] he administered the freeing up of resources towards education, created girls' incentive programs, and had several girls' schools built in Dera Bugti District. He also oversaw the construction of nuclear test sites in Chaghai where tests were conducted in 1998.

During the Soviet–Afghan War, the Zia regime began aiding the anti-communist Afghan mujahideen. Millions of Afghan refugees, believed to be the largest refugee population in the world,[21] crossed over the border into Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.[22] Under Zia and General Fazle Haq in KP, heroin and weaponry freely entered with the mujahideen.[23][24] In Balochistan however, Rahimuddin Khan detained the mujahideen in barbed wire military camps and seized their arms. Several fighters were allegedly transported back into Afghanistan by force, criticized by Pakistani human rights agencies. He also restricted refugees to civilian encampments during the war. Pakistan's Balochistan policy became highly unpopular in the eyes of Afghans, but drugs and weapons remained low in the province, becoming widespread in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.[25]

In March 1981, the Al-Zulfikar terrorist organization led by Murtaza Bhutto hijacked a Pakistan International Airlines airplane from Karachi to Kabul.[26] The hijackers threatened to murder hostages if state authorities did not release specific political prisoners. Upon the authorities' refusal, Al-Zulfikar shot and killed passenger Captain Tariq Rahim, mistakenly believed to be the son of General Rahimuddin Khan.[27][28] The decision to kill Rahim was taken after Murtaza Bhutto consulted KHAD chief Mohammad Najibullah.[29][30] Tariq Rahim had actually been a former aide-de-camp to the elder Bhutto.[31] The episode was ended when Zia-ul-Haq released the prisoners.