Tariq Majid - Military Career - Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee

Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee

Upon General Musharraf's retirement, Majid's appointment to four star rank was highly speculated in the media and military science circles. As early as in August and the following month, Majid was initially in the race to be appointed as chief of army staff. In military science circles, Majid was known to be a professional soldier and though, his closeness to Musharraf become a liability in country's political science circles.

On 3 October 2007, the media in Pakistan announced that Lieutenant-General Tariq Majid was promoted to four-star rank, and his nomination to succeed general Ehsan-ul-Haq was already approved by President Musharraf. On 8 October 2007, he was sworn as chairman joint chiefs and took over the operations of Joint Staff Headquarters (JS HQ).

Upon taking the JS HQ secretariat, Majid became the only officer from the Baloch Regiment after Rahimuddin Khan to ascend to chairman joint chiefs. At the time of promotion, Tariq Majid was fourth on the seniority list. Lieutenant Generals Khalid Kidwai, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (who was also promoted as four-star and made VCOAS), and Malik Arif Hayat were all senior to him, all of whom stood superseded and sought retirement. On race to the promotion to this four-star assignment, lieutenant-General Khalid Kidwai was already on a year's extension and another lieutenant-general Malik Arif Hayat had never commanded a corps thus virtually taking him out of the race for the top two slots in the army.

Less than a two weeks of being chairman joint chiefs, a suicide attack was struck on Majid when a suicide bomber struck a police checkpoint in the high security zone of Rawalpindi on October 30. It was carried out less than a kilometer from President General Pervez Musharraf's camp office, killing seven people, three of them policemen, and injuring 31 others. The blast splattered check post of General Tariq Majid's official residence. During the armed escalations with India, Majid served as the top military adviser to government and it was widely circulated that he, together with chiefs of navy, army and air force, had advised the president Asif Ali Zardari to take back his statement made last month, that his country would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in the event of a conflict with India". Responding to the India's military movement at the India-Pakistan border in 2010, General Majid told the Pakistan's media representatives at the ISPR that "the Indian army knows the capacity of the Pakistan armed forces. Responding to the Indian Army's Chief of Staff's statement of Indian military preparations to fight China and Pakistan simultaneously, Majid told the journalists that "leave alone China, General Deepak Kapoor knows very well what the Indian Army can not and Pakistan Armed Forces can pull off militarily.

As chairman joint chiefs, Majid notably terminated all military debriefings of senior scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan and recognized his services done to the country publicly on first week of November 2008. Earlier to this, Majid was known for welcoming dr. Qadeer Khan in the country's military science circles where Qadeer Khan was still welcomed. In 2010, while lecturing on nuclear weapons politics, Majid endorsed Qadeer Khan's services and stressed to the fact that: "Pakistan had to be mindful of a blatant pursuit of military preponderance in its eastern neighborhood". Lecturing at the National Defence University, General Majid argued that "a proposed fissile material cutoff treaty would target Pakistan specifically. Islamabad has refused to allow talks on such a pact to proceed at the International Conference on Disarmament. As chairman joint chiefs, Majid had asserted his role as principle military adviser to the government of Prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani and President Asif Ali Zardari on the matters involving the nuclear policy, military affairs, and geostrategic positions of Pakistan. He presented the government a tri-services combat framework to tackle the joint combat operations against the extreme elements; a plan which was duly approved by Prime minister Gillani as part of his war strategy. While presenting this plan Majid noted to Prime minister Gillani that there is a need to harmonize individual capacities of the services so that efforts are synergized within a framework of jointness and inter-operability to meet present and future challenges. He played a vital role in devising the government to change its foreign policy to neutral matters in Afghanistan, and to lessen the American influence in the country which had dismayed the civil society of the country.