Chief of Army Staff
Karamat was appointed the Chief of Army Staff by the then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto who gave her green signal and authorization to President Farooq Leghari on 18 December 1995 when the outgoing Chief of Army Staff General Abdul Waheed Kakar's three-year term was near expiration. On Prime minister Benazir Bhutto's recommendation, President Leghari promoted Lieutenant-General Karamat to four star rank and was appointed as the Chief of Army Staff when General Kakar was due to retire on 12 January 1996. He was the senior most general at that time, and therefore at promotion to four-star general, he superseded no one. At the time of his promotion, there were four senior generals in the race to replace Kakar as Chief of Army Staff: Lieutenant-General Jehangir Karamat, chief of general staff (CGS); Lieutenant-General Nasir Akhtar, quarter-master general (QMG); Lieutenant-General Muhammad Tariq, inspector-general training and evaluation (IGT and E) at the GHQ; and Lieutenant-General Javed Ashraf Qazi, commander XXX Corps, Gujranwala. As Chief of Army Staff, General Karamat tried to work with the Prime minister and President at once, but soon came to understand that the misconducts of politicians and bureaucrats would eventually lead to the dismissal of Benazir Bhutto's final government. General Karamat reached to then-Speaker of the National Assembly Yousaf Raza Gillani and "leaked" an intelligence information and tried convincing Benazir Bhutto and President Leghari to resolve their issues, and emphasized on focused on good governance. At one point, General Karamat wrote:
In my opinion, if we have to repeat of past events then we must understand that Military leaders can pressure only up to a point. Beyond that their own position starts getting undermined because the military is after all is a mirror image of the society from which it is drawn. —General Jehangir Karamat commenting on Benazir's dismissal,Read more about this topic: Jehangir Karamat
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