K. M. Azhar

Lieutenant General Khwaja Mohammad Azhar Khan (خواجہ محمد اظہر خان) (usually shortened to K.M. Azhar) (1918 – 29 October 2006) was the chairman of the high-powered committee of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan and a former governor of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Early life
Lt Gen Azhar was born in Saugar, India in 1918 into the (Mian Sheikh Darvesh) Waziris and received his basic education in Aligarh, India. He started his career as a doctor after receiving education at the King Edward Medical College, Lahore. He had attended the historic meeting of the All-India Muslim League in which the Lahore Resolution was adopted in 1940. Responding to a call of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah exhorting the youth to join the armed forces, he left the medical profession and got commission in the armed forces in 1945.

Military and political career
He fought on the Burma front during the Second World War and participated in the wars against India on the Kashmir front in 1947 and at Rann of Kutch in 1965.

He defeated one division of the Indian Army with the help of only two battalions during the 1965 War and conquered 1300 sqmi area in Rajasthan and captured the Munabao Railway Station along with a large number of Indian soldiers and three tanks.

He was injured while commanding Pakistani forces on the Rajasthan front in 1971 during his tenure as the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa governor.

General K.M. Azhar decided to join Jamiat Ulma-e-Pakistan Party after Maulana Shah Ahmad Noorani convinced him to do so in 1978.

Sports chairman
He also served as president of the Pakistan Hockey Federation in 1970 before retirement in 1972 and was the first chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board from 1978 to 1980.

Death and legacy
K.M. Azhar died at the Combined Military Hospital in Lahore on 29 October 2006, when he was admitted to the hospital after receiving a head injury while performing ablution (Wudu) to prepare for Islamic prayers. He was 88 and was survived by five sons and two daughters; four of the sons being graduates of Cadet College Hasan Abdal.

Upon his death in his remembrance his Waziri tribe named a mountain peak after him in Kaniguram Village Kaniguram of South Waziristan.