Ayub Khan

Born in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 1907, Khan trained at Sandhurst and fought for the British against Japan in the Second World War. After Partition in 1947 he joined the new Pakistan Army, rising to become its first native Commander-in-Chief in 1951. Seven years later, supporting President Iskandar Mirza's imposition of martial law, he waited three weeks before turning on Mirza and taking the presidency himself in Pakistan's first coup. He aligned with Washington, let the CIA fly U-2s from Peshawar, privatised industries, and presided over South Asia's fastest-growing economy — though land reforms…