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 failed and the gains pooled with elites. He launched Operation Gibraltar against India in 1965, fought to a stalemate, then won re-election against Fatima Jinnah that same year. By 1967 food prices and inequality had sparked mass unrest led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto; protests spread from East Pakistan across the country until Khan resigned in March 1969, handing power to General Yahya Khan. He died five years later, his "Decade of Development" remembered as both an industrial leap and the template for military rule that would crack the country apart.