A Tribute to Gen Janjua’s Leadership

Since the beginning of the modern age many great leaders have served their nations. This includes military and civilian leadership. Such leaders who have served their nations with the single aim to lead their nations to the top; success always kisses their feet. And among these, on the top most are those whose leadership skills always worked when their nations fell in crisis.

Leadership is the art of influencing others; to achieve the task by providing direction and inspiration. The fundamental responsibility of a military leader is the welfare of his soldiers and more importantly the accomplishment of his mission.

My first meeting with Lt Gen Naseer Khan Janjua (HI) was in the National Defence University, Islamabad in 2012, when he was appointed as the President of the University. He is leaving NDU soon as he is now appointed as Corps Commander Quetta of Southern Command of the Pakistan Army. During his one year command in NDU, he was able to achieve important milestone which I must say are due to his unique leadership qualities. The aim of writing this essay is to highlight Gen Naseer’s personality and some of the work done in NDU under his command.

National Defence University (NDU) is the highest degree awarding institution for the military officers in Pakistan Army. It also has a civilian component, where the university is educating young scholars at highest level in strategic and security disciplines. Thus at NDU the President has to deal with top military brass as well as civilian scholars. Gen Naseer was able to connect with both; a manifestation of his leadership skills. He took all possible steps to raise the bar to promote education and research in NDU. His positive attitude toward his subordinates is very appreciable. During his command in NDU he was inspirational, engaging, motivating and exquisite. One special thing about his command in NDU is really appreciable, his ability to delegate. In addition, I remember when he was addressing a seminar at ISSRA, the level of confidence during his keynote address was awe-inspiring.
One more special thing his personality possesses is a razor sharp memory. Usually, leaders forget about people working near to them, but he possesses a God gifted ability of remembering most of the things about people’s work under his command and I would say this level of memorizing things is unmatchable, which is a top leadership quality. Similarly, during this stay in NDU he communicated with everyone from top to bottom and tried to boost the morale of everyone, which make him a source of inspiration in NDU. Last but not the least his frequent visits to Faculty of Contemporary Studies (FCS) campuses made him different from the past administration.

His achievements in NDU include conducting workshops –Media Workshop and National Security Workshop 2012-2013, seminars, and the successful completion of National Security and War Course 2012-12, purely at academic level. One big achievement which I would say comes on top of all his previous achievements is the completion of exercise AZM-e-NAU 4 in NDU—the biggest military exercises in the history of Pakistan Army. Exercise AZM-e-NAU was kicked off in 2009, but the final stage—the consolidation and the final analyses of the War games—took place in NDU.

Prior to becoming the President of NDU, he served as Chief of Southern Command and Vice Chief of General Staff at General Headquarters. He also served in swat in most difficult times when Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had taken over the area and Pakistan Army came under a lot of pressure to regain the area from the Taliban and his efforts to defeat the Taliban during Swat operation were really commendable at operational level. Here I must say he really served the nation when swat was under crisis. Now he is assigned another duty as Corps Commander Quetta Southern Command Pakistan Army.

Pakistan is now facing multidimensional threats to its national security and Baluchistan right now is facing insurgency and ethnic violence. Especially Quetta in past has witnessed some of the deadly bomb attacks in civilian area as well as on the security forces. Now, it’s time for him to rejuvenate his leadership skills to deal with these miscreants like he had successfully done during Swat operation.