Air Marshal Asghar Khan born 17 January, 1921) is a Pakistani 3-star rank general and politician who was the first native Air Force Commander-in-Chief of Pakistan Air Force. A politician and world war II veteran fighter pilot, at the age of 36, he served as the youngest and first Pakistani head of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF). Later on he was appointed as the head of the National flag carrier PIA (Pakistan International Airlines).
He is considered an honest politician who did not achieve all his political goals due to the principled stands that he took. His long career in the Air Force, running PIA and in politics spanned many of the key moments in Pakistan's history. He is also the author of a dozen books. During his long political career which included imprisonment, he was adopted as a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International and was awarded the Gold Medal by the Pakistan Society of Human Rights. He has also been awarded the Jinnah Award by the Jinnah Society for outstanding services to the cause of democracy and for upholding the values and principles of Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
Air Marshal M. Asghar Khan is the son of Brigadier Thakur Rahmatullah Khan Bahadur (an Afridi Pathan from Tirah Valley) who served in the Kashmir Army. He was born in Jammu, Kashmir on 17 January 1921. Asghar Khan was educated at the Prince of Wales's Royal Indian Military College, Dehradun from 1933 to 1939. He joined the Indian Military Academy in 1939, was commissioned in the Royal Deccan Horse in December 1941 and seconded to the Royal Indian Air Force in January 1942. He commanded a Flight of No. 9 Squadron Royal Indian Air Force in Burma in 1944 and 45 and took part in Air Operations against the Japanese.
Much of Asghar Khan's family which had left Tirah Valley in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) to settle in Kashmir, again migrated at the time of partition to Abbottabad in the North-West Frontier Province and settled there. This included his parents and his ten siblings. He and all his brothers, except one, then joined the armed forces of Pakistan.
