Ministry of Defence (Pakistan)
The Minister of Defence is Cabinet member, who is responsible for controlling the armed forces. The current Minister of Defence is Khawaja Muhammad Asif. The Secretary of Defence is the senior-most administrative figure within the ministry, who in recent decades has typically been a retired three-star Pakistani army general. The assistant secretaries serving under him are serving flag-officers belonging to the respective services. The following is a simplified representation of the MoD's senior leadership: The Ministry of Defence is a successor of the "Military Department" created by the British East India Company in Calcutta in 1776. Its main function was to coordinate and record orders, relating to the Army, issued by various Departments of the Government of the East India Company. The Military Department initially functioned as a branch of the Public Department and maintained a list of Army personnel. Following Pakistan's independence in 1947, the Ministry of Defence was established at Karachi in August of that year, with Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan also holding the Minister of Defence, while Iskander Mirza served as Defence Secretary. British flag officers remained commanders-in-chief of the army, navy and air force in Pakistan until 1956. In December 1959, the federal capital shifted temporarily to Rawalpindi, while plans for Islamabad were drawn up by then-General Ayub Khan's military government. The proximity of the Army Headquarters in Rawalpindi played a major role in the decision to relocate the capital. In March 1972, President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in response to criticism over the difficulties in inter-service coordination in previous wars decreed that all service HQs were to move to Islamabad. The Navy was the first to comply, with Naval Headquarters moving from Karachi to Sector E9 Islamabad 1974, while Air Headquarters moved from Peshawar to Sector E10 Islamabad in 1983. Following two failed assassination attempts in Rawalpindi, President Pervez Musharraf restarted plans in 2004 for the entire defence establishment to shift to Sector E10 in Islamabad where the Ministry of Defence along with the four service headquarters would be based. This was subsequently cancelled in 2008 grounds of cost following Musharraf's forced resignation. The Ministry of Defence is presently located at "Calcutta House" in Rawalpindi. Other related top-level head offices based in Rawalpindi include the Ministry of Defence Production (MoDP), Joint Staff Headquarters and the Army General Headquarters. The Air Headquarters and the Naval Headquarters are located in Islamabad. The following organizations and services are under the Ministry of Defence:
History
The Ministry of Defence is one of the largest federal ministries of the Government of Pakistan in terms of budget as well as staff.