Pervez Musharraf

General Pervez Musharraf assumed the office of chief executive of Pakistan in October 1999, having been appointed chief of staff of the army a year earlier. After calling general elections in 2002 and then restoring the constitution, he became president and commander of the armed services of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in October of that year. He appointed a civilian prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, in 2004. Musharraf was born in Delhi, India, in 1943. His family emigrated to Pakistan in 1947 after the partition of the subcontinent. A graduate of the Command and Staff College in Quetta and the National Defence College in Islamabad, he continued his training at the Royal College of Defence Studies in the United Kingdom. He joined the Pakistan Military Academy in 1961 and was commissioned in an elite artillery regiment in 1964. He later volunteered and served for seven years in the special service group "Commandos," and participated in the 1971 war as company commander in a commando battalion. Under Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Musharraf served as head of military operations. Musharraf gained international prominence in the post-9/11 world as he backed the U.S.-led war on terrorism and cracked down on Islamic extremists in Pakistan. He has survived a number of assassination attempts after banning several fundamentalist groups and trying to transform his country into a moderate Islamic state.