Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has approved the appointment of Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir as the country’s first Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) for a period of five years. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s summary recommending Munir for both Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) and Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) was approved, the Pakistan President’s office said in a X post.

“President Asif Ali Zardari approved the appointment of Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir as COAS concurrently as CDF for 5 years,” the official X handle of the President of Pakistan said in a post.

This comes after a lot of speculation over Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s willingness to hand over more power to Munir, as the Sharif government was supposed to notify the appointment of the country’s first Chief of Defence Forces on November 29, the day Munir’s original three-year term as army chief ended.

The Chief of Defence Forces’ role was established last month under the 27th Amendment to the Constitution, aiming to centralise military command.

Additionally, the Pakistan President also approved a two-year extension in the service of Air Chief Marshal Zaheer Ahmad Babar Sidhu, which will take effect from March 19, 2026.

Asif Ali Zardari conveyed his best wishes to both Pakistan Armed Forces officers. Asim Munir, who was promoted to the Field Marshal rank this year, will also simultaneously hold the office of the Chief of Army Staff, along with his duties as CDF. He is only the second military officer in the country’s history to hold the Field Marshal title after Gen. Ayub Khan, who led Pakistan during the 1965 war with India.

What Tilak Devasher said

Earlier, when the Pakistan government delayed the official notification concerning Munir’s appointment as CDF, former member of India’s National Security Advisory Board Tilak Devasher said that Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif was intentionally avoiding the issue of notification.

Speaking to ANI, Devasher highlighted that Sharif left for Bahrain and then London, leading to speculation that he’s deliberately staying away to avoid issuing the notification.

“Very smartly, Pakistan PM had gone to Bahrain and from there, he pushed off to London,” Devasher told ANI. “He is deliberately staying out of this because he clearly doesn’t want to issue the notification giving Asim Munir 5 years as Army chief and as Chief of Defence Forces. He thinks that by keeping away from Pakistan and not having to sign the notification, he can escape the consequences.”

According to Devasher, the failure to notify had created a constitutional and operational gap. “All in all, this is a very messy state of affairs,” he said. “If the fact remains that he (Asim Munir) is no longer the Army chief, then you have a situation where Pakistan doesn’t have an Army chief and even the nuclear command authority, which was supposed to be under the new post of Strategic Forces Command, is also not there. So, it’s an extremely strange situation that Pakistan is under at the moment.” (ANI)