President PPP-S MNA NA-8 (Charsadda-II) Ex-Chief Minister NWPF
Pakistan Peoples Party-Sherpao
Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao
Born on August 20, 1944, Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao son of Ghulam Haider Khan was educated at Edwards College, Peshawar, and Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul, Abbottabad.
After passing out from Pakistan Military Academy with 34th Long Course in 1965, he joined Armoured Corps in the Probya’s Horse Battalion. Over a period of 12 years in the army, he rose to the rank of major.
It was after the assassination of his elder brother, Hayat Muhammad Khan Sherpao, in a bomb blast in 1975 that he jumped into the political arena. The then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto asked him to take an early retirement from his military career and afterwards nominated him as provincial vice-president of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). He was thus a stalwart of the original unified PPP from the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
After the death of his political mentor, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Sherpao wholeheartedly supported his daughter Benazir Bhutto and her struggle against the military dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq. He was a key political figure of the Movement for Restoration of Democracy from NWFP.
In 1988 elections, he orchestrated the downfall of the establishment-backed Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and became the NWFP chief minister. He took an extra-nationalist line to appease the nationalist forces, hostile to his party and thus broadened his political base in their areas.
Sherpao was once again elected as the NWFP chief minister in 1994. However, in the mid-1990s he developed serious differences with Benazir Bhutto when Major Genreal (Retd) Naseerullah Babar mistakenly suspected his role in undercutting him through allotment of party tickets in Nowshera. This finally led to the formation of his own faction of the party called PPP-Sherpao or PPP-S.
He fled Pakistan to Britain after the military came to power in 1999 amidst charges of corruption against him. Eventually he returned prior to the 2002 elections and after striking an electoral alliance with the religio-political parties, he was elected to both the provincial and national assemblies and his party performed relatively well amidst the rout of his former party and the PML in his home province.
Siding with General Pervez Musharraf after the 2002 elections, he was appointed as federal minister for water and power, and subsequently as federal interior minister he has been a prominent figure due to terrorist attacks and fighting in the tribal areas as well as Balochistan.
Sherpao’s family tree and cross-marriages in other influential families has given him a unique edge over his political opponents. His elder brother, Wali Mohammad Khan, was related to former President Sardar Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari. He himself is the son-in-law of Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar, a prominent figure among leaders who struggled for independence of Pakistan from the British colonial rule. His elder son, Sikandar Hayat Khan Sherpao, has already jumped into the provincial politics and was elected as member of the NWFP Assembly.
On April 28, 2007 he was injured in a suicide attack in his hometown of Charsadda, 18 miles northeast of Peshawar, the capital of NWFP.
The political career of Aftab Sherpao includes landmarks such as serving as leader of the opposition in the NWFP Assembly as parliamentary leader of the PPP in 1993 and 1997; chief minister of NWFP in 1994, senior vice chairman of PPP from 1997 to 1999.
