Hamid Gul (Urdu: حمید گل, 20 November 1936 – 15 August 2015) was a Pakistani military officer and defence analyst. A three-star general, Gul was notable for serving as the Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, between 1987 and 1989. During his tenure, Gul played an instrumental role in directing ISI support to the Afghan mujahideen against Soviet forces in return for funds and weapons from the US, during the Soviet–Afghan War, in co-operation with the CIA.
In addition, Gul is widely credited for expanding covert support to Kashmiri militants operating in Indian-administered Kashmir from 1989 onwards, diverting focus from the fallout of the Soviet war. Gul earned a reputation as a "godfather" of Pakistani geostrategic policies. For his role against India, he has been considered by A. S. Dulat, former director of R&AW, as "the most dangerous and infamous ISI chief in Indian eyes." He later turned against the United States and following an escalation of the Kashmir militancy in India and the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, the United States accused him of having ties to Islamic terrorist groups, notably Al-Qaeda and the Lashkar-e-Taiba. One of his nicknames was "Father of the Taliban".
In 1988, Gul, with the support of general's Aslam Beg and Asad Durrani, played a key role in forming the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI), a conservative political alliance created to prevent the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led by Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto from winning the 1990 Pakistani general election. He appointed Nawaz Sharif as the leader of the IJI, who would later win the election with the help of the ISI.
On 15 August 2015, he died after suffering a brain haemorrhage.
Hamid Gul was born on 20 November 1936 in Sargodha in the Punjab Province, British India into a Punjabi-Pashtun family to parents Muhammad Khan and his wife, who originated from Buner Tehsil in Swat District.
Gul ancestrally descended from the Yusufzai tribe of Pashtuns. His father, who was a Subedar-major in the British Indian Army, moved from Swat to Lahore before settling down in Sargodha, where he got arable land, his grandfather was a Khilafat Movement activist while his great-grandfather Faiz Khan participated in the jihad of Syed Ahmad Barelvi and Shah Ismail Dehlvi.
He got his early education from a school in his village. He then received admission into Government College Lahore, before being admitted to Pakistan Military Academy Kakul.
Hamid Gul was commissioned in the Pakistan Army in October 1956 with the 18th PMA Long Course in the 19th Lancers regiment of the Armoured Corps. He was a squadron commander during the 1965 war with India. He attended the Command and Staff College Quetta in 1968–69. During 1972–1976, Gul directly served under General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq as a battalion commander, and then as Staff Colonel, when General Zia was GOC, 1st Armoured Division and Commander II Corps at Multan. Thus, Gul had already cemented his ties with General Zia by serving under him when both were officers in the Armoured regiments of the II Corps. Gul was promoted to Brigadier in 1978 and steadily rose to be the Martial Law Administrator of Bahawalpur and then the Commander of the 1st Armoured Division, Multan in 1982, his appointments expressly wished by Zia himself.
Gul was then sent to GHQ as the Director-General Military Intelligence (DGMI) under General Zia, who then nominated him to be the ISI chief succeeding General Akhtar Abdur Rahman in March 1987. He was later replaced as the ISI commander by PM Benazir Bhutto in May 1989 and Gul was transferred as the commander, II Corps in Multan. In this capacity, Gul conducted the Zarb-e-Momin military exercise in November–December 1989, the biggest Pakistan Armed Forces show of muscle since the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War.
General Asif Nawaz upon taking the reins of Pakistan Army in August 1991, transferred Gul as the DG Heavy Industries Taxila. A menial job compared to Gul's stature, Gul refused to take the assignment, an act for which he was retired from the army.
Director-General of the ISI (1987–1989)
Afghanistan and the Soviet war
During his time as head of the ISI amid the Soviet–Afghan War, Gul planned and executed the operation to capture Jalalabad from the Soviet-backed Afghan army in the spring of 1989 immediately after the Soviet withdrawal. This switch to conventional warfare was seen as a mistake by some since the mujahideen did not have the capacity to capture a major city, and the battle did not yield expected ground results.
However, the Pakistani army was intent on installing a resistance-backed government in Afghanistan, with Jalalabad as their provisional capital, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf as Prime Minister, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as Foreign Minister.
Contrary to Pakistani expectations, this battle proved that the Afghan army could fight without Soviet help, and greatly increased the confidence of government supporters. Conversely, the morale of the mujahideen involved in the attack slumped and many local commanders of Hekmatyar and Sayyaf concluded truces with the government. In the words of Brigadier Mohammad Yousef, an officer of the ISI, "the jihad [meaning the plans for Hekmatyar to be installed as prime minister] never recovered from Jalalabad". As a result of this failure, Hamid Gul was sacked by PM Benazir Bhutto and replaced by Shamsur Rahman Kallu, who pursued a more classical policy of support to the rebels fighting in Afghanistan.
After the death of General Zia, Gul as ISI chief successfully gathered conservative politicians and helped them create the Nawaz Sharif-led Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI), a centre-right conservative coalition united against the left-leaning Pakistan People's Party (PPP) before the 1988 Pakistani general election. Gul later acknowledged his role in IJI's formation in various interviews for which he was harshly rebuked in one of the editorials of a major Pakistani newspaper, which asked the general to apologise first to the PPP for having done so and after that, apologising for a lack of intelligence because the IJI could not maintain its two-thirds majority for long. After General Zia's death, Sharif's political party – Pakistan Muslim League – split into two factions: the Nawaz led the Zia-loyalist Fida Group against PM Junejo's Pakistan Muslim League (J). The Fida Group later took on the mantle of the PML while the Junejo Group became known as the JIP. The two parties along with seven other right-wing conservative and religious parties united with encouragement and funding from the ISI to form the IJI. The IJI received ₨15 million from Zia loyalists in the ISI, with a substantial role played by Nawaz's ally Gul. The alliance was led by Nawaz and Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi and opposed Benazir Bhutto's PPP in the elections. The IJI gained a majority in Punjab, and Nawaz was elected as the chief minister. Nawaz Sharif became the 12th Prime Minister of Pakistan on 6 November 1990, succeeding Benazir Bhutto, securing a majority in the National Assembly after the 1990 Pakistani general election. His rise to power was the result of an election marred with controversy, with his victory orchestrated with the backing of President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and senior military officials—including Gul and generals Aslam Beg and Asad Durrani (the then head of ISI) who worked to buy the loyalties of politicians using funds from the country's foreign exchange reserves. Support also came from powerful drug barons such as Haji Ayub Afridi, Haji Mirza Iqbal Beg, and Sharif's own brother-in-law, Sohail Zia Butt. Sharif continued to maintain his ties with Iqbal Beg, who was arrested and subsequently released on bail as a result of his association with Sharif. In 1996, Asghar Khan filed a lawsuit challenging the results of the 1990 elections, following the discovery of the Mehran bank scandal. Nearly two decades later in 2012, Beg, Durrani, and Gul, along with banker Yunus Habib, admitted their involvement in manipulating the election. Later that year the Supreme Court, ruling in favour of petitioner Asghar Khan, agreed that the election was rigged and ordered legal action against those responsible. As of 2025, no one has been held accountable.