A. A. K. Niazi

Lieutenant General Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi HJ & Bar SPk SK MC (1915 – 1 February 2004) was a Pakistani military officer. During the Bangladesh Liberation War and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he commanded the Pakistani Eastern Command in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), he signed the instrument of surrender as in 16 Dec. '71 his forces had to surrender to the Indian Army's Eastern Command's commander Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora by the order of the then President of Pakistan Yahya Khan.

Niazi's area of responsibility comprised the defense of East Pakistan from India during the war in 1971, and authors and critics within the Pakistani military held him morally responsible for his decision to unilaterally surrender the Pakistani Eastern Command, which resulted in the war's end in a decisive Indian victory as well as the independence of Bangladesh.

After being taken and held as a prisoner of war by the Indian military, he was repatriated to Pakistan on 30 April 1975 as part of the Delhi Agreement. He was dishonourably discharged from his military service at the War Enquiry Commission led by Hamoodur Rahman. The Commission leveled accusations against him for human rights violations in East Pakistan and the supervision of smuggling efforts during the Bangladesh Liberation War; he was held responsible for Pakistan's military failure during the course of the conflict. Niazi, however, rejected these allegations and sought a military court-martial while insisting that he had acted according to the orders of the Pakistan Army GHQ in Rawalpindi; the court-martial was never granted.

After the war, he remained active in Pakistani politics and supported an ultra-conservative agenda under the Pakistan National Alliance against the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s. In 1998, he authored the book The Betrayal of East Pakistan.

Niazi died in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan, on 1 February 2004.