Bangladesh names SM Shafiuddin Ahmed as new army chief

The Defence Ministry has named Lieutenant General SM Shafiuddin Ahmed as the new chief of the Bangladesh Army.

Ahmed, the current quartermaster general, will serve as the army chief for three years, starting on Jun 24, the Ministry of Defence said in a notice on Thursday.

He will also be promoted to the rank of general before taking up the post.

Ahmed succeeds the current army chief, General Aziz Ahmed, who was appointed in June 2018.

Shafiuddin Ahmed was born to a family of Liberation War freedom fighters in Khulna. He was commissioned into the army in the 9th Bangladesh Military Academy Long Course.

In December 2020, he was appointed as the quartermaster general after serving as the GOC of the Army Training and Doctrine Command.

Ahmed was put in charge of ARTDOC following his promotion from major general to lieutenant general in August 2019.

In his long career, he took up leadership roles in an infantry division, an infantry brigade and a UN peacekeeping mission.

After his promotion to major general in 2012, the government made him the GOC of 19th Infantry Division. He later became the director general at the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies.

General Ahmed also worked as the senior directing staff at National Defence College and the GOC and area commander of Logistics Area.

He worked as a UN peacekeeper in Mozambique for 16 months in the 1990s. Ahmed later served as a deputy commander of MINUSCA, the UN peacekeeping mission in Central African Republic, from 2014 to 2016. He is the first Bangladeshi battalion commander to have led a multinational force at a UN peacekeeping mission. 

Born on Dec 31, 1963 in Khulna, Ahmed achieved a post-graduate degree in defence studies from the National University. He also completed MBA at the Military Institute of Science and Technology and MPhil in development and securities studies. He is doing doctoral research at the Bangladesh University of Professionals.