Muhammad Shahid Sarwar

Who is Muhammad Shahid Sarwar?

Colonel Sahibzada Muhammad Shahid Sarwar Azam FIEB is the current head of the Singranatore family. In the mid-1960s, he started his military career as a cadet at the age of fourteen under the Pakistan Army before the war of 1965 and 1971. In the 1970s, he was trained at the Bangladesh Military Academy, and then by the US Army, the People's Liberation Army of China and the Indian Army in the 1980s. He was also trained as a pilot in the 1990s.

In his military career spanning three decades, he was in Deputy Command of the armed forces of the United Nations after the onset of the Sierra Leone Civil War in 2002 in collaboration with the Sierra Leone Republic Armed Forces and Police to provide support to the Special Court for Sierra Leone following the arrest of former Revolutionary United Front leaders and Government minister on charges of war crimes, and enforce the Community Arms Collection and Development Program introduced by the United Nations Development Program in collaboration with the local paramount chiefs where neighboring conflicts in Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia had resulted in an influx of refugees in the area. During the start of his service, Bengali was made an official language of Sierra Leone by President Tejan Kabbah in order to honour the Bangladeshi peacekeeping force from the United Nations stationed there. His younger brother, a Lieutenant Colonel of the Bangladesh Army also served at the United Nations Mission in Sudan in 2005.