At 8:50 on the morning of 8 October 2005, the mountains of northern Pakistan began to shake, and in ninety seconds, entire towns ceased to exist. As buildings collapsed and the earth betrayed everyone standing on it, the soldiers serving in Azad Jammu and Kashmir did not run for safety. They ran toward the danger. Many never came back.
Lieutenant Naveed Tahir Shaheed of the Pakistan Army was among them. An officer of the 109 Long Course, ex 7 Field Regiment Artillery, he embraced martyrdom while serving the people of the affected region, not in battle against an enemy, but in the cold work of rescue, amid the rubble of one of the deadliest earthquakes in the country’s history.
An Artillery Officer
Lieutenant Naveed Tahir was serving in Azad Kashmir when disaster struck. Artillery officers are trained for the battlefield, but on that October morning the battlefield came to them in the form of nature’s fury. The earthquake killed tens of thousands and flattened entire towns across Azad Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
In that chaos, the distinction between combat duty and rescue duty disappeared. A soldier’s oath does not pause for disaster; if anything, it binds him tighter. Like every soldier in uniform that day, Lieutenant Naveed stood his post and served his people in their hour of greatest need, and he honoured that oath to the end.
When the earthquake struck, the Pakistan Army launched one of the largest relief operations in the country’s history. Soldiers who had been guarding the Line of Control found themselves digging through rubble, carrying the injured, and burying the dead. Many gave their health. Some gave their lives, in the service of strangers. Lieutenant Naveed Tahir was one of those soldiers.
The Day the Earth Shook
He did not fall alone. That single day claimed many officers and jawans alongside him: Lieutenant Colonel Kamran Akbar Shaheed, 76 Long Course, ex 40 S and T and 9 AT ASC; Captain Iftikhar Ahmad Shaheed, 648 Mujahid Battalion; Major Ahmed Gul Shaheed, ex 650 Mujahid Battalion; Havaldar Rana Shamshad Ali Shaheed, AMC; Captain Dr Asad Ullah Ahmad Shaheed, AMC and CMH; Major Sabir Hussain Shaheed, 72 Long Course, ex 56 S and T and 9 AT; Major Muhammad Jabar Chaudhry Shaheed, 87 Long Course, ex 117 Medical Regiment; and Lieutenant Colonel Shahid Mehmood Shaheed, 77 Long Course, ex 38 Cavalry and 644 Mujahid Battalion. All died in the line of duty amid the catastrophe.
Every year on 8 October, the shahadat anniversary of Lieutenant Naveed Tahir is observed, on the same date the nation mourns all the victims of the earthquake. Twenty-one years on, the date carries a double weight: a national day of mourning for the tens of thousands lost, and a day of remembrance for the soldiers who died serving them.
Service Beyond the Battlefield
Soldiers are remembered for how they die, but Lieutenant Naveed Tahir should also be remembered for how he lived his final hours: in service, amid chaos, helping others while the ground itself betrayed them. His sacrifice, and that of his fellow officers and jawans who perished that day, is a reminder that the uniform serves in war and in calamity alike.
There is a special poignancy in a soldier who dies not by an enemy’s hand but in the act of rescue. It may be the purest form of service: to give one’s life not in the heat of battle, but in the desperate work of saving strangers from rubble, with no glory in it, only duty.
Each 8 October, Pakistan remembers both the victims of the earthquake and the soldiers who died trying to save them. The two memories belong together, as two halves of the same tragedy, and the same testament to human courage.
Remembering All Who Fell
Lieutenant Naveed Tahir Shaheed stood his post when the earth itself turned against the people he was sworn to protect. His name is spoken alongside Lieutenant Colonel Kamran Akbar, Captain Iftikhar Ahmad, Major Ahmed Gul, Havaldar Rana Shamshad Ali, Captain Dr Asad Ullah Ahmad, Major Sabir Hussain, Major Muhammad Jabar Chaudhry and Lieutenant Colonel Shahid Mehmood, all of whom embraced martyrdom that day in Azad Kashmir.
They ran toward the danger. Pakistan will never forget them.
