Rizwan Akhtar was commissioned in the
Pakistan Army in the
Frontier Force Regiment in September 1982. He commanded an infantry brigade and infantry division in the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) after serving as Operation and Planning Officer at
Peshawar Corps. As
Director General of the
Pakistan Rangers in Sindh, Major General Rizwan Akhtar was the Mastermind behind the Karachi Operation. Akhtar played a key role to restore normalcy in the Financial Capital which was reeling under high crime rate, gang-wars and terrorism. Rizwan Akhtar's successor Bilal Akbar took Karachi Operation to its logical end by completely bulldozing the armed wings of the political parties oiling gang war in the city, which contributing in the recovery of the city by which Karachi was declared one of the safest cities of the world by 2017. Akhtar is also considered to have extensive experience of counterinsurgency from a previous posting in the border region of
South Waziristan. After getting promoted to the rank of
Lieutenant General in September 2014, he was posted as
Director General of the ISI but took pre-mature retirement from the army in October 2017. ==Academic career==