Brigadier Mohammed Yousaf was born in 1937 and was commissioned as an infantry officer into the Frontier Defence Force Regiment of the Pakistan Army in 1961. Subsequently his career took him through the usual sequence of command and staff appointments, including active service against India. He also attended the Command and Staff College at Quetta and the National Defence College at Rawalpindi. While commanding and infantry bridge he was selected by the Director of the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) to head its Afghan Bureau, a post he help from 1983 to 1987, until he resigned as a matter of principle and left the Army. During these four years he was responsible for training, and operational planning of the Mujahideen inside Afghanistan and later inside the Soviet Union.