Word: daoud
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Pingpong. For 30 years, the King had put up with despotic rule. When he came to power in 1933 after his father's assassination, Zahir Shah let his uncles run the country while he played games and grew vegetables. In 1953 Zahir Shah's cousin, Prince Mohammed Daoud, took over and continued the tough stuff. Secret police snooped everywhere; the press was heavily censored. After Daoud quarreled with his finance minister, that official and his family disappeared. Balding, haughty and highhanded, Daoud alienated Afghanistan's slowly developing intellectual class and won the distaste-if not outright dislike...
Still, by playing a diplomatic ping-pong game with Moscow and Washington, Daoud managed to build an economic infrastructure for his country. Soviet engineers cut the world's highest road tunnel through the Hindu Kush escarpment at Salang Pass; Americans erected a vaulting jet airport at Kandahar, the country's second city; together, they have pushed miles of highway across the high, harsh plateau. Along the Helmand River, eight U.S.-financed hydroelectric dams began rising...
...rising just as powerfully was resentment at Daoud's dictatorial ways, and in 1963 Zahir Shah forced his cousin to retire. For the first time in Afghan history, a commoner, Mohammed Yusuf, was appointed Prime Minister; his main job was to oversee the drafting of a new constitution. What evolved is a document that brings the criminal code into the 20th century and forbids members of the royal family to serve in either the Cabinet or the 216-seat Wolesi Jirga (People's Council or Parliament). Though the King may veto laws, the Parliament can overrule him with...
...Pakistan President Ayub Khan are of Pathan stock.) The Afghans have piously encouraged the Pathans' demand for an autonomous state of their own. A series of border shootings since September has rubbed Pakistan's nerves raw. If Pakistan's big army should make serious trouble, Daoud might conceivably invite Russian...
...Afghan army, Soviet-trained and equipped after the U.S. consistently turned down the Afghan's requests to arm them, throws its weight on the Russian side in the scales of Daoud's studied neutrality. But as long as Daoud feels he is getting a fair share of U.S. aid, he is likely to continue teetering along the neutral's profitable middle...