Word: khans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...assembly, his Awami League won an overwhelming 167 of 169 seats in the East. That was enough to guarantee Mujib a majority in the 313-seat national assembly, and ensured that he would have become Prime Minister of Pakistan. It was also enough to alarm President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan and the West Pakistani establishment, which has run the geographically divided country since its partition from India...
...televised interview aired throughout West Pakistan last week, General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan was almost preternaturally calm as he uttered the chilling words. "Total war with India is very near," said Pakistan's President. "There is a limit to our patience, and we are very close to it." Alarmist talk? Perhaps. Yet in the capitals of both countries, foreign diplomats rate the chances of averting a conflict at no better than fifty-fifty...
...Pakistanis knew anything about Yahya Khan when he was vaulted into the presidency two years ago. The stocky, bushy-browed Pathan had been army chief of staff since 1966. Half a dozen high-ranking generals were deeply disturbed about the avuncular Ayub Khan's willingness to permit a return of parliamentary democracy, despite his own comment that politicians behaved like "five cats tied by their tails." When a weary Ayub stepped aside in March 1969 in the wake of strikes and student riots that focused on wages, educational reform and a host of other issues, the generals eagerly imposed...
Yahya, however, had misread the political tempers. When East Pakistan's charismatic Sheik Mujibur Rahman won his stunning majority in the December election, the hard-liners began telling Yahya, "I told you so." Six leading generals-including General Abdul Hamid Khan, an old chum of Yahya's who is the current army chief of staff, and Tikka ("Red Hot") Khan, the coldblooded commander in East Pakistan -helped persuade Yahya to deal harshly with the East's "treachery...
Yahya (pronounced Ya-hee-uh) Khan claims direct descent from warrior nobles who fought in the elite armies of Nadir Shah, the Persian adventurer who conquered Delhi in the 18th century. With his pukka sahib manner, Yahya seems strictly Sandhurst, though he learned his trade not in England but at the British-run Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun. During World War II, he fought in the British Indian army in North Africa and Italy. After partition, like most of the subcontinent's best soldiers, he opted to become a Pakistani (India, the saying goes, got all the bureaucrats...