Word: khans
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...this has nothing to do with Osama bin Laden but with Mirza Ali Khan, a Pashtun holy man who revolted against the British in the late 1930s. For nearly a decade, the British army chased him and his followers through the remotest reaches of Waziristan and the Northwest Frontier Province-the same ground where allied troops have spent the past five years searching fruitlessly for bin Laden, and where the remnants of Afghanistan's Taliban fled to lick their wounds and recover their strength. The region was then, as it is today, a powder keg of fractious tribes and fundamentalist...
...Khan was called the Fakir of Ipi, after the Wazir town where he was said to exercise divine powers-like turning sticks into guns and feeding multitudes with a few loaves of bread. Flying the banner of "Islam in Danger," his small lashkars, or war bands, ambushed convoys and raided prominent towns, killing Hindu traders and marching off with money and munitions. For colonial officials in London and New Delhi, this was no minor uprising of petty bandits. Intelligence estimates at the time counted 400,000 fighting men among the various Pashtun tribes, at least half of them armed with...
...organization. In 1988, then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher congratulated the College of Europe on their courage to invite her to speak about the Union. In truthful representation of the British feeling, she herself said inviting her to speak about integration was like inviting “Genghis Khan to speak on the virtues of peaceful coexistence.” Even today, the EU is as popular in Britain as President George W. Bush is in America. Yes, it is that...
Tribal leaders interviewed by TIME say they do not support the aims of the jihadists. But the Taliban's campaign of fear has worn down local resistance. Malik Sher Muhammad Khan, a tribal elder from Wana, says, "The Taliban walk through the streets shouting that children shouldn't go to school because they are learning modern subjects like math and science. But we want to be modern. It's not just the girls. In my village, not a single person can even sign his name." Khan estimates that only 5% of the inhabitants of Waziristan actively support the militants. Others...
...young tribesman in Miranshah. National Intelligence Director John McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that "al-Qaeda is forging stronger operational connections that radiate outward from their camps in Pakistan to affiliated groups and networks throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe." Muzafar Khan, a headman from one of the local tribes, told TIME that Uzbek commander Tahir Yuldashev, leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and a suspected confidant of bin Laden's, commands some Uzbeks, Chechens, Arabs and local fighters from his base in the borderlands. "We know they are al-Qaeda," says Khan...