Word: pashtuns
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...South Waziristan base but not Swat, have always been Pakistan's Wild West, a lawless frontier land notorious for smugglers, thieves, guns and drugs. The FATA, as the area is called, is a legacy of a 19th century agreement between the British rulers of undivided India and the Pashtun tribes inhabiting the mountainous fringes of the Empire. In exchange for autonomy and the freedom to run their affairs in accordance with their Islamic faith and customs, the tribal leaders promised to guard the border with Afghanistan and keep peace in the region. At independence in 1947, Pakistan kept the agreement...
...agricultural production of the province, providing credit, seeds and fertilizer to farmers, who have no other recourse than to grow the raw material for heroin--which in turn finances the insurgency. Helmand is the biggest opium-producing region in the world. And it is home to a Pashtun population that has historically resisted centralized rule. It is, says Chris Alexander, the U.N.'s deputy special representative in Afghanistan, "the place where the challenges that used to be nationwide have been swept like dead leaves into a pile." And at the top of that heap is Kajaki, where the struggle...
...general election, has reported success against Islamists in the nearby Swat Valley, the militants' campaign against entertainment in Peshawar has only escalated. During the 1990s, when Taliban rule in Afghanistan forced scores of refugee artists into Pakistan, Peshawar became the capital of pop culture for the Pashtun, an ethnic-minority group numbering some 39 million along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Local producers built a formidable movie industry that served up a formulaic diet of violence and sexism (but no sex) to Pashtun populations on both sides of the border. This uniquely Pashtun take on exploitation cinema was hardly the stuff...
...young country staggered through its grief, seeking a unified identity out of dozens of feuding ethnic divisions, history continued to deal blow after blow. Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan's first Prime Minister and Jinnah's political heir, was shot dead in 1951 by a Pashtun separatist. Fifty-six years later, Benazir Bhutto died in the very same park. One of her attending doctors was the son of the physician who tried, and failed, to save Khan's life...
...makes for a smooth transition from best-seller to the big-screen. Yet despite the narrative’s imaginativeness and unconventionality, what makes it compelling is its believability, a result of the film’s rich character development. Amir’s father (Homayoun Ershadi), a wealthy Pashtun businessman who abhors everything Russian and loves Western cars, embodies the “old days” in Afghanistan, before civil, cold, and anti-terrorism wars lacerated the fabric of Afghan society. But when they flee to San Francisco, Amir and his father become just another pair of immigrants...