Word: pathan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...freezing rain lashed an old farmhouse on Pakistan's northwest frontier, the leader of the country's 6,000,000-member Pathan community, Khan Abdul Wali Khan, huddled over a stove and talked politics with several grizzled elders. In words as dark and foreboding as the winter night, he hinted that Pakistan, already defeated, divided and demoralized, might be veering toward further fragmentation. "We refuse to be treated like East Pakistan," the tall, gray-maned Wali told TIME Correspondent Dan Coggin, referring to the Frontier and Baluchistan provinces where his pro-Soviet National Awami Party predominates. He refused...
...drop of an epithet. "Stop reminding me every day," he once snarled at Pakistani journalists when they asked about his repeated promises of a return to democracy for his country. "The people did not bring me to power. I came myself." The stocky former army chief of staff, a Pathan who came to power in 1 969 when widespread strikes and dis orders forced President Ayub Khan to step down, showed his quick temper last week during an impromptu speech at a late-night dinner in Islamabad. Lash ing out at Indira Gandhi, he said at one point: "If that...
...frequently tear at one another in cities and towns. In West Pakistan, communal troubles are rare only because very few Hindus hung on after partition. But in East Pakistan, Moslem oppression had caused a steady Hindu migration to India even before the current troubles began. Now that light-skinned Pathan and Punjabi troops from the West rule by the gun, dark-skinned Bengali Moslems try to survive by informing on their equally dark-skinned Bengali Hindu neighbors. In India, meanwhile, the sight of a Hindu mob seeking vengeance for some Moslem insult is all too familiar. Such incidents have grown...
...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...
...Rupture. The civil war erupted as a result of a victory that was too sweeping, a mandate that was too strong. Four months ago, Pakistan's President, Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan, held elections for a constituent assembly to end twelve years of martial law. Though he is a Pathan from the West, Yahya was determined to be fair to the Bengalis. He assigned a majority of the assembly seats to Pakistan's more populous eastern wing, which has been separated from the West by 1,000 miles of India since the partitioning of the subcontinent...