Word: pushtu
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...summoned to tea by the local Taliban commander, Mohammed Haqqani. Along with his bodyguards and a Taliban judge, Haqqani is fiddling with a radio, trying to reach the BBC's Pushtu service. He finds it in time to hear that the Taliban have driven the Northern Alliance out of Maidanshahr, south of Kabul. They all beam and cheer; it reminds me a little of watching the annual Lions football game back home...
...Omar's knowledge of international affairs is limited to whatever he is able to grasp from Pushtu-language radio broadcasts by the BBC and Voice of America. He has met a few foreign diplomats and a small number of journalists. Common members of the Taliban can see him easily. In the past, he sat on his office carpet and received visitors. However, since being elevated to the status of Amirul Momineen, or Commander of the Faithful, he sits on a raised platform. He has learned to drive his luxury Land Cruiser and is adept at handling satellite phones and walkie...
Unlike Karmal, who is a member of the small, Dari-speaking elite, Najibullah has the advantage of belonging to the country's dominant Pushtu tribe. The new leader is therefore well placed to get fellow Pushtuns in Pakistan to cut guerrilla supply lines and unify the ranks of a regime so sharply divided that it is sometimes referred to as an example of "two-party Communism." If Najibullah can consolidate a solid and loyal Soviet-style government, Moscow may feel secure enough to withdraw its 120,000 troops from Afghanistan...
...World War II, alone and with $5 in her purse. As she describes her prospects, "My only commercial asset was that I knew French, but French was of no professional use to anyone in Canada then -- not even to French Canadians; one might as well have been fluent in Pushtu." Still, she perseveres, ultimately finds a job on a local newspaper and sets out to become a writer, much as the author herself did in the late 1940s. Such determination and pluck are rare among Gallant's outcast characters. When the girl's native country fails to meet her standards...
...announcements by Radio Kabul in Persian and Pushtu were brief but to the point: tanks and infantry loyal to a "military revolutionary council" had surrounded the presidential palace in Afghanistan's capital. President Mohammed Daoud, 68, and his younger brother and political confidant, Mohammed Nairn, had been killed after they "madly" resisted the coup. A new regime was in control, led by Col. Abdul Kadir, 37, the air force chief of staff...