Word: zahir
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Before the attendees even settled in their seats, host Pir Sayed Ahmed Gailani, a spiritual leader who has positioned himself close to deposed King Zahir Shah, sought backing for his plan to set up an interim supreme council headed by the former monarch. Under Gailani's plan, after the Taliban fell, a council chaired by the King would assume power, backed by a U.N. security force from Muslim countries. The council would call a loya jirga, the traditional representative political gathering, to write a constitution acceptable to all ethnic groups within the framework of Islamic law. Speaker after speaker embraced...
...unlikely that many chieftains from inside Afghanistan braved Taliban wrath to come. Nowhere sat a member of the Northern Alliance. Nor did a single so-called moderate Taliban attend. From Kabul, Taliban spokesmen jeered that the gathering was a bunch of self-seekers out to pocket American dollars. Even Zahir Shah, who stood to benefit most, inexplicably failed to send a personal representative. And the maneuvering in Peshawar ignores a harsh reality. When you ask four Afghan refugees who should rule their country, you get four different answers. Ghulan Sarwar, 50, favors the King. Mahmood Ayub, 25, says only...
...lawlessness that characterized Kabul before the Taliban took control. "There is no question of any repetition of the events that took place in Kabul before," promises Mohammad Da'oud Askaria, the director of the academy. Northern Alliance representatives have also been cozying up to former King Mohammed Zahir Shah, who is favored by the U.S. to lead a broad-based post-Taliban administration...
...dislodge the Taliban from their entrenched mountain positions. As the opposition pounded Taliban lines north of Kabul, more than 1,000 tribal elders, former mujahedin and other Afghan exiles assembled in Peshawar, Pakistan to discuss the post-Taliban era. The assembly agreed to invite the exiled king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, to play a moderating role and call a loya jirga, a grand council, to shape the country?s future government. But in a sign of the difficulty of building consensus, the king did not send an envoy and the Northern Alliance was not represented...
...1900s, when King Mohammed Zahir Shah ruled Afghanistan, wealthy women strolled Kabul's streets in jeans and Western dresses. The Soviets, although brutal in their occupation of the country, maintained women's rights during their decade-long rule. But when the Islam-inspired mujahedin government took over in 1992, life began to change. Women still could attend university, especially to study in the medical and educational fields, but many started wearing head scarves to appease the mullahs. When the Taliban came to power in 1996, its fanatical clerics erased all remaining rights: women are forbidden to leave the house without...