Word: zahir
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...Security Council met late Tuesday to discuss its response to the unfolding crisis in Afghanistan. The focus of that discussion was how to provide urgent aid to the millions of Afghanis who face starvation, but high on agenda was a request from Afghanistan's exiled king, Zahir Shah, to send peacekeeping troops to Kabul in the event of the Taliban's collapse. King Zahir is the lynchpin of Western hopes for a consensus-based government in Kabul that could begin rebuilding the failed state of Afghanistan with international assistance. Maintaining the security of such a government in the face...
...part, remains united by their hatred of the Taliban rather than by any shared vision, and defeat of the common enemy may reopen old wounds among its various tribal factions. Moreover, while many Alliance leaders are inclined to accept the principle of a unity government formed around King Zahir, the Alliance is still nominally loyal to Barhanuddin Rabbani, the president overthrown by the Taliban but who is still recognized by the United Nations. And matters are complicated by Rabbani's opposition to the king and his own desire to resume office...
...exiled king, Zahir Shah, has appealed to the UN to send peacekeeping troops to a post-Taliban Afghanistan. Presumably there will be some pressure on the U.S. to be part of such a force - how will the Pentagon view such a possibility...
Traditionally uneasy with one another, Islamabad and many of the fiercely independent tribal elders along the Afghan frontier are uniting behind Zahir Shah. Islamabad is aghast at the possibility that the Northern Alliance--backed by Iran and Pakistan's enemy, India--might actually topple the Taliban with U.S. military help. The clan chieftains agree for ethnic reasons: except for a few brief and violent intervals, the majority Pashtun tribes have always ruled Afghanistan, and they want to see that happen again. As a Pashtun, Zahir Shah fits the bill. The ethnic minorities of the Northern Alliance find him acceptable...
...oozing messianic praise of the Taliban. When the mullah gathers his robes and exits from the dark, carpeted room into a courtyard of flies and the blinding white light of the desert, Achakzai says with a grin: "Once the Taliban falls, that mullah will be cheering the return of Zahir Shah." Loyalty is something the Taliban can no longer count on among all its fellow tribesmen...