Pakhtunistan A Ghost Resurrected

Pakhtunistan: A Ghost Resurrected Mohammed Ayoob THE Daud coup in Afghanistan coupled with apparent political uncertainties in Pakistan have led to the resurrection of the emotional issue of Pakhtunistan which had been relatively dormant for over a decade. Immediately on the assumption of power, Daud Khan made a reference to the Pakhtunistan issue which must have made policy-makers in Islamabad sit up and take note. This was followed by other statements by Afghan official spokesmen culminating in the speech by the Afghan representative at the Algiers Non-Aligned Conference. Abdur Kehman Pazhwak, Afghanistan's chief delegate at Algiers who bad been a UN General Assembly President and is presently Kabul's envoy in Bonn, claimed at the plenary session of the Algiers Conference that seven million people of Pakhtunistan had been separated from Afghanistan. He made specific references to recent developments in the NWFP and Baluchistan and threatened that Afghanistan could not remain unconcerned with these developments.