Joanne Herring President of Pakistan Gen Zia Ul Haq Girl Friend

Joanne Herring in Afghanistan with the mujahideen

By Philip Sherwell

12:01AM GMT 02 Dec 2007 

Joan Herring was Girls Friend of Genereal  ZIA ul Haq of Pakistan Army and Dictor President of Pakistan and Murderer of Zufiqar ali Bhutto .

Gen Zia ul Haq Befriended Joanne Herring when he was in Jordon Killing Palestenains when he was a  Brigadiar in Jordon .

Leter when he Killed the First Elected PM of Pakistan Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and became a Doctayor and President of Pakistan , he Appointed Joanne Herring wife of Oil Magnet and Bussiness man Mr Herring as  Ambassdor of Islamic republic of Pakistan as he called Paistan then in Texas in Pakistani Embassy in  USA ,

She was Party Animal and Orgy Doer and had links with Influential Congress and Sentors in USA including the President Ronald Reagan , Isreal and also Middle East Dictators like King of Jordon and also Egyptian and Israeli's, with Parties of Sex , booze and orgies.

Gen Zia ul Haq had been Picked up in Favour with Israel and USA , after Operation Black Friday when he Killed a Lot of Palestenians attacking Israel from Jordon and he Killed 10,000 Under his Tanks as Brigadiar incharge of 2nd Armoured Brigade ,  to stop Palestenains from attacking Isreal and also Protect King Hussain of Jordon with whoem he has good Friendship and Loyality of King Hussian

As Persoanl Friend of King Hussain Joanne Herring also got acquainted  and Befriended Gen Zia Ul Haq Army Chief of Pakistan Army.

Gen Zia would Interrupt his cabinet meeting to just Take her call as People in his Cabinet like Sahibzada Yaqub Khan had noted in his Memoirs . She has relationship with Senator Texas Charlie Wilson , the Father of "Charlie Wilson war " , or Operation Cyclone , th iat Started as revenge for Vietnam but ended up Defeat of Soviet USSR Russian Empire  . 

Film trailer: Charlie Wilson's War
Arts channel


Joanne Herring was a pampered Texan until she took to the mountains of Afghanistan to fight the Red Menace. As her astonishing story comes to the big screen, she talks to Philip Sherwell


Joanne Herring speaks in the slow, refined drawl of a Southern belle. With her svelte figure, surgeon-assisted features, dyed blonde hair and obligatory sunglasses, she looks far younger than her 78 years, as she drives around Houston's ritzy suburbs in a red Jaguar convertible, accompanied by her two bandana0wearing black poodles.

Joanne Herring and Gen Zia President of Pakistan  

Thrice-married socialite, hostess, philanthropist, businesswoman, diplomat, television chat-show presenter and God-fearing ultra-conservative, Mrs Herring has been compared to a cross between Scarlett O'Hara and Dolly Parton in her various incarnations of Texan royalty.


But the most extraordinary role in her remarkable life is about to be portrayed by Julia Roberts in a new Hollywood blockbuster, Charlie Wilson's War, to be released in America on December 21. For Mrs Herring also changed the course of history.

A few months after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, she smuggled herself into that mountainous land to film the atrocities that the Russian forces were inflicting as they strafed villages from helicopter gunships.

Mrs Herring nearly became a casualty of those same tactics, surviving a helicopter attack by Soviet forces on their mujahideen foes while she was filming the battle with her combat photographer son, Robin King, and Charles Fawcett, an adventurer and movie-maker.

Joanne Herring adn Sentor Charlie Willson 

The footage they brought back was pivotal in persuading America to arm secretly and fund the tribal warriors fighting the Red Army. The biggest covert war in history turned Afghanistan into Moscow's "Vietnam", culminating in humiliating defeat for the Kremlin and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"Many times I wondered what a nice girl from Texas was doing in a place like that," she told The Sunday Telegraph last week. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I would have ended up in the underbelly of the world fighting the demons of communism."

She treasures a fading photograph that captures the bizarre incongruity of her mission. It shows her sitting demurely, looking as if she were dressed for a light lunch at the country club, with her coiffed hair, big glasses and neat cardigan and blouse, but she is surrounded by bearded, turbaned warriors toting automatic rifles in the bleak rocky terrain of Afghanistan.

Joanne Herring with King Shah Hussain of Jordon Friend of Zia 

On her return, she showed the film to Republican friends and political grandees, such as George Bush senior, the new vice-president under Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger and CIA chief William Casey.

Perhaps most significantly, she was dating Charlie Wilson, a flamboyant Texan congressman with a reputation as a hard-drinking playboy who was also a consummate Washington wheeler-dealer and influential member of the defence appropriations committee.

Mrs Herring and Mr Wilson (played by Tom Hanks in the film) forged an alliance with a rule-bending CIA operative Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to launch a clandestine international operation to back the mujahideen.

The maverick triumvirate secured Israeli and Swiss arms, paid for by US and Saudi money, and smuggled them through Egypt, in deals struck while belly dancers deployed their seductive talents on visiting dignitaries in Arab capitals.

It is little wonder that the film by veteran director Mike Nichols, who won an Oscar for The Graduate in 1968, begins with the declaration: "Based on a true story. You think we could make this up?" The trailer tempts cinema-goers with the message: "A stiff drink. A little mascara. A lot of nerve. Who said they couldn't bring down the Soviet Empire."

Mrs Herring will be given the red-carpet treatment at the film's premiere in Los Angeles and feted at a slew of parties next week, and she is delighted that their battle to halt the spread of communism is receiving the celluloid treatment.

"I am very proud of what we did. We were a tight-knit network of anti-communists who loved our country and loved freedom," she says. "I hope people who come to watch this movie will leave with an appreciation of what we achieved."

She is also braced for her "tarty" depiction on the big screen. "It's not the real me, but Hollywood is Hollywood and I accept that. I love Julia Roberts, she's gorgeous and I'm sure she plays the part wonderfully."

Is she worried about her reputation? "I've had a lot of bullets shot at me in my life, metaphorically and literally," she says, laughing again. "Nobody likes it, but I'm not worried about it."

In fact, Mrs Herring won what she sees as a major victory earlier this year when she first saw the script. "I don't curse, I don't drink double Martinis and I don't jump in and out of hot-tubs with men," she insists. "I'm not that kind of girl. I'm a Christian."

Mrs Herring deployed a high-powered Texan lawyer to argue her corner and Nichols agreed to cut the bad language, although the Martinis and the raciness are still there. But the frostiness has healed and Mrs Herring was charmed when she visited the set and met Roberts ("so sweet") and Hanks ("a real gentleman and a patriot, I hear").

She entertains visitors with her easy-going charm in a condominium in the same affluent River Oaks district where she grew up as an only child. A lift takes guests straight into an elegant living-room decorated in French style, although it is a step down from the colonnaded mansions she once occupied.

The "party girl" label has stuck with her, to her dismay. She dropped out of the University of Texas at age 20 to marry her first husband, the property developer Robert King, who she met at a debutante's ball.

For her 30th birthday party, he threw a "Roman orgy" costume extravaganza, complete with a mock slave auction, that remains the stuff of Texas legend half a century later. It was captured for posterity by a photographer from Life magazine. The then Mrs King was the first of many to be thrown into the swimming pool during the celebrations.

She became a Houston institution as host of the daytime Joanne King Show on local television but she and Mr King parted company - he liked the quiet life and she craved excitement. Soon after her divorce, she met and won the heart of the oil tycoon Robert Herring - a relationship that was to change not just her life but the fate of the world.

For, in the course of his international business travels, Mr Herring was offered the post of roving honorary consul representing Pakistan in America. He declined politely, but suggested his wife in his place.

"I was a woman, of course, but they still wanted to get Bob to build his pipelines," she says. "They didn't really know what to do, but they ended up saying yes."

Mrs Herring threw herself into the role, learning about the culture of Pakistan and teaching villagers how to establish cottage industries for rugs and textiles. She also become a confidante of President Zia-ul-Haq, who brought the "red menace" threat to Mrs Herring's attention after the Soviet invasion. And so, with Mr Fawcett and her son, Robin, she ventured into Afghanistan on her fateful trip in 1980.

She lays out the geopolitical realities of the time, lacing her analysis with her personal political loathing of communism. "I looked at the map and I saw that after Afghanistan, the Russians would want the warm-water ports of Pakistan," she explains. "And then it was just a short distance to the Straits of Hormuz. If they had managed to sink a couple of tankers there, they could have crippled the US economy.

"But, at that time, people didn't want to know about it in America. No one cared about Afghanistan. It was just some rocky mountains to the folks in Washington."

Shortly after her return to the US, another twist of fate intervened. Her beloved husband died of lung cancer and, after a period of mourning, she struck up a relationship with Mr Wilson, a fellow Texan, nicknamed "Good Time Charlie" for his partying lifestyle.

Even under President Reagan, the US did not at this stage want an open confrontation with Moscow, so the congressman, the socialite and the CIA chief developed their own clandestine network.

"The Americans, the British, the French and Middle Eastern governments were all involved, but surreptitiously," says Mrs Herring. "We even cornered the market on mules along the Pakistani-Afghan border to take the weapons in."

The operation helped turn the tide of the war as the mujahideen could then bring down Hind choppers with their shoulder-held missiles, depriving the Russians of the air invincibility that was so crucial in the mountainous country.

It was these anti-Soviet Islamic forces, with their foreign volunteers, such as Osama bin Laden, that later turned into al-Qaeda, the fanatical organisation responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks on America. But Mrs Herring is dismissive of the suggestion that her actions helped create a "terrorist Frankenstein", as some have argued.

"It's the stupidest thing I ever heard. Why were we there? Who were we fighting? We were fighting the Russians and we beat the Russians. You cannot predict the future but we won the war we went to fight.

"We did not make al-Qaeda. But we abandoned the Afghans and we've betrayed the Palestinians, and some extremists have exploited that. Certain so-called holy men - and that's spelt t-h-u-g-s - exploited this issue because they want power and money."

Mrs Herring and Mr Wilson split up but remain friendly. The former congressman, now 74, who was a consultant on the film and had a heart transplant in September, recently told an interviewer: "Joanne is a very difficult woman to say no to." She, meanwhile, married her third husband, the millionaire businessman Lloyd Davis, but they divorced in 2005.

Joanne Herring is still excited by the memories of those daring days and fascinated by the intrigues of international affairs. "It's such a tragedy that women cannot talk about politics in an intellectual way without people suspecting they have some other agenda," she laments.

Their story remained largely unknown until the publication in 2003 of the book Charlie Wilson's War by the late George Crile, an American television news producer. Mrs Herring is enjoying her time in the spotlight and it may not be over yet. She is writing her memoirs and Universal Studios is considering turning her astonishing life into a sequel. As they say, you couldn't make it up.

source : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1571233/How-Joanne-Herring-won-Charlie-Wilsons-War.html

Chief Strategist of Taliban Wars Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Defeated by his Success

When in the first half of 1979 Carter’s hawkish former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski designed the Afghan trap to the Soviets, he never dreamed with a further URSS collapse. He only wished to engage the soviet army in a kind of Viet Nam, meanwhile USA was going ahead in the gulf. That trap was code named "Operation Cyclone".

So, six months before Soviets decided to invade Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arab and the CIA had begun to train mujahideen in neighbor Zia ul-Haq’s Pakistan. As much as the mujahideen are not so prone to have any deal with the "Big Satan", the Stingers, bucks and ammo were funneled to Gulbuddin Hekmayar through the ISI, the Pakistani Secret Services.(1),(2),(4)

The guy who provided the funds to the Robert M. Gates CIA's (from dec/18/2006 US Secretary of Defense) was drawn from the buckle of the Bible Belt, the D-TX Charlie Wilson, a beloved friend of the nicaraguan dictator "Tacho" Somoza, whilst the CIA put Gust Avrakotos(5) in the Pakistani side to distribute ammo and bucks.

Those mujahideen were mainly recruited from the Pashto tribes dwelling in the FATA (Federally Administred Tribal Areas) Pakistan's NW Frontier, but a minority of Arab mujahideen were trained so, in a group called Maktab al-Khadamat (MAK). And guess you who was between them? If you thought about Osama, yes, you’re right.

When the mujahideen that the CIA had trained began to fight in Afghanistan to spur the Soviets, then they had bitten the fishhook and invaded Afghanistan. Ten years later, they had to withdraw and two years later, the URSS plummeted.

Never Brzezinski dreamed so much. The trap’s main aim was only to distract and keep Soviets engaged in dealing with a vietnamese-like guerrillas. So, when he received such gift, he told Le Nouvelle Observateur: “To repent of what? This secret operation has been an excellent idea!”.

But you know how this tale ends: Pashto mujahideen turned into Taleban, Taleban into Osama, Osama into WTC, WTC into Northern Alliance, Northern Alliance into Karzai, and then USA and NATO forces seeking for a window on how to leave the Brzezinski’s “Russian” trap. Without scheduling a withdrawal, of course, but best if we can do it in ten minutes!

And where’s Brzezinski nowadays? Well, after writing a couple of “:” books, and chaired another couple of “Freedom Organisations”, then he retired and in 2006 he was engaged on signing a Fairfax County neighbors treaty on how a sidewalk should be done(3). I suggest he call it SALT IV.

Reference :
1. "How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen”, Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76,
2. "Oui, la CIA est entrée en Afghanistan avant les Russes...” orginal interview (in french)
3. “Forever the Negotiator: Brzezinski in a Stalemate Over a Sidewalk”, The Washington Post, April 9, 2006,
4. "The Largest Covert Operation in CIA History", By Chalmers Johnson for LA Times
5. "CIA Agent Gust L. Avrakotos Dies at Age 67", By Patricia Sullivan for the Washington Post

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski

7. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zbigniew-Brzezinski

8. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski

CIA Agent Gust L. Avrakotos father of Taliban Project Operation Cyclones in Af-Pak.

By Patricia Sullivan Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Characters of Charlie Wilson War Real Above Played by Movie stars Below 

Gust L. Avrakotos, 67, the CIA agent in charge of the massive arming of Afghan tribesmen during their 1980s guerrilla war against the Soviets, died of complications from a stroke Dec. 1 at Inova Fairfax Hospital. He was a McLean resident.

Mr. Avrakotos, who ran the largest covert operation in the agency's history, was dubbed "Dr. Dirty" for his willingness to handle ethically ambiguous tasks and a "blue-collar James Bond" for his 27 years of undercover work. In the 1980s, he used Tennessee mules to bring hundreds of millions of dollars in automatic weapons, antitank guns and satellite maps from Pakistan to the mujaheddin.

Working with former congressman Charles Wilson (D-Tex.), Mr. Avrakotos eventually controlled more than 70 percent of the CIA's annual expenditures for covert operations, funneling it through intermediaries to the mujaheddin. As a result, the tribesmen drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and the long Cold War shuddered toward an end.

Those weapons later were used in the fratricidal war in Afghanistan before the Taliban took control. Critics noted that those weapons probably were still in use, both in support of and against U.S. troops, when the United States went to war in Afghanistan in 2001.

Mr. Avrakotos, whose thermonuclear approach to internal politics twice led him to coarsely insult the CIA's European division director, lost his position just as the Stinger antiaircraft missile launchers downed the first Soviet gunships. He was transferred to an African assignment and retired shortly thereafter, in 1989.

Mr. Avrakotos remained obscure until 2003, when "60 Minutes" producer George Crile published "Charlie Wilson's War," a best-selling description of how Wilson and Mr. Avrakotos strong-armed Congress and the bureaucracy into supporting the cause of the mujaheddin. He may become still better known: Tom Hanks has bought the rights to turn the book into a movie.

Mr. Avrakotos was born in Aliquippa, Pa., the son of Greek immigrants, and attended Carnegie Institute of Technology until family finances forced him to leave after two years. He worked in a local steel mill, then sold beer and cigarettes to ethnic taverns throughout western Pennsylvania, learning to banter with the first-generation immigrants from eastern and central Europe. He returned to college and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh.

Gust Avrakotos 

He joined the CIA in 1962, just after it began recruiting agents from beyond its Ivy League training grounds. Because he spoke Greek, he was assigned to Athens. While he was there, a military junta overthrew the democratic, constitutional government, and Mr. Avrakotos became the chief liaison to Greek colonels. Their fascist regime fell in 1974, and the November 17 terrorist group assassinated the CIA's station chief. CIA renegade Philip Agee, who had exposed the Athens station chief's name, six months later revealed Mr. Avrakotos as well, and the Greek press vilified him for his role in the regime.

He left Greece in 1978. But he could not get another decent assignment with the CIA, Crile wrote, because his superiors considered him too uncouth for promotion.

A second-generation, working-class Greek American with a profane tongue and bare-knuckle character, Mr. Avrakotos never quite felt at home in the polished WASP world of the CIA's elite. So when the intelligence scandals of the 1970s resulted in a purge of agents in 1977, and most were first- or second-generation Americans, Mr. Avrakotos felt betrayed by the organization. Not one to let bygones be bygones, Mr. Avrakotos once showed a photograph of a colleague who crossed him to an old Greek woman and requested that she put a curse on him.

He eventually found a position with the Middle East desk at the CIA and worked his way into a position as section chief of the area that includes Afghanistan. He was made a member of the elite Senior Intelligence Service in 1985 and received the Intelligence Medal of Merit in 1988.

"Throughout his Afghan tour, Avrakotos did things on a regular basis that could have gotten him fired had anyone chosen to barge into his arena with an eye toward prosecuting him. But then Avrakotos was not just lucky. He was brutally worldly wise, keenly aware of the internal risks he was taking. And so he always made it difficult for anyone to get him, should they try," Crile wrote.

Backed by Wilson's appropriations acumen, Mr. Avrakotos purchased so many weapons that he had to buy a special ship to move containers of them to Karachi. He badgered the Saudi Arabian government to keep a secret commitment to match U.S. funds to the mujaheddin and intimidated Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey (R-N.H.) into quieting his criticism of the CIA. He batted away a proposal by Oliver North and Richard Perle to set up loudspeakers in the mountains to entice Soviets to defect.

He shopped in Egypt for wheelbarrows and bicycles rigged as bombs. It was illegal to provide sniper rifles to foreigners, so he redefined the weapons as "individual defensive devices . . . long-range, night-vision devices with scopes."

But it was after he filed a memo warning against North's arms-for-hostages scheme that came to be known as Iran-contra that his career ascent ended, and he was reassigned to Africa.

He retired from the CIA in 1989, then worked for TRW in Rome and for News Corp., for whom he began a business intelligence newsletter, working in Rome and McLean.

He returned to work on contract for the CIA from 1997 until 2003.

His marriage to Judy Avrakotos ended in divorce. A granddaughter died in 2004.

Survivors include his wife of 19 years, Claudette Avrakotos of McLean; a son from his first marriage, Gregory Avrakotos of Melbourne Beach, Fla.; a sister; and two granddaughters.

source : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/24/AR2005122400871.html?noredirect=on    

Taliban tried to wipe out Afghanistan’s film industry. This is what survived Miracololusly and How ?

Afghan Cinema Archives

KABUL — A young woman lounges in a meadow, daydreaming about her love. Her friend sings and decorates her long hair with freshly picked flowers. Suddenly, she perks up to the clip-clop of an approaching horse. “Sharif is coming!” she cries out, jumping up to run toward him.
In Afghanistan, movie scenes like this one — released just before the outbreak of civil war in 1992 — were once an essential part of the country’s rich culture. Then, in the mid-1990s, the Taliban banned them — destroying some reels of film and leaving others to decay in storage.
Now, an elite team of film archivists here is working to conserve them as part of a years-long government program that aims to digitize about a century’s worth of Afghan documentaries and films over the next six months.

The project coincides with negotiations between the United States and the Taliban, which have raised both hopes for an end to the 18-year war and fears the Taliban could return to power. Once finished, some clips from the digitized movies will be made available to download online and others will be screened at mobile theaters across Afghanistan — even, the archivists hope, in some of the many areas that remain under Taliban control.
“Archives are the identity of a country,” said Sultan Mohammad Istalifi, 72, a longtime employee of Afghan Film, the state-run film company, who is part of the digitization team. “If the archive is not preserved, the identity of the country is lost.”

That the films have survived this long is something of a miracle. Afghan Film opened in the late 1960s with help from the United States and went on to oversee the production of movies across Afghanistan over the following decades.
But when the Taliban took over the government in Kabul in 1996, the militants enforced a strict version of Islamic law, banning music and moving images. Under their rules, just seeing a woman’s face in public was deemed immodest. To see one appear on screen — pining for a man, her hair uncovered — would have been considered sacrilegious.
Afghan Film staff knew the Taliban’s hard line interpretation of Islam put them and their films in danger.
Fearing the militants would destroy their irreplaceable archive, some employees risked their lives to hide the films, piling as many reels as they could in the building’s ceilings and walls. When the Taliban eventually stormed the company’s headquarters, militants burned much of what they found.
“I felt as if I were at a funeral,” Habibullah Habib, 61, a film projectionist who helped hide the films decades ago, said of that day. “The air was full of grief.”
Many of the movies survived in their hiding places until after the Taliban government fell in 2001. But in the shadow of the drawn-out war that followed, many of those films were neglected and damaged.
Efforts to protect the surviving films by digitizing them began years ago, but with funding and equipment shortages, the process stagnated. Then, last year, the archives staff at Afghanistan’s presidential palace took over the project and moved the reels from the historic Afghan Film headquarters into a climate-controlled room in the basement of a gray building on the far side of the palace compound in Kabul, where they now sit neatly stacked behind a heavy door with a biometric lock.

Critics accused the government of moving the films out of reach of the general population by barricading them on one of the most secure compounds in an already militarized capital. But Rafiullah Azizi, director of the palace archives, said relocating the reels was the only way to ensure they would survive whatever happens next in Afghanistan.
“Afghanistan has been destroyed and the movies are no exception,” he said. “They need to be taken care of like a baby.”
Some of the films were “almost ruined” when they were transferred to the palace, he said. The already fragile film was often unlabeled, ripped or covered in dust.
Now, six days a week, in a windowless room on the second floor of the building where the films are housed, four men sit at desks in different corners, diligently cleaning and repairing the 16- and 35-millimeter film, one strip at a time.
One gently wipes dust off the film with a small brush while another plays an old movie on a small screen, closely scrutinizing its sound quality and making careful adjustments. Once a reel of film has been properly repaired, the staff project it onto a large screen, taking notes about its content and any remaining glitches before registering it in a database.

Then the film is placed inside a $30,000 machine that transfers its contents onto a connected computer. A second group of experts then pore over individual scenes, using software to tweak the newly digitized version’s sound and color until every detail feels right.

The archivists working here see restoring these films to their original condition as a crucial service to their country — as important as the work others are doing to slowly rebuild other artifacts the Taliban has destroyed, like the centuries-old Buddhas they once smashed to pieces that experts are now carefully reconstructing at the National Museum in Kabul. Once the film digitization project is complete, they plan to move copies of some films to embassies abroad to ensure their protection.
Mamnoon Maqsoodi — one of Afghanistan’s most beloved actors, who is best known for his role as a simple villager on his first trip to Kabul in the comedy “De Konday Zoy,” which screened shortly before the Taliban came to power — said film is treasured here because movies are a coping mechanism, offering momentary respite for Afghans worn down by decades of war.

“Movies are the mirror of a society — the mirror of both its problems and its successes,” Maqsoodi said. “Cinema can give a lot, and connect people who hate each other.”

Since the war began, Maqsoodi said, he has never played the role of a Taliban fighter. But he has played the part of their victims, and in doing so, has sought to portray the harm the militants wrought on his country.

“If I can take revenge through acting and making films, I would never pick up a gun,” he said.
On a recent afternoon, Habib, the film projectionist, gently placed 16-millimeter film onto a yellow reel projector, then cranked its handle and peered through a small window where he could see it appear on the screen in a room next door.

Bit by bit, scenes from an earlier Afghanistan came to life.
It was the 1970s, and young women, their hair uncovered, skipped joyfully through a public park in Kabul. Teenagers marched proudly in a parade at a stadium in the capital. Vendors bustled on streets not patrolled by the military.

For Nazifa Hashemi, 58, who is contributing to the films’ restoration by analyzing and categorizing their content, watching these familiar scenes can evoke painful memories.
As a young woman in Kabul, she moved around town as freely as the women on screen, dressed in miniskirts and high heels and mingling with men at picnics. But when the Taliban came to power, she was forced to cover herself in a blue burqa. Most of her family fled to the United States.

Sometimes, the films remind her of how much she’s lost. But they’re also a source of pride and inspiration — a reminder of how much Afghans have left that’s worth trying to save.
“As long as we are alive, we want to see our country, our people, from the beginning to the end,” she said. “Never will I love anywhere else in the world as much as I love my own land.”
Shoaib Harris contributed to this report.

source : http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-taliban-tried-to-wipe-out-afghanistans-film-industry-this-is-what-survived/ar-AAGoUkc

Special Abdali Army of Ahmad Shah Durrani

Elite ghulam corps of Ahmad Shah Abdali



Ahmad Shah Abdali had served so long under Nadir Shah that it should be of no surprise that he organized his army on similar lines as the Persian one. Hence, the backbone of the Durrani army consisted of an elite corps of about 10,000 royal slaves (ghulam-shahis), one-third being former Qizalbashes who had served in the Nadirid army.


The remainder was also recruited from the old troops of Nadir Shah or other non-Afghan groups, such as Tajiks, Persians, Kurds and Kalmuks. Later he made arrangements with the chiefs around Kabul and Peshawar to supply him with new young recruits in return for assignments in land. The ghulam corps was organized in segments (dastas) of 1,200 each under the command of qullar-aqasis.


These were selected from amongst royal bodyguard of 500 eunuchs and personal attendants (pishkhidmatgar). The pishkhidmatgar ----under the Safavids called qurchis ----were the only soldiers who were mounted on the Shah's special Turki horses, procured from Uzbek and Turkoman territories along the river Oxus, whereas the mounted ghulams and other regiments owned their own horses.


The guards of the ghulams in the Durrani army served particularly well during Ahmad Shah's Indian campaigns. They were mostly kept in reserve behind the main lines of artillery and cavalry in order to reinforce weak spots in the defence or to charge into the already broken or dispersed lines of the enemy. Additionally, in a retreating situation they were able to keep the men in place and check possible desertions and and unnecessary flights from the battlefield. As such, especially in the short run, military slaves proved a splendid antidote to the huge gravitational forces of permanent sedition and shifting alliances.


Even the ever skeptical but sharp-witted Law De Lauriston was impressed as he claimed that ' that which renders the Pathans superior is primarily the discipline and subordination so strictly observed in the Abdali army.


Part of the ghulam troops were equipped and trained with short light blunderbusses with a heavy caliber called sher-bachas. Since these firearms were effectively used by mounted troops, they most probably consisted of flintlocks or of Mediterranean miquelets locks , which were far more manageable and more adaptable for cavalry purpose than matchlocks.


In imitation of the mounted Janissaries of the Ottomans, the Safavid emperor Shah Abbas (1588-1629) had already set up a corps of mounted infantry armed with muskets , swords and daggers. The eighteenth-century Persian army of the Zands also consisted of an elite corps of 1,400 mounted ghulams armed with the flintlocks (hence ghilman-e chaqmaqi). Thus it seems that in India the phenomena of the mounted musketeer armed with modern flintlock firearms was not introduced only through European channels -----this occurred during the mid-eighteenth century ----- but also through the Durrani invasions , and was subsequently adopted by the Indigenous Indian states.


A contemporary Indian account presents us with a vivid picture of how the mounted musketeers were actually employed on the battlefield of Panipat: "At noon, the Bhau on horseback and Wiswas Rao, the Nana's son, on an elephant, delivered a charge and engaged in fighting at close quarters with spear ans musket and sword. Mir Atai Khan was slain. Ahmad Shah saw that his troops were now very hard pressed ; he summoned the Bash Ghul squadrons ------which means his slaves who numbered 6000 men ------and cried out; 'my boys! This is the time. Encircle these men'. The three squadrons of slaves moved out from three sides and brought the vanguard of the Bhau's army under musket fire all at once , and swept away their firm stand. The Maratha vanguard retreated and mixed with divisions under the Bhau himself. A great tumult arose ; men turned their faces to flight.


The Bhau's personal guards showed some firmness and kept standing at some places. One squadron of slaves , numbering 2000 men, came from the right and after firing off their muskets went away to the left. Another squadron which came from the left , after emptying their muskets, went away to the right. The third squadron which came from the front , discharged their muskets at the Bhau's vanguard and then turned to the rear. Before the enemy could recover , these men had loaded their muskets again and arrived , the left squadron on the right wing , and the right squadron on the left wing , while the squadron that had been originally in front fell on the rear. It looked as if on all four sides troops were attacking the Marathas simultaneously.


The fighting went on in this manner. The Maratha soldiers who had been spread over the field drew together into a knot at their center. It came to such a pass that these three squadrons enveloped that lakh of troopers and revolved around them. (Nuruddin Hussain Khan Fakhri, Tawarikh-i-Najibuddaulah)


As follow up of this wheeling around, the Shah ordered the heavy cavalry, armed with swords and spears, to charge massively into the shaken lines of the enemy. Similar tactics had already been highly successful against the Rajputs at the battle of Manipur in 1748. Here the ghulam cavalry corps had galloped up within easy range of the Rajputs. After they made a volley of fire, they galloped back as swiftly as possible thereby completely surprising the Rajput cavalry who had prepared for hand-to-hand fight.


(Excerpts from " Indian Warfare and Afghan Innovation During the Eighteenth Century" by

J Gommans)


Source : www.barmazid.com/2016/11/elite-ghulam-corps-of-ahmad-shah-abdali.html?m=1

The Autobiography of Bacha Khan

While reading the autobiography of Bacha Khan Baba, one could argue that little has changed concerning the plight of Pashtun people, particularly the people of the FATA, since the time of British Colonial rule. In fact it seems as though one set of colonisers has been merely exchanged for another.

Bacha Khan discusses that in 1901, the British introduced the Frontier Crime Regulations – a set of brutal, savage, black laws, which he states the British used in such an atrocious manner, it created enormous disharmony, suffering and mutual enmity among Pashtuns. He states the majority of government officials allocated to the region at that time were from the Punjab, furthermore, the British created their own jirgas made up of their own people, in which Pashtuns could be sentenced to twelve or fourteen years in jail without the right to appeal. We are told that in the days of British rule, people were continuously stopped by security forces and asked to ‘pay security money.’ If people refused to pay, they would be sent to jail for up to three years. Thousands of people were thrown in prison under section 40 of the FCR. The British had spies everywhere among the people. These internal spies openly intimidated and frightened the people in every possible way, furthermore, Bacha Khan states that the Mullahs and many elders were ‘puppets in the hands of the British.’ (26)





In relation to the creation of the ‘Buffer Zone,’ and further division of the FATA into separate agencies, the motivation behind this tactic was not only to divide and rule, but was seen as a safer option whereby Pashtuns remained a collection of small tribes divided into small territories rather than mobilise as a united brotherhood. Bacha Khan states the people of the FATA were kept illiterate and ignorant, oppressed and tyrannized, their lives at the mercy of one person – the Political Agent.

With regard to education, Bacha Khan tells us the British opened many schools in the Punjab, yet no steps were taken to educate Pashtun children. He furthermore states, in schools across India, children received education in their mother tongue, whereas in Pashtun regions, no such arrangements were made. In the few schools that did exist, children were taught in a language which was not their own. The British left orthodox Mullahs in the region for a particular purpose. These Mullahs, who were held in reverence by the people, made propaganda against schools, pronouncing that anyone studying in schools were ‘unbelievers.’ The purpose of this propaganda, he states, was to keep Pashtuns illiterate and uneducated. (12)











Bacha Khan raises the issue regarding the extent to which outsiders have presented a false picture of Pashtun people to the world. He argues that firstly, being cut off from the world, with no option for people to get near the FATA to ‘see what we are like’ (123), has fuelled a false propaganda machine, in which Pashtuns are represented as ‘uncivilized savages.’ Bacha Khan states this is a completely false image which offers governments an excuse to crush Pashtuns, blow them up with bombs, kill them with guns and destroy their homes. He states imperialist powers have used Pashtun territory as training ground for their armies, turning ‘a peaceful ground into a battlefield’ (124).


Bacha Khan, a man who spent over thirty years in prison, at least fifteen years during the time of British colonial rule and a further fifteen after the creation of Pakistan, tells of the unspeakable cruelty, humility and suffering he endured, yet he states that the treatment he received at the hands of the Pakistan government, was far more cruel, more injust than anything he had suffered under the British colonisers. (207)










Bacha Khan with Gandhi



Judging by some of the factors outlined in the autobiography of Bacha Khan, one could argue that since the creation of Pakistan, little improvement or effort has been made to alleviate the suffering and plight of Pashtun people, particularly concerning the people of the FATA, who have been forced to stagnate in the mire, under the rule of antiquated, harsh laws set up in 1901 by British colonisers. The way in which Bacha Khan describes how the people ‘live in constant danger, suffer humiliation, tyranny and oppression,’ resonates to this day, as it seems the FATA has remained confined within the framework of a ‘colonised’ state.


One cannot overestimate the importance of Bacha Khan’s legacy, his unmitigated commitment and devotion to Pashtun people and nation remains unsurpassed. His vision and persistence in the field of education, for instance, despite opposition under an oppressive regime, was arguably one of his greatest achievements. In his ardent belief that education was the primary means to lift Pashtun people out of darkness and oppression he personally set about opening schools in the province, (modern day Pakhtunkhwa). This legacy, no doubt has led to a conscious awareness of the importance of education among Pashtuns. The 18th Amendment to the constitution of Pakistan has certainly altered the lives of Pashtun people living in Pakhtunkhwa for the better, not only in providing autonomy and political restructuring, but also in the area of education. However, what the future holds for the people of the FATA remains to be seen.


Reference: “My Life and Struggle: Autobiography of Badshah Khan,” Hind Pocket Books (P) Ltd., Delhi, Translated by Helen H. Bouman, Narrated to K.B. Narang, 1969.


Writer: Angelina Merisi
The writer hails from Ireland. She is part of the Pashtuns Times News Network. She is a PhD scholar at the University College Cork, Ireland. Her current research is focused on Islam and Pashtun male migrants in Ireland, masculinity and honour concepts. She can be reached at






merisi3331@gmail.com