Word: yahya
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...Yahya, however, had misread the political tempers. When East Pakistan's charismatic Sheik Mujibur Rahman won his stunning majority in the December election, the hard-liners began telling Yahya, "I told you so." Six leading generals-including General Abdul Hamid Khan, an old chum of Yahya's who is the current army chief of staff, and Tikka ("Red Hot") Khan, the coldblooded commander in East Pakistan -helped persuade Yahya to deal harshly with the East's "treachery...
...Yahya (pronounced Ya-hee-uh) Khan claims direct descent from warrior nobles who fought in the elite armies of Nadir Shah, the Persian adventurer who conquered Delhi in the 18th century. With his pukka sahib manner, Yahya seems strictly Sandhurst, though he learned his trade not in England but at the British-run Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun. During World War II, he fought in the British Indian army in North Africa and Italy. After partition, like most of the subcontinent's best soldiers, he opted to become a Pakistani (India, the saying goes, got all the bureaucrats...
Following Moslem practice, Yahya keeps his family-a wife, Fakhra, and two married children-well out of the public eye. His only known interest, outside of the military, is birds-all varieties. He keeps Australian parrots around President's House, and, in a specially built pool, a number of cranes and swans. He remains fussy as ever about his wavy expanse of thick, white-streaked black hair ("My strength lies in it-like Samson...
Westerners who know him well describe Yahya as a reasonable man but stubborn, proud and discipline-minded, He began a drive on corruption last year by summoning senior civil servants and telling them that they were all "a bunch of thieves." The bureaucracy ground to a halt in protest, and Yahya soon gave up the effort. But he shows no sign of yielding with the Bengalis, whom he reportedly calls macchar -Urdu for mosquitoes...
...Yahya is not a brutal man," says an American acquaintance. "He is a good soldier. But he has been blinded by his intense nationalism, and his belief that the honor and security of his country have been betrayed." There is a case for Yahya's Lincolnesque attempt to hold the Pakistani house together; there is none for his methods. He might have succeeded had he tried to accommodate the East's justifiable demands for greater autonomy. But his tough crackdown virtually guarantees that the country's two halves, which have precious little in common, will never...