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Daoud also made friendly contact with the Pathan independence leader in West Pakistan, frail, bearded, lumbago-plagued Mirza Ali, also known as the Fakir of Ipi. The Fakir of Ipi's impetuous followers, who love their girls second only to their guns and woo them with a ditty which begins, "Your eyes are two loaded pistols," thereupon increased their pressure on the Karachi government. By now, Prime Minister Daoud, expanding his notion of Pakhtoonistan to include more than half of West Pakistan, was demanding all the territory west of the Indus River, right down to the Arabian Sea.
Stewed Fruit. Irked by this Pakhtoon-foolery, Pakistan last week effectively closed the historic Khyber Pass, through which passes 80% of Afghanistan's external trade, including shipments to the U.S. of pistachio nuts, wool, and karakul fur (which becomes "Persian lamb" on Manhattan's Seventh Avenue). At the pass, Pakistani customs stopped grape, peach and pomegranate-laden trucks and told them to await clearance from Karachi—which, they blandly confided, would "take some time." While the truckers fretted, the fruit rotted.
At this point, another country got into the act. India, which has its own grievances against Pakistan, prepared to set up an airlift from Amritsar over the Khyber Pass to Kabul. The ambitious Afghans were grateful, but even more gratified by a handsome offer from the Russians: a five-year transit guarantee for their goods. Glowed Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Naim: "If one door is slammed shut and another is opened, we will go through it." After 100 years, the Russian bear's long vigil on the Oxus was beginning to pay off.
* Afghanistan's 12 million people, in a country the size of Texas, have no railroads, no free press, no labor unions, no political parties, two movie theaters. Only 5% of the nation's land is cultivated.