Rise and Fall of Power
He served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1981 to 1988 and 1989 to 1990, and as vice-President from 1990 until 1991, when he was dismissed shortly before the fall of the government.
A mujaheddin radio station reports intra-Parcham (a faction of the PDPA) (P) clashes in Kabul between supporters of Najibullah and Keshtmand, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers.
Non-PDPA member Mohammad Hassan Sharq was selected by President Najibullah to be the new Council of Ministers chairman, replacing Keshtmand. This move was made in order to free spaces in the new government for nonparty candidates.
He then left Afghanistan, first moving to Russia and then to England. There he became an outspoken defender of the rights of Hazaras and other minorities, claiming that the Pashtun majority in Afghanistan had had too much power in all of Afghanistan's regimes, past and present. After the communist Saur Revolution, which toppled Daud Khan's first Afghan Republic, he reportedly said, "Brothers, today the five long centuries of Pashtun political domination has come to an end."
Read more about this topic: Sultan Ali Keshtmand
Famous quotes containing the words rise and, rise, fall and/or power:
“If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so to speak, the worlds inheritance,... these are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and progress of the race; how, from the condition of ants, it arrived at the condition of men, and arts were gradually invented. Let a thousand surmises shed some light on this story.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“From this fat dungeon I could rise to skin
And human title, putting pig within.”
—Thom Gunn (b. 1929)
“The tension to mother the right way can leave a peculiar silence within mother daughter relationshipsthe silence of a mothers own truth and experience. Within this silence, a daughters authentic voice can also fall silent. This is the silence of perfection. This silence of perfection prevents mothers from listening and learning from their daughters.”
—Elizabeth Debold (20th century)
“Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (18051859)