The Last Wali of Swat

History has moved very swiftly in some parts of Asia, and the personal recollections of Miangul Jahanzeb, the Wali of Swat, span a breath-taking series of transformations of which he himself was partly architect, partly prominent participant or privileged spectator. When he was born in 1908 the Swat valley formed a complex but stateless society of several hundred thousand members, linked to the archaic cosmopolitanism of Inner Asia but hardly touched by centuries of external influence. Inde...