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Raja Anwar is a Pakistani journalist and writer, and a former PPP political activist.
Anwar was born into a Bhakral Rajput family of Darkali Sher Shahi a village, near Kallar Syedan (Rawlpindi district) in 1948. Anwar was a student leader (president of Gordon College Students Union)in the sixties and later joined the Pakistan Peoples Party.The agitation against the then military dictator Gen Ayub Khan sparked in goron college.Anwar led the first procession of youth on 7th of november 1968 against Ayub Khan in Rawalpindi,which resulted into a country wide movement.He was arrested times and again by the authorities however Ayub Khan had to step down in march 1969.Gen Yehya the successor of Ayub Khan imprisoned him for one year.He wrote his first book "Barri Jail Se Chhoti Jail Tak" based on his memoires of prison in 1970 .It was the first book on prisons written by a student.Raja Anwar got fame from his Book "JHOTAY RUP KE DARHSAN"based on love letters written by him to his girl friend "Kawal" during their tenure of punjab university from 1971 to 1973 approximately. Anwar was appointed as an adviser on Students and Labour in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's government (1974–1977). Anwar escaped to Afghanistan after Bhutto was toppled by a right-wing military coup led by Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.
Anwar joined Bhutto's elder son, Murtaza Bhutto, and formed Al-Zulfiqar, a leftist insurgency committed to toppling the Zia dictatorship. Raja Anwar had a falling with Murtaza over the latter's controversial terror tactics in 1980 and wanted to return to Pakistanand help Murtaza's sister, Benazir Bhutto's political struggle against Zia. Anwar was then admitted to a Kabul jail, the Pul-e-Charkhi, but was released in 1985 after Murtaza shifted his operations to Syria.
Unable to return to Pakistan due to his struggle against gen zia, Anwar found political asylum in Germany where he lived until theassassination of Zia-ul-Haq in 1988. His 1988 book "The Tragedy of Afghanistan" is considered a classic early study of the Afghan crisis before and during the Soviet occupation of that country.
Anwar currently lives in Pakistan and writes for various Urdu newspapers and has written a total of seven books in Urdu and English.
Anwar is working as the chairman chief minister's taskforce on elementary education as well as chairman punjab education foundation and looks after the school education reforms since 2008. He has recently launched his latest book in April 2011 ...KABAR KI AGHOSH ...(in the lap of the grave ) a book regarding the political situation of Afghanistan , Pakistan and the famous death cell ...PUL E CHARKHI PRISON of Kabul .He is the only Pakistani who survived both the prisons (Pakistan and Afghanistan)and written two wonderful books on them.
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