[1] His early years were marked by his involvement in his father's non-violent resistance movement, the "red shirts" against the British Raj.

Wali Khan was born on 11 January 1917, to a Muḥammadzay Pashtun family of local landlords in the town of Utmanzai in Charsadda district of the North-West Frontier province of what was then undivided India.

Soon after, he formally stepped into politics by joining the Indian National Congress where he eventually served as a provincial joint secretary of the party.

Like his father after the creation of Pakistan, Wali Khan agitated for Pashtun autonomy within a Pakistani Federal system, which placed him at odds with government authorities.

[11] The National Awami Party seemed to be on its way to victory in the 1959 elections,[12] when the civilian President Iskandar Mirza was ousted in a coup by the military, under Commander-in-Chief Ayub Khan.

Abdul Wali Khan, along with many other politicians at the time, was imprisoned and disqualified from contesting elections or participating in politics as part of this purge.

However, despite a compromise agreement on some issues, it was alleged that the military leadership and its political allies did not want Ayub Khan to succeed.

[15] The new military leader, Yahya Khan, called for general and provincial elections in 1970, promising to transfer power to the majority party.

In West Pakistan, the charismatic populist Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto won the second largest number of seats in the assembly, almost solely from the Punjab and Sindh provinces.

"[16] In 1971, in an attempt to avert a possible showdown between the Military and the people of East Pakistan, on 23 March 1971, Khan, along with other Pakistani politicians, jointly met Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

They offered support to Mujib in the formation of a government, but it was too late to break the impasse as Yahya Khan had already decided on a full-scale military crackdown.

Under General Gul Hassan Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was brought back from America and appointed the Civilian Chief Marshal Law Administrator and President.

In one case, Khan helped a senior East Pakistani diplomat's son escape to Afghanistan from possible internment in West Pakistan.

[18] In 1972, as the opposition leader, Wali Khan was contacted by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who wanted to lift martial law and set up a new constitution.

Public anger amongst ethnic Pashtuns ran high, as almost all the dead and most of the wounded were from the NWFP and were mostly members of the National Awami Party.

The enraged party workers and followers wanted to parade the dead bodies on the streets in Peshawar and other cities of the province, and provoke a full scale confrontation.

Wali Khan rejected this notion and held back his infuriated party cadres, escorting the dead bodies to Peshawar; he had them buried quietly and solemnly with their bereaved families.

Last minute disagreements over issues ranging from provincial rights to the renaming of NWFP, according to federal negotiator Abdul Hafiz Pirzada,[21] despite reservations, Wali Khan agreed to a compromise with the precondition that issues of Judicial independence and provincial rights would be granted by the federal government after transition periods of five and ten years, respectively.

[22] However, he succeeded in incorporating Hydel and gas royalties for NWFP and Baluchistan as well as having obligated the Federal government to ensure equal improvements for all regions in Pakistan.

In addition, Wali Khan lost his provincial seat to a PPP candidate, a sign of the decline in the ANP's popularity.

The ANP-PPP alliance collapsed in 1989 after a perceived snub by PPP Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and a dispute over ministerial posts and the governorship of NWFP.

[29] After his defeat in the 1990 elections at the hands of opposition candidate Maulana Hassan Jan (a close confidante of the Afghan Pashtun leader Gulbadin Hekmatyar), Wali Khan opted to retire from electoral politics and turned down a senate ticket from his party and the offer from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of contesting Lahore.

His relationship with PPP leader and Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was characterised by a fierce rivalry and a powerful clash of egos.

He survived a grenade attack at the Gujranwala railway station when he, along with Pir Pagara and Chaudhry Zahur Elahi, was on a visit to Punjab under the banner of the opposition alliance United Democratic Front (UDF).

[36] The fourth attack was carried out when he was about to address a public meeting in Liaquat Bagh Rawalpindi, a stray bullet killed a youth standing close to Wali Khan on the stage.

[12] Debates between the two rivals remained bitter, in one case Bhutto had just returned from a successful trip abroad, and in a confrontational mood he lashed out at the opposition and Khan for slowing him down.

Gauhar writes that, "Wali Khan narrated how Khawaja Shahabuddin asked him on three occasions during the conference, 'how is it that I never met a bright and able person like you when I was Governor of NWFP for three years.'

[44] This difficult experience prompted Wali Khan to be often ambivalent in his criticism of military dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq[36] who in 1977 ousted Bhutto and in 1979 had him executed.

They challenged his claim that he was the major or sole spokesperson for Pashtuns,[46] discounted the benefits of the 1973 constitution and the Simla agreement, and disagreed with his principles of not compromising with dictators.

Before his arrest in 1975, he was in fact striving for a more national role more in line with his position as Leader of the Opposition in government and he had started campaigning heavily in Punjab and Sind, where he was attracting large crowds.