Mohammad Zahir Shah, Last Afghan King, Dies at 92

Mohammad Zahir Shah, Last Afghan King, Dies at 92
By BARRY BEARAK

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 23 — Mohammad Zahir Shah , the former king of Afghanistan, whose 40-year reign, which ended in 1973, was esteemed enough to earn him the title “father of the nation” in the current Constitution, died Monday in Kabul. He was 92.
President Hamid Karzai, a fellow Pashtun tribesman whom the king supported as Afghanistan moved toward democracy, announced the death on national TV. “With great sorrow, I inform my dear countrymen that his majesty Mohammad Zahir Shah bid farewell to the mortal world this morning at 5:45, and joined with the grace of God,” he said.
The king had been frequently ill, having left the country several times for medical care after returning in 2002 from three decades in exile in Italy. In his final years, he was frail and shriveled. In rare public appearances, he needed a microphone pinned to his collar so that his faint voice could be heard.
“Zahir Shah was beloved by many people,” said Abdul Hamid Mubarez, one of Afghanistan’s best-known journalists . “For them, he was a mixture of Afghan and Western culture. He was educated in France and had a chance to observe the democratic system there. He brought back some very progressive ideas.”
Born into one of two Pashtun lineages that had ruled Afghanistan for two centuries, Zahir was only 19 years old in November 1933 when his father, King Muhammad Nadir Shah, was killed before the young man’s eyes during an awards ceremony on the palace grounds in Kabul.
The prince ascended to the throne. But Zahir “reigned, but did not rule” for the next 20 years, ceding power to his paternal uncles, according to “Afghanistan,” a seminal work of history by Louis Dupree.
Zahir never did become a dynamic ruler, always seeming more like a gentleman farmer at home on his property with a new breed of milk cows or fresh plantings of strawberries. But he did assert himself in the 1960s, introducing a constitutional monarchy and advocating greater political tolerance. His changes included new rights for women in voting, education and the work force.
These changes, in a deeply traditional Islamic society, were not popular with everyone. But his years were characterized by a rare long period of peace. This tranquillity is recalled now with immense nostalgia. On the other hand, peace was not accompanied by prosperity, and the king was faulted for failing to develop the economy.
Zahir was overthrown in 1973 while traveling in Italy, getting medical treatments for eye problems and therapy for lumbago. His successor was a slighted cousin, Sardar Mohammad Daoud Khan , whom the king had fired as prime minister a decade earlier. Zahir abdicated the throne rather than start bloodshed. But Afghanistan’s problems were just beginning.
The deposed king took up residence in a villa on Via Cassia, a main thoroughfare leading north out of Rome. He played chess and took walks. He was sometimes seen sitting in a cafe sipping a cappuccino or browsing through titles in a second-hand bookstore. He rarely gave interviews, perhaps out of concern for his safety. In 1991, he was wounded, though not seriously, by a knife-wielding assailant who pretended to be a Portuguese journalist.
Zahir fathered eight children. Three sons and two daughters survive him. His wife, Homaira, whom he married in 1931, died in 2002, just as she was making final plans to leave Rome and rejoin her husband in the Afghanistan they had left behind.
Living so far from home, the deposed king, like so many other Afghan exiles, watched helplessly as his country was wrenched apart.
Daoud Khan was himself a modernizer, but of an autocratic sort. He proclaimed a republic but was overthrown by Communists in 1978. The Soviet Union then invaded in 1979. The occupation lasted a decade, but met ferocious resistance. Finally, American-backed mujahedeen fighters drove the Soviets out.
Years of lawlessness and civil war ensued until the Taliban, an Islamic student militia, took control of most of the country, rolling into Kabul in 1996. They remained in power until late 2001, when they were toppled by an American-backed coalition of Afghan forces.
Though democracy was then ordained for Afghanistan, Zahir, the octogenarian former king, found himself fetched from obscurity. Many Afghans openly called for a return to the monarchy. In 2002, a new government was to be formed through a loya jirga, or grand assembly. The old man toyed with the idea of becoming president.
“I will accept the responsibility of head of state if that is what the loya jirga demands of me, but I have no intention to restore the monarchy,” he said. “I do not care about the title of king. The people call me Baba, and I prefer this title.”
Baba means granddad in the Afghan language of Dari, and much of the nation — especially older people — continue to think of Zahir this way.
Mr. Karzai declared three days of mourning for the former king. Television channels immediately replaced scheduled programs with recitations of the Koran, religious chanting and panel discussions extolling the deceased monarch.
Funeral prayers will be said Tuesday at Eid Gah Mosque in Kabul, a presidential spokesman said. The body will then be taken by carriage to a hillside tomb.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company





King Zahir Shah, President Hamid Karzai and Defence Minister Mohammed Fahim at the ceremony to mark the promulgation of the new draft Constitution in Kabul.


King Mohammed Zahir Shah
An appreciation.

By James S. Robbins

About ten years ago I was perusing the wares of an Afghan rug merchant named Homayoon. He had a large collection, mostly tribals, which makes for an adventure if you enjoy that kind of thing, which I do. I spotted one rug across the bin, buried under several others but eye catching. It stood out in the way that fine rugs do, even folded and from the side. It was a 4x6, featuring a deep red-patterned border around a cream field crossed with thin red and black lines forming diamonds. It was simple, elegant. I had never seen the pattern before. I asked Homayoon what it was.

”This is a Zahirshahi,” he said, “the pattern of the King of Afghanistan.” It was somewhat more expensive than the others but I bought the rug and eventually hung it on my living room wall. It was and remains my favorite.

Word came yesterday that the man the design honored, King Mohammad Zahir Shah, died in Kabul at age 92. President Hamid Karzai eulogized him as “a great leader who moved his country forward with an excellent and compassionate leadership. He shared sorrow and joy of the people. He loved freedom and his culture. He was a symbol of national unity and worked for the prosperity and development of the Afghan nation.”

Zahir Shah was the last of the Pashtun Barakzai dynasty, founded through fratricide by Emir Dost Mohammad Khan in 1818. Afghanistan entered the 20th century under the rule of his descendant Abdur Rahman Khan, picturesquely nicknamed “the Iron Emir,” a cruel, ruthless warlord who secured the independence of his country from both Britain and Russia, and was the last Afghan monarch for whom end of reign coincided with natural death. Habibullah Khan, Abdur’s son, was assassinated in 1919. Amanullah Khan, Habibullah’s son, abdicated under pressure of revolt in 1929. Amanullah’s brother Inayatullah, lasted three days before also being pressured out. Habibullah Ghazi, a Tajik pretender, was overthrown and executed that same year. The next ruler, Mohammed Nadir Shah, was shot down after a soccer game in 1933. His son was by his side, the Crown Prince Mohammed Zahir, who then assumed the throne as Zahir Shah. His reign lasted 40 years, almost twice that of the Iron Emir, and the longest of the dynasty. In fact his was the longest period of rule since the founding of Afghanistan in an uprising against Persian occupation in 1709.

Zahir’s kingship was noteworthy for its lack of serious controversy. He and his advisers (his uncles, who really ran the country in the early days) kept Afghanistan free of conflict; largely neutral in foreign affairs, and comparatively calm domestically. When the young king was finally able to assert independent power, he instituted a new constitution that guaranteed fundamental political rights, and created the first Afghan democracy, with elections and a parliament. He pursued economic modernization, advocated social tolerance and funded education for women. In these days Afghanistan was tourist destination, its gardens lush, its people happy, and at peace.

We learn from Aristotle that monarchs often are succeeded by tyrants — and in the 20th-century hereditary monarchies frequently gave way to predatory autocracies. At the time this was seen as a form progress. To the Western intellectual class, monarchs were a relic of the past, the product of an earlier historical epoch, or some such fiction. When Zahir Shah was deposed in1973 in a bloodless coup perpetrated by his cousin Mohammed Daoud, it seemed more in the spirit of the times, much more modern. Daoud was the kind of ruler that the international-aid community could understand and deal with, someone who promised centralization, large-scale public -works projects, and what passed for progress. “Some see Daoud as just the medicine Afghanistan needs to cure its centuries old lethargy,” one newspaper opined. A senior diplomat said, “Of course, I would prefer a democracy, but what this country needs is an enlightened tough guy. Daoud’s it.” This type of thinking was an epidemic back then. Monarchs were out of fashion. Strong men were in. Zahir settled down to a life of exile in Italy.

The rest of the story is well known, the tragic, horrific decline of Afghanistan to the dark ages. The authoritarian Daoud fell victim to the totalitarian Communists in 1978, whose internecine struggles precipitated the Soviet invasion the year following. A decade of brutal conflict left the country bloody, divided, and reeling, ripe for reunification under the Taliban theocracy, ushering in their own grim period of utopian horror. The days of Zahir Shah’s reign seemed like a golden age of peace and prosperity, which they were.

How many people now captive in Middle Eastern dictatorships would rather be living under the enlightened rule of someone like King Abdullah II of Jordan, or Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the emir of Dubai? Or King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain, or Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, emir of Qatar? These countries enjoy relative peace and sometimes dazzling prosperity, Dubai in particular. Their societies are comparatively tolerant, and Western-oriented. Of course not all monarchies are so praiseworthy, but when stacked up against post-Pahlavi Iran or Syria under the Assads, we really have to reconsider the traditional definition of political development. Zahir Shah may not have been the most dynamic king, but a gentle, kindly monarch and his mildly corrupt relatives are better guardians of liberty than nationalistic dictators or stern-eyed mullahs, each with interchangeable secret police and mechanisms of oppression.

Zahir Shah returned to Afghanistan in 2002 after the defeat of the Taliban, amid speculation that he desired a resurrection of the monarchy. “I do not care about the title of king” he said. “The people call me Baba [grandfather], and I prefer this title.” He was bestowed the honorific “Father of the Nation,” and was officially referred to as “His Majesty.” Zahir Shah spent the rest of his life using his influence and public stature to help make democracy work in Afghanistan, as he had tried to do 40 years ago. He was revered by the Afghan people as a man of peace, dignity, and wisdom. He did not seek power but only the welfare of his people. Though he refused to take back the crown, he remained a king until his final day.

— James S. Robbins is the director of the Intelligence Center at Trinity Washington University and author of Last in Their Class: Custer, Picket and the Goats of West Point. Robbins is also an NRO contributor.

— James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, a trustee for the Leaders for Liberty Foundation, and author of Last in Their Class: Custer, Picket and the Goats of West Point.