The Once and Future King?
Mohammad Zahir Shah

Note to Readers: Because this issue contains two Profiles, Listening Post does not appear in this issue.

Zahir Shah as King...		...And in Rome in Recent Years

Because Afghanistan has suddenly intruded itself onto the US' — and thus the world's — consciousness, a great deal of new attention is being paid to a man who will turn 87 years old in only 10 days, a man who has lived in a relatively modest villa north of Rome for the past 28 years: the last King of Afghanistan, Mohammad Zahir Shah, last of the Durrani dynasty, and the last Afghan ruler to preside over a relatively peaceful country. Since the Soviet withdrawal in 1988-89 and especially during the civil wars which wracked the country from then until now, some Afghan eyes have turned towards the King as a possible unifying factor. Those ideas are being heard again.

For several years now, the former King — he abdicated after being deposed in 1973, and is thus not strictly speaking merely a King in exile, but an ex-King — has been urging the calling of a Loya Jirga, the traditional "Grand Assembly" of tribal leaders, religious scholars, local notables and others which is the closest thing traditional Afghan society has to a genuinely responsive democratic institution. A Loya Jirga could, with some traditional claim to legitimacy, create a new government for Afghanistan. The process urged by the King (often called the "Rome Process" because he lives there, though there are other formulas for a Loya Jirga not involving the King) has gained some credibility in recent weeks, because it might allow the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and the more traditional Pashtun leaders to find a common ground against the Taliban. (See this issue's Dossier.)

Mohammad Zahir Shah was born on October 15, 1914 (some sources say October 20), in Kabul, son of King Mohammad Nadir Shah. In November 1933, when Zahir Shah was only 19 years old, his father was assassinated. He ascended the throne which he would hold for just short of 40 years. However, under Afghan tradition, the 19-year-old King was considered too young to exercise direct power, and his father's brother, Shah Mahmood Khan, and other uncles were effectively regents for some time. (Afghan specialist Louis Dupree called these "The Avuncular Years".)

His uncles held the post of Prime Minister. In 1953 that position passed to his cousin, Mohammad Daoud. Daoud continued to exercise more power than the King for some 10 years, but was replaced in 1963, at which point the King began to exercise power more directly, 30 years after accession to the throne. In 1964 a new Constitution was introduced which provided for an elected Parliament, barred the Royal Family from public office, and allowed a free press by Third World standards. Though political parties were not formally legalized, they were tolerated.

Development, however, was limited. There were some irrigation projects and road-building, but the country was not much developed beyond the Kabul area. Drought struck the country by the 1970s. Although the King was himself Pashtun, Pashtun separatism in southern Afghanistan (and the dream of a "Pasthunistan" including Pashtun areas of Pakistan) was at its height. The King balanced the country between East and West, receiving aid from both the Soviet Union and the West, but generally tilted towards the West. Though many saw the King as weak at the time, it was the last period of genuine social peace that Afghanistan has known, and many now yearn for those days, whatever their weaknesses at the time.

The King often traveled abroad. In the summer of 1973, he was in Italy, for medical reasons: some accounts say for eye treatment, others for mud baths for lumbago, or perhaps both. In July a coup was staged by Mohammad Daoud, his cousin and former Prime Minister. The King was deposed and a Republic proclaimed.The King abdicated and Daoud (himself anti-Western in orientation), proclaimed a republic, but was overthrown by Communists in 1978; in 1979 the Soviet Union invaded the country. In his Rome exile, living in a modest four-bedroom villa, the King was supported at first by Daoud, then, it is said, after Daoud's overthrow by the Communists, by a stipend from the Shah of Iran. After the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, there were reports of a Saudi stipend to maintain his lifestyle.

In recent years the King has insisted that he is willing to return to lead Afghanistan as an elected head of state or to serve in some other capacity, not necessarily to reclaim the throne, though he has a number of sons. He married Umairah Begum on November 7, 1931, and they had six sons (one of whom died young) and two daughters

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