Western Morning News (Saturday)
Afghanistan has seen off the invaders – but not its own rebels
Where did it all go wrong for Afghanistan? Author James Crowden looks back at events 50 years ago...
IF you wind the clock back to 1971 Afghanistan was a very different country. The King, Zahir Shah had been on the throne since 1933 and by remaining neutral in the Second World War, Afghanistan had enjoyed a long period of relative peace and prosperity. Zahir’s father, Nadir Shah, had taken the throne after Habibullah Kalkani, the bandit leader who led the 1929 revolt, had been captured and executed. But Nadir Shah only lasted till 1933 when he too was assassinated by a Hazara.
His son Zahir was only 19. He had been educated in French schools and a military academy, yet he was not a born soldier nor a strong politician, but he was a very astute diplomat. He kept his country on an even keel and wanted to modernise it. He ruled for 39 years. Real political power, however, resided with his two uncles as Prime Ministers. Hashim Khan was very pro-Nazi and accepted German aid for hydro-electric plants and factories. He also accepted aid from Japan and Fascist Italy.
And herein lies the fundamental Afghan problem. Modernisation, whether political or social, requires a strong economy and in a country as poor as Afghanistan you can only advance with foreign aid, which almost always has strings attached.
The other uncle, Mahmud Khan, was in favour of elections but famine was often only just round the corner and crop failures were a political reality. His scheme for irrigation in Western Afghanistan did not fare well. Another problem was the concept of Pashtunistan, the merging of Pathan populations on either side of the Durand line to form a separate Pathan state. This did not go down well in Pakistan. There had also been uprisings in 1944-47, where the Afghan air force had bombed its own people. Revolting tribes on their side of the North West Frontier. Plus ça change.
Mohammed Khan was superseded as Prime minister by Daoud Khan, Zahir’s more ruthless cousin. Keeping it in the family, so to speak.
Zahir Shah was a ‘compassionate’ leader and never signed a warrant for execution for political reasons during his reign. In 1964, at Zahir Shah’s behest, a new constitution was introduced which made Afghanistan a modern democratic state. He introduced free elections, a parliament, civil rights, women’s rights and universal suffrage.
So far so good. Zahir was also a keen farmer and bee keeper. He brought in French bee experts to help establish an Afghan honey trade. Beekeeping – a very good occupation for women helping them where it mattered most. Home economy and local status. Many Afghans liked Zahir Shah and trusted him.
However in 1973 his ruthless cousin, Mohamed Daoud, toppled him in a bloodless coup whilst Zahir was in Italy receiving treatment for an eye injury. Keeping it in the family once again. Looking back, that was the key point at which it all started to go wrong, though Daoud was at first very keen to modernise the country
even faster. Afghanistan became a republic overnight. Daoud called the King’s rule ‘corrupt and effete’ and vowed to replace it with ‘genuine democracy’. Many Afghans did not know what to make of it.
Then there were hippies. Maybe that is also where it went wrong. Up till that point westerners were welldressed, well-heeled and well respected. If hippies were the result of a decadent western liberal culture with ancient democratic roots, what message did that send out to the average rural Afghan?
A year later, in 1974, I was in Kabul with a friend as we obtained permission from an Afghan general in the Ministry of Interior affairs to walk through Badakhshan over the Hindu Kush into Nuristan, via the Kotal Ramgul, then over four more passes to the Pakistani border. As an army officer, I absorbed the terrain and immediately realised how difficult it would be if war ever ensued. It taught me everything I needed to know about the importance of mountain agriculture and survival. In the end, neither the Russians nor the Americans ever took Nuristan.
Not everyone was happy with President Daoud, even though he tried to speed up reforms. By 1977 he wanted a new constitution with a one-party state. Daoud, the tough man, was overthrown on April 28 1978 by the Khalq, an armed faction of the PDFA, a Marxist-Leninist party. The presidential palace was attacked by aircraft and then surrounded by rebels and tanks. Daoud and his brother Naim Khan fired at the soldiers and went down, guns blazing, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Also killed in the early hours were Daoud’s wife and her sister; his three sons; three daughters; a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law; and four grandchildren, one of whom was only 18 months old. Other officers and aides also died. A whole family wiped out then secretly buried on the outskirts of Kabul at night.
From that point on, Afghanistan slid towards an uncertain and volatile future, culminating in the Soviet invasion eight months later in December 1978. Russian tanks crossed the snow laden Hindu Kush by way of the Salang tunnel, which they had built in the 1960s, with special avalanche shelters either side. Aid was indeed a two-edged weapon, providing easy access for the next invasion. The coup in April 1978 marked the end of power of the Barakzai dynasty, who had ruled since 1826 – a period of 152 years.
What is perhaps just as important in retrospect is that back in 1975, in the neighbouring Panjshir valley, another small revolt erupted led by a young Tajik engineering student whose father had been a Colonel in the Afghan army. His name was
Ahmad Shah Massoud. He was anticommunist but pro-Islamic. A friend of mine met him in Chitral not long afterwards and shared tea with him. Massoud asked him to send him an English dictionary. Massoud later became a real thorn in the side of the Russians and was, as the ‘Lion of Panjshir’, acclaimed as one of the best guerrilla leaders of all time. He admired de Gaulle and liked chess.
Tragically, he was assassinated by a suicide TV team posing as Belgian journalists from Morroco. They were in fact Tunisian. The date was September 9, 2001. Once the Bamian Buddhas had been destroyed and the only credible alternative leader ‘taken out’, Afghanistan was on a very slippery slope. The attack on the Twin Towers was only two days later.
Amazingly, the one survivor of all this was Zahir Shah the beekeeper. After he abdicated, he kept his head down in Italy. In 2002, after the Taliban were ousted from Kabul, Zahir Shah was brought back from exile and even offered the throne again. Many Afghans would have liked that as he appealed to all ethnic communities but the US declined to back him. Instead the power resided in Hamid Karzai. Zahir Shah became Baba, ‘father of the Nation’. He died in Kabul in 2007, aged 92.
Ahmad Shah Massoud’s son is now fighting for his life against the Taliban in the Panjshir Valley. The last strong resistance to this fundamental take over.
What the future holds is uncertain, particularly for Afghan women. The Afghans have seen off Britain, Russia and the US, but have been less successful with their own rebels. Maybe it has more to do with opium and minerals.