The death of Muhammad Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, at the age of 92, provides a poignant reminder at a time when the country seems incapable of shaking off extremism and violence that it was not always so. Contrary to the general perception that Afghanistan has long been ungovernable, there was a time when government worked and the country enjoyed peace and stability.
Today, with the country seemingly sliding again into violence, it is not surprising that many Afghans look back on the 40 years that Zahir Shah reigned, from 1933 to 1973 when he was overthrown by his cousin, as a golden age. As well as peace and stability, there was also reform. Zahir Shah was a king who saw himself as an enabler rather than a ruler and who wanted to democratize his country. He did not want or enjoy personal power. He would have liked to have given his country prosperity as well, but in that his hands were tied. Afghanistan had and still has no natural resources to exploit other than the dangerous opium poppy. Sadly it was his desire to reform that led to his overthrow. His 1964 constitution barring members of the royal family from involvement in politics was bitterly resented by his ambitious cousin Mohammad Daoud, against whom it was in part directed. Daoud’s coup opened a Pandora’s Box that has proved impossible to close ever since.
Given the loyalty that so many Afghans felt toward Zahir Shah, particularly among his own Pashtun people, it was inevitable after the overthrow of the Taleban that he again was called upon use his personal abilities to pursue and enable compromise and oversee the transition to a new constitution that could give Afghans the stability and peace they still crave. No one else had the respect or the legitimacy in 2002 to convene the necessary loya jirga or tribal council to hammer out the country’s political future; only he could do it. The republican constitution that emerged in 2004 from the process he started recognized his importance by giving him the title Father of the Nation. But it may have been a mistake not to have given him a greater role in Afghanistan’s political structure. The areas where the Taleban have been resurgent and command some support are the same Pashtun areas where he enjoyed respect. If he had been restored as a constitutional monarch — purely symbolic, without political powers — he could have acted as a focus of national unity there and elsewhere, providing a counterweight to the Taleban’s renewed popularity.
It is said that it was Washington that opposed him having any constitutional role in the new Afghanistan, believing that he would not fit in with the democratic environment it hoped would emerge. Perhaps not, but the re-emergence of the Taleban now puts the whole democratic vision into jeopardy. He was an asset sadly wasted. Yet there is cause for hope, not despair. His reign showed that Afghans can live in peace and harmony with each other. That is his best epitaph.
