Mohammed Zahir Shah

Mohammed Zahir Shah: born Kabul 15 October 1914; King of Afghanistan 1933-73; Father of the Nation 2002-07; married 1941 Homira Begum (died 2002; five sons, two daughters); died Kabul 23 July 2007.

Two and a half weeks after the 9/11 bombings in the United States, Afghans feared their country might be annihilated if America took revenge against the Taliban and al-Qaida. The former king of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zahir Shah, gave a rare statement. Lasting hardly more than a minute and carried on BBC radio, the former king defended his countrymen, saying Afghans were not terrorists. He said international efforts were under way to resolve the crisis and a loya jirga (national gathering) would convene on Afghan soil to choose a new government. Overnight, the Afghan currency tripled in value.

Zahir Shah's popularity among Afghans was paradoxical. As king, he was never a particularly effective ruler. He was deposed in a bloodless palace coup in 1973, spent almost three decades in exile and seemed to turn his back on Afghan problems, in particular the bloody civil war which engulfed the country from 1978 to 2001. However, in comparison with the often barbaric rule of the men who succeeded him, Zahir Shah came to symbolise a golden age when Afghanistan was at peace with itself. It was this, more than any personal quality, which made him popular.

Zahir Shah came to power in 1933, aged 19. His father, Nader Shah, who had been helped to power by Pashtun tribes and the support of Britain, had been assassinated in front of him. Zahir Shah would prove the last of the Durrani dynasty, which largely ruled Afghanistan for 250 years.

The young king was a Persian- speaking Pashtun. He had been educated in Paris and, despite his impressive Pashtun lineage, spoke French better than Pashto. People remember him as a keen hunter, rather than a man who thirsted for power. Indeed, during his early years, he was a sort of regent, with his uncles holding real power. It was only in 1953 that he took full control of the state.

This is the era which many Afghans later remembered with such nostalgia. Zahir Shah introduced extremely cautious political reforms, including a new constitution in 1964 which allowed limited elections. Suffrage was universal, but the parliament's role was consultative only, and constituencies had been drawn to favour Zahir Shah's own ethnic group, the Pashtuns. During Zahir Shah's rule, there was a relatively free press and political parties were allowed, although banned from fighting elections. There was also economic progress and some emancipation for women. Afghanistan was officially neutral during this phase of the Cold War and managed a dangerous balancing act, getting aid money out of both America and the Soviet Union, without falling into either's sphere. The country's first university was built and some of the major roads were paved.

Change came suddenly in 1973. The king's cousin and brother-in-law, Prince Daoud, seized power and proclaimed himself president of a new Afghan republic. Zahir Shah had been in Italy getting medical treatment and would remain in exile there for nearly 30 years. President Daoud had gained power with the help of one of Afghanistan's Communist parties, but afterwards clamped down on both the Communists and the nascent Islamist groups. In 1978, he himself was ousted in a Communist coup and killed, along with many members of the royal Mohammadzai clan, amid the bloodiest purges of the civil war. However, resistance to Communist rule was widespread and only intensified with the Soviet invasion of 1979.

The Afghan civil war lasted almost 25 years. However, during the Soviet invasion and after its withdrawal, the brutal internecine fighting of the mujahedin factions and the rise of the Taliban, the exiled king remained informed, but made no active attempt to get involved. Nevertheless, inklings of his continuing popularity were occasionally glimpsed. In 1987, an opinion survey among Afghan refugees in Pakistan, where millions had sought exile, brought unexpected results; 70 per cent of those polled said they didn't want any of the mujahedin leaders to rule them, they wanted the king back. (The man who conducted the survey, Syed Majrooh, was assassinated for his trouble.) A decade later, in 1999, when some of the Pashtun tribes in the south-east of Afghanistan were getting restive under Taliban rule, their discontent was expressed not just in mutterings about high taxes but again, a desire for a return to the Zahir Shah monarchy.

It was the 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon which finally brought the king home. In the aftermath, there was talk among some Afghan politicians and United Nations officials that Zahir Shah could prove useful as a means of rallying the country against the Taliban. That did not happen. By the time Zahir Shah did finally return to Afghanistan the following year, the US had defeated the Taliban in military terms. Power in most of the country, including the capital, had been seized by US allies among regional commanders and the mujahedin factions. A member of the king's camp, Hamed Karzai, had been chosen as the interim leader. When Zahir Shah ended his long exile, landing at Kabul airport to crowds of well-wishers in June 2002, he was 87 years old, a frail man in poor health.

He was chosen to open a loya jirga where several hundred representatives from across Afghanistan would select a new national leader. As the delegates began arriving in Kabul, it became clear that many, perhaps a majority, might chose Zahir Shah over Hamed Karzai. The old king had always kept his options open when asked if he wanted to return to power. "It's not something I seek for myself," he told one interviewer, "but if my people ask me, I cannot refuse."

In the end, his frailness and lack of appetite for power coincided with powerful interests which did not want him anywhere near the throne. Those blocking a return to monarchy included the Americans, the Islamists (including the powerful mujahedin faction of the northern Alliance which had seized Kabul in November 2001 and still controlled the police, the army and the intelligence) and Hamed Karzai himself.

The day before the loya jirga was due to start, journalists were told at the US embassy by the US special envoy, the Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad, that the king would not be putting his name forward on the ballot. Later, one of the former king's aides read out in his presence a prepared statement confirming his position. Zahir Shah sat grim-faced and silent throughout. He had never seemed to enjoy being a king for the political power it gave him and had made no serious effort to get his throne back after the 1973 palace coup. However, this was an extraordinarily humiliating way to end the hopes of his supporters. It also gave a clear indication of who really held power in Kabul.

Zahir Shah did open the loya jirga and to thunderous applause, but Afghans watching on television failed to hear what he had to say. His address to the nation was blacked out by an unaccountable power failure. The same blackout had wiped his image from the screens when he had arrived at Kabul airport. The former king was given the title Father of the Nation by Hamed Karzai, who was chosen to be the interim leader of Afghanistan. Zahir Shah occasionally conducted ceremonial duties, but he was basically a private citizen. He was given a palace to live in, not one of the impressive state palaces of his reign, but a large-ish, Seventies-built house in an upmarket area. His four-poster bed was the only kingly aspect of the building.

Kate Clark