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King Zahir Shah
Ruling Afghanistan with a Nazi-inspired Racial
Purity
The
modern history of war in Afghanistan dates from July 17,
1973, when then King Zahir Shah's government demolished the
Christian church in Kabul. The church, built at the request
of U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower, who had built a mosque
for Muslim diplomats in Washington, was possibly the only
Christian church in Afghanistan at the time.
One
member of the congregation of that church told the mayor of
Kabul that if his government knocked down the church, God
would overthrow the Afghan government and, sure enough, on
the evening of July 17 a coup took place that removed Zahir
Shah from power.
Now,
the U.S. government seems to be counting on the former king
to rally Afghanistan's many ethnic factions to create a new
government. We are told Afghanistan has a traditional
institution called the "loya jirga" - a grand council where
all tribes are represented - that can be used to fashion a
consensus, and that the former king is a man around whom all
Afghans can rally. But is this information
correct?
According
to Nicholas Cullather, a history prof at Indiana University,
it is not.
Writing
in an article distributed by Scripps Howard News Service,
Prof. Cullather says that both the borders and the
institutions of Afghanistan were invented by the great
powers of the 19th century to place a buffer state between
Russia and the British Empire.
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[A]fghanistan
is a slap-dash nation, a "purely accidental
geographic unit" according to Lord Curzon, the 19th
century British viceroy who put the finishing
touches on drawing the country's
borders....
The
shape of the monarchy and the country are both
products of British imperial strategy. To keep
tribal feuds from drawing Russia into South Asia,
the Raj (British India) consolidated its frontier
along the Durand Line, today the 1,200 mile
boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan....a
mountain wall easily held and defended at key
passes.
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Prof.
Cullather says the border cut the Pashtun people in half.
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Britain
could deploy its own Pashtun armies, the "assured
clans," against Pashtuns on the Afghan side,
thereby keeping Kabul in friendly hands. The king's
clan, the Mohammadzai, was such a force.
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In
dividing the Pashtuns, the British also redefined their
identity as a "pure" race, compared to other tribal groups
in the region.
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They
were "our chaps," natural rulers, equals of the
British. "You're white people, sons of Alexander,
and not like common Black Mohammedans," the main
character of Rudyard Kipling's "Man Who Would Be
King," explained to the Afghans.
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Having
manufactured this identity for the Pashtuns, the British
began to believe it, and set out to create democratic
institutions for the Pashtuns.
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Anthropologists
confirmthe importance of the jirga, a form of
communal dispute resolution, in Pashtun culture,but
the loya jirga turned into a tribal parliament only
with some help from the British in 1914. "There was
a vague idea," an imperial official later
remembered, that "unlike the Baluch" the Pashtun
"would respond to this democratic
treatment."
Formalized
as a national assembly in 1933, the loya jirga is
characteristically Afghan, a synthetic tradition
for a synthetic nation.
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But
democracy did not take hold in Afghanistan. Instead, Zahir
Shah's father seized power in 1929, capturing Kabul from the
Tajiks. The history of the Shah monarchy does not suggest
that Zair Shah is a figure Afghans will welcome as a
unifying force.
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{The]
monarchy [was] based on Pashtun nationalism
with overtones of scientific racism. Comprising
less than half the population, Pashtuns calimed
entitlement as an advanced race, the bearers of
modernity and progress. The king invited Japanese,
Italian, and especially German advisers to help.
Returning from the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the
royal family declared its appreciation for Nazi
efficiency.
In
1947, the new king, Zahir Shah, announced his plan
for Afghan lebensraum. He claimed a chunck of
[the newly formed state of] Pakistan for an
ethnic homeland calle Pushtunstan. Pushtuns in
Quetta and Peshawar [in Pakistan] revolted,
and Pakistan sent troops to the border, closing
Afghanistan's outlet to the sea.
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The
dispute drew the U.S. into Afghan politics, but we were not
able to broker a peace, and Afghanistan became more
dependent on its neighbor, the Soviet Union. In all, there
were 8 rebellions against Zair Shah and his father from 1930
to 1960, carried out by their own Pushtun people.
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A
U.S. diplomat described Zahir Shah's kingdom in
1955 as a Soviet-style "police state, where there
is no free press, no political parties, and where
ruthless suppression of minorities is the accepted
pattern."
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In
the 1960s, Zahir Shah engaged in ethnic cleansing,
relocating Tajiks and Hazaras and moving Pashtuns in to take
over their lands. Prof. Cullather quotes one analyst who
said Zahir Shah wanted to "use these new settlers as a death
squad" against non-Pashtuns.
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Among
the resettled familes were the parents of Taliban
leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who was born in 1962
in a village outside Kandahar.
For
young Afghans, Islam offered the only alternative
to the politics of tribal division, and the
monarchy's enemies flocked to Pakistan's radical
madrassas,...
With
his country teetering between Islamic revolution
and Soviet invasion, the king was politely deposed
by his brother-in-law in 1973,
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Prof.
Cullather's conclusions from the history of Zahir Shah's
reign are clear.
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[W]e
should not repeat the mistake of creating an ethnic
state in which only Pashtun leadership will
do.
Zahir
Shah tried and failed. His 300 year experiment in
ethnic nationalism isn't worth
repeating.
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