Former Afghan king Mohammad Zahir Shah, whose 40-year reign coincided with one of the most peaceful periods in the country’s recent history, died on Monday, aged 92.
President Hamid Karzai declared three days of mourning and ordered flags to be flown at half mast for the man heralded as ”father of the nation” after he returned from 29 years of exile in 2002 to live out his last years as an ordinary citizen.
”With paramount grief, I would like to inform my countrymen that … Mohammad Zahir Shah has bid farewell to this mortal world,” President Hamid Karzai told reporters at the presidential palace.
The former king died in his bed after months of illness.
Karzai described Zahir Shah as the founder of Afghan democracy and a symbol of national unity.
Zahir Shah ruled Afghanistan from 1933 until he was deposed by his cousin in 1973. Since then Afghanistan has seen a succession of coups, wars and foreign military interventions that cost millions of lives and devastated towns, cities and villages.
When the former king returned to his homeland after the Taliban government was overthrown, he was visibly moved.
”When I saw the mountains of my country, my people, my friends — what is better than this,” he said shortly after his return. ”I wish just to be able to do things for my country and serve it.”
Zahir Shah came from a long line of ethnic Pashtun rulers and was the last monarch of a dynasty established in 1747.
The former king’s reign is remembered as one of the most tranquil periods of Afghanistan’s turbulent history.
”With the departure of king Zahir Shah, Afghanistan has lost a statesman of great stature, whose commitment and contribution to the peace, stability and welfare of Afghanistan and the region will be remembered for long,” Pervez Musharraf, President of neighbouring Pakistan, said in a message of condolence.
Reformer
Born in Kabul on October 15 1914, Zahir Shah received part of his education in France and returned to Kabul for military training. He ascended the throne in 1933 after his father was assassinated by a deranged student.
For two decades, the bookish king remained in the shadows, allowing three uncles to run the government. But he gradually gained confidence and took full control in 1953, overseeing a cautious modernisation of his backward realm.
He supported an end to purdah — the wearing of the veil — for women, used foreign cash to develop the country’s medieval infrastructure and managed to keep a balance between rival Soviet and Western interests.
In 1973, while holidaying in Italy, Zahir Shah was ousted in a bloodless coup orchestrated by his cousin and brother-in-law, Prince Daoud, ending two centuries of rule by the Durrani dynasty. He then lived for 29 years in exile in Italy.
Daoud was later killed in a coup and after Soviet troops entered the country in 1979 to prop up the communist government, Afghanistan has barely seen peace.
Some Afghans look back with nostalgia Zahir Shah’s rule, but others saw him as an ineffective ruler.
Zahir Shah will be buried in a mausoleum next to his father on a hill overlooking Kabul. – Reuters