Word: monarchal
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...week especially important. He is going there to bring back the country's exiled King, Mohammed Zahir Shah, in an effort to reconstitute national unity. The King's 40-year reign, the country's last taste of peace and prosperity, was ended by a coup in 1973 while the monarch was in Italy for mud-bath treatments. At an interview with TIME, the King appeared in notably better health than he did five months ago, when world leaders began looking to him to help fill the vacuum left by the Taliban. Still, he is 87 years old. "But this...
...monarch also has some personal priorities upon his return. One of his first visits outside Kabul will be to a small farm 30 km north of the capital where he'd once grown grapes, melons and pears. After heavy fighting in the region, Zahir Shah doesn't know if the trees survived - or if they will ever bear fruit again...
...monarch is an old man now, and those same eyes carry mostly sadness. For the past three decades he has lived in exile in Italy while his nation was decimated by foreign invasion and civil war. But Afghanistan is again set to turn to its former King for help. As part of last year's Bonn accord, which established Hamid Karzai as interim leader, the former King will inaugurate in June a loya jirga, a traditional Afghan assembly to choose a new head of state and transitional government to lead the country to elections in 2004. The ex-King...
...Afghan leader Hamid Karzai. Both Karzai's presence and the tight security are signs that Afghanistan's good guys and bad guys alike believe the royal leader may possess a singular power to unify the fractured nation. A European official with extensive experience in the region said the ex-monarch's popular support is remarkably strong - and cuts across ethnic and tribal lines: "He reminds people of a period of peace, while everything has been war. And most of all, the Afghan people want peace. He is a figure of great moral - and thus political - stature...
...monarch spoke clearly and appeared in good health - notably better health than five months ago when world leaders began looking to him to help fill the vacuum once the Taliban fell. Zahir Shah said age is often the first factor visitors consider. "But this is the very reason for my return," he insisted. "I want to dedicate the last few years of my life to confront the difficulties in the land to which I belong...