Word: zahir
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RETURNED. MOHAMMED ZAHIR SHAH, 87, former King of Afghanistan; to his country, for the first time since being deposed 29 years ago; to open a national council that will choose a new transitional government in June. In his emotional homecoming, during which he visited his assassinated father's war-torn grave, Zahir Shah said, "I want to serve the people of Afghanistan...
AFGHANISTAN Homecoming for an Exiled King Some people hadn't slept all night and others danced in the streets as former monarch Mohammed Zahir Shah came home after nearly 30 years in exile. Fears for his safety had delayed his return from Italy several times, but the country's most dangerous places still seemed to be the southern plains and the eastern mountains. A U.S. warplane accidentally dropped a laser-guided bomb on Canadian soldiers training near Kandahar, killing four, and in the mountain valleys southeast of Gardez, British marines began their first combat deployment since...
Hamid Karzai is a lot tougher on Western donors than on his querulous countrymen. Afghanistan's interim leader Thursday escorted former king Zahir Shah back to Kabul after three decades in exile, last week upbraided international donors gathered in Kabul to discuss the country's budget. "So far we've only given hope to the Afghan people and not real activity," he said, slamming the international community's sluggish pace in delivering promised aid. "And don't expect us to give you a report every month," he said. "We'll give you a report when we want to give...
...Fires are expected to spread in the run-up to the loya jirga. "The next few months will be an especially fragile period," CIA director George Tenet recently told the U.S. Senate. Pashtun royalists hope people will rally around former King Mohammed Zahir Shah, even though he has returned with the constitutional rights of an ordinary citizen rather than those of a monarch. But Afghanistan's volatile ethnic divisions are just as likely to turn the frail 87-year-old king into a symbol of division than one of peace...
Since Sept. 11, Pahlavi's stature has increased in Tehran and Washington. Many Iranians reacted enviously to the fall of the Taliban and the liberation of Afghan life--especially for women. Some are impressed by the rehabilitation of Mohammed Zahir Shah, the exiled Afghan King, who plans to return soon to Kabul for the first time in 29 years. In a TV broadcast last October, Pahlavi urged Iranians to demonstrate peacefully after their country's qualifying games for the World Cup. But young people poured into the streets, chanting anti-regime slogans in a fierce show of discontent. In Tehran...