Zia and Weis Royalties of Sorts

The future of Afghanistan

By Dr. G. Rauf Roashan

Abstract: Last week, Zia Masoud, Ahamd Shah Masoud’s brother and Mir Weis, the former Afghan King’s son spoke in Moscow and Rome on the issue of Afghanistan's future, the Loya Jirga and the role of the former King.  These interviews were very revealing of the stands of the two parties on issues of vital national importance to the Afghan nation.  This papers casts a quick look on some of these issues.

Early last week, two second-generation royalties of sorts spoke on the issue of Afghanistan’s future government system.  Zia Masoud, the new Ambassador of Afghanistan in Moscow, is brother of the late Ahmad Shah Masoud, defense minister in Rabbani’s government.  After his assassination in the hands of Arab suicide terrorists two days prior to September 11, 2001, Ahamad Shah Masoud has acquired, in the minds of some of his supporters, supernatural qualities.  In fact people say it is his pictures posted all around Kabul that leads Afghanistan and not Mr. Karzai. A dead man’s picture leading a country that had died during the years of his life is to be seen everywhere especially in Kabul the capital.  It is this dead man; they say that has appointed his brother Zia as Ambassador to Moscow.  Ambassador Zia Masoud was interviewed in detail about his country, its relations with its former enemy, Russia, and its future.  He was presented with the question of whether a revival of monarchy was in the cards for Afghanistan. Zia strongly rejected the idea saying the Afghan nation fought to bring about a democratic system of government and it would not agree to going back to a system of monarchy.

In Rome, Mir Weis, the only vocal son of the former King Mohammad Zahir Shah talked to newsmen and discussed the issue of the Loya Jirga.  He mentioned his father never was an aspirant to the high position of being the King.  He said that after assassination of King Nadir Shah, his father (Zahir Shah) was made King.  Even now, he does not want to go back and become King.  But Mir Weis said it is expected that the Loya Jirga would decide to go back to a system of constitutional monarch, like Great Britain, Spain, the Netherlands etc.  In that case, Mir Weis said, we cannot go against the decision of the Jirga and would comply.

Zia and Weis in the complex Afghan social conditions have each inherited a status that they would like to be called royalty.  Mir Weis would like to be called Prince.  He seems to be closer to politics of his father.  It is said that he has the support of his brother-in-law former General Wali a strongman of Zahir Shah’s forty year reign.  The King’s grandson Mustafa Zahir also wants to be called Prince Zahir and seems to be close to Afghanistan’s politics.  He too is positioning himself as a leader from among the royalty when and if constitutional monarchy is reestablished in Afghanistan.  They are the second and third generation representatives of a family that ascended the throne of Afghanistan early in the 20^th century after the fall of King Amanullah’s regime.

But the other kind of shadow royalty clans includes people related to leaders or having been followers of the leaders during the long decade of Afghanistan’s war for independence from Soviet occupation and Soviet installed government.  In about a quarter of a century of turmoil in Afghanistan, new generation of people and so-called leaders emerged.  They consider themselves true heirs to seats of power in Afghanistan mainly because they were there during the wars, had participated in battles or had followed in the paths of freedom fighters.  This new generation obviously objects to handing over of power to a group of royalists who watched from the fringes how situations would develop and evolve inside the country and when to return to acquire positions of leadership there.

Presently, a formula not based on true principles of democratic conduct, but emerging from circumstances and considered one of the workable and practical ways, namely a Loya Jirga is looked upon as a miraculous solution to Afghanistan’s longstanding misery. The Bonn meeting held under international pressure and heavily influenced by the Rome Process Movement and especially by the Northern Alliance representation, having no universal Afghan nation representation has helped establish an Interim Authority that was entrusted among other things with the task of preparing for the Loya Jirga.  The same meeting had assigned the historic task of opening of the Jirga to the former King.  This has been the only task officially entrusted to him.  And this is what members of the Jamiat Party, the main faction in the Northern Alliance, and their representatives such as Zia Masoud stress upon.  They say the return of the former King is only for the symbolic gesture of opening of a traditional Loya Jirga and nothing more.  On the other hand, the royalists, and many other people who are fed up with warlordism and impatient for a new and hopeful start for the country of its revival efforts, see the former King to be a uniting factor.  They look upon him as a person who could bring the widely diverse interests of sectarian politics together in a nation united and determined to get out of its present miseries.  How does he see his role has not been clearly pronounced. On the surface he has repeatedly said he does not want to become King.  But most recently both him and his camp have hinted that if the Loya Jirga invited him to become King, he might comply.  What this means is that he would like the Jirga to consider the possibility. His camp works for such an eventuality.

The problem, therefore, is not whether the Jirga wants the former King to be reinstated as the monarch.  It is how the rival groups in this power struggle would receive this, and agree, for the benefit of the nation, to lose considerable amount of power and prestige and lose guaranteed ambassadorships, for example, to the King’s clan members and not to enjoy the power of their arms as members of sectors led by warlords?