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New York Times
January 12, 2002
Eisenhower in Kabul
By Douglas Brinkley
There is speculation now about whether President Bush will
visit
Afghanistan once the American bombing campaign ceases and
the new
government is established in Kabul. If he does go, he will
not be the
first American president to make the journey. On Dec. 9,
1959, Dwight
D. Eisenhower, while on a goodwill mission to Central Asia
and the
Middle East, made a pilgrimage to Kabul. There, he met with
the
eager, 45-year- old Afghan king, Mohammad Zahir Shah — the
same king
many now would like to see return from exile to reclaim the
throne in
Kabul.
Eisenhower had long been eager to visit that strange and
forbidding
land. "It was a boyhood dream of his to see the Khyber Pass
and size
up how tough their soldiers were," Gen. Andrew Goodpaster,
who served
as Eisenhower's assistant on that trip, recently recalled.
On the
morning of Dec. 9, Eisenhower, who had been in Karachi to
discuss
Pakistan's troublesome relationship with India with
President
Mohammad Ayub Khan, flew from Pakistan to Bagram Airport, 38
miles
from Kabul. The flight, as reported by Russell Baker in The
Times,
was harrowing: as the president's jet swooped across the
snow- capped
peaks dividing Pakistan from Afghanistan and prepared to
land, "six
Soviet MIG-17's flown by Afghan pilots streaked out to
escort it in."
This was no accident: Soviet aid had been pouring into the
country
since 1955, when Nikita Khrushchev had visited. The Kremlin
was eager
to give Ike a little reminder that it was in charge in this
supposedly neutral nation. This was just the beginning of
one of the
most curious days of Eisenhower's presidency.
Winter had set in on this landlocked nation of 12 million
and the
temperature was near freezing, yet tens of thousands of
villagers
lined the route from the airport to Kabul. Zahir Shah,
looking like a
boyish stand-in for Charles de Gaulle, escorted him down the
route
(now paved by the Soviets) that had been traveled by
Alexander the
Great, the Persians and Genghis Khan. Many of the tribesmen
cheering
at the roadside had been waiting for hours, warming
themselves over
small bonfires. "Faces were weather- beaten, often hidden by
full
beards and turbans, more than faintly similar to biblical
pictures of
the time of Abraham," Eisenhower later wrote in his memoir,
"Waging
Peace." "Few, if any, women were present."
Once at Chilstoon Palace, Eisenhower and the king talked for
five
hours, with Eisenhower raising concerns over the Afghan
monarchy
accepting so much Soviet aid and the king asking for more
than the
$145 million in economic assistance that the United States
had
already promised him for building roads, a new airport in
Kandahar
and dams, and for training teachers.
Besides making a plea for more money, the king also hoped
that
Eisenhower could intervene with two difficult problems:
improving
Afghanistan's relationship with Pakistan and helping to
solve a
prickly water dispute between Afghanistan and Iran.
According to the
declassified report on the Eisenhower-Zahir Shah meeting,
the
president told the king that "nothing was easy these days"
and that
he was "not a mediator" but would "do what he could."
General Goodpaster remembers talking to Ike as the
president's plane
finally left Afghan soil. The president liked Zahir Shah but
his mind
was not on cold war politics or economic aid. (The joint
communiqué
issued by the two leaders said little of substance, mainly
noting
that the trip "had strengthened the already warm and
friendly
relations between the two countries.") Instead, Eisenhower
was most
interested in the chanting tribesmen he had seen and the
desolate
majesty of the Hindu Kush. As General Goodpaster recalls,
Ike
considered the Afghans "the most determined lot he had ever
encountered."
Douglas Brinkley is director of the Eisenhower Center for
American
Studies and professor of history at the University of New
Orleans.
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