Longer Live the King!

The last time Afghanistan pinned its hopes on Mohammed Zahir Shah, he was not much more than a boy. In 1933, as a 19-year-old Prince, he witnessed the assassination of his father, King Nadir Shah, and was called on to take the throne to spare his nation from potentially bloody turmoil. He would go on to rule Afghanistan for 40 years, bringing an era of relative peace and prosperity and unprecedented democratic reforms. Displayed prominently today in Zahir Shah’s plush, carpeted living room in Rome is a 1949 photograph of himself in military uniform, his piercing dark eyes projecting a certain pride in his benevolent regime.

But the ex-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’s presence, it is hoped, will give this meeting legitimacy and encourage rival Afghan leaders to accept its decisions.

Zahir Shah, 87, is expected to touch down this week in Kabul for the first time since he was ousted in a bloodless coup by a cousin in 1973. Security will be extraordinary as the former King is accompanied from Rome by interim 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.”

Though he plans to continue to shuttle between Kabul and Rome, where most of his family will remain, Zahir Shah says his return to Afghanistan is permanent. With the royal palace virtually destroyed, the ex-King and his small delegation will be staying in a cluster of hilltop residences that once housed the royal court and later top Taliban leaders.

Whatever the accommodations, Zahir Shah says he has no ambitions to retake the throne. “My principle is that I am subject to the free will of the people,” he told Time during a rare interview at his house in Rome. Sitting cross-legged on a living room couch in his contemporary-style concrete villa in the northern part of the city, Zahir Shah described his mixed emotions on the eve of his return: “It has been a great desire to be back among the Afghan people. But there will also be great sadness and nostalgia for all that has happened there.”

The ex-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.”

Those difficulties won’t be easy to confront. Taliban and al-Qaeda forces are regrouping in pockets around the country, and there are simmering feuds among tribal and ethnic factions. “The current conditions are not an ordinary state of affairs,” Zahir Shah concedes. “But today, we can say there is no civil war in Afghanistan.” There was disturbing evidence this month that the fragile internal peace may not hold, as U.S. commanders were reportedly forced to modify their assault in the region of Gardez because rival warlords fighting alongside the Americans were said to be ready to clash over the impending land grab. But, says Zahir Shah, “With unity we will obtain security and peace, and then we can address other priorities.”

The ex-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.