AFGHANISTAN: Death Near a Harem

For four years Afghanistan’s hero has been her King, bespectacled, spade-bearded, ruthless Mohammed Nadir Khan. In 1929 Afghanistan was a shambles. Nadir’s nephew King Amanullah, whose Western reforms so angered Afghans, had fled the capital (TIME. Dec. 24, 1928 et seq.). On the throne sat bloody Bacha Sakao, an upstart chief whose name meant “The Water Boy.” Backed by the royal family’s bribes of the Durani, Uncle Nadir marched on Kabul. He caught one of the Water Boy’s favorite generals and his staff, boiled them all in vegetable oil. Water Boy picked two of Nadir’s nephews from his hostages, slew them and piled their bodies in a palace closet. When Nadir had scattered Water Boy’s army, he strangled him in chains. It was a fine point whether Uncle Nadir ought to give the throne back to Nephew Amanullah, still hiding in Rome. A few rabble-shouts persuaded Nadir to take it for himself. Though beset by the plots of bitter Afghans, one of whom assassinated his elder brother in Berlin last June, Nadir ruled firmly and well until last week.

One evening His Majesty was leaving his harem. Too late he saw Death awaiting him. A man shot three bullets into him before, spare and powerful, Nadir Khan stumbled bleeding upon his assailant. He got the feel of the man in his hands but the other had a knife. The King’s spectacles fell off his nose and shattered on the pavement. As the cold steel went deep in him. Nadir Khan fell down dead.

Through Afghanistan, through all the bazaars of India ran contradictory rumors that the assassin had been an agent of Russia, of Amanullah, of one of Nadir’s brothers. The Afghan Government branded a “low-class Afghan,” one Abdul Khalliq, as the assassin, assured the Afghan Minister in London that “everything is absolutely all right.”

Nadir Khan was hardly cold before his supporters clapped the crown on the head of his only son, Mohammed Zahir Khan, 19. French boys who went to school with him in Paris called the new king “a good fellow and a good horseman.”

In Rome ex-King Amanullah wistfully but superfluously announced, ‘If my people want me. . . .”