Corridors of Power

THE ONCE AND (ALMOST) CURRENT KING -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai took time away from his country's growing problems earlier this week to report to parliament on King Zahir's improving condition following his hospitalization in India on Feb 4.

King who? After living in exile in Rome for 27 years, 92-year-old former King Zahir Shah returned to Kabul in 2002 following the defeat of the Taliban. But for U.S. republican sensitivities he might well have ended up as Afghanistan's restored monarch. In the loya jirga (tribal conference) that determined Afghanistan's political future, the idea of restoration had strong support. Older participants remembered Zahir Shah as the ruler who in the 1960s introduced a constitution of sorts before being deposed by his cousin in a bloodless coup while the king was in Europe. As a member of Afghanistan's Pashtun majority and a native Persian speaker, the king had credibility with the Pashto-speaking tribes of the south, and with Kabul's Persian-speaking elite.

Bush administration officials at the Kabul meeting discreetly blocked the pro-Zahir movement in favor of a presidency with their man Karzai as head of state. In a compromise designed to placate his supporters, the former monarch was designated "Father of the Nation" and took up residence in a former royal palace in Kabul.