• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

2001 Restoration of the Afghan Monarchy

Milo

George Brown Apologist
Patreon supporter
Location
London
Based on a quick reading of the Wikipedia there was some talk of restoring Mohammed Zahir Shah post the collapse of the Soviet backed government as he had pan-ethic support and his reign was seen as a fairly stable one, this never came to anything due to Pakistan's ISI. What if the Americans decide to restore him after the invasion. I know this is unlikely as American's don't like restoring and they were confident of doing nation building, but suppose he had some supporters in the state department that saw the monarchy as an institution that might have popular support and avoid the graveyard of empires fate. Do you think this would have been successful and helped with nation building?
 
Based on a quick reading of the Wikipedia there was some talk of restoring Mohammed Zahir Shah post the collapse of the Soviet backed government as he had pan-ethic support and his reign was seen as a fairly stable one, this never came to anything due to Pakistan's ISI. What if the Americans decide to restore him after the invasion. I know this is unlikely as American's don't like restoring and they were confident of doing nation building, but suppose he had some supporters in the state department that saw the monarchy as an institution that might have popular support and avoid the graveyard of empires fate. Do you think this would have been successful and helped with nation building?
I feel like the question ultimately comes down less to what Zahir Shah does as King (he was after all made "Father of the Nation" anyway) and more whether Ahmad Shah can get the same support to transfer to him after his father's death in 2007.
 
Last edited:
I feel like the question ultimately comes down less to what Zahir Shah does as King (he was after all made "Father of the Nation" anyway) and more whether Ahmad Shah can get the same support to transfer to him after his father's death in 2007.

Yeah, it might help in the short term to have a very popular figure as the figurehead leader and a symbolic Return To Before The Bad Times, but you have six years or less (he may die earlier due to the stress, he may have to abdicate) before he's not there and there's this old guy people don't know very well in charge. He'd have to very quickly establish some legitimacy, and then you've got the question "what are his sons like" because Ahmad Shah's old enough you have to think "he can die any day". If they're unpopular, seen as a bit crap, "but why do we need them" etc, then the head of state is someone the foreigners are forcing you to have when Afghans Kicked The Monarch Out Before.

A bit of extra stability and a popular guy up top in the first few years could be enough of a butterfly but only if his son & grandsons can avoid being Prince Charleses or Andrews.
 
I don't think it was impossible for there to be a halfway stable Afghanistan in 2021, nor was it impossible for that state to be at least partly democratic. Restoring the monarchy would arguably have helped- it certainly could be worse than Karzai.

But the sine qua non of a Taliban defeat (not the same thing as successful nation-building) was the Iraq War. Unless that massive redeployment of resources, troops and attention can be avoided, I doubt much changes save for today's headlines talking about the overrunning of the Royal Palace.
 
I don't think it was impossible for there to be a halfway stable Afghanistan in 2021, nor was it impossible for that state to be at least partly democratic. Restoring the monarchy would arguably have helped- it certainly could be worse than Karzai.

But the sine qua non of a Taliban defeat (not the same thing as successful nation-building) was the Iraq War. Unless that massive redeployment of resources, troops and attention can be avoided, I doubt much changes save for today's headlines talking about the overrunning of the Royal Palace.

I suspect you mean "couldn't", not "could".
 
I don't think it was impossible for there to be a halfway stable Afghanistan in 2021, nor was it impossible for that state to be at least partly democratic. Restoring the monarchy would arguably have helped- it certainly could be worse than Karzai.

But the sine qua non of a Taliban defeat (not the same thing as successful nation-building) was the Iraq War. Unless that massive redeployment of resources, troops and attention can be avoided, I doubt much changes save for today's headlines talking about the overrunning of the Royal Palace.

Karzai was an unpopular corrupt warlord. I think Zahir Shah could have garnered much more popular support.
 
One problem with this is that it is not clear to me that the scenario existed for a monarchy.

Spain was able to transition back to a constitutional monarchy, but this occurred in the context of domestic peace. Cambodia was able to become this after the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese occupation, but this occurred in the context of a peace of exhaustion after two decades of brutal warfare and a new regional consensus. The first possibility does not apply, while the second needs wider preconditions that were not present.

Beyond this, after two decades of war and another decade of radical republicanism, could a monarchy be solidly implanted?
 
One problem with this is that it is not clear to me that the scenario existed for a monarchy.

Spain was able to transition back to a constitutional monarchy, but this occurred in the context of domestic peace. Cambodia was able to become this after the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese occupation, but this occurred in the context of a peace of exhaustion after two decades of brutal warfare and a new regional consensus. The first possibility does not apply, while the second needs wider preconditions that were not present.

Beyond this, after two decades of war and another decade of radical republicanism, could a monarchy be solidly implanted?

Some Afghans did want to restore the monarchy.
 
One problem with this is that it is not clear to me that the scenario existed for a monarchy.

Spain was able to transition back to a constitutional monarchy, but this occurred in the context of domestic peace. Cambodia was able to become this after the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese occupation, but this occurred in the context of a peace of exhaustion after two decades of brutal warfare and a new regional consensus. The first possibility does not apply, while the second needs wider preconditions that were not present.

Beyond this, after two decades of war and another decade of radical republicanism, could a monarchy be solidly implanted?

Could you, please, explain what preconditions Cambodia had that Afghanistan didn't?
 
Also if your were worried about legitimacy you could try and do a referendum though how practical this would be to do in 2002 Afghanistan
 
But the sine qua non of a Taliban defeat (not the same thing as successful nation-building) was the Iraq War. Unless that massive redeployment of resources, troops and attention can be avoided, I doubt much changes save for today's headlines talking about the overrunning of the Royal Palace.
And that, I think, is the crux of the problem as far as that is concerned. It seemed like the Bush II administration was hell-bent on invading Iraq pre-9/11, so Afghanistan became a big distraction it initially didn't want which got transformed into "the good war". To get sole focus on Afghanistan in any case, regardless of the government it ends up with, requires not entertaining the idea of invading Iraq from the get-go. That's hinge number one.

Hinge number two, getting a monarchical restoration requires attention to the quality of government that Afghanistan gets - if it's like OTL but with a King instead of a President, then no amount of initial goodwill is going to save the monarchy once it gets overthrown (remember, Karzai appointed a huge bunch of the Royal Family to positions in the GIRoA anyway). Hence my thinking that to get something like to work, while overcoming US reluctance to reinstating monarchies, probably requires handing the civilian aspect of it over to the UN, and in particular treat Afghanistan as if it was coming out of a Cambodia-like situation (if you believe the Taliban was as awful as the Khmer Rouge). Of course, the general overall setup the UN would use would basically be a copy-paste of East Timor (keeping in mind we were just barely a couple of years after that fateful referendum, so that would be on the back of everyone's mind), but the addition of bringing the former monarchy and the jirga system onboard leading to the restoration of Zahir Shah is what brings Cambodia - primarily UNTAC - to mind.
 
Last edited:
A point well made.

I actually think you could get such a plan through the Security Council- we tend to forget now just how much freedom of action the US had diplomatically at the end of 2001, when fear, sympathy and self-interest all saw the major powers swing behind the US.
 
A point well made.

I actually think you could get such a plan through the Security Council- we tend to forget now just how much freedom of action the US had diplomatically at the end of 2001, when fear, sympathy and self-interest all saw the major powers swing behind the US.

Not to mention 'we went in, we took out the Terrorist Government, we're handing this over to the UN as an international police operation while things get set up' probably goes down better with the likes of Russia and China in that it looks more like 'look we don't really want a permanent base here'

Funnily enough the most interesting aspect might be what happens when we get to, say, 2005, Bush has been re-elected and Iraq is now top of the agenda, and there's an actual example of 'no see we just did an intervention against an enemy and it's all gone fine*'

*Obviously the new Afghan Government might still end up collapsing in 2012 or something.
 
So, the source I'm about to use is obviously highly questionable, but I think rings true here:

David Frum wrote the other day that the mood in the White House in the late stages of 2001 was one of thorough disinterest in Afghanistan. Cheney, Rumsfeld et al- all the hawks- really didn't think that there was any point to a long term occupation. That was coupled with a belief that Osama really was going to be captured at any point.

Once it became clear that didn't happen, the stop-gap solutions to 'what will Afghanistan look like once we're gone' suddenly turned into the basis of a long-term plan, despite the fact no one wanted to send more troops to the campaign or even keep the ones they had there. Frum claims that had Bin Laden been shot or somehow captured, it would have been Bring Up The Aircraft Carrier Boys, It's Mission Accomplished Time!

So let's say some informant flips on Bin Laden in the hope of bounty money, or when he crosses the Pakistan border he runs into a patrol or what have you- now America wants out fast.

That might contribute to a decision to restore a previous, somewhat legitimate government and define it as victory.
 
The other thing worth considering is that in late 2001, Russia, China and even Iran were not as hostile to a US presence in Afghanistan. 'The Axis of Evil' speech poisoned that last one right fast, but my point is that apart from Pakistan the major regional players would not have necessarily been averse to a UN-brokered solution.
 
Back
Top