The Hindu : Former king returns home

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 19, 2002

International

International

Former king returns home

The former Afghan king, Mohammad Zahir Shah (right), escorted by the interim Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai (left), on his arrival at the Kabul airport on Thursday. — AP

KABUL, APRIL 18, Afghan troops stand guard beside high-powered spotlights on the rooftop. The villa's walls are topped with coils of barbed wire. Heavy six-wheeled armoured troop carriers are parked outside.

It looks like a prison. But it's the new home of Afghanistan's long-exiled king. Fears of a possible assassination attempt postponed Mohammad Zahir Shah's return last month. Now that he's back — he arrived on Thursday for the first time since a coup 29 years ago — authorities are taking no chances. ``Sure, there are some people who want to do bad things to the king," said Sher Agha, the commander of dozens of troops guarding a single traffic circle on the route of the former king's motorcade. "But we have security four blocks deep. It's enough."

The former king arrived in Kabul aboard an Italian army C-130 cargo plane, one of three in an aerial convoy. Besides dozens of officials, tribal representatives and journalists, scores of tanks and jeeps mounted with machine guns were waiting on the runway. Two dozen international peacekeeping troops stationed in the control tower surveyed the tarmac with binoculars. Down below, peacekeepers patrolled with dogs.

The former monarch's first steps were on a red carpet. He was soon whisked away to his residence in a long motorcade. Along the road, thousands of cheering Afghans waited with 2,000-armed Afghan police, who whipped people with branches to keep them off the street.

Kabul was filled with security checkpoints. Some roads were blocked off altogether, save for specially authorised vehicles. Outside the former king's residence, Italian Carabinieri paramilitary police were positioned in green jeeps. The Italians were sent to escort the former monarch home, protect his house and work with his bodyguards.

Green and white Interior Ministry trucks near the residence disgorged dozens of security forces wearing riot helmets and carrying Kalashnikovs. As Ministers emerged from the former king's home, 150 police stood outside, along with a unit of German peacekeepers.

The former king was supposed to have returned last month, but the U.S. President, George W. Bush, called the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to warn that the Afghan security forces were not ready, according to a senior U.S. official in Washington. Mr. Berlusconi agreed and delayed the trip, the official said.

U.S. bomb kills 4 Canadians

Meanwhile, a U.S. F-16 warplane dropped one or two 225 kg laser-guided bombs on Canadian soldiers involved in a live-fire exercise in a clearly defined training zone in southern Afghanistan today, killing four and wounding eight others, a Canadian general, Ray Henault said. — Reuters, AP

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