At the Kabul Zoo, a Nice Kangaroo--or Two--Would Surely Do

Nasik Mir issued an appeal to the world the other day.

It was not an appeal for peace in Afghanistan. It had nothing to do with the United Nations or Moscow or Washington. In fact, it had little to do with the war that has been tearing Mir’s country apart for the past decade.

Mir wants a kangaroo. A llama would do, or even a South African ostrich. And he doesn’t expect to get them for free. He is willing to trade good red elk for them, even an ibex or two.

Mir is the director of the Kabul Zoo, and with spring in the air in this mile-high capital, he has something on his mind besides the war. The zoo season has begun.

Incongruous though it may be, with rebel rockets falling on Kabul every day and lines for bread and fuel a way of life, the Kabul Zoo is crowded with couples who are in love and students with a lust for learning.

The zoo is just one of the many distractions Kabulis have found in their efforts to cope with the effects of war on this refugee-swollen city of 2 million people.

With the coming of spring in the Kabul Valley, weddings and parties are taking place on an almost nightly basis. Every evening at the Kabul Hotel, a once-grand establishment that now resembles a cracked and peeling prison, huge family groups decked out in sequined gowns and three-piece suits fill the cavernous ballroom. Teen-agers and adults dance to rock bands and dig into what delicacies can be found.

Television is also an important distraction. Many Kabulis have access only to state-run Afghan Television, which offers repeats of speeches by President Najibullah and old rock videos from pre-revolution Iran. But others have huge antennas that pick up Soviet television, and they spend their evenings watching Phil Donahue shows and Russian movies.

During the day, most of Kabul’s children are in school, which have not been closed by the war. But when classes are dismissed, some teen-agers head for the poolrooms of the Old City bazaar, others for the city’s ancient parks and gardens.

And some head for the zoo.

“When the season peaks in a few weeks, we expect 1,000 visitors a day,” Mir said. “Some are coming to see and learn about the animals, most of them students.

“But it is also for entertainment. Young couples do come here to be alone. It is a quiet place, the zoo, a peaceful place.”

Mir is the first to concede that his zoo is also a troubled place. It has not been spared by the war, he said.

“Our biggest problem,” he said, “is that we cannot go around the country to collect animals for trade anymore. The war is there.”

Before the April, 1978, Marxist revolution and the civil war that followed, the zoo was something of a showplace in south Asia. It was built with the assistance of the Cologne Zoo in West Germany.

A 1972 guide to Kabul praises the zoo for the natural environment it provides for the animals.

Just before the revolution, the West Germans cut their ties to the zoo, and when Najibullah’s pro-Moscow People’s Democratic Party took over the country, in 1978, the zoo found itself even more isolated internationally.

“We tried our best to link up with other city zoos, to get animals by trade,” Mir said, emphasizing that he has Afghan red elk and ibex to spare.

“We tried Moscow, Prague, Delhi, Sofia and other cities, but either they didn’t have the animals we wanted or they didn’t want the animals we had.”

As a result, many of Mir’s animals died of old age, among them his kangaroo, llama and ostrich.

Mir’s collection has been so reduced that he concedes, sadly, that there are now more dead animals--stuffed and on exhibit in the zoo’s museum--than live ones.

Still, there are signs of hope. In answer to Mir’s plea, the East Berlin Zoo donated what has become the pride of Mir’s collection--a male and female lion that last year gave birth to cubs.

Unfortunately, East Berlin could offer no help in the effort to acquire a kangaroo, and as veterinarian Habibullah Atayee said: “This is a zoo. We should have a kangaroo.”

Another animal has become popular, if only in a negative sense. Children have crowded around the cage of the zoo’s black bear.

The bear pokes its head through the bars and the spectators tease and taunt it. Occasionally a child will laugh and shout, “ Sorobi ! Sorobi !”--”Russian! Russian!”