Afghan Capital’s Beleaguered Zoo Is a Microcosm of Nation

Hathi, the 25-year-old female elephant that was a wonder and a delight for countless Afghan children, didn’t make it through the civil war.

Over a period of three years, rival Muslim militias warred around the zoo in Kabul’s western neighborhoods in a battle to gain or retake territory. One day, a rocket landed inside the zoo, and the powerful burst killed Hathi.

A truck towed away the pachyderm’s shrapnel-peppered carcass, and the Afghan conflict’s biggest victim to date was given a burial.

Anyone looking for a pathetic microcosm of the destruction and suffering caused by Afghanistan’s years of battle will find one behind the bullet- and shell-pocked walls of the Kabul zoo. An estimated 10% of Afghanistan’s human population perished in the fighting. The zoo population fared much worse.

Donkeys, birds, fish and scores of other animals were killed by artillery shells, rockets or bullets, or they died for want of food or care as fighting raged, mostly between forces loyal to ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani and the hostile Shiite Hezb-i-Wahdat.

“We used to have 95 kinds of creatures here,” Mohammed Akbar, a grizzled, elderly caretaker said, as he sadly wandered the grounds one recent morning, counting his losses. “Now there are six.”

Last year, Akbar said, a Kabul man boldly climbed into the zoo pen containing a pair of lions to prove his bravery. “He said, ‘The beasts will not be able to eat me,’ ” Akbar recalled. But the male lion mauled the intruder and killed him.

Obeying the timeworn dictates of Afghan tribal mores, which demand blood for blood, the victim’s brother returned to the zoo that evening and heaved a grenade at the big cats. The blast tore off a side of the male lion’s muzzle, but he and his mate survived.

Kabul’s new masters, the members of the Taliban fundamentalist militia, shut the zoo the day after they took control of the capital last month. This closing of the menagerie seems to replicate in miniature their puritanical, repressive style of Islam, which so far has no place for educated girls, working women, music, television and photographs.

“There will be no joy,” a U.N. official commented.

But there is nothing much to do in war-shattered Kabul, and the occupying Talibs seem to enjoy visiting the zoo themselves.

In great numbers they gawk at the surviving animals--the lions, a wild boar, bears, wolves, monkeys and green parrots--spit on them and poke them with their gun barrels.

In a city where many families can afford little to eat beyond bread and tea, municipal authorities recently began supplying food for the remaining beasts--11 pounds of meat a day for the wolves, double that for the lions and a five-pound ragout of carrots, rice and meat for the boar.