Delays in a Long-Awaited Return

They’re patching a rocket hole in the pool house roof, planting flowers in the garden and assembling furniture kits flown in from the United Arab Emirates. Behind a security wall, newly raised to 10 feet and topped with coils of barbed wire, Afghans are readying a house almost fit for a king.

What’s missing from this picture? If Afghanistan’s deposed monarch is on his way home to this war-battered country, you would think that his six-bedroom residence might be swarming with security guards. But not yet.

Belated qualms over who will protect 87-year-old Mohammad Zaher Shah, considered a key figure in the country’s hoped-for transition to democratic rule, have forced a politically awkward delay of his long-awaited return from exile in Italy. He had been due to arrive here Tuesday aboard an Italian air force jet after nearly 29 years in exile.

The Bush administration urged Italy to postpone the trip so that U.S. military officers could train a special force of Afghans deemed loyal to the former monarch rather than leave his protection to the Afghan Interior Ministry, whose leaders have opposed Zaher Shah in the past, a senior U.S. official said.

At the administration’s request, the official said, Italy also agreed to deploy some of its peacekeeping troops to protect the elder statesman here until the special Afghan force is ready. Italian authorities say the revised security plan will delay the homecoming by at least three weeks.

The sudden change, which became known Saturday, irritated and embarrassed the leaders of Afghanistan’s Western-backed interim government. They said they had no say in the matter and grumbled privately about outside meddling.

Afghanistan is trying to recover from 23 years of mayhem, including a decade of Soviet occupation and the entrenchment of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network during the Taliban regime that fell to U.S.-led forces last fall.

Zaher Shah, whose tranquil 40-year reign ended in a 1973 palace coup, has been invited by the new rulers to preside over a loya jirga. That traditional assembly is to meet in June to chart a two-year transition to constitutional rule, but any further delay in Zaher Shah’s arrival could undermine preparations for that event, Afghan officials say.

Fears That Afghans Will Doubt the King

“This delay will create doubts among Afghan people and damage their trust,” said Zalmai Rassoul, Zaher Shah’s secretary, who was fidgeting with yellow worry beads while trying to plan the ex-king’s homecoming. “People are starting to believe that he is not serious about coming to Afghanistan.”

Rassoul said he had worked closely with Interior Minister Younis Qanooni and had been satisfied with plans by Qanooni’s police to take over the former king’s security from Italian officials upon his arrival here.

“Total security does not exist anywhere, and it cannot be done in Afghanistan,” Rassoul said. “But if I had thought the security was not satisfactory [for the former king], I would have told him not to come.”

The U.S., however, overruled Rassoul. The Americans are wary of Qanooni, whose ethnic Tajik faction resisted a special role for the former king, an ethnic Pushtun. Qanooni’s police force, they say, is a clumsy amalgam of Taliban-era cops and anti-Taliban militiamen of the Northern Alliance.

Plans for Zaher Shah’s security were deemed “not entirely satisfactory,” the senior U.S. official said. Now, it has been decided that the former king will get the same kind of bodyguards as are assigned to the interim government’s leader, Hamid Karzai, who is also Pushtun. The guards will be trained by Americans.

Until the guards are prepared, Italian military police in Kabul’s 4,600-member British-led international peacekeeping force will protect Zaher Shah--just as Italian police have been doing at the ex-king’s villa outside Rome since 1973.

“The Italians have done a good job,” said an official of another Western government. “He’s still alive.”

American and other Western officials would not speak on the record, in part because of the sensitivity involved in telling Afghans how to protect their own leaders. Italian officials, once persuaded to delay the homecoming, took responsibility for the decision and put forward their own justification: They had received threats against Zaher Shah’s life, including one to shoot down the Italian plane that was to bring him to Afghanistan. Afghan officials found it difficult to argue in public about that.

As word of the postponement spread in Kabul, many of the capital’s residents said they were hopeful that the deposed king would show up soon and that his presence would do much to bind the nation’s wounds.

Time Now Left to Clean Swimming Pool

Officials noted a bright side to the delay: They will have time to finish cleaning his swimming pool, install electrical wiring and plan his public appearances. Refurbishing continued apace Sunday at his two-story Bauhaus-style residence--guarded by two Afghan police officers--and his royal ancestors’ tomb on a hilltop across town. Both sustained heavy rocket damage during decades of fighting.

“Maybe he comes; maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he’s scared; maybe he’s sick,” shrugged Mohammed Akbar, 29. Akbar’s Gul Shan Photo Studio displays a popular new calendar bearing a 1960s photo of the king and one of Ahmed Shah Masoud, the legendary Northern Alliance commander who was slain last year. “Maybe it’s better if the king doesn’t come. He might have a heart attack when he sees all this destruction.”

But others were more eager to have the king back. “Every leader after the king did his best to destroy Afghanistan,” said Mohammed Sardar, 47, who was part of a big crowd visiting the royal tomb Sunday. “They ended the monarchy, but I’m sure he’s coming back. The date should not matter. This is his land, and he wants to come tell us to stop fighting each other.”