By Judi McLeod
Thursday, July 26, 2007
It was a return to my past when I discovered a picture of Prince Mostapha Zahir, taken at his grandfather's funeral, on Google yesterday.
Mostapha was there when the body of King Mohammad Zahir Shah, Afghanistan's last king, was lowered into a bullet-ridden hill by an honour guard on Tuesday.
Afghan officials and dignitaries, including President Hamid Karzai, walked behind the coffin amid heavy security.
It was from Mostapha during the days when he was a Political Science student at Kingston's Queen's University that I learned most about Afghanistan. This was during my two-year stint as a reporter at the Kingston Whig Standard in the late 1980s.
Working quietly in the background on the Afghan Medical Relief Organization (AMRO), Mostapha teamed up with Kingston realtor Alan Henriksen as an AMRO co-founder. AMRO brought Afghans wounded during the Soviet-Afghan war into Canada for medical treatment at Hotel Dieu Hospital.
Mostapha always spoke proudly of his grandfather who was living in exile in Rome. Even back then the young student prince predicted his grandfather would one day return to Afghanistan.
Mohammad Zahir Shah did return to Kabul in 2002, and the joyful return proved a touchstone for Afghan hopes for peace and the revival of their institutions and traditions. Indeed, Zahir Shah was there for the swearing in of Hamid Karzai as Afghan President.
It was a bittersweet return tied to a 30-year dream, but tragedy revisited the royal family almost as soon as their feet touched Afghan soil. Former Queen Homaira, 86, died of a heart attack after a bout of bronchitis and pneumonia in Italy. Homaira had fully intended to join her husband in Kabul when she recovered from illness; instead her corpse was flown to the Afghan capital for burial.
The missiles, rockets and other explosive devices discovered close to the royal family's bomb-damaged mausoleum, where Homaira's body was interred, served as a reminder of the unstable conditions to which the royal family had returned.
Married since they were teenagers, Zahir Shah was inconsolable over his wife's death, refusing visitors for days.
Depression over her death was to follow him the rest of his days.
Mostapha was only a nine-year-old boy hiding under a table when his grandfather was ousted by his cousin, Mohammad Daoud in 1973.
His grandfather was only 19 when he became king within weeks of his father's assassination when he was shot during a school prize ceremony in the Palace grounds before his very eyes.
Upon their return home, Mostapha and his grandfather worked together in a post-Taliban Afghanistan as advocates of a Loya Jirga, a traditional grand council charting the country's future.
He must have been proud that his grandfather had been named the "Father of the Nation" in the nation's new constitution.
King Zahir Shah's death marked the end of a 300-year dynasty and triggered three days of national mourning.
In those long ago days when Mostapha talked as a student prince of his dreams of a free Afghanistan, it would have been a stretch of the imagination to believe that one day Canadian soldiers would be fighting the Taliban in his mother land; impossible to know that one of the soldiers whose body would be flown back home for burial called the city of Kingston home.
But in post-Taliban Afghanistan, hope stirs the human heart to look forward to better days. The media portrays the war against the Taliban as a lost cause. They rarely report on the schools that are being built; that water and electricity are running in once ravaged villages and that girls can attend class again.
A senior delegate and signatory to the famous Bonn Accords, which set the foundation for the Afghan Interim Authority as well as the Islamic Traditional Government, Mostapha remains Afghanistan's chief diplomatic representative in Italy.
Surfing the Internet to find more news about Mostapha, I was reminded of something that must bedevil one Osama bin Laden: the posthumous success of his one time deadliest enemy, Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Massoud, a national hero, was the target of a suicide attack, which occurred at Khajeh Ba Odin on September 9, 2001.
People the world over wept at the news of the death of the "Lion of the Panjir" Valley.
The timing of the assassination is considered significant because it is believed that Osama bin Laden ordered the assassination to help his Taliban protectors and ensure he would have their protection and cooperation in Afghanistan.
Of Massoud's six brothers, Ahmad Zia Massoud is current Vice President of Afghanistan under Hamid Karzai. Ahmad Wali Massoud is the Ambassdor of the United Kingdom.
While the world's most infamous terrorist clings to caves living out his days as a shadow, even in death Ahmad Shah Massoud lives on as a hero, while his flesh and blood brothers are part of a promising new regime in Afghanistan.
For Osama bin Laden, it must be a humiliation like no other: Moderate Muslims will someday restore peace to Afghanistan.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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