To Hamid from Abdur Rahman (Part Two)

To Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan,

More salaams from the mausoleum. Mine is close to where you live and work in Kabul. Its gardens in Zarnegar Park are overgrown. Its cupola and minarets, built by my son Habibullah, need fresh paint. But this fact remains after 101 years: I was the last Afghan ruler to die in both power and peace.

Habibullah was assassinated. Six other kings, amirs, and presidents – including three in two years (1978-79) – died violently. But for God’s will and American bodyguards, you too would have been gunned down in September. There will be other attempts. Your own grave, whether peaceful or violent, is part of God’s plan and comes closer every moment. How, meanwhile, can you best live and work on behalf of our country? Remembered still as the Iron Amir, I write you this second letter, again with quotes from my memoirs in a script which the Franks call “italics.”

Like last week, my prime concern is character. The world is full of experiences and trials, or ups and downs. True character – natural merit – transcends circumstance, and any great Afghan leader must rise above misfortune. Once a dynastic setback stripped me of all possessions except a saucepan, a scrap of meat, and a crust of bread. As I was going to take the cooked meat out of the saucepan, a dog, thinking the hanging string was the intestines of some animal, seized it in his mouth and ran off with the whole thing. Despair and defeatism, Hamid? Not at all. From this I learned the power of God. Three days before I had 1000 camels to carry my cooking utensils, and now one dog could run off with my cooking pans, together with the food. I could not help smiling at so humiliating an incident, and eating the piece of bread without the meat, I went to sleep. Kipling, a sahib scribe of my era, has sound advice on Triumph and Disaster: “Treat those two imposters both the same.”

With equanimity comes patience and mental discipline. When held captive by the Russians in my 20s, the whole world was dark in my eyes from anger and grief, and I thought to … kill some of my enemies before I myself was killed. Had I done so, Hamid, there would have been no Iron Amir and, most likely, no Afghanistan for you to rule today. Recovering my senses, I argued with myself that such impulses belonged to idiots, that the wise wait for proper occasions to revenge themselves. I was nearly motionless for two hours, after which I regained my senses and recovered my peace of mind. You and your 1980s jihad took my revenge on the Russians.

Now add bravery and belief in God. For us Muslims, these two are the same. At one crucial moment, I had only 100 troops against 12,000. If the Almighty wishes to protect a humble person, he need not fear the whole world. I say this in the name of God. This is not bravery, but simply a feeling which He has given me. I distinctly want to tell all true believers what happened to me. The result of my belief is, that I am a King today.

What happened? Those 12,000 enemies dispersed. My heart was so strong that if I had to face the army of the whole world, they would appear as insects under my feet. You have the same stuff in you, Hamid. You spoke well after the September assassination attempt: “These things happen. I have been fighting for a long time. I will go on fighting.”

Islam provides legitimacy as well as courage. For this reason, you must never appear a puppet of non-Muslims. The people of Afghanistan have such strong prejudices against being ruled by a sovereign of any other religion but their own, that they look upon of the kings of all other faiths as infidels; and men and women take up arms to fight for their faith, believing that everyone who is killed in fighting against the infidels will go to straight to Paradise. Our people went to war when the British substituted a stooge named Shah Shuja for my grandfather in the 1830s. And when the Soviets installed their stooges in the 1970s and 1980s.

Your enemies call you “Shah Shuja” today and say that America pulls your strings because it supplies your purse. I faced the same problem – lack of funds – and, like you, depended on outside subsidies. Our common dilemma: How to maintain Muslim legitimacy while relying on non-Muslims. Our common enemy: Those who, in the name of religion, seek to usurp our power. They maneuver with much stealth and intrigue, which the Franks call “cloak and dagger.” One power-hungry Kandahar mullah accused me of being an infidel and, like your Mullah Omar, went to the Mosque of the Holy Mantle and hid under the Prophet’s robe. I ordered that an impure dog such as he should not remain in that sacred sanctuary; he was accordingly pulled out of the building, and I killed him with my own hands. He had the cloak, but I had the dagger.

Be known, like me, as a champion of Islam. On May 25, 1896 – again this bizarre Nazarene dating system – I myself was named “The Light of the Nation and Religion.” But you must, like me, oppose extremist clerics who seek your ruin. When I first took power, many of these priests taught as Islamic religion strange doctrines which were never in the teaching of Mohammed, yet which have been the downfall of all Islamic nations in every country. Those scoundrels were like your Taliban and al-Qaida. So the first thing I had to do was to put an end to these numberless robbers, thieves, false prophets, and trumpery kings. I confess that it was not a very easy task, and it took 15 years of fighting before they finally submitted to my rule and left the country, either by being exiled or by departing into the next world. I came to prefer the second outcome, and recommend it for CIA-favorite-turned-renegade Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose opportunistic Islamism trumps even those “trumpery kings” of my era.

Which brings us, Hamid, to a task even bigger than rebuilding Afghanistan: reconciling our eternal Islam with the modern world. Here is the greatest challenge of your time. Islam’s inner turmoil threatens the peace of God’s world. The Faithful need to find a new mix of sacred and secular. Perhaps Afghanistan, whose people are very ready to adopt modern reforms and education, and are free from silly and needless scruples and superstitions, can show the way.

Education is the key, and it must begin with the man in charge. Now I realize, young man, that you are far more broadly educated than was ever my fortune. Even so, consider this advice any Afghan leader: In addition to his duties as a ruler, he must keep a fixed time for improving his knowledge and information, as I have done throughout my lifetime. The best system is that adopted by me, namely, in the evening when he is too tired to do any work himself, he must every night employ readers to read him books of history, geographies of foreign countries, biographies of great kings and great men … and newspapers. Have your Yankee protectors read to you each evening from the Bangor Daily News. And be sure your subscription is up to date.

I shall address you in this forum again next week. Our topics then: forcefulness and reputation. Without those two qualities, you are lost. I was the last of your predecessors to master them. I’ll tell you how. Meanwhile, remember last week’s words of our Prophet: “Place your confidence in God, but watch your camel.”

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world. He was last in Afghanistan in May on a U.S. government contract.