WI Afghanistan remains a monarchy

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Afghanistan would be just as bad as today. It wouldn't have suffered from the current US devastation or the US-armed militias that swarmed the country in the 80s and 90s, but the economy would have remained an undeveloped Hell on Earth in the control of a British colonially supported viceroyal autocracy that exploited the population.

Basically, it would be another Saudi Arabia, only with arguably more poverty and with high rates of drug addiction.

Do you know anything about Afghanistan before '73 coup? Yes, Afghanistan had problems but it was far from Hell and it had good changes develope at least to OTL Jordan level nation. Tribalism and extremist conservatives might cause some problems but these wouldn't be anything compared to OTL problems. And major guilt to current sorry state of the country was USSR.
 

Maoistic

Banned
Do you know anything about Afghanistan before '73 coup? Yes, Afghanistan had problems but it was far from Hell and it had good changes develope at least to OTL Jordan level nation. Tribalism and extremist conservatives might cause some problems but these wouldn't be anything compared to OTL problems. And major guilt to current sorry state of the country was USSR.

-Putting Jordan as a good model.

Nope.

-Major guilt goes to the USSR

Love your apology of the US-armed militias that became the Taliban and other narcoterrorist groups.
 
-Putting Jordan as a good model.

Nope.

-Major guilt goes to the USSR

Love your apology of the US-armed militias that became the Taliban and other narcoterrorist groups.

Americans did mistakes, but Soviets invaded firstly. That probably wouldn't happen if king would had still be there.
 

Maoistic

Banned
Americans did mistakes, but Soviets invaded firstly. That probably wouldn't happen if king would had still be there.
-Mistakes.

Sure, I bet Stalin made mistakes as well.

-Soviets invaded first

No. They invaded only when they saw the US was arming anti-Communist militias and directing the semi-fascist government of Pakistan against Afghanistan. I don't defend the Soviet invasion, but it was a reaction to US-supported aggression and far more understandable given how Afghanistan was in its immediate borders (to give a comparison, it's as if the Soviet Union had armed militias in Mexico or Canada).
 
Hard to see how the Communists could have come to power in the first place had the king not been overthrown by his cousin who had weaker support among his people.
 
Firstly, Zahir Shah is being given the most ridiculously lopsided revisionism here. He was no liberal democrat. He was a monarch and one who permitted his ministers to run the country into the ground. Westerners (like on this thread) seem to think a couple of women in miniskirts; OMG liberal!!!!, no he was not.

Secondly, his decades of misrule, including the ruinous "Pashtunistan" campaign caused the Afghan Economy to be delinked from that of its neighbour and largest trading partner. Uptil the 1960's, Pakistanis coming for holiday was sources of Afghan economy as well as guest workers in Pakstan; well that ended PDQ the after war in the 1960's. The guy literally told his people to assemble on the border to "liberate Afghan lands" and of course the PAF simply said "hold that pose" and bombed the shit out of them, leading to thousands of casualties (including many dead).

Zahir Shah lasting longer would simply have seen him being overthrown by the USSR, or by Pakistan supported rebels. He was a lousy ruler and is as responsible for the fate the befell his country as anyone.

My understanding is Daud Khan overthrew Zahir Shah because he was not aggressive enough against Pakistan and annoyed his own tribe the Pashtuns. Not certain Pakistan had that kind of political influence in Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion.
 

Ak-84

Banned
The reason that Zahir Shah was "not agressive enough" against Pakistan was since Daud's posturing tended to result either in Afhghanistan gettong cut off from Pakistani markets (most of Afghans fruits went to Pakistan OT or hundreds of Afghan troops getting KIA whenever Pakistan got weary of Afghan border pot shots. (The Afghan military then as now was Potemkin village, while the Pakistani one, well they can be accused of many things, lack of fighting skills are not one of them).

Zahir Shah had no bone with the concept of Daud's anti-Pakistanism, he just did not lkike the coseqerunces of it (typically after having done fuck all to stop it). fot
 
Maybe with the stability they may have been a bit better off.

Also would the american's have been so gun-ho about going into afghanistan if they had a functional monarchy, i doubt it, i think they'd probably be even more co-operative.

I doubt it would be great but maybe a decent country to live in (aside from rural areas which i still think will end up with the taliban). maybe a HDI of around .6
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Ak-84 brings up the good point of the stupidity of the Pashtunistan campaign. That deliberate provocation of its much stronger and populous neighbor to the south created the extra degree of dependency on the Soviet Union as a trade outlet that could have been crucial to either communist takeover or the Soviet feeling of entitlement to exclusive influence there, or both. So, yeah, that was some stupidity that falls squarely on the shoulders of the Afghan royal family.

[Was it somehow an essential distraction that prevented *earlier* overthrow of the monarchy? Was it truly by Afghan Pasthun "popular demand"?]

Also, this indicates that Pakistan might have seen restoration of Zahir Shah as an eff you, it did not see (at least in the earliest years) in the placement of Karzai in power?

Was the King's unpopularity with Pakistan a significant fact going against monarchical restoration?
 
Ak-84 brings up the good point of the stupidity of the Pashtunistan campaign. That deliberate provocation of its much stronger and populous neighbor to the south created the extra degree of dependency on the Soviet Union as a trade outlet that could have been crucial to either communist takeover or the Soviet feeling of entitlement to exclusive influence there, or both. So, yeah, that was some stupidity that falls squarely on the shoulders of the Afghan royal family.

[Was it somehow an essential distraction that prevented *earlier* overthrow of the monarchy? Was it truly by Afghan Pasthun "popular demand"?]

Also, this indicates that Pakistan might have seen restoration of Zahir Shah as an eff you, it did not see (at least in the earliest years) in the placement of Karzai in power?

Was the King's unpopularity with Pakistan a significant fact going against monarchical restoration?
 
I'm not as sure as some people that a Commmunist takeover could have been avoided if the monarchy had not been overthrown by Daud in 1973. Communist infiltration of the armed forces had already started under the monarchy--and indeed the backing of pro-Communist elements in the military for Daud in 1973 was one of the reasons his coup succeeded. "By 1973, a quarter to a third of the officers on active duty in the Afghan Army had been trained in the USSR." https://fas.org/irp/cia/product/afghanistan/index.html
 
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