History v. Progress

From the Desert of Death in the sunblasted south to the 18,000-ft.-high Wakhan Valley in the far northeast, the first blossoms of modernity have finally begun to sprout in the rugged kingdom of Afghanistan. So have the weeds. After 2,500 years of inertia, a startling 13-year spurt of modernization has made itself felt across much of the Texas-sized nation. The beginnings of progress have also brought new problems, political and economic. As a result, Afghanistan's course seems far less clear today than it did a few years ago.

The landmarks of the new Afghanistan are quickly visible to the visitor who jets into the gleaming airport of Kabul, the capital, or who drives the solid new blacktop highways. From those roads, however, other sights can be seen. Long caravans wind across distant valleys, as they have for centuries past. In the south, high-walled family compounds housing fierce Pathan tribesmen still stud the countryside. In the bleak mud houses of northern villages, young children often go blind weaving and knotting traditional Bukhara rugs. Nomad Kuchis seek fresh pasture land for their camels and fat-tailed sheep on the desolate plateaus, as chill winds whistle down from the snowy summits of the 600-mile-long range of the Hindu Kush.

Tents Folded. The architect of the effort to build a new Afghanistan is King Mohammed Zahir Shah, 54, a European-educated Moslem monarch who for years spent much of his time hunting and golfing. But in 1955, 22 years after he came to power, Zahir Shah decreed the beginning of formal economic planning and began to move his 15 million subjects on the road to democracy. He ruled that the chadri, a tentlike garment that makes women look like ambulatory potato sacks, need no longer be compulsory garb. In 1964, he promulgated a new constitution that in the long run, as its institutions evolve, will considerably reduce his own power. A year later, following the country's first free elections, the 216-seat Wolesi Jirga, or parliament, came into existence. Afghanistan seemed well on the way into the modern world.

Indeed it was, for good and ill. Student demonstrations in 1965 forced the ouster of Prime Minister Mohammed Yusuf, and two years later Yusuf's successor was forced to depart because of similar pressures. Even more disturbing was the indication that two leftist groups (one pro-Peking, the other influenced by Moscow) had played a role in organizing the unrest. Communism has had little or no appeal for the mass of Afghans, but the signs of even slight influence caused the government to tighten up a bill to allow the creation of political parties so as to exclude the Communists.

Meantime, the lack of political parties has hamstrung the parliament. It wastes much time debating such weighty measures as whether Afghan women should be prohibited from going abroad unchaperoned. Debate on a proposed Afghan-Polish cultural exchange broke up in confusion when a back-country member of parliament angrily shouted: "I know what a cultural agreement means. It means Afghan women dancing naked in the streets of Warsaw."

For all the veneer supplied by a decade of lavish foreign aid from both the Soviet Union and the U.S., Afghanistan is still a starkly backward land. Only an estimated 7% of its people can read and write, and barely 12% of the country's school-age children gain even a smattering of education, despite the fact that the number of Afghan schools has nearly doubled in the past three years. Although the number of doctors has increased by the same rate, there still is only one doctor for every 25,000 Afghans. Ninety percent of the population eke out a minimal existence from the land, just as their forefathers have done for centuries. Thousands of tribesmen still carry weapons as a matter of course. Usually, they are 19th century British-made flintlocks, though newfangled bolt-action rifles are gaining favor.

Soviet Arms. Afghanistan's armed forces, on the other hand, are well equipped, thanks to a substantial chunk of the total $1 billion in Soviet aid over the past 15 years (the U.S. has chipped in $386 million in purely economic assistance). The once warm rivalry of the two superpowers for Kabul's affections has now all but ended: in the last fiscal year, foreign aid totaled just $52 million, down from $77 million the year before. Both Moscow and Washington have come to feel that the Afghans must do more to help themselves and bring to an end a situation in which 80% of development funds comes from foreign sources. Along with the fall-off in aid there has been a skid in export earnings, which fell 10% in the past year to $65 million.

The heady optimism of the past few years is thus no longer so evident in Kabul. There is parliamentary democracy, but no politics. An economic infrastructure exists, but no industry. Zahir Shah's four-year-old experiment in liberalization is, like many four-year-olds, experiencing a severe case of growing pains. Under the circumstances, the gossip in Kabul's bazaar has it that Zahir Shah might be considering turning the clock back. In a rarely granted interview, Afghanistan's ruler told TIME Correspondent Dan Coggin that this is not so. "We will follow this system with steady progress," he said. "I am careful, but not afraid. And I am involved not only as a sovereign but as a person with a conscience."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.