NP? article: The Afghan King and the Nazis

[Murthy Yenamandra]

Doug Millison writes:
> http://www.counterpunch.org/tariqking.html
> The Afghan King and the Nazis:
> A German Dispatch From 1940 Shows
> King Mohammed Zahir Shah's True Colors
> [...]

The article is fine for as far as it goes, but the title is highly
misleading, I think.

It is well known that the Afghan govt has never recognized the Durand
line as the border with the british empire (and its successor state,
Pakistan). So much so that Afghanistan was the only country to vote
against admitting Pakistan to the UN. Even the Taliban, created by the
Pak govt, have nursed ambitions of a greater pashtunistan.

Now, in the second world war, all over the british empire, there were
nationalist factions who tried to get the brits to leave and allied
themselves with the axis to that end, even though they didn't share the
greater aims of the axis powers. Given the history of the british in
?fghanistan, it doesn't surprise me that the afghan king tried to cozy
up to the germans (or at least keep the option open). This amounts to
showing his "true colors" in only so far as his true colors are
anti-british and most certainly doesn't warrant painting him with the
colors of nazi ideology, which I think the article tries to do. He was
only playing one power against the other.

I don't know the author's agenda, but one needs to read the accounts of
northern alliance atrocities, true as they may be, with a grain of salt
and an equal cognizance of the fact that Taliban were no better if not
worse. As far as human rights abuses go, there were enough of them to
go around many times over.

IMHO and YMMV, etc.

Murthy

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra                  mailto:yenamand at cs.umn.edu
"I strive to be brief, but I become obscure." - Horace