The Shah of Afghanistan: Politics in a Fragile State

This book presents the first comprehensive study of Mohammad Zahir Shah’s forty-year reign, uncovering how conservative governance sustained the longest period of political stability in modern Afghan history. Challenging dominant narratives that portray Afghanistan as inherently unstable, it shows how Zahir Shah’s pragmatic and traditionalist approach shielded the country from internal rebellion and foreign intervention amid the global crises of the Second World War and the Cold War until 1...