If western military forces pull out of Afghanistan too soon, says a friend of Mohammed Zaher Shah, the country's aged last king who died on July 23, "the situation might explode in such a manner that you'll have many 9/11s all over the world."

A premature exit will mean "a big disaster" in Afghanistan, says Ved Pratap Vaidik, a scholar whose lifelong study of Afghanistan developed into a 40-year friendship with the king. "Anarchy will prevail in cities and the lives of western soldiers will be in great danger. The country may be divided into several independent territories."

He says the West needs to "shell out" to Afghanistan one-tenth of the resources it gives to Iraq. Afghanistan needs $30 billion to $40 billion U.S. -- five times the current aid commitments. "It's peanuts for the Americans and their allies."

"By ignoring Afghanistan, I would say the western countries are watering the roots of the Banyan tree of terrorism. Its roots are very firm and widely spread."

Mr. Vaidik is also an acquaintance and admirer of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, describing him as "a very competent person, doing his best with all the ethnicities and provinces."

But, given the divisions in the country, says Mr. Vaidik, "the present presidential-model constitution will not survive. In the long run, it must be a parliamentary system whose prime minister serves at the pleasure of parliament.

"I am deeply pained at the situation in Afghanistan" says the prominent India-born political analyst, governmental adviser, former editor of the views section of Nav Bharat Times, and founder-editor of BHASHA, the Hindi News Agency.

These days, Mr. Vaidik puts in 18-hour days of travel and lectures abroad, chairs the Council for Indian Foreign Policy, which he founded, and writes two weekly newspaper columns for 200 newspapers. He spoke to the Citizen recently from the studio of the Voice of America in Washington, D.C., where he was interviewed about the king.

Afghans don't have enough food, homes, roads, hospitals and schools, he says, while opium production has hit record levels. "The warlords and the Taliban thrive on income from opium."

Any sudden pullout would doom peace forces working in Afghanistan and would demoralize the other nations there, he says. "Because Canada is known as a very peaceful and well-meaning nation, a nation which is good to others," he says, "this image of Canada will also suffer."

While he supports a popular view here that Canada should withdraw its forces, he says Canada and the U.S. should first create a regular Afghan army of at least 80,000 soldiers. "That's not a very big number. When the king left, Afghanistan had 140,000 soldiers."

In 1973, during one of his leisurely trips abroad, to Italy, King Zaher Shah was deposed bloodlessly by his cousin, Mohammed Daoud Khan. Mr. Vaidik says he was upset, but held his tongue. Daoud Khan, also a friend, complained to him that the new constitution, introduced by the king, contained a clause that shut out all royalty from holding power. After the coup, Daoud Khan named himself president and ruled until his assassination five years later during a communist-led revolution. The king went into exile in Rome. He returned to Afghanistan upon the death of his wife, and after the Taliban were routed.

While the king returned to rally his country to stability, says Mr. Vaidik, today, Afghan soldiers lack training and pay. The more time it takes for help to come from the West, the more soldiers will join the Taliban or go to the Mujahedeen in Pakistan.

However ominous his predictions, he has one optimistic scenario. But time will run out on it, he predicts, in a year.

He says that if Canada, the U.S., Japan and Britain concentrate on Afghanistan, and give it the money and manpower it needs, the country could build a strong national army in that year.

Afghans need look no further than India to find thousands of competent workers, he says -- doctors, soldiers, administrators and teachers who would provide services at one-tenth the cost of western workers.

"India has a very efficient bureaucracy -- I don't say this because I'm from India," he says. "I love Afghanistan so much that first I'm Afghan and then I'm Indian."

"Western people feel very threatened in Afghanistan. A lot of Afghans have a grievance against Christians because they fought three great wars in the 1800s against the Christian armies of the British.

"Afghans don't like Pakistanis -- their smuggling, their undesirable trade practices," he says. "And, rarely discussed by the western press, they say 'We don't like the way Pakistanis come as teachers and have an eye on our girls, marry our girls.'

"Our Hindu men don't go and try to marry Afghan girls or elope with them. The Afghans feel very safe with the Indians. We have been training Afghans for the last 40 years; many military officers and cabinet ministers were trained in India."

The war in Iraq has diverted the world's resources from Afghanistan though, he says, Iraq never posed the threat to world peace that Afghanistan does, reverting to "a kind of international asylum for all terrorists, a no-man's-land and a free-for-all."

"I love America. I love Canada. They are great countries, something unprecedented in human history. But through lack of foresight, all the gains of civilization might go down the drain.

"My theory is that the problems in Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan -- it is such a big problem area -- will consume all the resources of the western powers and will denude them of their prosperity and peace."

"Inadvertently, the foreign armies have created so much resentment against forces by bombing civilians and hospitals. This is natural as they do not know the area, the people and they do what they deem is correct."

In the Islamic mind, he says, the U.S. is connected with anti-Islamic feeling. And it is connected with the feeling that Americans are there "to serve their own national interest and as the father of the Taliban," he says, whom they supported to drive out their Cold War rivals, the Russians, after their 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

"Afghans hated the Russians, but have forgotten them," he says. "I was there twice during the Russian occupation and I saw an Afghani throw a stone when Soviet leader (Leonid) Brezhnev came on the set -- threw a stone at his own television!"

Mr. Vaidik visited the ailing King Zaher Khan in his bedroom in Afghanistan, where they talked for many hours about the country they both love.

The king was known as an easygoing, "peaceful, peaceful man, very simple with no taste for the ambitions of politics," says Mr. Vaidik. During his exceptionally long and stable rule of 40 years, the king was able to thaw U.S. and Russian Cold War tensions to the point that they co-operated on road-building. (Mr. Vaidik wrote his PhD thesis on the phenomenon.) The king served more as adviser to the real decision-makers. During his reign, religious and press freedom flourished.

The king told Mr. Vaidik that the Taliban "are not of God -- they have flouted all the tenets of Afghan culture. And he told me how they had mutilated the paintings on the palace wall, had broken the furniture, the crockery and mutilated paintings.

"He showed me pictures. You know what they did? Any paintings showing legs -- even those with birds -- were considered pornographic and they destroyed them."

Mr. Vaidik had his last talk with the king in Afghanistan two years ago. "He was a very optimistic man. He always thought the Afghans shall overcome present difficulties -- that they have a genius for survival and progress."

Donna Jacobs is an Ottawa writer; her e-mail address is donnabjacobs@hotmail.com

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007