Global Times Interview with Ambassador Hua Liming, Chinese Diplomat to Afghanistan in the 1960s: I Witnessed the "Golden Age" of Afghanistan

Source: Global Times

Hua Liming narrates Zhang Ni finishing

Editor's note: Afghanistan has a history of constant war, but in modern times it has had a "golden age" of peace and stability. Hua Liming, former Chinese ambassador to Iran and the United Arab Emirates, worked at the Chinese Embassy in Afghanistan in the 1960s and 1970s and witnessed those precious years. Thirty years later, when the afghan war broke out, he set foot on the land again. In his eyes, what kind of historical existence did Afghanistan's "golden age" look like? What changes has the war in Afghanistan brought to the country? Recently, a reporter from the Global Times conducted an exclusive interview with Ambassador Hua Liming.

In 1965, I started my first job abroad since joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – translating to the ambassador at the Chinese Embassy in Afghanistan. I studied Persian at university, and Afghans speak half Persian and half Pashto. That's when I got into this country. I was 26 years old and stationed in Afghanistan for six years, witnessing a rare "golden age" of peace and stability in Afghanistan's recent history.

Kabul Infographic

Western luxury stores are plentiful

At that time, China and Afghanistan had friendly relations. At the beginning of the founding of New China in 1949, there were very few countries that recognized China, including Afghanistan. In 1955, China and Afghanistan established diplomatic relations. In 1963, the two countries signed the border treaty, and I participated in the translation of the treaty. At that time, the border issues between China and the Soviet Union and between China and India had not been resolved, and China's relations with the two countries were also very complicated. In contrast, Sino-Arab relations are friendly and the border negotiations are relatively smooth. The two sides took out a pair of maps, and the border line was quickly fixed. After the signing of the boundary treaty, Vice Premier Chen Yi made a special visit to Afghanistan. In 1964, King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan visited China and met with Chairman Mao Zedong. When Liu Shaoqi visited Afghanistan in 1966, many local people also organized a crowd to welcome him, and the scene was very warm.

Before I went to Afghanistan, I didn't know anything about the country, and when I arrived, I felt very new and new. At that time, China's economy was still relatively backward, and food stamps were needed for meals. At that time, Kabul was known as the "Little Paris of the East", and the shops selling Western luxury goods on the street were full of goods, and modern buildings such as the Intercontinental Hotel I saw for the first time in Kabul. At that time, Afghanistan was not very religious, women's clothing was very Westernized, and few people wore headscarves. The rich in Afghanistan live in urban Kabul, while some poor people live on hillsides on the outskirts of the city. I remember when Liu Shaoqi visited Afghanistan, he saw the broken houses on the hillside and asked me who lived there.

At that time, my embassy colleagues and I liked to go to Kabul Street, where there were many shops on the side of the road for baking flatbread and kebabs, and the smell of roast lamb was filled with the street. We sometimes bought a flatbread, a few skewers of lamb and ate them on the side of the street, which is interesting in retrospect.

I also went to the countryside of Afghanistan. Their agriculture is more developed, and farmers grow many vegetables, fruits and wheat themselves. Ordinary farmers are simple, industrious, and hospitable. After we went, they slaughtered sheep and chickens to treat us warmly and let us eat melons casually in the melon field. The watermelons and cantaloupes there are particularly sweet.

That's when I also saw the Bamiyan Buddha for the first time. When I climbed to the top of the Buddha, I was amazed, not expecting that more than a thousand years ago, the skilled craftsmen of Afghanistan could carve such a spectacular artifact on the mountain. Afghanistan was a Buddhist country in ancient times, and important cultural relics from the Buddhist period for thousands of years are treasured in the National Museum in Kabul, which I have visited many times. Unfortunately, many of these precious cultural relics were destroyed in the war.

King in tuxedo

Afghanistan in the 1960s was not rich, but peaceful and stable, and The then King Mohammed Zahir Shah was the last monarch of the Barakzai dynasty of Afghanistan and one of the most enlightened kings of modern Afghanistan. Zahir spent his early years in France, received a Western education, and succeeded to the throne in 1933. After World War II, Zahir began to carry out modernization reforms in Afghanistan, introducing advanced production technology from Europe, and Afghanistan in the 1960s could already produce industrial products such as automobiles.

King Zahir was of great prestige, and various tribes in Afghanistan, including the Pashtuns and Tajiks, accepted him and supported him. Zahir has a policy of non-alignment with the outside world. At that time, the United States and the Soviet Union were vying for influence in Afghanistan, and he maintained the same distance from the United States and the Soviet Union, and maintained equal distance from neighboring India and Pakistan, while maintaining friendly relations with China. Even with Pakistan, which has historically had a bad relationship, there has been no conflict.

Because of my work relationship, I have had a lot of contact with King Zahir. He seemed polite, gentle and spoke very good French. Influenced by Western culture, King Zahir held various activities in the palace, and the ceremonies were all Western-style, including meeting Liu Shaoqi. For example, at the events held in the palace, he never wore traditional Afghan clothing, but wore tuxedos and bow ties, and ate Western food at banquets.

A show storm

During my work in Afghanistan, it coincided with China's "Cultural Revolution", and bilateral relations were greatly affected. But an Afghan deputy foreign minister has worked well with the king's non-aligned policy and has worked hard to preserve relations with China. I have experienced such a thing firsthand. Every year on Afghanistan Independence Day, they celebrate and invite art troupes from various countries to visit and perform. Traditional songs, dances, acrobatics, etc. performed by Chinese art troupes are very popular, and King Zahir attaches great importance to them and comes to see the performances every year. But in 1966, the Chinese Art Troupe went to a group of Red Guards to perform a revolutionary program in which the statue of Chairman Mao was held high. After seeing the rehearsal, the relevant Afghan personnel felt embarrassed, so they said: If you must hold up the portrait of Chairman Mao, can you also hold up the statue of our king? The Chinese art troupe firmly disagrees. For this reason, the two sides quarreled and made a lot of unpleasant trouble. At this time, The Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan, Lavan-Farhadi, came forward.

That day, as an interpreter, I went to negotiate with Farhadi with our ambassador and the head of the art troupe, and I said that it was almost 3 a.m. and that there was no result. At that time, some people in the Afghan government tried to prevent the Chinese art troupe from performing, and the Minister of Culture, Sidjee, spoke fiercely, saying that if the Chinese art troupe insisted on such a performance, it would not perform. China-Arab relations are facing a crisis, and the deputy foreign minister Of Wargard Farhadi was very patient, and while talking with us, he tried to persuade the Minister of Culture not to let this performance become a diplomatic event. In the end, the deputy foreign minister came up with a compromise that was acceptable to both sides: the Chinese side could hold up a statue of Chairman Mao when performing, but King Zahir would not come to the performance. He also calmly discussed with us whether the content of the gun shot on the stage could be removed. Later, the Chinese Embassy also persuaded the art troupe to remove this part of the content and reduce the gunpowder flavor of the program. Finally, at 3 o'clock in the morning, the two sides reached an agreement. After 6 o'clock, the deputy foreign minister made a report to his superiors and received approval. In the end, the performance storm was smoothed over, and the bilateral relations between China and Algeria were not affected by this incident, and the Afghan diplomat can be said to have contributed a lot.

I have great admiration for this Afghan diplomat, who was already Afghanistan's representative to the United Nations in 2002, and who called me specifically through the Afghan ambassador to China that year. When we met in Beijing and talked about this incident, he still remembers it vividly. He said that he really did not know what was happening in China at the beginning, only that a group of radical Chinese youths had come to Kabul, and the only idea was to implement King Zahir's non-alignment policy and maintain the relations between the two countries.

In 1971, I returned home from my term, and for the years that followed, Afghanistan remained stable. It was not until 1973, during King Zahir's visit to Italy, that Daoud staged a coup d'état to overthrow him. When I heard this news in Beijing, I was shocked, and I estimated that it would be difficult for Afghanistan to have a peaceful life from now on.