IN 1964, Afghanistan appeared on the cusp of a great developmental stride towards modernity and prosperity. Strategically located between the two competing blocs of the Cold War, its leaders had managed the fine art of extracting massive amounts of aid and technical assistance from both sides. Fuelled not least by such ‘overkill in foreign aid’, the social and political fabric of the country had undergone massive changes, fuelling increasingly tense, ideology-driven domestic and external politics. When this period came to an end in 1963, the country’s monarch instigated a concerted effort to create a new, forward-looking but socially acceptable institutional framework in which competing interests could be pursued orderly and peacefully. The resulting 1964 Constitution was and continues to be hailed by knowledgeable commenta- tors as ‘the finest in the Muslim world’.Prospects for the country appeared unusually good – but then everything unravelled