Page "Mohammed Zahir Shah" Paragraph 12

Zahir Shah lived in exile in Italy for twenty-nine years in a modest four-bedroom villa in the affluent community of Olgiata on Via Cassia, north of the city of Rome where he spent his time playing golf and chess, as well as tending to his garden.

He was barred from returning to Afghanistan during Soviet-backed Communist rule in the late 1970s.

In 1983 during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Zahir Shah was cautiously involved in plans to head a government in exile.

Ultimately these plans failed because he could not reach a consensus with the powerful Islamist factions.