backs to the future, 1929–33made sure that it was almost impossible for any private independent entre-
preneur to trade and merchants seeking to retain their independence faced
a Kafkaesque bureaucratic process that deterred all but the most deter-
mined. Those who persisted in trading in competition with the shirkats
risked accusations of smuggling, tax evasion or even anti -government
activities. Most traders gave up the unequal struggle and either subscribed
to a shirkat or went out of business.
Despite Dupree praising Zabuli’s ‘pioneering free enterprise system’
and his ‘laissez-faire economy’, 17 his economic policies were the antithesis
of a free market economy and were more akin to Soviet state mono-
polies. They encouraged price fixing, corruption and tax evasion as well
as smuggling and a flourishing black market. The shirkats concentrated
most of the nation’s wealth in the hands of the ruling elite and contrib-
uted significantly to widening the already vast gap between rich and poor.
Furthermore, Zabuli’s policies eventually led to a self-inflicted economic
crisis. When the bottom fell out of the international karakul market due
to the Great Depression, the Bank-i Milli was forced to restrict the issue
of foreign exchange, with the result that the afghani fell heavily against
the Indian rupee.
Afghanistan’s Hindu, Sikh and Jewish communities were hardest hit by
the shirkat system, for non-Muslims were forbidden to have any share in
the joint stock companies. Historically these religious minorities had been
the backbone of the country’s commercial activity, a situation that Zabuli
regarded as intolerable. Indeed, Zabuli openly stated that the shirkats were
intended to ‘cut off the hands of the foreigners’. Afghanistan’s indigenous
Jewish community, as well as the substantial refugee Bukharan Jewish
community, who had been the main traders in karakul, were particu-
larly hard hit. To add to their misery, during the 1930s Nazi Aryanism
and anti-Semitism was increasingly popular among the ruling elite of
Afghanistan. In 1933 the government accused Bukharan Jewish émigré
merchants of being fifth columnists for Moscow and Nadir Shah ordered
all Jews to relocate south of the Hindu Kush. Two years later, following
anti-Semitic riots in Herat, most of the Bukharan and indigenous Jews fled
to Kabul. Eventually all but a handful of this historic Jewish community
left for Palestine. 18
One of the few traders wealthy enough to remain semi-independent
was ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Hamidi, known as Londoni, due to a visit he made to the
British capital during the reign of King ’Aman Allah Khan. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz’s
family were originally from Kashmir, where his father had traded in
animal pelts and sheepskin postins. However, while in London ‘Abd al-‘Aziz