For Kabul’s wealthy elite some things are de rigueur: armed guards, a marble-clad mansion, a blacked-out SUV. But one man has taken the flamboyant lifestyle a step further and bought a lion.
Mohammad Shafiq, a 42-year-old businessman, is very proud of his growling pet, which spends its days prowling a roof terrace at his sprawling home in a posh residential area of central Kabul.
“A friend said he had a lion in Kandahar and wanted to sell it to me,” Shafiq, who runs a construction company, told AFP. “He knew I loved dogs and birds, but this was more than what I was expecting.
“I had seen lions on television and in the zoo, but never this close. So without any hesitation, I said I will buy it. To me, lions are brave and I respect them. Knowing I could buy one was very exciting.”
The lion, still unnamed, is not chained up and has no collar and spends much of the day lying quietly in a corner of the roof terrace above a storeroom, coming down each evening to eat.
Shafiq says he spends about $ 1,000 a month employing a caretaker to feed it fresh meat bought from a butcher and also paying a vet to check its health regularly.
Tens of billions of dollars have flowed into Afghanistan in the 12 years since the US-led invasion that toppled the Taleban. Some Afghans have become very rich as a result and they are not shy when it comes to flaunting their wealth.
Kabul is dotted with the flashy houses of the nouveau riche, dripping with chandeliers and nicknamed “poppy palaces” — hinting at the shady provenance of at least some of the money in the world’s leading opium producing nation.
But so far Shafiq is thought to be the only person to acquire such an unusual status symbol.
Shafiq, who says he was a resistance fighter when the Taleban fell and made his money through lucrative construction contracts for clients including the US embassy, said he had owned the male cub for two months and thought it was now about six months old.
“It cost me $ 20,000, including transport from Kandahar to Kabul by road,” he said, declining to explain about how the lion was driven on the 480-kms route that is often hit by insurgent bombs and ambushes. He brushed off suggestions he is being cruel by keeping a large wild animal in captivity in a city wrecked by decades of war, and said he though it may have come to Afghanistan via Iran.
But during a visit to the house by an AFP reporter and photographer, the lion appeared nervous and growled aggressively when anyone approached it. Shafiq has plans to move it to a large pen in the backyard of another property in the Afghan capital.
Claire McMaster, wildlife director at the World Society for the Protection of Animals, criticized Shafiq, warning that any captive lion posed a serious threat to human life.
“Wild animals should not be kept as pets as it is cruel to hold them in captivity and confined away from their natural habitat, especially as owners are unlikely to meet their complex needs,” she told AFP.
“The other problem with keeping a wild animal as a pet is that unlike domesticated animals, the size and unpredictable behavior could lead to serious injury or death to the owner.”
Kabul Zoo has a lioness donated by China, and was once home to a half-blind lion called Marjan, who became a symbol of Afghan survival after living through coups, invasions, civil war and the hard-line Taleban era. Marjan, born in 1976, was blinded by a grenade thrown by a vengeful soldier whose brother had been killed after entering its cage, but lived on through until 2002.
“I would be shocked if there is a pet lion in Kabul,” Aziz Gul Saqeb, director of Kabul Zoo, told AFP. “It’s very hard to keep a lion, it’s a wild animal.”
For now Shafiq says he is very happy with his pet, but admits he may not be able to keep it in the long-term.
“I don’t know, I will see and I might give him to Kabul Zoo one day,” he said.
Meet the $ 20,000 pet lion that lives on Kabul rooftop
Meet the $ 20,000 pet lion that lives on Kabul rooftop
How Netflix won Hollywood’s biggest prize, Warner Bros Discovery
- Board rejected Paramount’s $30 a share bid amid funding concerns, sources say
- Warner Bros board met daily before accepting Netflix’s binding offer
LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK: What started as a fact-finding mission for Netflix culminated in one of the biggest media deals in the last decade and one that stands to reshape the global entertainment business landscape, people with direct knowledge of the deal told Reuters. Netflix announced on Friday it had reached a deal to buy Warner Bros Discovery’s TV, film studios and streaming division for $72 billion. Although Netflix had publicly downplayed speculation about buying a major Hollywood studio as recently as October, the streaming pioneer threw its hat in the ring when Warner Bros Discovery kicked off an auction on October 21, after rejecting a trio of unsolicited offers from Paramount Skydance .
Details of Netflix’s plan and the Warner Bros board’s deliberations, based on interviews with seven advisers and executives, are reported here for the first time.
Initially motivated by curiosity about its business, Netflix executives quickly recognized the opportunity presented by Warner Bros, beyond the ability to offer the century-old studio’s deep catalog of movies and television shows to Netflix subscribers. Library titles are valuable to streaming services as these movies and shows can account for 80 percent of viewing, according to one person familiar with the business.
Warner Bros’ business units — particularly its theatrical distribution and promotion unit and its studio — were complementary to Netflix. The HBO Max streaming service also would benefit from insights learned years ago by streaming leader Netflix that would accelerate HBO’s growth, according to one person familiar with the situation. Netflix began flirting with the idea of acquiring the studio and streaming assets, another source familiar with the process told Reuters, after WBD announced plans in June to split into two publicly traded companies, separating its fading but cash-generating cable television networks from the legendary Warner Bros studios, HBO and the HBO Max streaming service.
Netflix and Warner Bros did not reply to requests for comment.
The work intensified this autumn, as Netflix began vying for the assets against Paramount and NBCUniversal’s parent company, Comcast.
Warner Bros kicked off the public auction in October, after Paramount submitted the first of three escalating offers for the media company in September. Sources familiar with the offer said Paramount aimed to pre-empt the planned separation because the split would undercut its ability to combine the traditional television networks businesses and increase the risk of being outbid for the studio by the likes of Netflix.
Around that time, banker JPMorgan Chase & Co. was advising Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav to consider reversing the order of the planned spin, shedding the Discovery Global unit comprising the company’s cable television assets first. This would give the company more flexibility, including the option to sell the studio, streaming and content assets, which advisers believed would draw strong interest, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Executives for the streaming service and its advisory team, which included the investment banks Moelis & Company, Wells Fargo and the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, had been holding daily morning calls for the past two months, sources said. The group worked throughout Thanksgiving week — including multiple calls on Thanksgiving Day — to prepare a bid by the December 1 deadline.
Warner Bros’ board similarly convened every day for the last eight days leading up to the decision on Thursday, when Netflix presented the final offer that sources described as the only offer they considered binding and complete, sources familiar with the deliberations said.
The board favored Netflix’s deal, which would yield more immediate benefits over one by Comcast. The NBCUniversal parent proposed merging its entertainment division with Warner Bros Discovery, creating a much larger unit that would rival Walt Disney. But it would have taken years to execute, the sources said.
Comcast declined to comment.
Although Paramount raised its offer to $30 per share on Thursday for the entire company, for an equity value of $78 billion, according to sources familiar with the deal, the Warner Bros board had concerns about the financing, other sources said.
Paramount declined comment.
To reassure the seller over what is expected to be a significant regulatory review, Netflix put forward one of the largest breakup fees in M&A history of $5.8 billion, a sign of its belief it would win regulatory approval, the sources said. “No one lights $6 billion on fire without that conviction,” one of the sources said.
Until the moment late on Thursday night when Netflix learned its offer had been accepted — news that was greeted by clapping and cheering on a group call — one Netflix executive confided that they thought they had only a 50-50 chance.
