“Exotic species” are different in Afghanistan. For example, the Kabul Zoo is home to what's thought to be the nation's only captive pig, really a massive boar. Pork is haram, or forbidden, in Islam, hence the lack of domestic swine.

A sign outside its enclosure seems to say its name is Sarkozy, like the former French president, but the zoo's director, Aziz Gul Saqib, insists that the boar has no name.

The boar was a gift from China, and was a favorite of Karl Eikenberry, a previous U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, who grew up in North Carolina, where the campaign to revive the Kabul Zoo began. Eikenberry visited the Kabul Zoo several times, including the day before he left the country in 2011.

The boar's odd status in Afghanistan was underlined in 2009, when he was briefly taken off exhibit in the middle of a swine flu scare. He posed no threat, but Afghans didn't really understand the disease and visitors to the zoo worried that they might contract it from him, Saqib said.

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