20 Afghanis

Da Afghanistan Bank's early note issues were produced almost entirely by Thomas De La Rue through the 1950s and into the 1960s, a relationship that reflected both the printer's dominance in Commonwealth and post-colonial central bank contracts and Afghanistan's own limited domestic printing capacity at the time. This 1961 issue falls within a politically stable window — the reign of Mohammad Zahir Shah — before the coups and currency dislocations that would progressively complicate Afghan monetary administration from the early 1970s onward.

The watermark is the sole mechanical security feature, which was not unusual for De La Rue's lower-denomination contracts of the period.