State Formation in Afghanistan: A Theoretical and Political History 178453949X, 9781784539498, 9781786722065, 9781786732064

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgements
List Ofmaps
Introduction
Problematizing the Literature on Official Discourse of State Formation in Afghanistan
The Afghan/Pashtun Ethno-centric Nationalist Exclusionary Discourse
The Colonial and Post-Colonial Discourse
The Non-Pashtun Inclusive Discourse
The Post-Dislocation Critical Discourse
Organization of Chapters
On Materials and Sources Consulted
Chapter 1 Theoretical Framework
Introduction
Discourse Theory
Derrida’s and Foucault’s Perception of Discourse
Discourse Theory of Laclau and Mouffe
Transforming Antagonism into Agonism
Colonialism and Post-Colonial Discourse
Discourse, Orientalism, and Deconstruction
Colonial Knowledge and the Question of Credibility
The State Debate
Concluding Remarks
Chapter 2 Reconstructing The Official Discourse Of State Formation In Afghanistan:1880—2010
Introduction
Codification and Establishment of the Official Discourse 1880–1901/1901–19
Establishment and Enrichment of the Official Discourse 1919–28
Sophistication and Advancement of the Official Discourse 1930–78
Dislocation and Diversification 1978–2001
A Return to the Past: The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 2001–10
Chapter 3 Reconstructing The Discourse Of State Formation Inenglish Literature On Afghanistan:1809—2010
Introduction
Colonial Knowledge Formation 1808–1901
George Forster
Mountstuart Elphinstone
Afghanistan and Afghans; as the Master Signifier of the Discourse
The Nodal Point of Emergence
The Nodal Point of
(Grand Assembly) or Governance through Assemblies
The Nodal Point of Invasion and Resistance
Convergence of Colonial Discourse with Afghan National Discourse (1901–78)
Afghanistan and Afghans as the Master Signifier of the Discourse in Post-1920
The Nodal Point of Emergence
The Nodal Point of
and
or Government through Assemblies
The Nodal Point of Invasion and Resistance
L. Dupree
The Nodal Point of Emergence
The Nodal Point of
or Governance by Councils
The Nodal Point of Invasion and Resistance
A Post-1980 Perspective of State Formation in English
An Afghan Perspective of State Formation in English
Afghan (Pashtun) Writers and the Discourse of State Formation
Dislocation, Diversification and Decolonization 1978–2010
Concluding Remarks
Chapter 4 Historiographies, Treaties, Cartographies And Atlases:problematizing The Official Discourse Of State Formation In Afgh
Introduction
The Historiography of 1300–1880 and the Story of State Formation in Afghanistan
Genesis of the Afghan State in the Light of Treaties and Official Engagements with the East India Company and the British Empire
Cartography, Maps, Atlases, Historical Geography and the Master Signifier of the Official Discourse:
Khurasan and Afghanistan
Concluding remarks
Chapter 5 Dislocation, Diversification And Decolonizationof The Official Discourse Of State Formation In Afghanistan
Introduction
The Post-Dislocation English Literature and the Master Signifier of the Official Discourse: Afghanistan and Afghans
Jonathan L. Lee
Benjamin David Hopkins
Christine Noelle-Karimi
Thomas Barfield
Indigenous Post-Dislocation Discourses in English Challenging the Official Narrative
M. Nazif Shahrani
Sayed Askar Mousavi
Angela Pervanta
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi
Indigenous post-Dislocation Discourses in Persian Challenging the Official Narrative
Muhaiddin Mehdi
Abdul K. Lalzad
Aziz Arianfar
Seddiq Rahpoe Tarzi
Changiz Pahlavan
The Post-Dislocation Literature and Nodal Points of the Official Discourse
The Myth of Emergence and the Nodal Point of
The Nodal Point of Invasion and Resistance
Concluding Remarks
Chapter 6 Transforming Radical Antagonismto Plural Agonism
Introduction
General Observations
Contextualizing Afghanistan in the Wider Region
Differentiating between Pre-Colonial and Post-Colonial Political Maps of the Region
Differentiating between Afghanistan as a Political Entity and Afghans (Pashtuns) as an Ethnic Group
How to Approach the Official Discourse
Civilizational Discourse as the Empty Signifier of Unity and Coexistence
The Nodal Points of the Civilizational Discourse
Critique of Civilizational Discourse
Concluding Remarks
Conclusion
Notes
Prelims
Introduction
Chapter 1 Theoretical Framework
Chapter 2 Reconstructing the Official Discourse of State Formation in Afghanistan: 1880–2010
Chapter 3 Reconstructing the Discourse of State Formation in English Literature on Afghanistan: 1809–2010
Chapter 4 Historiographies, Treaties, Cartographies and Atlases: Problematizing the Official Discourse of State Formation in Afg
Chapter 5 Dislocation, Diversification and Decolonization of the Official Discourse of State Formation in Afghanistan
Chapter 6 Transforming Radical Antagonism to Plural Agonism
Bibliography
Online Sources
Index

Citation preview

Mujib Rahman Rahimi is a diplomat and civil servant in Afghanistan. He holds a PhD from the University of Essex.

‘A seminal work with significant implications for traditional views of Afghanistan, it seamlessly weaves discourse theory with empirical research into original material to unpack and lay bare the frailty of received wisdom on the history and formation of the country as a nation state. An essential read, providing a long-overdue critical perspective on the exoticised portrayal of Afghanistan’s history and peoples and the role of colonial knowledge production in it.’ – Ahmad Shayeq Qassem, author of Afghanistan’s Political Stability: A Dream Unrealised ‘Academic books are sometimes accused of not being relevant or urgent with respect to the pressing issues of our time. This charge most emphatically cannot be levelled at this timely and impressive work of scholarship. It explores a key set of challenges facing contemporary Afghanistan, the region and international relations more generally. State Formation in Afghanistan provides a brilliant and erudite genealogical analysis of the emergence and formation of the Afghan state, thus disclosing alternative possibilities and a more pluralizing ethos. Mujib Rahman Rahimi has written a splendid tour de force, which will make a lasting contribution to our understanding of Afghanistan and the prospects for peace, stability and democracy.’ – David Howarth, Department of Government, University of Essex

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN A Theoretical and Political History

MUJIB RAHMAN RAHIMI

Published in 2017 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright q 2017 Mujib Rahman Rahimi The right of Mujib Rahman Rahimi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. Library of International Relations 83 ISBN: 978 1 78453 949 8 eISBN: 978 1 78672 206 5 ePDF: 978 1 78673 206 4 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

For Somaya, Asmah and Yaser, words cannot express the depth of my love and gratitude.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements List of Maps Introduction Problematizing the Literature on Official Discourse of State Formation in Afghanistan The Afghan/Pashtun Ethno-centric Nationalist Exclusionary Discourse The Colonial and Post-Colonial Discourse The Non-Pashtun Inclusive Discourse The Post-Dislocation Critical Discourse Organization of the Chapters On Materials and Sources Consulted 1.

Theoretical Framework Introduction Discourse Theory Derrida’s and Foucault’s Perception of Discourse Discourse Theory of Laclau and Mouffe Transforming Antagonism into Agonism Colonialism and Post-Colonial Discourse Discourse, Orientalism, and Deconstruction Colonial Knowledge and the Question of Credibility The State Debate Concluding Remarks

xi xiii 1 5 5 5 6 6 7 10 18 18 19 20 23 35 36 39 40 42 56

viii

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

2.

Reconstructing the Official Discourse of State Formation in Afghanistan: 1880–2010 Introduction Codification and Establishment of the Official Discourse 1880–1901/1901–19 Establishment and Enrichment of the Official Discourse 1919–28 Sophistication and Advancement of the Official Discourse 1930–78 Dislocation and Diversification 1978– 2001 A Return to the Past: The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 2001–10

3.

Reconstructing the Discourse of State Formation in English Literature on Afghanistan: 1809– 2010 Introduction Colonial Knowledge Formation 1808– 1901 George Forster Mountstuart Elphinstone Afghanistan and Afghans; as the Master Signifier of the Discourse The Nodal Point of Emergence The Nodal Point of Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) or Governance through Assemblies The Nodal Point of Invasion and Resistance Convergence of Colonial Discourse with Afghan National Discourse (1901– 78) Afghanistan and Afghans as the Master Signifier of the Discourse in Post-1920 The Nodal Point of Emergence The Nodal Point of Jirga and Loya Jirga or Government through Assemblies The Nodal Point of Invasion and Resistance L. Dupree The Nodal Point of Emergence The Nodal Point of Loya Jirga or Governance by Councils The Nodal Point of Invasion and Resistance A Post-1980 Perspective of State Formation in English

58 58 61 65 68 84 87

90 90 95 95 98 99 103 105 106 108 109 114 115 115 116 117 118 119 120

CONTENTS

An Afghan Perspective of State Formation in English Afghan (Pashtun) Writers and the Discourse of State Formation Dislocation, Diversification and Decolonization 1978– 2010 Concluding Remarks 4.

5.

Historiographies, Treaties, Cartographies and Atlases: Problematizing the Official Discourse of State Formation in Afghanistan Introduction The Historiography of 1300– 1880 and the Story of State Formation in Afghanistan Genesis of the Afghan State in the Light of Treaties and Official Engagements with the East India Company and the British Empire Cartography, Maps, Atlases, Historical Geography and the Master Signifier of the Official Discourse: Ariana, Khurasan and Afghanistan Concluding remarks Dislocation, Diversification and Decolonization of the Official Discourse of State Formation in Afghanistan Introduction The Post-Dislocation English Literature and the Master Signifier of the Official Discourse: Afghanistan and Afghans Jonathan L. Lee Benjamin David Hopkins Christine Noelle-Karimi Thomas Barfield Indigenous Post-Dislocation Discourses in English Challenging the Official Narrative M. Nazif Shahrani Sayed Askar Mousavi Angela Pervanta Shah Mahmoud Hanifi Indigenous Post-Dislocation Discourses in Persian Challenging the Official Narrative Muhaiddin Mehdi

ix

123 126 131 132

137 137 138

148

151 161

165 165 167 168 175 181 183 184 185 187 194 195 201 201

x

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Abdul K. Lalzad Aziz Arianfar Seddiq Rahpoe Tarzi Changiz Pahlavan The Post-Dislocation Literature and Nodal Points of the Official Discourse The Myth of Emergence and the Nodal Point of Loya Jirga The Nodal Point of Invasion and Resistance Concluding Remarks 6.

Transforming Radical Antagonism to Plural Agonism Introduction General Observations Contextualizing Afghanistan in the Wider Region Differentiating between Pre-Colonial and Post-Colonial Political Maps of the Region Differentiating between Afghanistan as a Political Entity and Afghans (Pashtuns) as an Ethnic Group How to Approach the Official Discourse Civilizational Discourse as the Empty Signifier of Unity and Coexistence The Nodal Points of the Civilizational Discourse Critique of Civilizational Discourse Concluding Remarks

203 205 207 209 210 211 225 228 231 231 234 236 237 237 238 247 251 254 255

Conclusion

257

Notes Bibliography Index

265 318 330

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are many people I am obliged to acknowledge for their unconditional assistance and support in completing this book. My greatest intellectual debt and inspiration goes to my supervisors: David Howarth, Professor Aletta Norval and Jason Glynos. Their teaching, theoretical work, encouragement, and guidance shaped the structure, contents and value of the book. I am especially in debt to and thankful for David’s unreserved intellectual support, teachings, discussions, feedback and kindness. I must also acknowledge Dr Natasha Ezrow for supervising parts of the book, and providing valuable feedback. I am also grateful to Professor Todd Landman and his insightful contributions to enrich and develop my PhD proposal and research skills. I am grateful for all the help and assistance I have received from the current and former academic and administrative staff of the Department of Government at the University of Essex throughout my MA and PhD research. I want to thank the former graduate staff Linda Day, Jackie Pells and the current graduate administrator, Alex West, for their sincere and kind support. I extend my special gratitude to all PhD students at the Ideology and Discourse Analysis (IDA) in the Department of Government for making the academic environment at the university a pleasant experience. I am also grateful to a number of intellectuals and academics outside the university who have assisted and supported me unreservedly throughout my research: Professor Changiz Pahlavan, Professor N. M. Shahrani and

xii

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Dr Shayeq Qaseem. I am especially thankful to Dr Shayeq for his unconditional support during my difficult years of research. I am also grateful to a number of people who offered their intellectual and logistical support during my field trips to Kabul, Afghanistan. In particular I would like to thank Abdul Hafiz Mansour and Dr Sayed Askar Mousavi. I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my immediate family for their constant emotional support during my entire student life and thank them for their unconditional love and understanding: my parents, my sisters and my brother Lutfi Rahman Rahimi. I am especially thankful to Lutfi for his intellectual contributions, unreserved support and above all his patience during my research. I wish him all the best in his PhD studies at the University of Exeter. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my daughters Somaya Rahimi, and Asmah Rahimi and my beloved son Yaser Rahimi for their unremitting support and love which eventually made it possible to complete this journey. I have no words to thank them for their love and emotional support in every step of the way. Without their love, understanding and patience, this journey would have been impossible. To honour their love and care I dedicate this work to them and wish to make them and their dreams my priority. I round up these acknowledgements by fully appreciating the traditional cliche´: needless to say, any errors in my research are my sole responsibility.

LIST OF MAPS

Map 1 Asia in 1300. Emanuel Bowen and John Gibson, 1758. Originally published by J. Newberry. Map courtesy of David Rumsey (www.davidrumsey.com)

xiv

Map 2 Asia in 1775. Thomas Jefferys, 1775. Originally published by William Faden. Map courtesy of David Rumsey (www.davidrumsey.com)

xv

Map 3 Kingdom of Caboul in 1838.

xvi

Map 4 Asia in 1860. Samuel Augustus Mitchell, 1860. Originally published by S.A. Mitchell Jnr. Map courtesy of David Rumsey (www.davidrumsey.com)

xvii

Map 5 Asia in 1903. Rand McNally and Company, 1903. Originally published by Rand McNally and Company. Map courtesy of David Rumsey (www.davidrumsey.com)

xviii

Map 6 Afghanistan since 1908.

xix

Map 1 Asia in 1300. Emanuel Bowen and John Gibson, 1758. Originally published by J. Newberry. Map courtesy of David Rumsey (www.davidrumsey.com)

Map 2 Asia in 1775. Thomas Jefferys, 1775. Originally published by William Faden. Map courtesy of David Rumsey (www.davidrumsey.com)

Map 3

Kingdom of Caboul in 1838.1

Map 4 Asia in 1860. Samuel Augustus Mitchell, 1860. Originally published by S.A. Mitchell Jnr. Map courtesy of David Rumsey (www.davidrumsey.com)

Map 5 Asia in 1903. Rand McNally and Company, 1903. Originally published by Rand McNally and Company. Map courtesy of David Rumsey (www.davidrumsey.com)

Map 6

Afghanistan since 1908.2

INTRODUCTION

Pre-modern states or authorities in the forms of dynastic rules, empires, and kingdoms have existed in the Iranian plateau for centuries. This common civilizational sphere with its specific characteristics, which took shape, developed, and transformed through time, has been the habitat and centre of diverse ethnicities, communities, languages, religions and great cultures throughout history. But after the arrival of colonialism the political structure and the cultural mosaic of this common civilizational sphere was radically changed with the introduction and imposition of the Euro-centric nation state system and the ideology of nationalism. The map of the region was redrawn by colonialism, history and religion was invoked by the newly created post-colonial states to construct their own exclusionary discourses to hegemonize the floated elements in favour of their individual political projects. This development on the one hand harmed and weakened the civilizational sphere in the last two centuries, and on the other, divided the communities of the sphere into several parts. Afghanistan, as the outcome of these dislocatory events, and as the product of the rivalry between European imperial powers in what came to be known as the ‘Great Game’, took shape within its current borders when Russia and Britain advanced through central Asia and India respectively. After the two Anglo– Afghan wars, Afghanistan, through its forced integration into the Euro-centric state system as a buffer state, formally entered the new world order under British suzerainty. In order to strengthen this newly created post-colonial state, Britain tried to lay the foundation of a modern post-colonial nation state under the

2

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

leadership of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan (1880– 1901). The colonial powers not only empowered the Pashtun elite in Afghanistan, but also provided them with ideological, organizational, financial and coercive resources to reign over an ethnically diverse and heterogeneous society. The Afghan/Pashtun dominant governments and elite, as I explain throughout the book, irrespective of the diversity and heterogeneity of the society, invoked history and religion to construct an exclusionary Pashtun-ethnocentric official discourse of state formation. This official discourse, among other things, argues that Afghanistan as an independent nation state, and Afghans as a nation existed as early as the fifth to the tenth century BC . It claims that Afghanistan and Afghans have their distinctive historical and civilizational depth, which is different to that of their neighbouring nation states, e.g. Iran, Central Asian Republics and especially Pakistan. To illuminate this, the discourse speaks of ancient or historical and contemporary or modern Afghanistan. The historical Afghanistan is in turn categorized into pre-Islamic and post-Islamic. Ariana is the pre-Islamic identity of Afghanistan and its national state, and Khurasan is the post-Islamic identity of the country. The contemporary or modern Afghanistan is re-established by Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1947, after it was invaded and divided. The country and its national state in the official discourse is portrayed as a democratic political entity throughout the history, which is governed through Jirgas (assemblies) on the basis of free public participation, deliberation, and consent. However, Afghanistan and its independent national state, in this narrative, is the subject of constant invasion by foreign parties or enemies of the country, which sometimes led to a breakdown of the state. But the courageous and free people of Afghanistan, or the Afghans, always fight back to defend their country, defeat their enemy, reclaim their independence and re-establish their national state. The narrative vaguely speaks of Afghanistan and Afghans, and provides a long list of Afghan rulers throughout the history. When it comes to the contemporary or modern Afghanistan, it attempts to present it as democratic as possible, and honours the founder of the nation as the symbol of unity and freedom. The official discourse denies the role of colonialism in the creation or construction of the country, and portrays the Afghans as the indigenous habitants and owners of the land. Furthermore, it refrains from referring to other ethnicities of the country, recognizing their identities and representing them in the state

INTRODUCTION

3

symbols. Thus the general concern of this research is to examine these statements and explore whether this official narrative is as valid and credible as it is claimed by the Afghan state or not? If not, then how should we perceive Afghanistan? When and how did it emerge? Who are the Afghans, and when and how did the state emerge and develop in the context of Afghanistan? If the official discourse is an exclusionary political act involving power and social antagonism, then what is the master signifier of the narrative and its nodal points? When and how they have been piecemealed? If it is an exclusionary narrative, whose identity has it excluded and how? What are the reactions of those excluded and suppressed? What are the steps they have taken to challenge the official discourse? What are their demands? If the official narrative is disrupted as the outcome of dislocatory events and the struggle of the excluded and marginalized groups, then how we can assess the current status of the official discourse, and also the statues of the opposing pole? What are the possible solutions to the current hegemonic crisis, and how can the tension be defused? It is mainly around these research questions that the book is structured. Nonetheless, my hypothesis is that Afghanistan and its nation state is not as ancient and historical as it is argued in the official discourse. I further assume that the nation state in Afghanistan is not the product of its own socio-economic or cultural and intellectual tradition. I argue that Afghanistan and its state is a colonial construction of the British and Russian Empires strategic rivalry of the nineteenth century in the region. I also argue that the Afghans (Pashtuns), after their domination constructed an exclusionary narrative of their own, relying on colonial knowledge and actively suppressing and marginalizing the identity of the nonAfghan habitants of the country. I further claim that after the radical dislocations of post-1970 in the country, the official discourse, its symbolic order and the domination of Afghans (Pashtuns) have been disrupted. As a result of these new developments the suppressed nonAfghan groups have re-emerged and formed their own political projects to identify with. They not only challenge the official discourse but also call for the decolonization and re-writing of the entire narrative to open the space for an inclusive alternative. I also claim that the hegemonic crisis in the post-dislocation period has resulted in a bitter conflictual encounter between the opposing poles.

4

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Inspired by discourse theory developed by Laclau and Mouffe, this research attempts to provide answers to these questions, detail my claims and deconstruct the official discourse in order to defuse the tension in the post-dislocation period and provide an alternative. Instead of developing or employing a normative theory as the solution to a political problem, this research as a ‘problem driven’ enquiry into social science, starts from a specific political problem in a specific historical context and aims to deconstruct, and problematize it. The research as a critical, ‘deconstructive genealogical’ investigation attempts to open the condition of possibility for the subjects to free themselves from an ‘aspectival captivity’, or ‘being captive of a picture’, which limits their capacity for self-government and self-realization.1 To do so, the first chapter of the book sheds light on the theoretical tools, the second chapter explores and reconstructs the first reading of the emergence, construction and limits of the official discourse in state-produced knowledge, the third chapter examines and reconstructs the official narrative in the colonial and English language, the fourth chapter is a first deconstructive-genealogical move that problematizes the official discourse using the primary historical sources, the fifth chapter deconstructs and problematizes the official discourse using the critical literature in the period of what has been termed ‘dislocation, diversification and decolonization’, and at the same time highlights the demands and claims of the newly emerged discourses, the sixth chapter of the book makes it evident that the radical antagonistic ‘friend/enemy’ relations in the period of hegemonic crisis in Afghanistan between the opposing camps destabilizes the country and threatens its current political process. To defuse this tension internally and lay the corner stone of regional cooperation, the book presents the civilizational discourse as an alternative to transform the radical antagonism into agonistic pluralism.2 I believe the Afghan government, in constructing the discourse of state, has always invoked the religion of Islam to legitimize its rule. However, because of allocating part of my research independentnly to accounting for the logic of the Afghan state or its legitimacy, the book doesn’t discuss in detail the use of religion by the state as a nodal point or empty signifier in the quest of constructing the narrative of state formation. Otherwise, I strongly believe that the religion of Islam, especially the Hanafi school of thought, is one of the important nodal

INTRODUCTION

5

points of state formation in the country, which has been invoked repeatedly, especially in times of crisis.

Problematizing the Literature on Official Discourse of State Formation in Afghanistan The literature on ‘state formation’ or the ‘emergence of the state’ in Afghanistan can be divided generally into four major categories, each with its variations: the Pashtunist discourse, the colonial and Western discourses, the non – Pashtun discourse, and finally the post-dislocation critical discourse challenging the official account of state formation in Afghanistan.

The Afghan/Pashtun Ethno-centric Nationalist Exclusionary Discourse The official literature of state formation in Afghanistan is a Pashtuncentric exclusionary narrative. This in turn can be divided into: pre-radical Pashtun ethno-nationalism, which covers the period of codification and establishment of the discourse (1880–1901 and 1901–19), and postradical Afghan ethno-nationalism, which covers the period of enrichment and sophistication of the discourse (1919–28 and 1930–78). This exclusionary discourse is constructed around the master signifier of Afghanistan and Afghans, and the nodal points of: the myth of emergence, the notion of governance through assemblies and the idea of invasion and resistance. The Pashtun-centric discourse, as explained and elucidated throughout the book, especially in the ‘first reading’ of the official discourse in the first and second chapters, and also in chapter five, as an exclusionary essentialist and reductionist approach, employing the logic of difference, attempts to maintain its dominant position and the symbolic order it has constructed and imposed on the society irrespective of its diversity and multiplicity.3

The Colonial and Post-Colonial Discourse The colonial literature on state formation in Afghanistan as a problematic power-knowledge biased imperial representation and accumulation of volumes of information can be divided into:

6

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Elphinstonian discourse, which covers the period of colonial knowledge formation and its development (1809 – 1920s) and postElphinstonian discourse which covers the convergence of the Afghan/Pashtun-centric state sponsored nationalism with colonial and post-colonial discourse (1920 – 78). This discourse, as the book engages with it critically in the third and fifth chapters, lays the foundation of a misleading and confusing representation of the region; its culture, identity and history, or, as Geertz called it, a second or even third order interpretation, because only a ‘native’ can make a first order one, as it is not possible for them to capture the imagination or the moral codes embedded in the language of the inhabitants of the region.4 Furthermore, the colonial discourse not only misrepresents the history and identity of the region for the Western world, but in a later stage it has been internalized and reproduced by the Afghan government and the Pashtun elite.

The Non-Pashtun Inclusive Discourse The pluralist inclusive discourse, which represents the newly emerged discourses of Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and other communities, mainly emerged in the dislocation period. This inclusive or democratic discourse, as explained in chapters five and six of the book, on one hand, challenges the official discourse, and on the other, provides a new perspective. Problematizing the ‘imposition’ of a Pashtun ethnocentric identity and the ‘domination’ and ‘discrimination’ of a particular ethnicity against others, and opening up the space for a more inclusive perception is at the centre of the inclusive discourse. However, because its very configuration is based on a radical antagonism against an ‘other’, the ‘Pashtuns’, hence it is bitterly engaged in a conflictual confrontation with the Pashtun-centric discourse.5

The Post-Dislocation Critical Discourse The literature that mainly emerged in the period of ‘hegemonic crisis’ in the country, what I call the epoch of ‘dislocation, diversification and decolonization’ (1978–2010), forms the base of my endeavour to present the civilizational discourse as an alternative to defuse the tension among conflicting discourses and function as an ‘empty signifier’. This literature,

INTRODUCTION

7

as explained in the fifth and sixth chapters, challenges the official discourse, reflects the dislocation and presents a more democratic and inclusive alternative. In employing the post-structuralist discourse theory in the case of Afghanistan, the book relies on this critical literature to deconstruct and problematize the official discourse.6 It is argued that in the pre-dislocation period (1880–1970s) there were no competing discourses against the Pashtun-ethnocentric dominant discourse. But in the post-dislocation epoch there is a proliferation of other discourses in the discursive field of struggle. It is argued that as the outcome of some radical dislocatory events, which led to the disruption of the official symbolic order, the country faces a hegemonic crisis. In the absence of a common ground to bring the conflicting groups together, the radical antagonism is going to take the form of ‘friend/enemy’ relations among the competing camps. Without a party to defuse the tension and prepare the ground for the construction of a meaningful configuration in the discursive field, the ‘civilizational discourse’ is presented as an alternative to function as an ‘empty signifier’, and to transform the radical antagonism into agonism.

Organization of Chapters The first chapter of the book is allocated to the theoretical tools and categories constructed to study, deconstruct and problematize the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan. In this chapter I attempt to present a combination of four categories to function as the base of my research: the discourse theory, agonism, colonial and post-colonial discourse, and the state debate. However, the main focus in this chapter remains on the discourse theory developed by Laclau and Mouffe, and the techniques developed by Derrida and Foucault. The second chapter of the book is devoted to the configuration of the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan. In this chapter, I attempt to provide a ‘first reading’ of the official discourse as a political, contingent, and historical construction. To do so, it relies on stateproduced literature during the period of 1880 to 2010. It mainly focuses on reconstructing the official narrative around the master signifier of Afghanistan and Afghans, and the three nodal points of the narrative; the myth of emergence, governance through assemblies and the notion of invasion and resistance, which function as privileged signifiers to

8

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

bind together the newly constructed system of meanings. Gradually but systematically it reconstructs the official discourse in five distinctive stages: (1) the codification and establishment of the discourse (1880 – 1901 and 1901 – 19); (2) the enrichment of the discourse (1919 – 28); (3) the sophistication and advancement of the discourse (1930–78); (4) the diversification and dislocation of the discourse (1978–2001); (5) the struggle to ‘cover over’ by a return to the past and re-imposing the old regime of truth (2001–10). These phases reflect the processes of construction, constitution, dislocation as well as a new attempt to re-impose the already ruptured and dislocated official discourse. Furthermore, it reveals the systematic process of exclusion, use of force, and inherent tensions and paradoxes in the formation of the official discourse. The third chapter of the book is allocated to the ‘first reading’ of the discourse of state formation in colonial knowledge, and to the literature produced in English by academics, researchers and the Afghan state. Similar to the previous chapter, it seeks to reconstruct the discourse in English around the master signifier and the three intertwined nodal points of the official discourse. To do so, it attempts to reconstruct the discourse in three stages: the colonial knowledge formation, the convergence of the colonial knowledge (discourse) with the Afghan ethno-nationalist discourse, and finally the beginning of dislocation, diversification and decolonization. The fourth chapter of the book is devoted to the first ‘deconstructive genealogical’ move. In this stage it mainly relies on primary sources to problematize the official discourse. In doing so, it adopts a threefold strategy: first, it moves back to the historiography and history of the region to understand the present configuration and to explore their perspectives of the master signifier and the nodal points of the official discourse. This retrospective step enables the research to examine the credibility of the official claims that Afghanistan existed as an independent state throughout history and to present a taste of the pre-colonial discourses in the region to reveal the contingent character of the official discourse. Second, it investigates the British Collection of

INTRODUCTION

9

Treaties, Engagements and Sanads in the region to trace and show how the concept of Afghanistan as a colonial and post-colonial perception emerged and developed in colonial discourse. Third, to assess the trustworthiness of the official discourse, it carefully reviews and examines the ancient and modern maps, atlases and historical geography of the world and Asia to establish whether such an independent nation state as Ariana in ancient times, Khurasan in the post-Islamic era, and Afghanistan in 1747 exist on the world map or not. The fifth chapter of the book, as the second ‘deconstructive genealogical’ endeavour or ‘second reading’, uses the secondary literature from 1970 – 2012 in the period of ‘dislocation, diversification and decolonization’ to problematize the official discourse. It argues that in post-1970 major radical dislocatory events unfolded in Afghanistan. As a result of these, amongst other things, the old power structure was disrupted, the official discourse as the only regime of truth was challenged and destabilized, and a new condition of possibility opened for the emergence of new discourses. In this period a number of scholars and researchers from inside and outside the country managed to undertake some unprecedented steps to produce new critical works challenging the official narrative and presenting a more democratic and exclusive perception. This chapter systematically engages with the critical literature produced in this period and presents their critique alongside their new interpretations of the master signifier of the official discourse and its nodal points. Furthermore, the chapter argues that in the post-dislocation hegemonic crisis in Afghanistan, the Pashtun-centric camp attempts to suture their ruptured and radically dislocated symbolic order by returning to the past, and imposing the old pre-dislocation ‘only regime of truth’, and the radically dislocated antagonistic Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek camp claim that they are prevented by the Pashtuns from fully attaining their identity, and deem them responsible for their identity blockage. To overcome this confrontational and conflictual antagonistic relation for the purpose of partial fixation, the Pashtunists, because of their privileged position in the current post-Bonn political structure employ the logic of difference to disrupt or incorporate their opponents, and the opposing camp attempts, however sometimes unsuccessful, employing the logic of equivalence to challenge the official discourse.

10

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

The sixth chapter of the book argues that in post-dislocation Afghanistan the blockage of identity is a mutual experience for both antagonising forces; the Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns. This hegemonic crisis, in turn, has opened the space for radical antagonism based on ‘friend/enemy’ relations. It further elucidates that the novelty of democratic politics is not to overcome this ‘us/them’ opposition, which is ‘impossible’ to eliminate, but to establish the ‘us/them’ discrimination in a way compatible with plural democracy. Hence, to create unity in the context of conflict and diversity, and to defuse this hegemonic crisis and to lay the theoretical foundation of ‘us/them’ as adversaries rather than ‘enemies’, employing the ‘agonistic pluralism’, it proposes the civilizational discourse as an alternative to transforming the existing antagonism into agonism in Afghanistan. To do so, it attempts to present some general observations, discusses the two major dominant discourses on how to approach the official narrative of state formation in Afghanistan, and finally presents the civilizational discourse as an alternative.

On Materials and Sources Consulted Here, I present, briefly, the detail of materials and sources used in each chapter of the book. However, it is worth mentioning that all translations from Persian and Pashto in the book are mine.

Chapter 1 On formulating and organising the theoretical framework despite the variety of sources referred to, I mainly rely on the work of my supervisor David Howarth, Laclau and Mouffe on discourse theory. Chapter 2 On reconstructing the official discourse of state formation (1880– 2010), in the second chapter of the book, I use the sources produced in Farsi and Pashto inside Afghanistan. For the purpose of cohesion and systemization, they are divided into two main categories. First, the official history or the knowledge produced directly by the state apparatus i.e. the national curriculum for the state-run schools in the field of history, geography and literature as well as the official history books produced and published under the direct supervision of the state. However, because of regime changes and radical dislocationary events in the

INTRODUCTION

11

country, there are some variations in the details, prioritizations, and certain aspects of the official account of state formation from 1880 to 2010. To account for these variations and prioritizations, and to reveal the very constitution and development of the discourse, I consult the primary sources of each period. To collect these materials, I travelled four times to Afghanistan between the years 2008–12 and managed to gather major parts of the material from Kabul Public Library, the Library and Archive of the Ministry of Education, private libraries, booksellers and private collectors. My second source of the data for this chapter is the Afghanistan Digital Library of New York University,7 which has digitized all printed material in Afghanistan from 1870–1930. Second, I use the semi-official history, geography and literature books published in Afghanistan from 1880– 1978. I managed to access these sources in Afghanistan, the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, the British Library, the India Office Collection on Afghanistan and my own private library on Afghanistan. Additionally, a long list of materials in Farsi and Pashto on the subject i.e. Afghanistan yearbook, Ariana Encyclopedia, magazines, newspapers, treaties, and official documents also have been consulted.

Chapter 3 On reconstructing the discourse of state formation in Afghanistan in English literature in the third chapter of the book, I use three categories of resources from three somewhat different phases: first, the colonial knowledge or the Elphinstonian discourse, second, the post-Elphinstonian discourse or the merger of the colonial and Afghan nationalist discourses, and, third, the dislocation and diversification period. It is widely understood that the bulk of work on Afghanistan in English begins with the advance of the British Empire towards India and the establishment of East India Company in the seventeenth century. The British Empire attempted to explore the region for colonial objectives, and the rivalry between the European powers, including Russia, came to be known as the ‘Great Game’, and subsequently the British Empire military intervention in Afghanistan led to the production and accumulation of volumes of books, and intelligence reports on Afghanistan and the neighbouring region, what I call ‘the colonial knowledge formation’ or ‘the Elphinstonian

12

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

discourse’. As an example of the colonial discourse and colonial representation, I use Elphinstone’s remarkable two volumes book; An Account of the Kingdom of Cabaul (1809), and his colleague’s influential work on Afghanistan and Afghans, and also Forster’s journey to Afghanistan in 1783. Once Afghanistan was forcibly integrated into the new international system, a process of change took root in the country. The controlled modernization and the slow opening of the society in the reign of Habibullah Khan (1901 – 19) facilitated a new movement for the publication of new books, a newspaper, translations from other languages including English, and production of knowledge. The state for the first time opened modern schools and employed teachers from British India and Turkey to teach the new subjects. The need for new teaching materials for newly introduced subjects i.e. history, geography, and science accelerated the need for translation. This trend was followed more vigorously by the radical modernization Afghanistan experienced under King Amanullah Khan (1919 – 28), and the Musahiban dynasty (1929 – 78). In this period the process of rewriting the history and constructing a new image of Afghanistan was institutionalized under the direct supervision, and guidance of the state. At this stage, on one hand, Afghan writers internalized the colonial knowledge, and reproduced it with an Afghani flavour, and on the other, the government opened the space for English researchers to visit Afghanistan to incorporate the state-produced nationalist discourse in their writings, what I call ‘the convergence of the Afghan (Pashtun)-centric state-sponsored nationalism with colonial and postcolonial discourse or post-Elphinstonian discourse.’ As an example, and a representation of the post-Elphinstonian discourse in pre-1980, I focus on two major works; The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan (1969) by Gregorian, and Afghanistan (1973) by Dupree. After the 1980s, because of radical dislocatory events in the country, the space opened for the marginalized and excluded discourses to emerge and challenge the dominant discourse. However, dislocation did not necessarily mean the end of Elphinstonian, post-Elphinstonian and the official discourses, but a new phase of conflictual confrontation in the period of hegemonic crisis. The work produced at this stage could be categorized generally as reproducing the Elphinstonian, postElphinstonian and the official discourse and also as a critical; reflecting

INTRODUCTION

13

the dislocation and challenging the colonial and official discourse. To represent a sample of the first category produced in this period, I consult the Fragmentation of Afghanistan (2002) by Rubin, Revolution Understanding; Afghanistan 1979 to the Present (2000) by Dorronsoro, and Afghanistan: A Short History of its People and Politics (2002), by Ewans. In addition to the colonial and post-colonial work produced in English, I focus on a number of works in English, either produced or sponsored by the Afghan government or written by Afghan writers, I call them state beneficiaries, enforcing the official narrative, sympathetic to it or influenced by it: Afghanistan a Brief Survey (1934), by Ahmad and Aziz, Ahmad Shah Durrani Father of Modern Afghanistan (1959), by Singh, Government and Society in Afghanistan; The Reign of Amir Abd al-Rahman Khan (1979), by Kakar, Production and Domination in Afghanistan, 1747– 1901 (1982), a PhD Thesis presented at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University by Ghani, and Afghanistan Political Frailty and External Interference (2006) by Misdaq. However, I have to admit that it is not possible to examine all the texts available on Afghanistan in different forms: books, intelligence reports, topographies, visual representations, gazettes, and articles of these periods; hence I had to limit my work to what I consider most relevant to my research.8 It is also worth mentioning here that the majority of works on Afghanistan in English relate to the fields of history, anthropology and archaeology, and there are only few recent major academic works studying Afghanistan from a political science perspective.

Chapter 4 In the fourth chapter of book, which is a deconstructive endeavour to problematize the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan from 1880 to 2010, I consult three primary sources: First, the examination of the official and non-official historiography and history of the region from 1321 to 1880 in Persian: In the first part of the chapter, to investigate the credibility of the official discourse, using both official and non-official histories written in the region during that period, it is argued that the region as a common civilizational sphere, prior to the arrival of colonialism, the forceful creation of postcolonial nation states, and the imposition of the new Euro-centric international system, has been ruled by several empires and dynasties.

14

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

The discursive formation of the region, and the discourses governing the area, were different from what the region has experienced in the colonial and post-colonial age under the influence of nationalism. A number of important history books have been written at this time (1321 – 1880) covering the historical developments of the region. For the reason of time and space, I limit myself to consulting just some of the major works produced between 1321 and 1880. The primary resources used here can be categorized as pre-colonial and postcolonial. As it will be indicated, the impact of the Elphinstonian discourse is widely visible even in the sources produced before the 1880s in the region. An important source of problematizing the official discourse, in the long list of primary sources I use, is the History of Ahmad Shah, written under Ahmad Shah Durrani’s personal supervision. Furthermore, apart from the historical books, I also refer to the letter of Ahmad Shah to the Ottoman Caliph to see how he describes himself and his kingdom. Pre-colonial sources (1321–1760): (1) Tarikh Namae Herat [History of Herat] (1321) by Saif ibn Mohammad ibn Yaqub Herawi; (2) Tuzuk-i Timuri [Timuri Laws] (1404) by Tamerlane;9 (3) Babur-Nama [Memories of Babur] (1505) by Zahuruddin Mohammad Babur; (4) Tarikh-i Ferishta [Ferishta History] (1606) by Mohammad Kasim Shah Ferishta; (5) Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi [History of Ahmad Shah] (1773) by Mahmod ul Hossaini ibn Ibrahim Jami, and (6) the letter of Ahmad Shah Durrani addressed to Ottoman Caliph/Sultan Mustafa III (1757– 74) written in the early 1760s. Post-colonial Sources (1850– 85): (1) Tarikh-i Ahmad [History of Ahmad] (1850) by Munshi Mohammad Abdul Karim; (2) Tarikh-i Sultani [History of the King] (1864) by Sultan Mohammad Khan Ibn Musa Khan Durrani; (3) Gulshan-i Imarat [Rosary of the Government] (1870) by Nur Mohammad Nuri;

INTRODUCTION

15

(4) Tarikh-i Ahmad Shah-e Durrani or Tarikh-i Durranian [The History of Ahmad Shah Durrani or The Durrani History] (1885) complied and translated by Seyed Hossein Shirazi; (5) Tarikh-i Padshahan-i Mutaakhir [History of the Recent Kings of Afghanistan] (1907) by Mirza Yaqub Ali Khafi; and (6) Ain al-Waqayi [The Real Events] (1905) by Mohammad Yusuf Riyazi Harawai. Second, the Collection of Treaties, Engagements and Sanads: Relating to India and Neighbouring Countries (1809 – 1930s): once the East India Company was established in the subcontinent in the seventeenth century, and the British Empire’s imperial expansion extended in the region, it engaged and signed treaties with various dynasties, princes, kings and other rulers of the region, including rulers of the kingdom of Kabul, what was later known as Afghanistan. The official engagement of British India with the Kingdom of Kabul and the Afghans begins with Elphinstone’s mission, and continues until the British withdrawal from India. To explore genealogically how the British perceived and referred to the master signifier of the discourse; Afghanistan and Afghans from the very first treaty of 1809 to the last treaty of the 1930s, I use the ‘Aitchison C. U, B.C.S, A Collection of Treaties, Engagements and Sanads: Vol-XIII Relating to Persia and Afghanistan’, Calcutta: Government of India Central Publication Branch (1933), India Office, the British Library. Third, to assess critically the credibility of the official discourse, I carefully review and examine the ancient and modern maps, atlases and historical geography of the world and Asia to establish whether an independent nation state known as Ariana in ancient times, Khurasan in the post-Islamic epoch, and Afghanistan in 1747 established by Ahmad Shah Durrani existed. To do so the following sources are consulted: (1) The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies, part of the School of Oriental and African Studies; (2) the maps available at the Texas University Library on Afghanistan; (3) the Digital South Asia Library; (4) the Columbia University official websites; (5) ‘A Historical Atlas of South Asia’ by Schwartzberg;

16

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

(6) the map provided by John Malcolm about Persia and adjacent countries in ‘The History of Persia’; (7) the map sketched by Elphinstone in ‘An Account of the Kingdom of Caboul’, and (8) the map of Persia in the eighteenth century by Laurence Lockhart in ‘The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia’.

Chapter 5 From the 1970s some major radical dislocatory events took place in the country i.e. the communist coup d’e´tat of 1978, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the countrywide Jihad and resistance against the occupation, the worldwide support for the resistance, the Russian withdrawal, the collapse of the communist regime and the victory of Mujahedeen in 1992, the emergence of the Taliban, the 9/11 events, the US intervention and finally the Bonn transitional process of post-2001. As a result of these dislocatory events, not only did the iron walls and the government-imposed suppression, exclusion and isolation of other ethnicities, political groups and discourses end, but as the outcome of the structural disruption a new space opened for the emergence of new discourses to challenge the colonial and the official discourses. In this period (1980 – 2010) alongside the literature reproducing the Elphinstonian, post-Elphinstonian and the official discourse, a new post-dislocatory and critical literature emerged reflecting the dislocation and presenting a new antagonistic challenge to the dominant discourse. In writing this chapter I mainly consult this post-dislocation secondary critical literature on Afghanistan, which covers its history, politics, society and geography. For the purpose of understanding the internal and external perspectives of the post-dislocation literature, the literature is further divided into two categories: the English, and the indigenous post-dislocation literature in Farsi and Pashto. The English literature is further subdivided into the work undertaken by Western academics and the work undertaken by native Afghan scholars working outside Afghanistan, to capture the variations in their perspectives. In English literature I rely on the following sources, which challenge the official narrative of state formation in Afghanistan, or present a new perspective: The ‘Ancient Supremacy’; Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731–1901 (1996) by Jonathan L. Lee, The Making of Modern Afghanistan (2008) by Benjamin D. Hopkins, State and Tribe in

INTRODUCTION

17

Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan (1997), by Christine Noelle-Karimi, Afghanistan: A Country Without a State? (2002), (edit.) C. Noelle-Karimi, Conrad Schetter, and Reinhard Schlagintweit, and Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (2010), by Thomas Barfield.10 As an example of the works undertaken in English by writers from Afghanistan, I focus on the extensive work of Professor M. Nazif Shahrani, The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical, Cultural, Economic and Political Study (1998), by Sayed Askar Mousavi, Editing the Past: Colonial Production of Hegemony Through the “Loya Jerga” in Afghanistan (2009), by M. Jamil Hanifi, and finally Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier (2008), and other articles by Shah Mahmoud Hanifi. In the Persian literature I rely on the following sources, which despite their theoretical and systematic shortcomings, represent the postdislocation literature and constitute a critical challenge to the official narrative: Dr Mehdi’s article on ‘Theories of Stability and the Issue of Ethnicity in Afghanistan’ (2001), several articles and papers of Professor Abdul Khaliq Lalzad on creation of Afghanistan, and the historical names of the country, the new work by Aziz Arianfar on re-writing the history of Afghanistan and finally the work by Seddiq Rahpoe Tarzi challenging the history of the country. I also refer briefly to the critical intervention of Changiz Pahlavan an Iranian scholar, and expert on Afghanistan who questions and problematizes the exclusionary nature of the official discourse.

Chapter 6 This chapter mainly consists of my reflections and interventions, but in presenting the civilizational discourse as an alternative candidate, it mainly relies on the work of C. Pahlavan (1998), Afghanistan: Asre Mujahidin wa Baramadane Taliban [Afghanistan: The age of Mujahidin and the Emergence of the Taliban], C. Pahlavan, (2011), Tajadod wa Roshanfekri [Modernity and Intellectualism], C. Pahlavan, (2003), Farhang Shenasi, [Cultural Studies], C. Pahlavan, (2009), Farhang wa Tamadon, [Culture and Civilization] and M. A. B. Qajar (2007), Nazariya-e Howza-e Tamadoni Irani wa Baztabha-e Manteqawa-e An, [Iranian Civilizational Theory and its Regional Reflections].

CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Introduction To deconstruct the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan a set of theoretical tools and categories are used to conduct the research. Thus, the aim of this chapter is to formulate, organize and elucidate the theoretical tools, concepts, techniques and perceptions utilized throughout the enquiry. Inspired mainly by the work of poststructuralists such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and the theory of discourse developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, a retroductive approach is adopted in this research. Instead of applying a normative solution to a political problem it is attempted to construct a set of theoretical tools and categories to study, explain, interpret, reconstruct, deconstruct and problematize the official discourse. In order to formulate and organize the theoretical framework, it is presented in four categories: the discourse theory, agonism, colonialism, and the state debate. First, the chapter begins with a brief introduction to the discourse theory, its core assumptions and how it is different from essentialist and reductionist traditions of enquiry. Second, it presents and elucidates Derrida’s conception of discourse as a ‘text’ or ‘writing’, and his technique of deconstruction or ‘double reading’. Third, it presents briefly Foucault’s perception of discourse, and his technique of archaeology, genealogy and then the synthesization of the two in what he calls problematization. Fourth, it presents in some detail the core theoretical assumptions and tools of discourse theory developed by Laclau and Mouffe which constitute the base of my research.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

19

In the next part of the chapter the concept of ‘agonism’ and Mouffe’s perception of ‘agonistic pluralism’ is explained as the theoretical base to present the civilizational discourse to defuse the radical antagonism in the period of hegemonic crisis in Afghanistan. Then it moves to discuss and elucidate the perception of colonialism, post-colonialism, orientalism and colonial knowledge, and how they help us to understand the impact and credibility of the colonial discourse in the very constitution of Afghanistan. The last part of the chapter engages with the state debate; the perception of pre-modern and modern state, the nation state, nationalism, the European origin of the nation state, and nationalism and how they expanded to include or impact other parts of the world, the perception of post-colonial nation state, and finally the state debate in Afghanistan.

Discourse Theory Discourse theory ontologically stresses the ultimate contingency of every social meaning and practice, hence it rejects the essentialist or reductionist theories of knowledge production, and stands against approaches in social science borrowing their model of knowledge and methods from natural science believing that the goal of social science is to explain phenomena and events in objective universal terms. The underlying assumption of this trend is a particular picture of valuefree research and knowledge for causal account of phenomena which can be empirically tested and confirmed. The overall aim of research in this tradition is the production of universal laws and theories that are falsifiable by independent testing. In turn these universal laws and theories serve as the basis for predicting comparable or future events and processes. This copied model of natural science, because of the success of natural science in explaining the physical world, exerts a visible influence in social science in traditions such as logical positivism, behaviouralism, certain forms of structural functionalism, critical realism and Marxism. In recent decades this positivist hegemony has been challenged by a range of interpretive and critical traditions of analysis such as ethnography, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, post-analytical philosophy and post-structuralism. Whereas the goal of positivism is the objective

20

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

explanation of an independently existing reality, the goal of interpretative critical approaches is to understand and interpret a world of meaningful social practices from the inside rather than viewing the objective reality as a disengaged spectator.1 Discourse theory does seek to provide novel interpretations of events and practices by elucidating their meaning; it does so by analysing the way in which political forces and social actors construct meaning within incomplete and undecidable social structure. This is achieved by examining the particular structure within which social agents take decisions and articulate hegemonic projects and discursive formations.2 Hence, contrary to essentialist or reductionist traditions of research and enquiry, discourse theory not only opposes any principle of an a priori logic underlying the construction of social and political identities, but also the discourse theory practitioner does not claim to be conducting value-free or objective investigations as he/she is situated in a specific discursive formation and within a specific tradition which constituted him/her as a subject like other subjects. Generally speaking, by opposing the essentialist or reductionist theories of knowledge production, this poststructuralist framework will inform and guide the research.

Derrida’s and Foucault’s Perception of Discourse In conducting this research I found Derrida’s and Foucault’s techniques and methods are used frequently. I use Derrida’s conception of discourse as text or writing, and his logic of diffe´rance in studying the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan as an exclusionary political act. He argues for a conception of discourse as a ‘text’ or ‘writing’, in which all human and social experiences are structured according to the logic of diffe´rance.3 Derrida’s concept of diffe´rance, according to Howarth ‘captures the way in which meaning is produced; both by interplay of different traces and by the necessary deferment of some possibilities not actualized or signified by the play of traces.’4 Thus, it argues for the historicity and contingency of the identity formation, because every affirmation of identity is also premised on the active deferring of certain possibilities. For instance, the production of identity

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

21

x entails the deferral of u, v or w, which represent other possible identities not actualized by any particular project or discursive articulation. Identity x not only lacks an essence, as it is ‘incomplete’ and could be different, but its meaning depends on the complex ‘play of differences’ between itself and those identities from which it is actively differentiated.5 In the second and third chapters of the book, it is demonstrated how the official discourse in the process of its constitution actively deferred the actualization of other possibilities, draws the social borders between ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘us’ the Afghans and Afghanistan, as the ‘essence’ or ‘insider’ and ‘them’, the foreigners, as the ‘outsiders’ or ‘accidentals’ dichotomy and how it remained incomplete and vulnerable to the excluded forces. Derrida’s deconstructive reading of ‘binary oppositions’ in structural linguistics (speech/writing; signifier/signified) entails that these oppositions consist of a privileged essence (an ‘inside’) and excluded or secondary term (an ‘outside’), which is merely accidental or contingent. Contrary to the view that the outside simply threatens or undermines the purity of the inside, as it is showed in chapter six, Derrida argues that if the outside is required for the definition of the inside, then it is just as necessary as the inside itself.’6 To account for this, Derrida introduces a new conceptual articulation or ‘infrastructures’, which combine the inside and outside in a new syntheses and the relationship between origin (‘essence’, ‘inside’) and supplement (‘accident’, ‘outside’) in these new syntheses is undecidable. I also extensively use Derrida’s deconstruction technique or method in my research. His deconstruction method entails what might be deemed a ‘double reading’ of philosophical texts and discourses. On the one hand, this involves an initial endeavour to reconstruct ‘in the most faithful, interior way’ the logics of a dominant discourse or text and its intention, so as to provide the most ‘charitable’ and plausible interpretation possible. On the other hand, deconstruction seeks to pinpoint ‘from a certain exterior’, the gaps, tensions, paradoxes, limits, and ‘points of undecidability’ in discourses or texts, which enable the discourses or texts to both cohere and ‘organize themselves’, but which simultaneously serve to undermine their coherence and unity to open the space for a new interpretation or understanding.7 Using this method, in the second and third chapters of the book, I attempt to reconstruct and provide the first reading of the official discourse in the most plausible way possible. The fourth and fifth chapters are allocated to the deconstruction or second

22

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

reading of the official discourse. Furthermore, in the first reading, and also in the deconstructive move, to destabilize the official narrative, the gaps, tensions and paradoxes in the official discourse are pointed out. In deconstructing the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan I also use Foucault’s perception of discourse, and his technique of archaeology, genealogy and problematization. Foucault argues that discourses shape material bodies and forms, and constitute human beings as subjects: ‘Discourses are. . . not to be treated as groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’.8 It is shown systematically in different parts of the book, how the official discourse using its privileged position, managed to produce its subjects in Afghanistan. Discourses, according to him, transmit and produce power, and also reinforce it, but at the same time undermine and expose it, render it fragile and make it possible to thwart it.9 Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy; they can, on the contrary, circulate without changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing, strategy.10 From this ‘strategic’ perspective, discourses are the means for different forces to advance their interests and projects, while also providing points of resistance for counter-strategies to develop. Foucault further argues that in every society the production of discourse is controlled, organized, redistributed, and certain discourses are actively forbidden or suppressed.11 Foucault adds that power and knowledge directly imply one another and one cannot presuppose one without the other. Hence, to him, discourse is the product of power relations and forces that form them, ‘it is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined together.’12 Informed by his insight, it is explained how the Afghan/Pashtun government infused its power through the official discourse, and how it used the colonial knowledge to reinforce the ‘picture’ it constructed as the only regime of truth by controlling and forbidding the opposing discourses. Meanwhile, it is also showed how the excluded forces, to advance their interests and projects, use discourse as a counter-strategy to challenge the official narrative.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

23

To engage in critical study of the discourses in Afghanistan, I widely rely on Foucault’s unique techniques and methods of enquiry; archaeology, genealogy and then the synthesization of these in what he later calls problematization. To Foucault, archaeology describes the rules of formation that structure discourses, and genealogy examines the historical emergence of discursive formations with a view of exploring possibilities that were excluded by the exercise of power and systems of domination.13 Howarth, in drawing the distinction between employing the two methods, states that first, ‘an archaeologist wears the mask of a spectator who simply describes discourse, while the genealogist diagnoses and offers cures for the problems of the contemporary societies by examining their historical emergence and formation.’ Second, the archaeologist suspends the values of truth, knowledge and meaning, the genealogist recognizes the impossibility of avoiding these questions. Third, the archaeologist studies discourses as autonomous rule-governed practices, the genealogist produces a form of history that can account for the constitution of knowledge, discourses, and domains of objects that necessarily involve the complex interaction of discursive and non-discursive practices. Howarth then asserts that genealogy is explicitly concerned with the centrality of power and domination in the constitution of discourses, identities and institutions and involves the adoption of a critical ethos toward them. Thus, the genealogist seeks to uncover the ‘lowly origins’ and ‘play of dominations’ that produced the phenomenon, while also showing possibilities excluded by the dominant powers. In doing so, the genealogist discloses new possibilities foreclosed by existing interpretations.14 Hence, a genealogical analysis is an exercise of deconstruction; as it fragments what were considered to be unitary entities and decomposes ideas into their constituent elements, as historical, contingent and a possibility out of many others. Later Foucault endeavours to articulate both of the methods in a new approach he calls ‘problematization.’15 The strategy of problematization carries an intrinsically ethical connotation as it seeks to show that the dominant discursive constructions are contingent and political, rather than necessary.16

Discourse Theory of Laclau and Mouffe In constructing the theoretical framework, I engage briefly with the theory of discourse or the School of Essex developed by Laclau and

24

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Mouffe17 and its core concepts and tools that form the base of my research. According to Howarth they draw critically upon structuralist, post-structuralist and Marxist traditions of thinking to extend the scope of discourse theory to embrace all social practices and relations. Let us begin with furnishing the basic framework of the discourse theory that forms the logic and pattern of this research. This will enable us to comprehend the frequent use of discourse-related terminologies and their connotations in different parts of the book. The concept of discourse in Laclau and Mouffe’s theory means that all objects and actions are meaningful, and their meaning is conferred by particular systems of significant differences. To elucidate this, Howarth presents the example of a forest standing on the path of a proposed motorway, which 1) may represent an obstacle impeding the rapid implementation of the new motorway, or 2) might be viewed as a site of special interest for scientist and naturalist, 3) or as a symbol of the nation’s threatened natural heritage. The meaning or ‘being’ of the forest here depends on the particular systems of difference or discourses that constitute its identity. Each of these discursive structures is a social and political construction, which establishes a system of relations between different objects and practices, while providing subject positions with which social agents can identify. Furthermore, in broader social and political terms ‘hegemonic projects’ will attempt to weave together different strands of discourses to dominate or structure a field of meaning to fix identities of subjects and practices in a particular way.18 Howarth argues that discourse theory begins with the assumption that all objects and actions are meaningful, and their meaning is the product of a historically specific system of rules. Hence it studies the way in which social practices construct and contest the discourses that constituted the social reality. These practices are possible because systems of meaning are contingent and can never completely exhaust a social field of meaning.19 To elaborate on this, Howarth proposes the need to understand the working definition of three basic categories put forward by Laclau and Mouffe: discursive, discourse and discourse analysis. Discursive means that ‘all objects are objects of discourse’ and their meaning depends upon a socially constructed system of rules and significant differences; ‘a horizon of meaningful practices and significant differences’ or a ‘world of meaningful discourses and practices.’20

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

25

Discourse, on the other hand, refers to ‘historically specific systems of meaning which form the identities of subjects and objects.’ Hence ‘discourses are concrete systems of social relations and practices that are intrinsically political, as their formation is an act of radical institution which involves the construction of social antagonism and the drawing of political frontiers between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. The construction of discourses thus involves ‘the exercise of power and a consequent structuring of the relations between different social agents.’ He further points out that ‘discourses are contingent, and historical constructions, which are always vulnerable to those political forces excluded in their production, as well as the dislocatory effects of events beyond their control.’21 In the second and third chapters of the book, or the first reading of the official discourse, it is explained in detail how the Afghan (Pashtun) government constructed the official discourse as a political act to hegemonize its political project. In the fourth and fifth chapters of the book, or in the ‘second reading’, I systematically show the disruption of the official discourse as a result of dislocatory events and the return of the excluded discourses. Another key component of the theory, informing the research is the discourse analysis and the unique techniques it provides to engage critically with the official discourse of state formation and the opposing discourses in Afghanistan. Howarth states that ‘discourse analysis refers to the process of analysing signifying practices as discursive forms.’ This enables the discourse analysts to study a wider range of linguistic and non-linguistic material as ‘texts’ or ‘writings’ which let the subjects experience the world of objects, words and practices. To do so, he suggests that discourse analysts can use Derrida’s ‘method’ of deconstruction and Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical approaches.22 The theory of discourse, ‘investigates the way social practices systematically form the identities of subjects and objects by articulating together a series of contingent signifying elements available in a discursive field.’ While it stresses the ultimate contingency of all social identity, it also acknowledges the partial fixation of meaning. A key concept in the process of constructing the discourses in Afghanistan, to which, I refer frequently, is articulation. Laclau and Mouffe argue that all identities emerge through articulation or re-articulation of signifying elements. They define articulation as ‘any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified as a result of

26

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

the articulatory practice.’ Hence, to them discourse is ‘the structured totality resulting from this articulatory practice.’ If we understand discourse as the partial fixation of meaning within a particular domain, then any ‘differential positions’ or all ‘signs’ that ‘appear articulated within a discourse’ are called moments, and any differences which are ‘not discursively articulated’ because of the ‘floating’ character they acquire in times of social crisis and dislocations, are called elements.23 [W]e will call articulation any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice. The structured totality resulting from the articulatory practice, we will call discourse. The differential positions, insofar as they appear articulated within a discourse, we will call moments. By contrast, we will call element any difference that is not discursively articulated.24 This articulatory process, as explained in chapters two and three of the book, enables me to explain how the government and Pashtun elites piecemealed the official discourse in several stages adding new moments to the discourse. Similarly, it sheds light on the opposing camp’s strategy of articulatory practices to challenge the official discourse. Furthermore, the concept of nodal points and empty signifier is used extensively in my attempts to identify the privileged reference points of the discourses in Afghanistan in their struggle for hegemony and partial fixation. Laclau and Mouffe, to account for the paradox of contingency and partial fixity, where the transition from ‘elements’ to ‘moments’ is never complete, because of the ‘openness of the social’ as the result of ‘constant overflowing of every discourse by the infinitude of the field of discursivity’, introduce the concept of nodal points to structurize the elements into a meaningful system of moments in a discourse. Hence, nodal points are the ‘privileged signifiers or reference points’ (‘points de caption’ in the Lacanian vocabulary) in discourse that bind together a particular system of meaning or ‘chain of signification’ for partial fixation.25 In his recent works, Laclau has introduced the concept of ‘empty signifier’ to function as reference point of chain of signification similar to that of nodal points. Discourse theory ontologically argues for ‘the impossibility of closure’ or the ‘impossibility of society’,26 which entails that social field can never be closed; hence political practices or

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

27

hegemonic projects attempt to ‘fill’ this lack of closure. According to Laclau ‘although the fullness and universality of the society is unachievable, its need does not disappear: it will always show itself through the presence of its absence’.27 So, despite the fact that full closure of the social is not possible, still the idea of closure and fullness function as an impossible ideal. Thus, societies are organized and centred on the basis of such impossible ideals, and ‘empty signifiers’ are needed for the emergence and functioning of these ideals. To illustrate this, Laclau uses the Hobbesian example of the state of nature. People need an order, and the actual content of it becomes a secondary consideration. ‘Order’ as such has no content of it because it only exists in the various forms in which it is actually realized, but in a situation of radical disorder ‘order’ is presented as that which is absent; it becomes an empty signifier, as the signifier of this absence. In this sense, various political forces can compete in their efforts to present their particular objectives as those which carry out the filling of the lack. To hegemonize something is exactly to carry out this filling function.28 Thus articulation of political discourses can only take place around an empty signifier that functions as a nodal point, and emptiness is revealed as an essential quality of the nodal point and as an important condition of possibility for its hegemonic success.29 In reconstructing the official discourse, as indicated throughout the book, it is argued that the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan is constituted around the master signifier of Afghanistan and Afghans, and three main nodal points: the myth of emergence, the notion of governance through assemblies and the idea of invasion and resistance. Furthermore, the same logic is used to account for the nodal points of the opposing newly post-dislocation discourses in chapter six of the book. To defuse the radical antagonism in the post-dislocation period in Afghanistan, the civilizational discourse is presented as an empty signifier to function as an ideal, as a presence of an absence; unity in the context of diversity, and to transform antagonism into pluralistic agonism. However, discourses, according to Laclau and Mouffe, by constructing nodal points attempt to partially fix the meaning, but the contingency of the meaning precludes this possibility from being actualized.

28

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Whereas particular discourses are partial fixations of social meaning, discursive fields are characterized by a ‘surplus of meaning’ that can never be fully exhausted by any specific discourse. That is to say, while discourses endeavour to impose order and necessity on a field of meaning, the ultimate contingency of meaning precludes this possibility from being actualized. Moreover, as discourses are relational entities whose identities depend on their differentiation from other discourses, they are themselves dependent and vulnerable to those meanings that are necessarily excluded in any discursive articulation. This is what Laclau and Mouffe (1985:110– 11) call a ‘discursive exterior’ and it means that the necessary moments are also penetrated by contingency.30 In addition, the conceptualization of nodal points and empty signifiers still begs the question as to the emergence and constitution of partial fixation or closure of identity and society. To account for this paradox of ‘open texturedness’ and partial fixation or closure of identity and society, Laclau and Mouffe affirm the primacy of politics in their social ontology. They argue that discourses and identities produced in articulatory sets of practices are always political constructions involving the construction of antagonisms and the exercise of power, as it is made evident, especially in reconstructing the official discourse in the second chapter, and then throughout the book. Because the social systems have a fundamentally political character, they are always vulnerable to the forces excluded in the process of political constitution. It is around these processes, Howarth claims that Laclau and Mouffe seek to formulate their political theory of discourse. In so doing, they introduce three central concepts: social antagonism, political subjectivity and hegemony.31

Social Antagonism The conception of social antagonism in discourse theory is central to this research. It is ‘directed against the objectivist accounts of social conflict that conceive antagonisms as the clash between social agents with fully constituted identities and interests.’32 Social antagonism introduces an irreconcilable negativity into social relations, because it reveals the limit points in society in which social meaning is contested and cannot be stabilized. Thus it is the evidence of the political frontiers of a social

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

29

formation or constitution, or in Lacanian terms it discloses the lack at the heart of all social identity and objectivity. Laclau and Mouffe further argue that social antagonisms occur because social agents are unable or prevented from fully attaining their identities, and interests by an ‘enemy’ or ‘foe’ who is deemed responsible for this failure. Hence, antagonism occurs when the presence of an ‘Other’ prevents me from being totally myself, and I experience a ‘blockage of identity’. The relations hence do not arise from fullness, but rather from the impossibility of their constitution. They further argue that the blockage of identity is a mutual experience for both the antagonising force and the force being antagonized. Insofar as there is antagonism, I cannot be a full presence of myself. But nor is the force that antagonises me such a presence: its objective being is a symbol of my non-being and, in this way it is overflowed by a plurality of meaning which prevents it being fixed as full positivity.33 It is argued that what constitutes or conditions the failure of any claim to identity to achieve final fullness or full determination in the notion of antagonism is not the external enemy who is preventing one from achieving his identity, but the fact that every identity is already blocked in itself, marked by an impossibility, and the external enemy is simply a small piece, upon which one project or externalize this impossibility. Hence one has to distinguish between antagonism in its radical from, as a limit of the social, as the impossibility around which social field is structured, from antagonism as the relations between antagonistic positions. Or in other words, one has to distinguish antagonism as real from the social reality of the antagonistic fight.34 It is within this framework that I look at the process of identity formation, and the political frontiers in Afghanistan. It is showed systematically in the book, how the very identity of Afghanistan, and Afghans, the official discourse, and also the newly emerged discourses internally and externally constructed on the bases of these antagonistic relations. Furthermore, this reveals the contingency and precariousness of all identities and social objectivity as any identity is always threatened by something external to it.35 In order to account for this political operation and the construction of social antagonism, Laclau and Mouffe introduce the logic of equivalence

30

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

and the logic of difference. The logic of equivalence ‘functions by creating equivalential identities that express a pure negation of a discursive system.’36 Howarth further explains that in the logic of equivalence, say if the terms a, b, and c are made equivalent (a ¼ b ¼ c) with respect to characteristic d, then d must totally negate a, b, and c (d ¼ -(a,b,c)), thus subverting the original terms of the system. This, he adds, means that identity of those interpellated by a discourse would always be split between a set of particular differences conferred by an existing discursive system (a, b, and c), and more threat posed by the discursive exterior (d). Employing this logic, it is argued that nonPashtuns or non-Afghan ethnic communities i.e. Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, in their struggle to challenge the Pashtun domination attempt to use the logic of equivalence, and special attention is paid to the chain of equivalence among non-Afghans in Chapter 5 and 6. If the logic of equivalence functions by splitting a system of differences and forming a political frontier between the two opposed sides, the logic of difference does the opposite. It accounts for the expansion of a discursive order by breaking the existing chains of equivalence and incorporating the disarticulated elements into the expanding formation. Whereas a project principally complying the logic of equivalence seeks to divide social space by condensing meanings around two antagonistic poles, a project mainly employing a logic of difference attempts to displace and weaken antagonisms, while endeavouring to relegate division to the margin of society.37 Employing this logic, it is argued that the Afghan government and the Afghan or Pashtunist elite, from the very beginning used the logic of difference through suppression, cooption or alliance with one ethnic group at the expense of another or others, to hegemonize their political project. Likewise, in the dislocation period after 1970, it is argued that the Pashtunist elite employs the same logic to suture the structural disruption by returning to the pre-dislocation epoch.

Subject Positions and Political Subjectivity Laclau and Mouffe place great importance upon ‘subjectivity’ and ‘agency’ in developing their theory of discourse. They pay attention to the way social actors or agents acquire and live out their identities and

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

31

act, and stress on the role of agency in challenging and transforming social structure. They argue that identities of the subjects are discursively constructed, but at the same time recognize the autonomy of the agent. In this regard they distinguish between subject positions and political subjectivity to capture the positioning of a subject within a discursive structure, and to account for the agency of the subject. Subject position entails that rather than a homogeneous subject with a particular interest, any ‘concrete individual’ can have a number of different subject positions e.g. ‘black’, ‘middle class’, ‘Muslim’, and a ‘woman’. Hence the concept accounts for the multiple forms by which agents are produced as social actors. The concept of political subjectivity on the other hand captures the way in which social actors act.38 The political subject is neither simply determined by the structure, nor does it constitutes the structure. Rather, the political subject is forced to take decisions – or identify with certain political projects and the discourses they articulate - when social identities are in crisis and structures need to be recreated. In Lacanian terms, the emergence of political subjectivity is the result of a lack in the structure. It is this lack in the structure that ‘causes’ subjects to identify with those social constructions that seem capable of suturing the rift in a symbolic order. In short, it is in the process of this identification that political subjectivities are created and formed. Once formed and stabilized they become those subject positions which ‘produce’ individuals with certain characteristics and attributes.39 This category enables us to explore the power of discourses in Afghanistan in pre-dislocation and also in post-dislocation in creating their subjects. As it will be explained throughout the book, the official discourse, because of its privileged position, and the sedimentation of the concepts it has constructed in time, created a specific type of political subjectivity and identity. However, because of the radical dislocations in post-1970, the political subjects are able to take new decisions and identify themselves with new discourses articulated in this period. Furthermore, the categories of ideology and fantasmatic logics are also used to explain the reasons behind the grip and identification of subjects with the official and the newly emerged discourses in the

32

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

country. Ideology according to Howarth ‘signals the way in which the subject becomes complicit in covering over the radical contingency of social relations by identifying with a particular discourse.’ Hence he misrecognizes his real conditions of existence. The hold of this misrecognition inures or insulates the subject from the vagaries of the structural dislocation that always threaten to disrupt it. The ‘grip of ideology’ thus comprises a myriad of practices through which individuals are turned into subjects with an identity, and through which such identities are sustained and reproduced. This ideology can thereby induce the ‘forgetting of the political origins’ and it can enable subjects to live as if their practices were natural.40 To Howarth the fantasmatic logic ‘provides the means to understand why certain practices and formations are gripping the subject,’ and it is concerned with the force behind these operations. It has the key role to play in filling up or completing the void in the subject and the structure of social relations by bringing about closure. In political practices fantasy gives them direction and energy, as it conceals or closes off the radical contingency through a fantasmatic narrative or logic that promises fullness to come once an obstacle is over. This category in my research captures the reasons and the fantasy infused in nodal points of the official discourse; the myth of emergence, the notion of governance through assemblies and the idea of invasion and resistance, which reinforces the blockage of identity by an outsider, and promises a fullness to come once the enemy, ‘the mysterious foreigner’, is defeated or neutralized. Another key concept that informs this research, and is referred to extensively throughout the book, is the category of dislocation. In discourse theory dislocation accounts both for the disruption of symbolic orders, their associated identities, and the opening of the spaces within which creative political subjects emerge to identify themselves with new discourses. Dislocation thus can be defined as ‘events’ or ‘crisis’ that cannot be represented within an existing discursive order, as its function is to disrupt and destabilize the symbolic order.41 This ‘decentring’ of the structure through social processes shatters the already existing identities and creates an identity crisis for the subject, and accounts for disruption of the symbolic orders. However, dislocations are

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

33

not solely traumatic incidents, because they, on one hand, disrupt the partially fixed order and, on the other, open the space for a new order, which might be more open and inclusive. ‘On the one hand they threaten identities, on the other they are the foundation of which new identities are constituted’.42 Howarth further argues that dislocation, while disrupts identities and discourses, also creates a lack at the level of meaning that stimulates new discursive constructions, which attempts to suture the dislocated structure.43 In the second and third chapter of the book, as mentioned, I explain the construction and domination of the official discourse. Then, as explained in the fifth chapter of the book, some radical dislocatory events take place in the country, which not only disrupt the dominant structure, but also open the space for the emergence of new orders. The concept of hegemony as an ideal form of political activity is also used in the book, which is also central to discourse theory. It is explained throughout the book how conflicting groups attempt to articulate and present their political projects to hegemonize the dislocated field of politics. Hegemonic practices in discourse theory are the exemplary or ideal form of political activity, which involves the articulation of different identities and subjectivities into a common project, while hegemonic formations are the outcome of such projects attempting to create new forms of social order from a variety of dislocated elements. Hegemony in its Gramscian sense is best understood as the formation of historical blocks and the organization of consent, through which subordinated forms of consciousness are constructed without recourse to violence or coercion. The major aim of hegemonic projects is to construct and stabilise systems of meaning or ‘hegemonic formations’ which, on a societal level, are organized around the articulation of nodal points. The latter are defined as privileged condensations of meaning that partially fix the identities of a particular set of signifiers.44 Laclau and Mouffe’s concept of hegemony, of course presupposes the contingency and openness of social relations, and the existence of antagonistic forces, hence the instability of political frontiers, and the presence of contingent elements or floating signifiers that can be articulated by opposed political projects attempting to hegemonize them. Laclau and Mouffe further extend the contingency of elements to

34

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

both the subjects of hegemonic projects and to the social structures, and the latter are understood as ‘undecidable’ entities, which always presuppose a ‘discursive exterior’ that constitutes and at the same time threatens its existence. However, despite the fact that hegemonic projects attempt to construct and stabilize the systems of meaning, no discourse is capable of completely hegemonising a field of discursivity by eliminating the experience of dislocation and social antagonism.45 The general field of the emergence of hegemony is that of articulatory practices, that is, a field where the ‘elements’ have not crystallised into ‘moment’. . . hegemony supposes the incomplete and open character of the social, that it can take place only in a field dominated by articulatory practices. . . [T]he two conditions of a hegemonic articulation are the presence of antagonistic forces and the instability of the frontiers which separate them. Only the presence of a vast area of floating elements and the possibility of their articulation to the opposite camp – which implies a constant redefinition of the latter – is what constitutes the terrain permitting us to define a practice as hegemonic. Without equivalence and without frontiers, it is impossible to speak strictly of hegemony.46 At the high level of obstruction, it is not possible to conclude that all discourses would be equally in a position to achieve hegemony. Hence to account for new forms of identifications as the outcome of rapid dislocations, which let the political subjects reconstitute the dislocated orders and establish different modalities of hegemony, Laclau introduces the concepts of myths, imaginaries and horizon. Myths, according to Laclau, construct new spaces for representation that attempt to suture, and ‘cover over’, the dislocated space. If successful in suturing dislocations, and in incorporating a wider range of social demands, then one can say that myths have been transformed to the imaginary. Then a collective social imaginary is defined as a ‘horizon’ or ‘absolute limit’ which structures a field of intelligibility e.g. Christian Millennium, and Enlightenment.47 Taking this category into account, it is argued that in Afghanistan neither of the discourses has reached the level of myth, imaginary or horizon.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

35

Transforming Antagonism into Agonism Different modalities of relations between self and other have been developed in the post-structuralist tradition, e.g. Connolly’s agonistic respect,48 Tully’s intercultural and constitutional development49 and Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism. Nonetheless, as the theoretical base of presenting ‘the civilizational discourse’ in the sixth chapter of the book as a candidate to defuse the radical antagonistic ‘friend/enemy’ relations in Afghanistan and to transform it to an adversaries ‘them/us’ relation, I employ the ‘agonistic pluralism’ model of democracy developed by Mouffe. Mouffe, after critically evaluating the essentialist and reductionist shortcomings and deficiencies of the ‘aggregative’ and then the ‘deliberative’ models of democracy in liberal discourses, which amongst other things, denies the presence of social antagonism and power relations, presents ‘agonistic pluralism’ as an alternative model of radical democracy.50 In doing so she develops a model of democracy which places the question of power and social antagonism at the very centre. She states that the theoretical base of such an approach was furnished in Hegemony and Social Strategy. Mouffe argues that when we acknowledge the dimension of ‘the political’ and understand the sort of ‘politics’51 that can take shape in antagonism, then we can comprehend the idea of ‘agonistic pluralism’. She states that ‘politics’ aims at the creation of unity in the context of conflict and diversity, hence it is always concerned with the creation of an ‘us’ and ‘them’. Thus the relations between the competing groups can take a ‘friend/enemy’ form; the construction of ‘us’ the ‘insiders’ and ‘them’ the ‘outsiders’. The novelty of democratic politics, she argues, is not to overcome this us/them opposition, which is ‘impossible’, but to establish the ‘us/them’ discrimination in a way that is compatible with pluralistic democracy. To defuse this tension, and to open the space for a social division in terms other than ‘friends/enemy’ relations, Mouffe suggests a distinction between ‘enemies’ and ‘adversaries’. Thus from an ‘agonistic pluralism’ perspective, Mouffe asserts that the aim of democratic politics is to construct ‘them’ in a way that they are not perceived as an ‘enemy’ but as an ‘adversary’. Envisaged from the point of view of ‘agonistic pluralism’ the aim of democratic politics is to construct the ‘them’ in such a way that it is no longer perceived as an enemy to be destroyed, but as an

36

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

‘adversary’, that is, somebody whose ideas we combat but whose rights to defend those ideas we do not put into question.52 However, this category of ‘adversary’, Mouffe adds, doesn’t eliminate antagonism, but defuses it; hence an ‘adversary’ is an enemy, but a legitimate enemy, with whom we have some common grounds, because we share adhesion to the same political principles or we belong to the same political association and share a common symbolic space within which conflict takes place. Mouffe further argues that introducing the category of ‘adversary’ requires distinguishing two different forms in which it can emerge: antagonism and agonism. Antagonism is a struggle between enemies, while agonism is a struggle between adversaries with the aim to open the space for dissent; a legitimate democratic clash of political positions and alternatives. In the absence of agonistic relations, there is the potential threat that ‘the democratic confrontation will be replaced by a confrontation between essentialist forms of identification or non-negotiable moral values. When political frontiers become blurred, disaffection with political parties sets in and one witnesses the growth of other types of collective identities, around nationalist, religious or ethnic forms of identification.’53 She concludes by stating that ‘from the perspective of “agonistic pluralism” the aim of democratic politics is to transform antagonism into agonism’.54 Informed by Mouffe’s insight, in the last chapter of the book, it is argued that the disruption of the official discourse as the outcome of the dislocatory events after 1970, has furnished the ground for radical antagonism based on ‘friend/enemy’ relations. To defuse this radical antagonism, and change the terms of confrontation from an enemy to an adversary, the civilizational discourse is presented as an ideal solution to the problem.

Colonialism and Post-Colonial Discourse In my endeavour to reconstruct and problematize the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan the book discusses the role of colonialism, the British and Russian Empires, and how they changed the political map of the region, imposed the Euro-centric political model, and created, among other things, Afghanistan as a new buffer state. It brings to the fore the reciprocal impact and merger of colonial

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

37

discourse with that of the state narrative, and the internalization of the colonial discourse by the Afghan state.

Colonialism Some of the scholars referred to in this book, especially in chapter five, frequently speak of colonial rule, colonial episteme, colonial knowledge, and decolonizing the official colonial narrative of state formation in Afghanistan. To understand or make sense of the colonial discourse, I briefly present the post-colonial approach. In doing so, the concept of colonialism, and related concepts are explained, then briefly the post-colonial discourse as a challenge to colonialism is disscussed and finally the Foucault and Said post-colonial approach is presented as the base of the critical approach to colonial discourse on Afghanistan and the wider region. However, it is worth mentioning that in discussing colonialism and post-colonialism, the focus will remain on the parts that are related to my research. Colonialism55 is generally conceived as the conquest, settlement and physical control of the government and economy of another country and the subjugation of its people. Hence colonization refers to the process of invasion, and the seizing of control, backed by cultural supremacy. Therefore it is a specific political and economic project and a larger discourse of domination and superiority or promulgation of a cultural ideology that justifies the colonizer’s presence on the basis of his superior knowledge and civilization.56 If colonialism means a concrete act of conquest, imperialism which is closely linked to colonialism and sometimes used interchangeably, refers to a broader form of authority and domination. It is understood as a larger structure of economic or political domination that does not necessarily have to include the direct rule or conquest of another country.57 In this sense imperialism could continue after the end of colonial rule. Colonialism as the move for conquest and settlement was one of the ways in which empires spread their domination. Imperialism as a broader form of authority is characterized by exercise of power, either through direct conquest or through political and economic influence which effectively amounts to a similar form of domination. Hence, both colonialism and imperialism involve forms of subjugation and domination of one people by another and the practice of power through facilitating institutions and ideology.58

38

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Post-colonialism Post-colonialism is a somewhat broad and constantly changing movement that has provoked both interest and controversy. It began during and after the war of independence in remaining British and French colonies, and rapidly became a major area of intellectual innovation and debate. Post-colonialism in this sense can be understood as a ‘multiple political, economic, cultural and philosophical response to colonialism’.59 Generally post-colonial approaches can be situated within two major categories, first, the history of decolonization, the anti-colonial, the movement of intellectuals and activists who fought against the colonial rule, and their successors who are engaged with the continuing legacy of colonialism, challenging, and revising the dominant colonially defined concepts, i.e. culture, race, and history. Second, the revolution within Western intellectual traditions in thinking about the role of language, power, ideology and how human subjectivities are formed.60 I begin with a cursory look at the debate on the ‘anti-colonialism’ resistance movements fighting colonialism, and the forms it took, then move on to focus on the philosophical and intellectual dimensions of post-colonialism discourse, which challenges the very foundation of colonial discourse. In doing so, among others the main focus will be on Foucault’s discourse, Said’s Orientalism, and Derrida’s textual deconstructive approach in dealing with colonial knowledge, which paves the way to problematize the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan. Post-colonialism consists of different trends, strategies and modalities, but undoubtedly Frantz Fanon61 and Jean Sartre62 are among the most significant revolutionary and politically engaged anticolonial thinkers, whose work became the ‘handbook’ of revolutionary action against colonialism. A second influential trend of post-colonial movement is that of the Indian experience of decolonization against the British rule manifested in the non-violent struggle of Mahatma Gandhi and the Subaltern Studies Group.63 The latter, a group of Indian historians drawing on Gramsci, focuses on a critique of how the history of India has been written by colonialists and nationalists, and attempt to rewrite the political history of colonial India from the point of view of the people, the subalterns. It argues that Indian historiography is the exposition of the interplay of power and knowledge, which entails Britain, by writing the history of India from a Euro-centric perspective,

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

39

attempted to impose and extend its power by means of education rather than reflecting the history of the people.64

Discourse, Orientalism, and Deconstruction Foucault’s idea of power/knowledge relation, and the claim that production and dissemination of knowledge is linked to the operation and expansion of power structure, provides a groundbreaking theoretical tool for post-colonial philosophy to critically engage with colonialism and colonial knowledge. Hence, the creation and use of knowledge is a political act to propagate, and reinforce a particular discourse, and oppress those who do not conform to the norms of the dominant discourse. Obviously Foucault did not engage directly with colonial studies, but his idea of power/knowledge, and how knowledge is shaped and produced by power through discourse in The Archaeology of Knowledge, and the idea of bio-power in his other works, is highly influential in post-colonial studies as it opens the way for critical study of colonial discourse, and highlights the role of power-knowledge in its very formation. Unlike the classical Marxist, which is concerned with the notion of ideology as a false consciousness, Foucault introduces the notion of discourse which exerts authority over the construction or formation of one’s subjectivity, and the subsequent positioning of the subject within or outside the discourse.65 Once the discourse constitutes its subject, then the subject operating from within the discursive formation, not only internalizes the narrative but also reproduces its effects in the society. It is Foucault who subsequently opens the way for Said, the Subalterns Studies Group and many others to take on the colonial discourse and knowledge and to study the totalitarian effect of colonial discourse, colonial representation and uncover how this knowledge has been used. Said explicitly draws on Foucault’s discourse to theorize the ways in which the Orient is discursively constructed as the object of knowledge, and reveals how this process of ‘construction and categorization’ serves to reinforce the colonial project of conquest and subjugation. To Said, Orientalism first, means the academic study of the orient in multiple disciplines in the West. Second, it is a style of thought based on an ontology and epistemological distinction made between the Orient and the Occident, which rely on binary opposition between East and West; a misleading and destructive dichotomy, as Orient stands for all that is

40

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

‘other’ to the West and threatening. Third, it is a Western style of dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. Hence, it is a discourse, a wide ranging network of texts, images, preconceptions and assumptions, which helps to reinforce the position of the West as the site of power.66 The orient for Said is the conglomeration of the images and forms that stand for Europe’s other, and the colonialist creates his opposition of mastery and dominance over that other by claiming to define, categorize and know its difference from the self.67 Derrida in his textual deconstructive move targets the structure of colonial episteme which positions the European subject at the centre and subordinates other cultures, and by questioning this European domination in his deconstructive method, as explained in this chapter, he calls to rethink the relation between self and other, or perhaps for a new post-colonial ethic.68

Colonial Knowledge and the Question of Credibility It is argued that European colonialism has reshaped the existing structure of human knowledge. All branches of learning and knowledge were touched by colonial experience. An important part of this process was the gathering and ordering of information about land and the people visited by colonial powers or who became their subjects. The European ventures to Asia, Africa and America marked a new way of thinking and constructing the ‘other’; two categories of binary opposition, a conception of itself in the form of European, or the West in relation to the rest of the world.69 Knowledge in post-structuralist tradition of thinking is not innocent but profoundly linked to the operation of power. It was this Foucauldian insight that informed Said’s Orientalism, which in turn argues that the way ‘knowledge’ about the orients was produced and circulated in Europe, was an ideological accompaniment of power, and not credible. There is, after all, a profound difference between the will to understand for the purpose of co-existence and humanistic enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external domination.70

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

41

Here, the focus is centred on colonial knowledge and the claim that it has played a decisive role in the formation or constitution of the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan. The intention, on one hand, is to question the credibility and status of the colonial knowledge and on the other, to expose the internalization of this contaminated and distorted colonial knowledge or discourse by the Afghan state. It is obvious that in the long history of European overseas imperialist colonial expansion, an immense and diverse collection of texts, images, drawings and maps were produced, which still survive in archives and libraries around the world. This colonial representation of the other people, their culture, history, geography and practices made a claim to knowledge. With conventional historiography based on a legal paradigm of ‘evidence-based truth’, either scientifically or as an outcome of practical experience, this ‘claim to knowledge’ was either accepted or taken for granted as an ‘historical source’ or a valid representation and evidence of the past. It was only with the emergence of post-colonial studies, especially the discourse theory, and the idea of power/knowledge relations, that this conventional historiography was profoundly challenged, and the ‘epistemic value’ and credibility of colonial knowledge was questioned and problematized. Colonial knowledge both enabled conquest and was produced by it; in certain important ways, knowledge was what colonialism was all about. Foucault’s elaborations on discourse and its powerknowledge nexus; Cohn’s investigation of colonial categories as a cultural project of control; Said’s critique of the Western academic representations of the Orient; Bhabha’s Derridian reassessment of hybrid ‘in-betweenness’ of colonial stereotypes; the Subalterns Studies Group concern with accessing subaltern agencies in colonial accounts, and especially Spivak’s radical deconstructive take on the absence of subalterns’ ‘vices’ in colonial records, are generally considered the seminal moments of this discoursecentred critical post-colonial tradition.71 In addition to this, the nature of colonial knowledge of Afghanistan, as it is explored and discussed by Hopkins, Hanifi, Noelle-Karimi and Lee, among others, is mostly related to intelligence reports, which also reveals its problematic nature.

42

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

The State Debate The official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan, as it is discussed in detail throughout the book, claims that the ‘Afghan nation’ has existed since ancient times. The nation, it argues, throughout its history had its independent national states. However, it confesses that periodically, but consistently, the nation has been attacked by foreign invaders, which resulted in a temporary breakdown of the national state and the occupation of the country. But through resistance and sacrifices, the nation or its leaders have always managed to free the country, to regain its independence and re-establish the national state or in some cases re-integrate it after it was divided by the invaders. In this endeavour to study and deconstruct the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan, I frequently use or refer to the concept of state, the nation state, post-colonial state, and the concept of nation and nationalism. Here, only for the purpose of clarity, and to specify what I mean by using these concepts, in a twofold strategy, briefly but genealogically I discuss the emergence and development of these concepts in Europe, and present the history of these concepts in its nonEuropean context; a history that happened outside through colonialism or emulation. Contrary to the claims of the official discourse, it is demonstrated that these concepts, even in their European contexts, are modern and politically constructed.

Pre-modern and Modern States If we look at ‘state’ or ‘authority’ more broadly as ‘any coherent, distinct organization of power such that it identifies a group of people and an institutional structure that lays down the rules which members of a society must follow’,72 then we can claim that a form of authority has always existed in the world. But Max Weber (1864– 1920), while theorizing the state, distinguished between the modern and pre-modern notion of state by grounding the bases of these rules on tradition, charisma and legal. Calling the earlier polities based on tradition or charisma ‘patrimonial’ forms of authority; which are characterized among other things by the absence of institutional distinction between the rulers and the institution of rule. But the modern state, according to him, is distinguished from the earlier polities on the ground of legality and rationality, and it is characterized among other things by public

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

43

institutions, the notion of sovereignty, formal monopoly over means of violence and an impartial bureaucracy.73 This new type of polity, which is called the nation state or the modern state has emerged in Europe as the outcome of a slow and long process. While other polities prior to the emergence of the new one are specified as pre-modern states, city states, princely states, empires, and absolute states.74

The Nation State The nation state in contemporary debate as a phenomenon and also as a concept, despite sharp and sometimes conflicting accounts among political theorists, constitutional lawyers, and different schools of thought, is geographically and historically perceived to be a European invention or construction. It is argued that the concept of the modern state, as it is familiar to us, cannot be isolated from the nationalist and organizational developments in Europe from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.75 Migdal, a political scientist, while discussing the nation state, argues that the nation state is shaped from two elements: image and practice. The image of the modern state, he argues, finds its origin in the fifteenth to the seventeeth centuries in north-western Europe, and came to encompass the entire world in the second half of the twentieth century.76 Only two hundred years ago, there were fewer than 20 states with the shape and character that we should now recognize as deserving description as national states, with the rest of the world being divided between a host of very small principalities and city-states, a few untidy empires, and large areas that were the home of tribal communities who lived without fixed territorial boundaries. By 1945 there were 51 national states and by 2000, following the virtual end of colonial empires, there were 192. Today the only relics of empire are a few miniscule territories such as Gibraltar, the Falkland Isles, Martinique and Guadeloupe. The transformation has come about largely because the doctrine of nationalism has both triumphed in Europe and been exported to the rest of the world.77 It is very common to speak of the state in terms of power since Machiavelli’s celebrated book The Prince, and Weber’s influential

44

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

definition: ‘A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’.78 Surprisingly, almost all definitions of the modern state, in one way or other, have been influenced by that of Weber and his idea of legitimacy. Here, only for the purpose of clarity, to elucidate the perception of the nation state in academic debates, a few widely circulated definitions are presented. Leftwich defines the modern state as a set of ‘political apparatuses, distinct from both ruler and ruled, with supreme jurisdiction over a demarcated area, backed by a claim to monopoly of coercive power, and enjoying legitimacy as a result of a minimum level of support or loyalty from their citizens.’79 Likewise Migdal defines the modern state as ‘a field of power marked by the use and threat of violence and shaped by (1) the image of a coherent, controlling organization in a territory, which is a representation of the people bounded by that territory, and (2) the actual practices of its multiple parts’.80 Birch, another political scientist, defines the state as ‘a legal entity possessing sovereign independence, having unfettered control over its own territory, defining its own citizenship rules, and equal in international law to all other states. Seen from the inside, a state manifests itself in a collection of public institutions, legislative, executive, administrative and judicial, having the power to govern the territory and all its inhabitants.’81 But for Gramsci, the domination as a basic component of the state is tempered by ‘hegemony’; a concept far more comprehensive than legitimacy, which does not sharply contrast with the notion of civil society. To him state is: ‘the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules’.82 Last but not the least is Timothy Mitchell, who defines the state as a ‘structural effect’ resulting from modern techniques of functional specification, organizational control and social surveillance exercised in the society by state institutions.83 Birch attributes the difficulty of producing a simple and agreed definition of the nation state to ‘the fact that in the modern world the state is an abstraction that is deemed to exist independently of the individuals and institutions that exercise state power.’ He further adds that one cannot see a state, in any concrete sense, but it is the manifestation of the state’s existence, which has to be divided into external and internal manifestations.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

45

Nation(s) and Nationalism The nation state or the national state, as is evident from the name, is composed of two terms; the nation and the state. It is argued that defining the nation turns out to be more problematic than that of the state, because the nation, contrary to the state, refers to a community of people rather than to a set of institutions, thus defining who constitutes the nation is problematic and essentially contested. Kedourie has observed that humanity is divided into nations, the nations are known by certain characters which can be ascertained and the only legitimate type of government is national self-government.84 Following these three basic propositions Birch states; the entire land surface of this planet, with the single exception of Antarctica, as a result of the recent developments in human history is divided into territories known as national states.85 Still there are different perspectives on whether the nation is a cultural entity, sharing common language, history and traditions, or it is a political entity, where its members perceive themselves as a political community, or it is a psychological entity, bound together by shared loyalty and allegiance, or it is a cultural and political entity. However, a nation, according to Birch, can be described ‘as a society that has a distinctive culture and also possesses its own state’,86 or a ‘society which has a distinctive civilization and also possesses its own state,’87 or ‘a society which either governs itself today, or has done so in the past, or has a credible claim to do so in the not-too-distant future.’88 But in reality nations have to be created by a process, which is political. Various qualities such as a common territory, language, religion, and ethnic origin, identity or a common history or a combination of all or some of these have been prescribed, theorized or defended for the creation and construction of a nation e.g. culture and history in France, language in Germany, ethnicity in Japan, and religion in Pakistan and Israel. However, it is just not possible to define nationhood in terms of any one social or cultural criterion, for instance the French theorist Ernest Renan fell back on the purely subjective definition that a ‘nation is a group of people who believe themselves to be a nation.’89 Nationalism Nationalism, despite lacking a founding father, but similar to nation state, can be traced back to Europe and Enlightenment thinkers.90 It is a European doctrine91 that emerged at the time of the French revolution,

46

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

and has since been exported to or copied in other parts of the world. Constructing nationalism in the Western experience is varied, but overall one can find a common pattern in the experience, especially on the sociological side of the narrative, where the idea of nation is theorized prior to or at the time of establishing the nation state, similar to the story of state itself. But in post-colonial nations the experience of nationalism and nationhood is best understood from the state rather the sociological end of the equation. The new states emerged as a result of the colonial rule or the end of the colonial rule with new borders imposed upon them, in some cases dividing the old established societies. The loyalties in these new post-colonial states were mostly tribal or ethnic or perhaps religious, only with the exception of a tiny minority of educated and Westernized leaders, which was tasked with the creation of national identity and national loyalty in these newly created political entities.92 The essence of nationalism is a belief in the social basis of political authority.93 With the idea of ‘the nation’ after the French revolution, Europe witnessed the growth of nationalism. The nationalist elite, in order to establish a new national identity, attempted to construct a new national mythology. To win over the bulk of the population, according to Baycroft, each nation needed to construct its own image and create an emotional link with the nation.94 However the term ‘nationalism’ is used confusingly in a variety of ways; to denote loyalty to the state, for which the right word is patriotism, to describe the cultural and civilizational superiority over others, for which the right word is chauvinism, or to denote pride in national identity. But the term correctly, according to Birch, refers to ‘a political doctrine about the organization of political authority’,95 and ‘about the proper relationship between society and the political regime.’96 It usually takes two forms: first to be united under a single government, and second to be liberated from foreign domination. To Smith, nationalism can be defined as an ideological movement for the attainment and maintenance of autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of a population deemed by some of its members to constitute an actual or potential ‘nation’. Anderson, on the other hand, argues nation, nationality and nationalism are the dominant themes of our time but are difficult to define.97 To him nation ‘is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

47

because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion,’98 and nationalism or nation-ness, is a cultural artefact of a particular kind.99 But to Gellner ‘nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist.’100 To Hearn nationalism can be all of these at once: feeling, identity, idea, movement and process.101 To Spencer nationalism is an ideology that imagines the community in a particular way (as national), asserts the primacy of this collective identity over others, and seeks political power in its name, ideally (if not exclusively or everywhere) in the form of a state for the nation (or a nation state). Hence nationalism is also crucial in the genesis and reproduction of national identity.102 To Calhoun, from a post-structuralist perspective, nationalism is all about emotions, and creating an emotional link between the state and its subjects, or in the Foucauldian term it is a ‘discursive formation’, which forms the subjects and provides them an identity to identify with, a direction, a way to speak and shape their conscious, to use the language, and perceive themselves and others in the world, but at the same time is problematic; an exclusionary act, leading in cases to the most radical form of domestic suppression and to the most radical form of antagonism in its ‘friend/enemy’ format internationally. Thus, to him, nationalism is a way of thinking and acting; a discourse. Calhoun further explains that in the post-colonial states, the discourse was already available; hence they did not begin from scratch, but instead copied the dominant colonial discourse and implemented it internally.103 Smith argues that theoretically there are four paradigms or grand narratives of nationalism: (1) Primordialism, which holds that the nation is a primordial category, or one founded upon primordial attachments. (2) Perennialism, which holds that nations are seen as immemorial or perennial; and therefore nationalism is simply the ideology and movement for an already existing nation. (3) Modernism, and (4) Ethnosymbolist. Modernism to him comes in several forms: sociocultural, economic, political, ideological, and constructionist. The labels suggesting the main explanatory thrust or focus of the approach or theory. However, according to him all modernist approaches hold the following in common:

48

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

‘1. nationalism is an explicitly modern ideology and movement, that is to say, it is both novel and relatively recent, i.e. from the eighteenth century onwards; 2. as a social structure and cultural system, the nation is likewise both novel and relatively recent, again from the eighteenth century or slightly earlier; 3. as a system, the international order of national states is both novel and relatively recent, dating from the nineteenth century, though with intimations going back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648; 4. all three – nationalism, nation and the international order of national states – are the product of specifically modern conditions; namely, capitalism, bureaucracy, industrialism, urbanisation, secularism and the like.’104 Ethnosymbolism, or what Smith prefers to call ‘historical ethnosymbolism’, suggests a ‘twofold starting-point for the analysis of nation formation: first, the importance of historical clusters, or heritages, of myths, memories, values and symbols for cultural community formation; and second, the vital role of ethnic ties and ethnic communities, or ethnies, in providing a basis for the emergence and persistence of nations.’105 However, Smith treats ‘post-modernist’ as a development of modernism rather as an explanatory paradigm in itself, and argues that undoubtedly, the current orthodoxy is modernist. On the other hand, Ozkirimli, for instance, categorizes nationalist discourses into: Primordialism, Modernism, Ethnosymbolism and post-modern.106 However the process of bringing together, which is known as national integration or nation building, is a political act and mainly aims at constructing a unified discourse of loyalty. To do so governments, according to Birch, have mainly taken the following steps; (1) created symbols of national identity i.e. head of state, flag and national anthem; (2) established national political institutions; (3) created an educational system which gives the children a sense of national identity, teaching them about a common history to inculcate a sense of patriotism; (4) developed a national pride; (5) adopted a single official language for the political, legal, commercial and military establishment;

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

49

(6) controlled the media, e.g. radio and television, and the flow of information to the public, and (7) most, if not all, of these nation states constructed a historical narrative from a multitude of events of the past to create a national mythology to serve the purpose of planned or unplanned integration.107 In accounting for the European experience of the construction of this national image or nationalism, despite its variations, Baycroft observes some similarity in the construction, selection and imposition of the following patterns. He divides these patterns, which are similar to the steps explained by Birch, into historical and cultural. Historically, he argues that the nationalists: constructed a national history; created an imagined community; constructed national symbols; created historical figures; invented national events; preached the constructed symbols and relied on the popular will of the people. Culturally, he adds, they created and supported the national language, enforced the constructed image through government-run schools, military service, political integration, national institutions and constructed a common ancestry. However, national history has played a significant role in the construction of nationalism. Baycraft refers to national history as the key element of European nationalism: Every nation or would-be nation has a strong identification and association with the past. This can be glorious past, in which the prestige of the nation and its culture or military successes were stressed; or, alternatively, a martyred past in which the true nation was kept down by the tyranny and oppression of ‘others’ outside the nation [. . .] national sentiment and nationalism do not arise instantaneously; they must be cultivated and encouraged until they gain widespread acceptance. . . national historical myths and the image. . . need to be created. This process requires a great deal of time, using a carefully edited version of the history of the nation which highlights certain key episodes and events and downplays or ignores others. The creation of such a national image requires a selection and interpretation of historical facts, sometimes even a distortion of these facts. Ernest Renan describes the national needs

50

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

to foster national sentiment [. . .] in order for a nation to exist, not only must its history be selective, but forgetting and even historical error are necessary for the formation of a national mythology [. . .] the defining characteristics of the nation –be they cultural, ethnic or historic – must be selected and prioritised [. . .] the particular characteristics which have been selected as the central features of a given nation will distinguish it in nature from other nations.108 Baycraft further argues that this constructed ‘picture’ became the official doctrine of nation states in Europe. The governments of the nation states, not only adopted the new narrative as their official state policy, but also set out to propagate it among the population. Drawing on Bhabha’s work, Hall has identified a variety of discursive strategies which are central to the nationalist project. There is, to begin with, the story of the nation as told in history books, works of fiction, symbols, rituals, and other elements of popular culture. Through these accounts of national triumphs and disasters, individuals are helped or invited to feel themselves connected with the past and future of a national destiny. Secondly, he suggests, there is an emphasis on ‘origins, continuity, tradition, timelessness’109 so that the character of the nation may be seen as unchanged and unchanging through all its long past history. Thirdly, there is commonly an invention of tradition in an attempt to establish a historical continuity for the nation, its symbols and rituals. Fourthly, there is the existence of a foundational myth – a story which locates the origins of the nation so long ago that it is lost in the mists of time. Finally, there is the frequent attempt to ground national identity on the idea of an ethnically pure original people or ‘folk’.110 Bhabha suggests that nationalism is riddled with tension and haunted by ambivalence. There are crucial recesses that nationalist discourse obscures, elements that it has to repress in its effort to construct the ‘impossible’ unity of the nation as a symbolic force. Bhabha’s concern in particular is with those on the margins, as the nation seeks to define itself in relation to what is outside or beyond its boundaries. The problem is that these boundaries can never be secure. The boundary is Janus-faced and the problem of outside/inside must always itself be a process of hybridity, incorporating new ‘people’ in relation to the body politic, generating other sites of meaning and,

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

51

inevitably, in the political process, producing unmanned sites of political antagonism and unpredictable forces for political representation.111

The Post-Colonial Nation State112 The discourse of modern state or the nation state in the Western or European experience first of all was the object of a long tradition of theoretical reflection. In Europe the rise of the modern state took shape within the context of some major theoretical interventions, e.g. Bodin (1530– 96), Hobbes (1588–1679), Locke (1632– 1704) and Montesquieu (1689–1755), which, on one hand, stressed the necessity of the modern state and its moral recognition and, on the other, argued for placing restraint on its potentially destructive power and expressed concern about its overexpansion into areas of civil society. Western political theorists, in reflecting philosophically on the question of state, the nature of political obligation and the idea of res publica, drew upon a long tradition of Greek and Roman antiquity, and more recently on the Italian Republican political thought.113 Contrary to this, the arrival of the European model of the nation state through colonialism in Asia and Afghanistan has a different story; a history that happened outside, which not only lacked the theoretical foundation but also marked a radical breakdown or rupture with the pre-colonial model of authority in the region. Furthermore the colonies, in adopting the colonial model of the nation state, nation building, and nationalism could not or failed to draw on an existing conceptual resource to make sense of the new European institutionalized form of political power. The Euro-centric model of nation state, as the necessary tool of domination first was imposed by colonial powers, second, the successful nationalist movements, even after decolonization, enthusiastically accepted the colonial model of nation state despite the fact that it was entirely different from traditional forms of authority or the model represented by the same colonial power they had been fighting against. Ironically the nationalist anti-colonial movements not only did not object to the modern state as a colonial heritage, but only opposed it because it was controlled by the colonial power. After gaining independence they not only did not ‘abolish’ the post-colonial state, but used it for their own purposes. In some other parts the adoption of the model is attributed to cultural diffusion or to the voluntary imitation of Western countries.114 Hence, the nation state in post-colonial countries,

52

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

including Afghanistan, is not a natural growth of their own socioeconomic history or their cultural and intellectual tradition similar to the European experience where democratic ideas turned an absolute and despotic rule democratic, and the nation state took shape on the basis of a constructed nationalism. Likewise the post-colonial state lacks the conditions and the capabilities of the Western nation states. The postcolonial nation state’s institutions and politics are mainly shaped by the nature of pre-colonial polities; the economic purposes of the colonial rule; the characteristics of the colonial institutions; the character of the socio-political group or groups which dominated the state structure; the way the pre-colonial institutions were incorporated into the colonial system and finally the empowerment of a particular group by the colonial power as the outcome of the radical dislocation in the newly created political entity. This is why Kaviraj argues that eventually, when British power was consolidated in the subcontinent, the form of the state that emerged was something of an intermediate form, a hybrid between an empire-state of the older type and a sovereign state in the European pattern. To him modernity in the region, and perhaps also in other European colonies, was largely a political affair, and that is why the story of state as the largest and most important collective agency of governmentality is central to the story of non-Western modernity, and colonialism is central to the story of the state. The primary concern of imperial powers or imperial companies at the first stage of colonization was economic exploitation of the colonies, but in the process some parts of their colonies, e.g. India and Afghanistan, became strategic areas to be protected for military, economic and security reasons. The drive between imperial powers to regulate their competition and prevent conflict often led to the recognition of each other’s borders, sphere of influence and the forceful creation of buffer states to avoid direct confrontation. The identities of such states reflect the relation of force and strategic needs of the imperial powers rather than the political or social structure of those societies.115 The question that arises here is whether these post-colonial nation states, since they lack the philosophical, theoretical and cultural grounds, are ‘real states’; the outcome of a ‘protestant ethic’ as was suggested by Weber, or the link between the development of individualism as a cultural tradition and the emergence of the modern state, as suggested by Dumont.116 Some go to the extent of suggesting that the very notion of state is

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

53

related to a specific European set of cultural and religious values, which go back to Roman law, the Renaissance and to the concept of secularization. Such values, according to them, are incompatible with societies dominated by organic religions. To export, impose or import such a model for these societies, will lead only to the emergence of authoritarian regimes in the political sphere.117 Some argue that postcolonial states are not real, at best one can portray them as ‘quasi-states’. They state that one must distinguish between a legal, juridical concept of the state and a sociological concept of the state. Many post-colonial states are considered states only in their juridical sense, as the evolution and developmental process of the state in these countries have been exactly the opposite or the reverse of the pattern in the European experience. In the European context, states developed as political, military and social entities and then through competition and war tried to gain legal recognition. In post-colonial countries, first the state emerged in its juridical sense as part of the colonial imposition or legacy before the transformation of social and philosophical prerequisites to internalize the new concept and develop it. Furthermore, the ‘legality’ of the post-colonial state prevents it from becoming a real ‘sociological’ state, because the very notion of legality gives it a false impression of being complete, which negates the need to move toward building a comprehensive and inclusive state.118 It is also argued that the postcolonial state suffers from a lopsided or unbalanced nature. It looks underdeveloped in certain areas and overdeveloped in others. The overinflated size of the bureaucratic machine, especially the military wing in these countries, to serve the purpose of the colonial powers and later the domination of the ruling elite are good examples of this lopsided development.119 Epistemologically, it is argued that the word state signifies two different notions in Latin/English and Arabic/Farsi.120 The term ‘state’ in European languages implies stability and continuity of position, while in Arabic and Farsi ‘dawlat’ means circulation and reversal of power and the fortune. According to Bernard Lewis, the first time the term ‘dawla’t’ to denote the modern meaning of the state, distinct from dynasty and government, was used in the Muslim world can be traced back to the 1930s.121 It is also worth mentioning here that the concept of community (umma), in its religio-cultural sense, is more important, dominant and hegemonic in the Islamic political tradition than other

54

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

modern concepts e.g. state or a particular form of political system.122 Some radical discourses, e.g. that of Hamid Rabi, an influential Egyptian political scientist, with an Islamic inclination and anti-Enlightenment orientation, which to some extent resembles the discourse of Al Qaeda, Hizbe Tahrir, the Taliban and other Islamist movements, passionately argue that the Islamic polity is not a state in its European sense; territorially defined and governed by the sovereignty of its people and government. The Islamic polity is an organized politico-religious community (umma). The purpose of the umma is to spread the message (dawa), and the function of the authority or power (sulta) is to achieve such a mission. The Islamic state, therefore, is a ‘doctrinal’ state, with a distinct communicational function based on the merger of ethical principles and political ideals, which implies a non-separation of private and public life. The Islamic state is hence linked to a culture or civilization which is combative and confrontational. It is based on group loyalty internally and on civilizational encounter externally, the ‘self’ and ‘other’ dicotomy. The cultural and civilizational function of the Islamic state is grounded on al-dawa, (the call), and the main aim of politics is to secure an environment that enables the individuals to comprehend their Islamic ideals. This state, inherently, has a universalistic dimension, which contrasts with the very notion of European state based on the principle of territoriality.123 The ideas of the two main Muslim intellectuals, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1839–97), and Mohammad Abduh (1849 – 1905) in the early nineteenth century, in reaction to or in encounters with the European ideas, inclined toward a ‘vitalist’ and ‘organismic’ concept of body-politic, which could be compared to Herder’s romanticism and his notion of Bildung, is more popular among post-colonial Muslim states, including Afghanistan, and Islamic movements, compared to Western-oriented political concepts. It is worth noting that their theory of ‘tight bond’, (al-urwa al-wuthqa), in its tenor and content which is very antiEnlightenment, has been implicitly or explicitly embraced by all revivalist movements in the Muslim world.124 The discourse of Islamic state, which unconsciously and paradoxically, reproduces the colonial or Western narrative, and the call for the implementation of Sharia has more appeal among Islamists and the majority of Muslims, especially in Afghanistan, than the Western democratic models. Even some Western scholars, in order to distinguish between the Western nation

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

55

states and the non-Western states, intentionally use terms such as developing states, third world states, quasi-states, patrimonial and new-patrimonial states, to re-emphasize the difference.

The Post-Colonial State in Afghanistan Certainly a form of authority existed in the wider Iranian-civilizational sphere, which could be termed as empire, kingdom, Caliphate, Emirate, Sultanate, and dynastic rule, or perhaps, borrowing the Weberian term, pre-modern. The last of these powerful empires in the post-Islamic era in the region of Iran and Khurasan were the Persianate Safavid, Afsharid and Mughal dynasties governing the region. The discourse of power and legitimacy in the region prior to the arrival of colonialism was different from that of the European or the Western in general. But the present state of Afghanistan as a new polity within its current borders, as I explain in detail in the coming chapters, took shape when the Russian and British empires advanced through central Asia and India – respectively, and as a result of their rivalry in what is known as the Great Game. To avoid direct confrontation, both empires agreed to establish a buffer state, and the outcome of the decision was the creation of a new political entity as Afghanistan. After the two Anglo– Afghan wars, Afghanistan was not only formally created and demarcated but also entered the Euro-centric colonial nation state system under the British suzerainty with Russia’s approval. In order to strengthen this newly created colonial state in the region, Britain tried to lay the foundation of a modern state under the leadership of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan (1881– 1901) by providing him weapons and cash, which helped him to establish a post-colonial hybrid state structure which lasted until 1978 with periodic breakdowns and failures.125 Another dimension of the colonial history in Afghanistan, which makes it unique in my understanding, is the complex British policy toward the newly created buffer state which included among other things: containment, direct intervention if required, providing subsidies, indirect control and imposing the British suzerainty which ended in 1919. This kept the new political entity, unlike say India, quarantined and on the margin of the colonial, political and economic developments in the region and the wider world.126 In doing so, the colonials empowered and relied heavily on the Pashtun ruling family and elite using a hybrid system to maintain order and at the same time to guarantee the legitimacy of their rule. Ironically while the Afghan rulers

56

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

were profoundly relying on British subsidies and support to maintain their domestic grip on power, they were preaching a radical religious discourse of anti-infidels.127 It was under Amir Abdur Rahman (1880– 1901) that for the first time Afghanistan, as a post-colonial state, but still under British suzerainty, had; (a) an internationally recognized boundaries; (b) was politically unified; (c) had a standing army; and (d) was governed directly by a despotic centralized authority, within the framework of fairly well-defined and universally applied administrative and judiciary rules and regulations.128 Even though the post-colonial state is a daily reality in Afghanistan but still as a concept and as an idea it remains an ‘alien’ intruder; a European concept, imposed and imported by colonial powers, a distorted version. This post-colonial entity, as explained throughout the book, embarks on constructing an exclusionary discourse of its emergence, which I attempt to deconstruct.

Concluding Remarks In order to reconstruct, deconstruct and problematize the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan, I have presented a combination of theoretical tools and categories to conduct this research. The first part of the chapter introduced the core assumptions of the discourse theory and elucidated the conception of discourse and special techniques of research developed by Derrida and Foucault. It paid special attention to the methods of deconstruction, archaeology, genealogy and problematization, and how they have been employed in the research. It discussed in detail the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe and its theoretical tools relevant to the research. It further explained how the theory forms the base of the research, and how and where its core concepts and tools have been used in chapters. The second part of the chapter illuminated the normative concept of ‘agonism’ and Mouffe’s perception of ‘agonistic pluralism’ in post-structuralist tradition of enquiry. It made it clear that it functions as the theoretical base of civilizational discourse presented in chapter six of the book to defuse the radical antagonism in the period of hegemonic crisis in Afghanistan based on ‘friend/enemy’ confrontation and to transform it to an adversary form of ‘us/them’ relations. The third part of the chapter discussed and elucidated the theoretical tools combined with discourse theory to further enhance the study,

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

57

understanding and deconstruction of the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan. It explained colonialism and post-colonial discourses, their developments and their wider impacts. It also explicated the role of colonialism in constructing its own narrative of others, and problematized the credibility of the colonial knowledge relying on the idea of power/knowledge relations developed by Foucault and advanced by Said in his concept of Orientalism. It also explained how the category captures the impact of colonial knowledge on the very constitution of Afghanistan and the Afghan state as the master signifier of the official discourse that I discuss throughout the book. To understand the very idea of the state, its relation to the concept of nation and nationalism, where and how it developed, and when and how it reached other parts of the world, It discussed in some detail the contemporary state debate and nationalism. The fourth part of the chapter explained that contrary to the official discourse in Afghanistan, the concepts of nation state, nation and nationalism are modern developments that originated in Europe and transformed to reach other parts of the world through colonialism. It further explicated the notion of post-colonial nation state and made it evident how Afghanistan as a post-colonial state was emerged.

CHAPTER 2 RECONSTRUCTING THE OFFICIAL DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN:1880—2010

Introduction As an outcome of some major dislocatory events that took place in the wider regions of Central Asia, the Middle East and South Asia during the arrival and direct intervention of the Russian and British colonial empires, the post-colonial Afghan state was created and forcefully integrated into the new Euro-centric nation states system. After its creation as a buffer state in the nineteenth century, and the empowerment of the Pashtun elites under the auspices of the Mohammadzai dynasty, the government by following in the footsteps of the colonial master and other newly established regional nation states, e.g. Turkey and Iran, began a gradual process of articulating a new hegemonic project to establish a new symbolic order. The narrative of state and the story of its emergence constituted a major part of this hegemonic project. To articulate the new narrative, the government constructed an exclusionary Pashtunethnocentric discourse of state formation as ‘a picture’, which held many captive and works as a self-imposed constraint on their capacity for self-government, self-realization, and justifies certain political claims and a set of practices.1 The official discourse, if I can summarize it briefly, states that Afghanistan as a political entity existed as early as the tenth century BC .

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

59

It speaks of historical and contemporary Afghanistan. The historical Afghanistan, according to this discourse, was called Ariana in ancient times, and Khurasan in the post-Islamic era, but the contemporary or modern Afghanistan was re-established by Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1947. Hence, Afghanistan with a distinctive historical and civilizational background has existed as an independent national state since its establishment by Afghans. It is portrayed as a democratic political entity, which usually governed itself on the basis of public participation, deliberation, and consent through Jirgas (assemblies). However, the country was constantly attacked by foreign powers or the enemies of Afghanistan, which sometimes led to state breakdown, but the courageous and free people of Afghanistan or the Afghans always fought back, defeated the enemy and re-established their national state. This official discourse of state formation, to my understanding, is constructed around the master signifier of Afghanistan and Afghans and three major nodal points: (1) the myth or the moment of emergence/formation, (2) the concept of government by Jirga (assembly), and (3) the notion of invasion and resistance. However, Afghanistan and Afghans function as the master signifier of the narrative which provide a distinctive meaning and identity to the entire chain of signification in this discourse. The official discourse, in constructing the narrative, relies heavily on the notion of radical antagonism. It constitutes the very identity of the master signifier; ‘Afghanistan and Afghans’ and other related nodal points, on the basis of ‘us’, the Afghans, ‘the insiders’, against the ‘Others’, the enemies, and foreigners, as ‘the outsiders’ who not only threaten the existence of the insiders, but also prevent them from being totally themselves to realize their fulfilment. However, to impose and at the same time to represent a homogeneous inclusive ‘picture’, irrespective of the irreducibility of social antagonism within the nation state, the official discourse, employing the logic of difference, attempts to negate, exclude and suppress the opposing internal discourses. Hence, internally it only speaks of the Afghans as a united people and ‘one’ nation in opposition to the ‘Other’, the ‘foreigners’ and non-Afghans. Furthermore the official discourse presents itself as a unitary entity, as the only ‘regime of truth’ or as the only true ‘picture’. Due to the violent nature of power, and the brutal methods of imposition of the regime of truth by the Afghan state, in the absence of other voices, this discourse remained dominant in the country; if not hegemonic. Because of its

60

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

sedimentation, it constitutes the discursive basis of subject formation in the country. It forms their political subjectivity, shapes their way of thinking, conscious and the unconscious mind, and it functions as an ideological tool for gripping and fantasizing the subjects in an attempt to fill their ‘lack’. Hence the aim of this chapter is to provide a ‘first reading’ of this discourse, which is a political, contingent, and historical construction. To reconstruct the discourse, firstly, only relied on stateproduced or state-controlled literature during the period of 1880– 2010. Secondly, in the endeavor to reconstruct the official discourse, the main focus is on the master signifier and the three intertwined nodal points of the narrative, which are erected to function as privileged signifiers to bind together the newly constructed system of meanings or the chains of significations for structuring a partial fixation. The nodal points in turn, as mentioned, linked to the master signifier or empty signifier of ‘Afghanistan’ and ‘Afghans’. I assume that the master signifier and the three related nodal points constitute the foundation or core of the official discourse of state formation. Thirdly, in reconstructing the official discourse a ‘deconstructive genealogical’ method is used: (1) Derrida’s deconstruction technique of ‘double reading’ which, on the one hand, involves an initial endeavour to reconstruct ‘in the most faithful, interior way’ the logics of a dominant discourse or text and its intention, so as to provide the most ‘charitable’ and plausible interpretation possible. On the other hand, it seeks to pinpoint, ‘from a certain exterior’, the gaps, tensions, paradoxes, ‘limits, and ‘points of undecidability’ in discourses or texts, which enable the discourses or texts to both cohere and ‘organize themselves’, and simultaneously serve to undermine their coherence and unity. (2) Foucault’s genealogy, which is explicitly concerned with the centrality of power and domination in the constitution of discourses and identities and involves the adoption of a critical ethos in their examination. It further studies the historical emergence of discursive formations with a view of exploring possibilities that were excluded by the exercise of power and systems of domination. Gradually but systematically the official discourse is reconstructed in five distinct phases: (1) the codification and establishment of the discourse (1880– 1901 and 1901–19); (2) the enrichment of the discourse (1919–28);

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

61

(3) the sophistication and advancement of the discourse (1930– 78); (4) the diversification and dislocation of the discourse (1978– 2001), and finally (5) the phase of an attempt to return to the past and re-impose the old discourse (2001– 10). These phases reflect the processes of construction, constitution and dislocation, as well as a new attempt to re-impose the already ruptured and dislocated offical discourse. I set the matter out in this way for several reasons; first to account for the gradual process of constructing and adding new nodal points and moments to the discourse as it develops to undermine its unity. Second, to account for the shifts and radical dislocations that took place in the country through the course of time and finally the third objective is to account for the impact and internalization of the colonial knowledge or discourse by the Afghan state.

Codification and Establishment of the Official Discourse 1880 –1901/1901 – 19 In the first part of this phase (1880–1901), after the Anglo–Afghan wars, a new post-colonial political entity was created, and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan (1880– 1901) was chosen by the British Empire to rule over the country. Various books, pamphlets, and statements published in local languages during the reign of Amir refer to him as the king of ‘the God-given state of Afghanistan’ by divine right.2 He also uses the term ‘Afghanistan’ and dawlat (state) frequently in his writings and his correspondence with the British India.3 However, in this literature one cannot find a full historical account of how the Afghan state emerged and developed. But there are sufficient accounts of what he achieved in establishing a centralized state in Afghanistan. It is only in an alleged English biography of the Amir that he claims Afghanistan was established by Ahmad Shah Durrani and occasionally refers to various kings of the Sadozai or Barakzai dynasties to praise or denounce them for the problems of the country. Referring to the first king of the land he writes: The first King of the Durani dynasty, to which I belong, was Ahmad Khan, better known as Ahmad Shah Durani, or Abdali, who succeeded to the throne of Afghanistan in A.D. 1747,

62

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

corresponding to 1061 Hijira (the year of Mahomed’s flight). He was a constitutional monarch and was proclaimed king by the chiefs and representatives of various tribes who, being tired of the troubled state of the country, wanted to have one king at their head for the sake of peace.4 However, it should be pointed out that the language and terminology used in the quote, e.g. constitutional and representation are different from the language and terms used in the literature produced in the reign of Amir. It was in the second part of this phase in the reign of Habibullah Khan (1901–19), son of Amir that the foundation of a modern school system was laid in Afghanistan. Hence there was an urgent need to formulate a modern curriculum based on the Indian and Turkish models. Among other subjects, history, geography and literature became part of the curriculum and as a result the country began constructing a new history. To do so, the state had to translate the teaching materials from colonial sources, and also employ teachers from India and Turkey. A groundbreaking work in the field of history at this period is the production of Sarajul Tawarikh [Lamp of Histories] which was written in Farsi by Faiz Mohammad Katib under the direct supervision of the king. The book begins from the time of Ahmad Shah Abdali (1747) and covers the entire period of the Sadozai (1747– 1818) and Barakzai (1826– 1901) dynasties in Afghanistan. A further radical development at this time was the return of some exiled families to Afghanistan, specially the return of Mahmod Tarzi, and the establishment of a biweekly Sarajul Al-akhbar, [Lamp of the News], which led subsequently to the formation of the Afghan discourse of nationalism5 and the emergence of the first constitutional movement in Afghanistan.6 It is in this period that one can trace the patchy attempts of the state to construct and invent an official narrative.7 In his introduction Katib explicitly asserts that he has written the book by the order of His Majesty King Habibullah and he makes it clear that the King had the final word in shaping the book; a process of knowledge production by the state to constitute a new identity. The official narrative of state formation in this phase begins from the time of Ahmad Shah Abdali (1747) and Katib refers to him as the king of Afghanistan. By doing so it excludes the previous empires, emirates, and

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

63

kingdoms of the region, especially the period of Hotakis, where the Ghilzai tribe of Pashtuns, for the first time had played a significant role in establishing a self –ruled tribal authority in Kandahar prior to that of the Abdalies in 1747.8 According to the state-produced literature in this period, Ahmad Shah Abdali establishes Afghanistan in 1747 and the first Afghan independent state emerges under his leadership. Based on Hayat Khan’s account, which is a reproduction of the colonial knowledge,9 this is how Katib narrates the emergence of the Afghan state: This region, Afghanistan, during the kingdom of Kayanian dynasty and Pishdadian dynasty was called Kabulistan and Zabulistan. At the time of Alexander the Great, it was called Bakhtar, and after the Islamic conquest it was divided into two parts; eastern and western. Its western part from Kabul to Kandahar to the border with Iran, with its famous city of Herat, was called Khurasan. Its eastern part from the mountains of eastern Sind River to Hassan Abdal was called Rowa. In the reign of Mohamad Akbar it became part of India and it was only called Kabul. At the time of Ahmad Shah (1747), after the decline of Nadir Shah, it became known as Afghanistan. It is called Afghanistan because a lot of Afghans10 are living in this country, by adding the suffix; (stan) at the end of (Afghan), it has become Afghanistan, like Arabistan11 and Gulistan.12 Katib also states that Afghanistan originally referred to a particular geographical area where Afghan tribes lived with a population of approximately 4 million.13 He asserts that a map of the new Afghanistan, as opposed to the original Afghanistan he described, and its precise borders based on the research of King Habibullah will be included at the end of his book.14 The official discourse at this stage portrays Ahmad Shah Abdali (1747– 73) as the one who named the new country Afghanistan and later as the founder of Afghanistan. How he raised to power and established Afghanistan and the Afghan state constitutes the core of the official narrative in government derive to hegemonize its new political project. According to Katib the ancestors of Ahmad Khan lived in Multan (currently in today’s Pakistan) and he was born there. He then moved to Kandahar with his father when he was a child and from there they went to settle in the city of Herat. The Ghilzai

64

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

ruler of Kandahar subsequently imprisoned him along with his brother till Nadir Afshar conquered the city. He adds that then Ahmad Khan was released and sent to Mazendaran in Persia. After a while he was chosen by Nadir Afshar, the Persian conqueror, as his chief bodyguard, commanding around three to four thousand cavalry forces of the Abdali tribe, and was assigned to the task of protecting the king. Katib also narrates that one day Nadir called Ahmad Khan and told him that he will be the ruler after him and asked him to look after his family.15 This is how Katib illustrates the moments Ahmad Khan claims the throne and lays the foundations of Afghanistan: When they [his enemies] entered in the middle of the night and chopped off Nadir Afshar’s head and threw it among the army, a servant from the seraglio (harem) of his majesty Nadir Shah, informed Ahmad Khan about the incident [. . .] Ahmad Khan marched toward Kandahar with Abdali Afghan cavalry without attacking Herat and its governor. There with the approval of elders of the Abdali tribe, especially Haji Jamaludin Khan Barikzai,16 who was the most powerful of all, Ahmad Khan became the new ruler. At this time, Saber Shah, a spiritual person, put a green grass on his turban and said that this is your crown and you are now the king. His Majesty Ahmad Shah named his tribe Durrani, who used to be called Abdali. Hence he became the new king and started his reign by appointing Shah Wali Khan as his grand vizier.17 The role of the spiritual man in Ahmad Shah’s selection in the narrative, also, among other things, reflects the attention or the importance the official discourse gives to religion. It is noticed that Katib does not refer to Ahmad Shah Abdali as the founder of Afghanistan; but instead refers to him as the founder of the Durrani Empire and the first ruler of the Sadozai dynasty. But he asserts, as we have seen, that the country was named Afghanistan in the reign of Ahmad Shah Abdali.18 Mahmud Tarzi, the founding father of Afghan nationalism and the Pashtun-ethnocentric discourse of state formation, narrates a similar story. He begins the official history of the country from 1747, when, according to him, the Afghans established an independent state.19 Tarzi, with regard to the historical background of Afghanistan, claims that Afghanistan is a great part of Asia and the Afghans (Pashtuns) are one of

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

65

the oldest ethnic groups of the world. They have lived here since the age of Pishdadian, exactly at the same place of today’s Afghanistan, which was called Kabulistan at that time. Stories and myths of Kings of Kabul, Zaal and Rustam,20 are an example of their mythology, he claims. The Pashtuns are mentioned in the early history of Iran, they refer to them by their today’s Pashtun names and Herodotus has mentioned them in his book written in 4 BC , he adds.21 Similar to the story of Katib, Tarzi narrates that Ahmad Shah from the Sadozai branch of Abdali or Durrani tribe was an officer in the army of Nadir Shah. When he died Ahmad marched to Kandahar, announced his independence22 and laid the foundation of Afghanistan.23 Tarzi in his writings refers to the kingdom of Ahmad Shah as the beginning of the establishment of an independent state in Afghanistan and to Ahmad Shah, unlike Katib, as the founder of an independent Afghanistan.

Establishment and Enrichment of the Official Discourse 1919 –28 It was in the second phase, in the reign of Amir Amanullah (1919–28), that the state began its policies of modernization and reform, mainly based on Afghan nationalism propagated by Mahmud Tarzi; now father-in-law of the young king and the first foreign minister of the newly independent Afghanistan. In this period the discourse of state formation in Afghanistan gained a new momentum; the government for the first time established Pashtu Maraka (1922), and there was a remarkable increase in the number of state-run schools, publications, and newspapers which enabled the government to construct a new image of Afghans, Afghanistan, and the Afghan state, and lay the foundations of a gradual move toward enriching the discourse. In the national curriculum and official historiography of this period, which are again mainly translated from English books produced and published in India, it is argued that Afghanistan was known to the ancient Greeks and they had divided the country into seven parts, but as a whole it was called Ariana. It constituted the eastern part of the great Iranian country. When Alexander the Great conquered Iran he added this part to his conquest, and after his death, it was added to the kingdom of Sham.24 With regard to the old names of Afghanistan it is argued that Afghanistan at the time of Hindu Rajas was called Elhekdess, when the

66

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Iranians took over they named it Zabulistan, and when Shamies ruled the area they called it Bakhtar. In the Islamic period, from Kabul to Kandahar, and from Herat to Toos it was called Khurasan. But from the time of Ahmad Shah in 1747 it has been called Afghanistan. It is also added that during the reign of Ahmad Shah Baluchistan was part of Afghanistan, but now instead it includes Turkistan.25 In the history textbooks of this period it is argued that in ancient times writing was not that common in the country, therefore the history of the country is unknown, and it is from the history of Iran and India that we understand that at one time half of Afghanistan’s western region; Herat, Farah to Kandahar was under Iranian control, and its eastern part was controlled by the Indian government, but the people of the valleys and mountains had their independent life.26 However, it is asserted that after the arrival of Islam the history of the country is well-known. According to this narrative, the following kingdoms and dynasties ruled Afghanistan after the arrival of Islam: Safaris, Samandis, Ghaznavids, Saljukies, Ghoris and Khawarazms.27 It is argued that Genghis Khan, a Tatar, invaded the country and ruled it for a long time. Amir Timur, from Genghis Khan’s tribe, was the next invader to rule over Afghanistan. His sons and descendents ruled Afghanistan and expanded their rule to include India. It was Babur who established the Mughal Kingdom in India and ruled over Afghanistan. In Jehangir’s reign, the narrative states, Kandahar then part of the Mughal Empire was occupied by the Iranians of the Safavid dynasty and the Mughals could not retake it. Iranians sent their own governor, Gurgin Khan, to Kandahar in the reign of Shah Hussian Safavi, the last King of the Safavid dynasty. Gurgin was an oppressor and the people of Kandahar were not happy with him. Chief of the Afghans,28 Mirwais Khan Hotaki, with the support of the people of Kandahar invited Gurgin to his house and killed him.29 By killing the governor he became the new ruler of the city. Iranians tried to re-capture Kandahar but failed. Mirwais Khan, from the Hotaki clan of Ghilzai tribe of the Pashtuns, managed to establish an independent Afghan state in Kandahar.30 Marwais, the story states, did not call himself the king, but his brother Abdullah declared himself king after his death. Hotakies then invaded Iran and captured the capital of the Safavid dynasty in Isfahan.31 In this phase a new dimension is constructed and added to the narrative of state formation; the notion of a divided country, which

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

67

implies that a unified Afghan state existed before the forceful conquest and division. This dimension plays an important role in constituting the historical conscious of the subjects in Afghanistan for generations to come. The official discourse argues that in 1506 Babur took control of Kabul and made it his capital. At this time, it states, Afghanistan was divided between the Iranian and Indian governments. When Aurang Zaib died in 1707 and the Mughal dynasty weakened in India, a tribe of Afghans (Pashtuns) attacked the Iranians and established their own state.32 It was Nadir Shah Afshar (1736–46), an Iranian conqueror, who defeated the Afghans in Iran, captured the cities of Herat and Kandahar, put an end to the rule of the Hotaki dynasty and subsequently conquered the whole of today’s Afghanistan. It was after his death that Ahmad Shah Abdali, one of his officers, returned from Iran and established the state of Afghanistan. This is how the official account depicts the moment of emergence and the logic behind such a decision in this phase: After the death of Nader Shah, chiefs and nobles of the Durrani tribe, one of the largest Afghan tribes, got together and said: until now we had to live under a foreign government, in this case Iran. Why we should not have the kingdom of our country and choose one of us as the king? Ahmad Khan Sadozai, who was a credible official of Nader Shah and was familiar with the affairs of the kingdom, was accepted as king.33 To figure out the image of Ahmad Shah Abdali as the founder of Afghanistan, this is how Sayyid Mohammad Hashim portrays his personality and efforts to establish Afghanistan: Ahmad Khan, who will be referred to as His Majesty Ahmad Shah in this book, after being set on the throne of Afghanistan, first captured Kabul, Ghazni and eastern parts of Afghanistan from the governors of Nader Shah and then added Punjab and Kashmir to his kingdom. He expanded the western borders of Afghanistan to Mashhad. From the north he added the entire region of Badakhshan and Turkistan to the country of Afghanistan.34 It is argued that in 26 years of his reign Ahmad Shah Abdali established an independent state, which from the west had extended to Mashhad, from

68

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

the north to the Oxus River (Amu Darya), and from the east it included Peshawar, Punjab and Kashmir. It is claimed that the entire nation of Afghanistan is in debt to him as he freed them from the Iranian and Indian yoke and established an independent state called Afghanistan.35 On the question of why this country is called Afghanistan, a similar argument to that of Katib has been presented: ‘because the government of this country belongs to the Afghans (Pashtuns) and the majority of its people are Afghans’ therefore it is called Afghanistan.36 It is also argued that it is unknown when and by whom the country was named Afghanistan, because, the narrative says, there is no mention of the name ‘Afghanistan’ in olden history books. Considering the dispute among historians regarding the name of the country, Mohammad Ali, again relying on colonial sources, states; 1) some historians claim that it was first used by Ahmad Shah Abdali; 2) some others argue that it was coined by Iranians, 3) but both parties agree that it began in the reign of Ahmad Shah Abdali.37

Sophistication and Advancement of the Official Discourse 1930 –78 In the third phase of constructing the narrative of state formation in Afghanistan (1930–78), which I have termed sophistication and advancement, some significant developments took place. The discourse is enhanced in its scope and details as the government strengthens its grip on power and imposes radical exclusionary polices to constitute a new identity. One such fundamental development in the reign of Musahiban dynasty (1928– 78) is the establishment of Anjoman Adabi, which later changed to Pashto Tolana,38 tasked with rewriting the history of Afghanistan. The knowledge and discourses produced under the auspices of this body play a major role in the discursive formation of Afghans, their political subjectivity and how they perceive themselves, others and the establishment of the state in their country.39 Some of the books published during this time continue to retain the position of reference point, not only for the internal readers but also to the wider world, especially for researchers of Afghanistan. Their sway on official school textbooks produced since then, and on all books and literature produced studying Afghanistan, is still dominant. In this part, the chapter focuses on some of these reference books published in this period, which are household names in Afghanistan,

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

69

followed by the official curriculum to see how the process of constructing the master signifier and the nodal points of the official discourse gradually developed in this phase: Afghanistan in the Course of History, by Ghulam Mohammad Ghubar; Afghanistan after Islam, by Abdul Hai Habibi; History of Afghanistan, by Ahmad Ali Kohzad; Ahmad Shah: the Inheritor and Re-establisher of the Empire of Afghanistan, by Popalzai and Encyclopaedia of Ariana. The core of the narrative of the master signifier and the nodal point of emergence, in the semi-official historiography, if I can use the term for some of the books published in this period, is not different from that of the official discourse. The only difference one can notice at this stage is the categorization, sophistication and the historical depth added to the narrative. Another major development of this phase is the construction of two new nodal points; the notion of invasion and resistance, and the idea of governance through assemblies or Jirgas. In the previous phase, the narrative, as highlighted, seemed to be unstable and shaky, but in this phase, despite its inherent contradictions, paradoxes, and exclusionary strategy, the narrative stabilized itself to produce a coherent discourse to constitute a new identity. In this phase, for the first time in portraying the master signifier of the discourse, the narrative speaks of two Afghanistan: the historical Afghanistan and the emergence of the contemporary Afghanistan, which is re-established by Ahmad Shah Abdali, as opposed to the claim that the history of the country is not known prior to the arrival of Islam. Here one can see an apparent attempt to conceptualize the Afghan state in a way to provide the reader with the impression that an independent state of Afghanistan can be traced to its roots as far back as 5000 to 10000 BC , but with some periodical breakdowns because of foreign invasions. One such invasion, according to the narrative, takes place prior to 1747 and leads to state breakdown and the division of the country, here Ahmad Shah emerges as the rescuer, and as a hero from within the nation, and manages to defeat the enemies, reclaim the independence of the country and establish the contemporary Afghanistan. The new narrative strongly argues that Afghanistan was by far larger than what it is today and the last state of Afghanistan, which was based on its natural borders,40 was that of the Abdali State in the eighteenth century, since then, the Afghan state has gradually reduced to what it is today.41

70

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Historical Afghanistan In this period of the historiography the semi-official and official narrative provide us with a new schema; three distinguished periods and historical phases. (1) Ariana: as the oldest name of Afghanistan, from the Age of Avesta (1000 BC ) to the fifth century AD , for almost 1,500 years; (2) Khurasan: from the fifth century AD to the eighteenth century AD , again for 1,500 years; and (3) contemporary Afghanistan established by Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1747.42 On Ariana, Ghubar replicates the constructed narrative of Kohzad from his book Ariana43 and Habibi affirms their assertion, but with an understandable attempt to locate the Pashtuns among the ancient Arians of the region. However, still there are conflicting claims on how and when Ariana, Khurasan and Afghanistan were used as the names of the country. For instance Habibi claims that Khurasan was the name of some parts of our country and on Afghanistan he states that the word Afghan, the national name of the people of Afghanistan, at least has 1,700 years of historical and national background. He goes on to claim that some people think that it began with the re-establishment of Afghanistan by Ahmad Shah Abdali in the eighteenth century, but that is simply not true.44 Contrary to this, Ghubar argues that it was in nineteenth century that Khurasan changed to Afghanistan. He says the word ‘Afghan’ was used by Muslim writers to denote some of the Pashtun tribes, but in the eighteenth century it included the entire Pashtun tribes. He further claims that in the thirteenth century Afghanistan was used as a name for some eastern provinces of the country. In the fourteenth century that developed to include areas around the Suleiman Mountains in the eastern part of today’s Afghanistan. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries it expanded to include Kabul and the surrounding areas, but it still meant the place where the Afghans (Pashtuns) lived. It was only in the eighteenth century, according to him, that Afghanistan became the official name of country.45 The narrative in tracing the history of the emergence of the state in pre-historic periods presents an image that a prosperous and well organized polity existed in this part of the world some 2000 to 3000

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

71

years BC . It tries to locate Afghanistan as one of the oldest civilizations of the world. The narrative portrays Afghanistan as the centre of gravity in the region and claims that the history of central Asian countries, India and Iran is linked to this centrality. In search of creating a credible depth to the new history of Afghanistan, Ghubar mainly provides an historical account, while Habibi and especially Kohzad attempt to support their historically constructed claims by the archaeological findings in Afghanistan and in the region. The concept of Ariana, Aryans,46 the Vedic civilization, the first migration of Aryan tribes and the civilization of Avesta are at the heart of the narrative as part of the Afghan civilizational depth. Attacks of tribes, especially on the city of Balkh, according to the narrative, led to the establishment of the first strong state in ancient Afghanistan. Yama is portrayed as the first king of Aryans in the city of Balkh – its capital; hence he is the first king of the Afghan state. The narrative further claims that Jirga (assembly) and government by consent was the way Aryans were administering their country. Afghanistan, based on this narrative, was an independent polity at the time of Zarathustra, who emerged in the city of Balkh. Avesta, the book of Zarathustra, as the pure domestic product of Afghanistan, provides an old account of the history and culture of the country at that time. The narrative in this context refers to the age of myths and the evolution of the society to a religious stage. Stories and myths of Shahnameh by Ferdowsi,47 the great Persian poet and other legendaries are mentioned in some detail to back up the ancient history of the state in Afghanistan.48 However, there is a clear tendency in the narrative to locate the Pashtuns of Afghanistan among the oldest tribes of Aryans and portray them as the rulers and major player since the early history.49 The official narrative in this phase, unlike the second phase, where one can trace patchy signs of constructing a new identity based on ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, and the idea of a divided country attacked by foreign powers, invokes history from a very early stage to construct a radical narrative of ‘invasion and resistance’ as a new nodal point. It begins with the influence of the foreign states and the resistance of the people of Afghanistan from as early as the sixth century BC and continues until now. This radical strategy, by introducing the notion of ‘us’ and ‘them’, in its ‘friend/enemy’ format, opens the space for a radical antagonistic relation. The first round of these attacks, as categorized by the official discourse, begins from the sixth century BC to the third century BC . The story begins

72

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

with ‘Afghanistan and the state of the Achaemenids’, a Persian-Iranian originated empire, which expanded rapidly to conquer many parts of the world and invaded the independent state of Afghanistan, but the people of Afghanistan resisted this invasion. The narrative portrays Achaemenids’ conquest of Afghanistan as the ‘barbarian domination’.50 The narrative within this framework moves to include the invasion of Alexander the Great in 330 BC , where he, similarly to Achaemenids, faced a tough resistance. Habibi, to construct historical depth for Afghans and glorify the notion of resistance, claims that the Afghan (Pashtun) tribes of Kunar and Bajaur51 fought Alexander bravely and he was injured twice by Pashtuns.52 Then the narrative goes on to claim the decline of foreign domination and the establishment of an independent state in Afghanistan from the third century BC to the sixth century AD ; the Greco-Bactrian state 250–135 BC , the Kushani state 40–220 AD , and Yaftali state 425– 566 AD .53 After this, again, the narrative attempts to present a new round of invasion, which begins with the influx of Turkic people to Afghanistan from central Asia and the expansion of the Sassanid to include Afghanistan. Hence the country, prior to the emergence of Islam, was partly ruled by the Sassanid state and local autonomous kings and chiefdoms.54 With the arrival of Islam ‘Ariana’, the pre-Islamic name of the country, according to the official discourse, changes to Khurasan. But the approach of the historians in studying the arrival of Islam in Afghanistan differs from that of a nationalist approach to that of a sympathetic one. Ghubar calls it the ‘Arab domination’, and the others call it ‘the emergence of Islam and the influence of Arabs in Afghanistan’. Overall the narrative asserts that Islam expanded to include Afghanistan during the rule of the Caliphs (642–61), Umayyad (661–746), and Abbasside (754–821) dynasties. However, the notion of a constant move toward re-establishing an Afghan independent state, which was eliminated by Arabs, remains a common theme in the narrative. Ghubar explicitly refers to this era as ‘a new round of struggles and uprisings by the people of Afghanistan from the seventh to the ninth century against Arab domination’. Abu Muslim-e Khurasani55 is the national hero of this new independent movement in the official narrative to destroy the Arabs and free the people of Afghanistan.56 It was under the Tahirid dynasty, according to the narrative, that Afghanistan declared its independence from the Arab rule. Hence, from the ninth to the thirteenth century the Afghans managed to establish the following independent states in the

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

73

country: Tahirid State (821–72), Safari State (872–910), Samanid State (910–61), Ghaznavid State (962–1148), Seljuqi State (1038–1153), Ghurid State (1148–1214), and Khawarazmian State (1214–19).57 It was in the thirteenth century, according to the narrative, that the independent state of Afghan collapsed; this new breakdown begins with the invasion of the Mongols. Genghis Khan is the symbol of this new invasion.58 After a period of struggle for survival in different parts of country a new round of invasion unfolds, this time under the leadership of Amir Timur (1369–1404). However, paradoxically Timur’s death marks the end of state breakdown in Afghanistan; a new era of prosperity under the leadership of his son Shahrukh (1404–46) and his decedents takes shape in the country. Interestingly the father in the official narrative is an invader, an ‘outsider’, but his son is an ‘insider’ who lays the foundation of the Timurid state. The establishment of the Timurid State in Afghanistan (1380–1506) marks the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the newly independent country. Herat, the capital of the new state, became the centre of development and growth, not only in Afghanistan, but in the entire region.59 As the Timurid state weakens and disintegrates because of the foreign invasion, a new round of struggle and resistance is instigated by the people of Afghanistan from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries to re-establish their state. The official narrative to justify the struggle of Afghans, claims that three new invading powers emerged in the region after the collapse of the Timurid state of Afghanistan; the Shaybanid Uzbek state (1500–99); the Safavid Persian-Iranian state (1502–1722) and the Baburi Mughal Indian state (1483–1718).60 The decline of the Timurid state, which is considered a national Afghan state, eventually led to the disintegration of Afghanistan. Hence, the official narrative claims that the northern provinces, the north of today’s Afghanistan, were occupied by the Shaybanid state for two and half centuries, the western provinces were occupied by Safavid from 1506– 1708/1716, and the eastern provinces fell to the Baburi state from 1506– 1747 respectively. The collapse and disintegration of the Afghan state, according to the narrative, continued for almost two and a half centuries, with devastating consequences for the socio-cultural development of the country.61 The occupation of the country by these three states, as the ‘outsiders’ and ‘enemies of the people of Afghanistan’, provided the justification for a new round of struggle against foreign rule and for a new national move to reintegrate the country and establish a central

74

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

government. Hence, in the post-Timurid period, the narrative presents a nationwide resistance against the invaders in all parts of the imagined disintegrated state of Afghanistan. This time, the struggle for freedom begins with an obvious focus on the prominent role of Afghan (Pashtun) tribes. They are named by their tribes and locations, while previously the official narrative had been ambivalent or avoided mentioning the ethnic origin or the identity of the people constituting the residents of the imagined Afghanistan or fighting for it, rather it was generally speaking of the people of Afghanistan. Historically, contrary to the official claim, this is the first time that the Afghan (Pashtun) tribes enter the political map of the region, while previous residents or dynasties of the region were not Afghans and it is immoral to refer to them as Afghans. The official narrative at this stage constructs a countrywide struggle of all Afghan (Pashtun) tribes to reunite the divided state of Afghanistan. It begins with the Afghan (Pashtun) tribes on the eastern front under the leadership of Peri Roshan and then Khushal Khatak who fought the Mughal Empire.62 On the southern front, it claims that the Hotaki Afghans managed to establish the Hotaki State in Kandahar to reclaim the lost central authority. The city of Kandahar at that time was controlled by the Safavid dynasty after a long period of exchanges between the Baburi and the Safavid states. Mirwais Hotaki (1709–15), chief of the Ghilzai tribe, organized a rebellion and killed the Safavid governor of Kandahar city. Here the official narrative constructs and presents the third nodal point; the notion of Loya Jirga (grand assembly).63 It argues that in three consecutive ‘national Loya Jirgas (grand assemblies)’ organized by Mirwais and attended by Abdali, Ghilzai, Tajik, Uzbek and Hazaras of Afghanistan, to represent the entire nation, it was decided with consent to end the occupation and establish a national state. The Hotaki state (1709–38), not only secured the freedom of Kandahar, but also managed to defeat the Safavid dynasty and establish the first Afghan state or kingdom in Iran.64 The Encyclopaedia of Ariana, a state structured and produced knowledge follows the same nationalistic path, but at the same time it makes a fascinating claim on how and when the first independent state was established by Mirwais Khan: This was the first national government in the world, which was established by people, by the will of people and was administered

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

75

by the people.65 Hence the foundation of the first national government in the world, administered by Jirgas (councils) and the people, was laid down by Mirwais Khan eighty years before the French Revolution.66 In the western part of the country, the official narrative states, the Abdali tribe in the city of Herat organized a similar rebellion and declared freedom of the city from Iranian rule. In this phase the concept of Loya Jirga (grand assembly) as a nodal point enters the realm of education in a massive scale and became part of official historiography as a political institution and decision making at the national level. The narrative calls Mirwais neka, (father/grandfather), a Pashtu term to denote a higher position, and reserves baba (father/grandfather), the Farsi term to denote father or father of the nation for Ahmad Shah Abdali.67 It is argued that after a period of uncertainty Nadir Afshar (1688–1747) emerged as a powerful player and managed to establish a new empire replacing the three previous dynasties of the region. He successfully neutralized the Abdali state in Herat (1728), defeated the Ghilzai Afghan (Pashtun) state in Esfahan (1729), captured Herat in (1731) and defeated the Ghilzai state in Kandahar in (1738). Nadir in his expeditions in Iran and India relied heavily on Abdali Pashtuns headed by Ahmad Khan (later called Ahmad Shah Abdali) and later on other Pashtun tribes. His assassination by his Iranian guards in 1747 paved the way for his Afghan (Pashtun) forces to march towards Kandahar under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Abdali and re-establish the contemporary independent state of Afghanistan.68

The Moment of Formation or Emergence of Contemporary Afghanistan in 1747 The official narrative in this phase after constructing the right historical pretext for the re-establishment of the national state in Afghanistan, by distinguishing between the historical and modern Afghanistan, claims that the contemporary or modern state of Afghanistan was established by Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1747. The official narrative attempts to construct and present the very moment of the formation and also the personality of the founder of the state as civilized and as democratic as possible. For instance Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan (1909–78), a prominent figure of the Musahiban dynasty, the prime minister of

76

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Afghanistan (1953– 63) and later the president of the Republic of Afghanistan (1973– 8), while serving as the Governor of Kandahar, ordered Mir Ghulam Mohammad Ghubar the well known historian to write a book about Ahmad Shah Abdali. He accepted the job, and constructed an official account of him as the father of the nation and founder of modern Afghanistan. It is argued that it was this constructed account of Ghubar that was first translated into Russian and then from Russian into English and this is how the official narrative, without any critical analysis, found its way into English literature.69 However, because the story is the product of a piecemeal power/knowledge process, there are tensions and contradictions inherent in the text which destabilizes the ‘picture’. In this part, the chapter focuses in some detail on the moment of emergence, because it represents the symbolic configuration of the official discourse. According to Ghubar, Ahmad Shah (1747– 73) was born in Herat in 1722,70 but Habibi is not sure about the place of his birth, therefore he says either Herat or Multan. It is agreed that he was imprisoned by Shah Hussain Ghilzai, the ruler of Kandahar and remained there till 1738. When the city was captured by Nadir Afshar, he was freed and then exiled to Mazandaran, a city in the north of today’s Iran. It was from there that he joined the army of Nadir Afshar and became the commander of Abdali and Afghan forces of Nadir Afshar. It was after the assassination of Nadir that he returned to establish the contemporary Afghanistan. This is how Ghubar narrates his ascent to power: [. . .] a sense of confusion and chaos appeared in his army, the Afghan army, which was composed of four thousand Ghilzai and twelve thousand Abdali and Uzbeks, with the consent of Noor Mohammad Khan Ghilzai and Ahmad Khan marched toward Kandahar. Kandahar was the centre of Afghan ethnic groups. Noor Mohammad Khan asked the chiefs of Ghilzai, Uzbek, Abdali, Hazara, Baluch and Tajiks to convene a Jirga (Assembly) to elect [emphasis added] the king. The Jirga (Assembly) was inaugurated in October 1747 in the building of Mazare Shir-e Surkh inside the Nadir Abad Military Fort and continued for nine days. In the sessions of the grand assembly an agreement was not possible, because they were taking an important decision and every powerful chief wanted to become the king. While rival chiefs, e.g.

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

77

Noor Mohammad Khan Ghilzai, Mohabat Khan Popalzai, Mosaa Khan Ishaq Zai and Nasrullah Khan Noorzai,71 were rejecting each other, the only person in this Jirga (Assembly) who was not talking about himself was Ahmad Khan Abdali, because his tribe, Sadozai, was smaller compared to the others. However, one must notice that his grandfather, Dowlat Khan, was chief of the Abdali tribe of Arghasan, and his father, Zaman Khan, was head of the Abdali government in Herat. The dispute between chiefs of Abdali and Ghilzai in rejecting each other created a vacuum needing to be filled. On the ninth day of the Jirga the two sides appointed a member of the Jirga as an arbiter and agreed that whomever he elects as a king the rest will declare their allegiance72 to him. The arbiter was a spiritual man, not belonging to any tribe, and not even from Kandahar, this man was Sabir Shah Kabuli, son of the famous Sufi Ustad Liekhar, who was well respected among different classes of Kandahar. This Sufi politician stood and introduced Ahmad Abdali as the king and put a wheat spike73 as a substitute for a crown on his turban.’74 Ghubar here develops the story in his previous book Ahmad Shah Father of the Nation, but the detail he provides contradicts his previous account. There he says the call for conducting a Jirga was a collective decision, and he does not say that on the ninth day they decided to appoint Sabir Shah as arbiter to decide who should be the next king, instead he claims Sabir Shah stood and spoke on the ninth day of the Jirga about the attributes and qualifications of Ahmad Shah, so the rest accepted his opinion thinking that he is the right option taking into account the small size of his tribe.75 Habibi narrates a similar story, but without giving the exact number of the Afghan army. Contrary to Ghubar’s claim that the Jirga was called at the request of Noor Mohammad Ghilzai, he asserts that the Afghan chiefs convened a National Jirga as they arrived in Kandahar. Habibi also agrees with Ghubar that the national Jirga continued for nine days, but until the eighth day of deliberations they could not agree on a person who could respect their Afghani traditions (whatever that is) and national democratic values. However, Habibi does not provide us with any account of Ahmad Khan’s conduct or attitude during the democratic deliberation of the delegates in the Grand National Assembly to select

78

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

their king. On the ninth day, he claims that the delegates turned their attention to the 25-year-old young Ahmad Khan. The elders’ understanding that a young man from a small tribe would not rule them with tyranny, if they chose him as their king, led to the collective decision to elect him as their king. Contrary to Ghubar’s narrative, that on the ninth day the opposing poles appointed Pir Sabir Shah as an arbiter to choose the king, Habibi narrates that after Ahmad Khan was elected, Sabir Shah, who used to live in Mazare Shir-e Surkh,76 came out of his private room, went to the nearby field and brought a wheat spike and placed it on the turban of the newly appointed king as the symbol of kingship.77 The Encyclopaedia of Ariana, a state production and an official comprehensive account of all branches of knowledge in Afghanistan, depicts a similar story of how Ahmad Shah established contemporary Afghanistan after the collapse of Nadir Afshar in Iran.78 It narrates that Ahmad Shah Abdali, after the death of Nadir, returned to Kandahar with the Abdali army, the elders of Kandahar titled him Dure Duran, (pearl of pearls), and in July 1947 he was elected king. He chose Kandahar as his capital and organized his new administration. The concept of National Jirga, nine days of democratic deliberations, the role of Peer Sabir Shah and the presence of all other ethnic groups in the process of electing the new king is missing altogether from the narrative. However, the Ariana account stresses the notion of ‘election’, and the ‘will of the people through Jirga’ in electing Ahmad Shah as the new king.79 In the book Ahmad Shah: the Inheritor and Re-establisher of the Empire of Afghanistan by Azizuddin Wakili Popalzai, which covers the reign of Ahmad Shah in much detail, one can find similarities and contradictions with previous accounts. Because the book is written by a Durrani Pashtun close to the royal family and because he has dedicated the entire book to the reign of Ahmad Shah, similarly to Ghubar, the chapter attempts to reconstruct the parts related to the moment of formation. The book provides a detailed insight into how Ahmad Khan was proclaimed king. Before reconstructing Popalzai’s account of the events, it is worth mentioning here that, based on the explanation he provides, Popalzai had originally completed the book in 1958, but according to him, it was burnt in a fire incident and he had to re-write it entirely, which took him another 21 years to complete. In the final year of completion, he says he got hold of a copy of Tarikhe Ahmadshahi [History of Ahmad Shah], written by Mahmud ul Hussaini, and printed

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

79

for the first time in Moscow in 1974.80 In the space of those 21 years, the foundation of the constructed official discourse had taken root in the country under the auspices of state created institutions and, in the meanwhile, the political system of Afghanistan had changed from a constitutional monarchy to a republic, in a coup d’e´tat, but with a lead from within the royal family. In the light of these new changes Popalzai, on one hand, tries to maintain the old narrative, and on the other, he seeks to accommodate the new developments and power shifts in Afghanistan: i.e. justifying the republican form of government against that of the monarchy. However, one can observe obvious tensions and paradoxes in his narrative which thus arise. To him, Ahmad Shah, after the assassination of Nadir, well before arriving in the city of Kandahar, was accepted as the next king of Afghanistan. The only reason for delaying this announcement was to consult more people. Once he arrived in the city, upon the insistence of the people, the elders, the scholars and the chiefs of tribes, he accepted the offer to be the new king. Apparently, it was here that he received the ‘wheat spike’ from the Afghan spiritual man, Sabir Shah, as the crown of his kingship. He also states that based on hereditary norms, Ahmad Khan was the right person to be the next king and that is because of his family background. Then, contrary to his own narrative, he replicates part of Ghubar’s story of ‘the grand assembly to elect the king’ (the Loya Jirga), where Ahmad Khan remains silent, but knowing for sure that he would be the only candidate. However, the following claims of the previous narrative are missing from his account of the events: the ‘national composition of his army’, the call for a national Jirga by Noor Mohammad Khan Ghilzai to elect the king, nine days of democratic deliberations by representatives of all the ethnic groups, disagreement on who should be the next king and the appointment of an arbiter to resolve the dispute. To him Noor Mohammad Khan is an ‘Alizai Durrani Pahstun’, not a ‘Ghilzai’. Contrary to the previous narratives, Popalzai claims that Noor Mohammad Khan was appointed chief of Kandahar by Nadir Afshar. He asserts that Noor Mohammad was in Kandahar at the time of Nadir’s assassination, rather than being with Ahmad Khan in Nadir’s court. Popalzai goes on to state that Noor Mohammad Khan subsequently organized a revolt against Ahmad Khan as he proclaimed the power in the city and finally was captured and executed by being trampled by an elephant in the presence of Ahmad Khan. Popalzai also argues that Peer

80

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Sabir Shah was originally from Kandahar and a close companion of Ahmad Khan all along, who had done what he did, by the order of God and his Prophet. He also adds that the people declared their allegiance (baiat) to Ahmad Shah, the khutbah81 was read in his name and new coins (sika) were minted to indicate the beginning of a new era. To him, Ahmad Khan is the re-establisher of the Afghan Empire; a revivalist who managed to reinstate the Afghan state and redraw its natural borders. He is the father of the nation and the founder of the Durrani Empire of Afghanistan. It is not mentioned in his narrative that Ahmad Shah has named his empire Afghanistan, rather he speaks of an existing Afghanistan, which had lost its independence to the Iranians and Ahmad Shah managed to reclaim it. In an unprecedented move in the history of Afghanistan, to demonstrate the impact of power in constructing and shaping new discourses, Popalzai states that Ahmad Khan was the founder of the first republic in the country, perhaps a desperate move to link Ahmad Shah’s kingdom to the newly born republic of Afghanistan in 1975.82 A kingdom established by the consent and consultation of the leaders of the nation and all civilian and military tasks are carried out after consulting and taking the religious verdict of the most famous people of the time is considered to be a republic [emphasis added]. Hence the establishment of the Durrani Empire marks the establishment of the Republic of Afghanistan.83 To link the struggle of Pashtun tribes to each other, despite their bloody internal wars and rivalries, the official narrative asserts that Ahmad Shah, the founder or the re-establisher of the Afghan state, is in debt to his predecessor Mirwais Hotaki, as he accomplished Mirwais’s vision for the country.84 Subsequently, within the scope of the nodal point of invasion and resistance, Russia (later the Soviet Union) replaces the Central Asian Khanates, Persia (Iran) replaces the Safavid and Qajar dynasties, and the British India (later Pakistan) replaces the Baburi or Mughal state of India. The narrative again operates within the same framework: because of foreign invasion the central state breaks, then, the people or the king resist or fight back to re-establish the state and in an attempt to do so the nodal point of Loya Jirga plays its traditional legitimizing role.

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

81

When it comes to the British invasion of Afghanistan and the three Anglo–Afghan wars, the official narrative, one can argue, based on crude hatred, enmity, hostility and radical antagonism depicts the ‘Englis’85 as an absolute evil. This approach not only takes into account Britain, but also all its Afghan collaborators. Britain as imperial and colonial power, similarly to previous foreign powers, once again threatens the Afghan state. The ‘people’, in this ‘new round of invasion and resistance’, are the real heroes of the war of independence against England. The rulers in this round of struggle, contrary to previous cases, where a king or a personality was the hero of the nation, have bowed to the ‘Englis’ master and have betrayed the real wish of the people. The myth of three consecutive England or Britain defeats in Afghanistan and the heroic struggle of the people constitute the core of the discursive formation of the official discourse on constructing the nodal point of invasion and resistance, the Afghan nationalism and historiography or history telling in the country. The official narrative not only fails to provide us with any account of the emergence of modern Afghanistan as a result of the three Anglo–Afghan wars and the Russian advancement toward Central Asia, but it strongly denies the role of any foreign power in creating or even facilitating the establishment of the Afghan state. The official narrative of this phase when it comes to the role of Amir Abdur Rahman (1880–1901), who is considered the founder of the modern Afghan state by foreign writers, to which I will come in my deconstructive move, and how he reached the throne, provides a conflicting account: sometimes sympathetic and sometimes an opponent because of changes in the power structure. However, he is not recognized in the official discourse as the founder of Afghanistan or founder of the modern state of Afghanistan. The official story refers to him as the iron Amir who united the country and established a strong central state in Afghanistan. Ghubar and Habibi agree that at the end of the second Anglo–Afghan war in 1880 he was chosen by Britain to replace Yaqub Khan as the next king of Afghanistan. In return he accepted the British suzerainty and was offered financial and military support. When he assumed power, according to Ghubar, the country was partially destroyed because of the two invasions. The administrative and military establishment had vanished and a new phase of chieftains had taken root in the country. When he became the king, he took it upon himself to fulfil two major tasks: the absolute centralization of authority through

82

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

establishing a strong central state, and social reforms. Amir was at the top of the political and administrative hierarchy. Under his leadership he developed a very sophisticated administrative, military, intelligence and taxation mechanism to execute the government’s daily policies. As an absolute monarch he used to implement his orders with no mercy even within his close circle. Internally he integrated different parts of the country and exerted the central government’s authority over the land. Most importantly the British and Russian governments during his reign demarcated the international borders of Afghanistan.86 All the historical books and literature, in both Farsi and Pashto, that I managed to consult during my research in and outside Afghanistan, with few exceptions in recent years (to which I will turn in my deconstructive move), replicate, reproduce and reinforce a similar narrative on the emergence of the Afghan state. The reason for this similarity and continuity is very simple: the dominant position of the official discourse of state formation in the country, first, because of the monopoly of power by a single ethnic group, and second because of a policy of radical exclusion of alternative discourses. The official discourse presented by Ghubar, Habibi, Kohzad and other members of ‘Anjoman-e Adabi Kabul’ is so dominant, decontested and sedimented that even questioning them can cause a storm among the Pashtunists and some non-Pashtun educated elite let alone the masses.87

The Emergence of State in the National Curriculum 1930– 78 A careful assessment of the national curriculum in this period reveals a total similarity between the semi-official and the official discourses, which is reflected in the national curriculum of Afghanistan around the same nodal points. One can observe a desperate attempt to claim that an independent and sovereign Afghan state – a distinctive political entityexisted for thousands of years. It operates within the same schema of historical and modern Afghanistan: Ariana in the pre-Islamic period, Khurasan in the Islamic era, and Afghanistan at time of Ahmad Shah Durrani.88 Kohzad, the author of a new history textbook in this period, begins his narrative with a cursory look at the ancient civilizations and empires of the world. He strives to differentiate Afghanistan’s historical–civilizational roots from ‘others’, and, at the same time, situate it in the history as a separate and independent nation. He begins

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

83

with the Aryans as the first indigenous inhabitants of Afghanistan.89 He tries to construct a separate historic civilizational background for Afghanistan which is different from that of Iran and other regional states.90 He claims that Yama was our first great king and goes on to state that after he was elected 91 by the nobles and elders, he then built the city of Bukhdy (Balkh) and raised his flag on four towers of his palace. In exploring the customs and social life of the Arias (i.e. the Aryans) he further claims that ‘Paktian Padsha’, (King Paktian) was the king of Pakts or Pashtuns, to situate the Afghans (Pashtuns) at the heart of the Aryan’s first kingdom in Afghanistan. He argues that Jirga (council or assembly) was very common at that time and our kings used to govern their country through assemblies and consultations. This is how he justifies the persistence of Jirgas in today’s Afghanistan.92 He further argues that singing, music and Atan were very common among our ancestors, especially Atan,93 which was very popular among the youngsters.94 He follows the same chronological history of Afghanistan, but with great emphasis on the separate character of Ariana as a country and on the resistance of its people against foreign invaders. With the arrival of Islam, this state collapses and the Arabs, however, with difficulty manage to conquer Afghanistan. In a bold move under the title of ‘the Holy warrior of Afghanistan’s independence’, the narrative introduces new political concepts, e.g. ‘war of independence’ and establishing new ‘independent states’.95 The narrative also portrays the dynasties that ruled Afghanistan in the post-Islamic period, as Independent National States of Afghanistan. Based on this account, Afghanistan had seven independent national states till the Mongols invaded the country. However, the narrative vaguely speaks of Afghans and the Afghan state and does not provide a full account of the ethnicity and the exact territorial borders of these imagined independent national states of Afghanistan: Tahirid State (821–872), Safari State (872–910), Samanid State (910–61), Ghaznavid State (962–1148), Seljuqi State (1038– 1153), Ghuri State (1148–1214) and Khawarazmian State (1214–19). At this stage a similar imaginary and fantasy to that of the semiofficial narrative takes shape within the framework of the nodal point of ‘invasion and resistance’; the Mughal invasion, national resistance, the re-establishment of Afghanistan under the Timurate State (807–913), the rise of three new powers, the disintegration of Afghanistan and a new space for the re-emergence of ‘the Afghan State’.96 Meanwhile, in an

84

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

unprecedented move, the official narrative adds a new chapter to explicate the ‘Afghan State in India’, which includes a long list of Afghan (Pashtun) dynasties that ruled over India.97 Unlike the semi-official narrative, because of changes in the power structure, the role of Mirwais and the Ghilzai Pashtuns in establishing the first self-ruled authority in Kandahar prior to Ahmad Shah is not very prominent in the narrative constructed by the Abdali or Durrani rooted government of Afghanistan. There is also no mention of the struggle of the Afghan tribes on the eastern front, contrary to the semi-official account, it refers to Mirwais as the elder and the chief, rather as the founder or father of the nation.98 When it comes to Ahmad Shah Abdali, the narrative portrays him as the ‘father’ (i.e. the father of the nation). But the story of ‘the National Jirga (assembly)’, nine days of democratic deliberations and how he was elected is missing from the narrative. However, it only claims that Ahmad Shah Abdali became king of the country through the people99 and that Sabir Shah Kabuli put a ‘wheat spike’ on his head as a crown.100

Dislocation and Diversification 1978 –2001 Taking into account the notion of social antagonism, and the ‘impossibility of the society’, we argued that discourses, by constructing nodal points, attempt to partially fix social meaning, but the contingency of meaning precludes this possibility from being actualized. As discursive fields are always characterized by a ‘surplus of meaning’ that can never be fully exhausted by any specific discourse. Furthermore, it is explained that because discourses are relational entities and their identities depend on their differentiation from other discourses, they are themselves dependent and vulnerable to those meanings that are necessarily excluded in any discursive articulation as well to the dislocatory effects of events beyond their control. In this phase, because of the radical dislocatory events in Afghanistan, which mainly began with the communist coup d’e´tat of 1978, the Soviet invasion of 1979, the Jihad and mass migration of the people, regional and international involvements, the official discourse is radically dislocated and challenged. The chapter begins with the communist coup d’e´tat of 1978. In this phase, the national curriculum and all major publications begin with an introduction to glorify the Communist Revolution of 1978 (now mostly

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

85

known as a coup d’e´tat) and the changes it instigated. A major shift in the official discourse of the ‘state formation’ in the communist era is their overemphasis on the role of the Ghilzai Pashtuns as opposed to the Durrani Pashtuns in the formation of the Afghan State, which can be attributed to the prominent role of the Ghilzai Pashtuns in the communist coup d’e´tat of 1978 which ended the Durranies rule. Another notable change in the narrative is the introduction of the classical Marxist discourse and its related terminologies in socio –political and historical analysis in the context of Afghanistan.101 The revolutionary communists’ account affirms the prehistoric configuration of the Afghan state codified by the previous regimes and state institutions. Hence, the focus will be on their account of how the contemporary Afghan state was re-established or perhaps re-emerged in 1747. The narrative, as usual, begins with the rivalry of the three newly emerged states in the region and hence the disintegration of Afghanistan between them. Here, contrary to the previous Durrani-centred discourse, it is the Ghilzai Afghans under the leadership of Mir Wais Khan, who successfully challenge the Safavids and establish the first independent national state of Afghanistan. In this narrative, for the first time, it is acknowledged that the Pashtun tribes have entered politics at the end of the seventeenth century, this assertion, to put it in context, contradicts the entire efforts of the previous Pashtun governments to establish the Afghans (Pashtuns) as the indigenous and early rulers of Afghanistan at the heart of the official discourse. Meanwhile, unlike the previous curriculum, the struggle of Mir Wais Khan has been linked to the struggles of other Pashtuns in the eastern parts of the imagined Afghanistan. To highlight the endeavours of the Pashtun tribes to establish an independent national state, the new discourse lists the following historical moments to achieve this goal; the Khatak tribe’s struggle in the sixteenth century under the leadership of Khushhal Khatak; the successful revolt of the Ghilzai tribes under the leadership of Mir Wais in 1706 against the Safavid rule in Kandahar, which led to the establishment of the first independent national state in Afghanistan; the revolt of the people under the leadership of the Abdali tribe in Herat in 1717; Mahmud’s conquest of Iran in 1722 with a mixed army of Tajiks, Hazaras and Bluchs, where he declared himself the king of Afghanistan and Iran; Ghilzai and their war against Nadir Afshar; rivalry between the Abdali and Ghilzai tribes; and finally the

86

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

revolt against Nadir Afshar and the establishment of the Durrani Empire in 1747.102 On the re-establishment of the Afghan state by Ahmad Shah Abdali and how he was elected, the narrative more or less repeats Ghubar’s account. However, it skips the appointment of an arbiter and the role played by Sabir Shah, perhaps because of ideological reservations,103 and instead the narrative claims that he was elected by the majority of the participants. A turban and a ‘wheat spike’ was presented to him instead of the crown, and this is why, according to the story, the ‘wheat spike’ is part of the official symbols of Afghanistan. Unlike other accounts, it has been asserted that among many other factors, Ahmad Khan’s return from Iran to Kandahar – with a lot of booty, soldiers and a strong artillery force – played a crucial role in his selection.104 The new narrative affirms that Amir Abdur Rahman was chosen by Britain to rule the country and for the first time the internal uprisings and struggle of the people against the expeditions and oppressions of the Amir are recognized as legitimate moves, especially the resistance of the Hazara people.105 The Amir himself, contrary to previous accounts, has been labelled a tyrant and oppressor. The communist coup d’e´tat of 1978 in Afghanistan, and the subsequent invasion of the Soviet Union in 1979 led to major domestic, regional, and international changes. As a result the state domination and control developed by the Musahiban dynasty (1930 – 78) collapsed and, because of the war and conflict, millions migrated to neighbouring countries (about three million to Pakistan and another two million to Iran).106 Consequently, for the first time in the history of Afghanistan the people, especially the non-Pashtun ethnic groups, secured the right of self-expression; culturally, militarily, and economically.107 This entitlement, and the new openness after a long period of exclusion, suppression and imposition because of Pashtun state domination, provided the people with the opportunity to write and express their collective memories, publish new books, newspapers, magazines and form new emancipationary debates on history and identity in Afghanistan. This, in turn, created a new radical dislocation in the discourse of state formation, especially among the nonPashtun ethnic communities of Afghanistan, to which I will come in my deconstructive move. However, the official discourse of state formation in the literature produced by the Mujahedeen, especially in the school curricula they

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

87

produced in Pakistan and Iran in the post-dislocation period, despite its preoccupation with the ideological dimension of the conflict, only challenge parts of the official discourse but endorse the master signifier and the three interrelated nodal points of the official discourse. The Islamic State of Afghanistan (1992–2001) after the collapse of the communist regime mostly relied on the curriculum produced in Pakistan, which affirms the core components of the official discourse, but the Taliban, as far as I know, have not produced new school books or any literature addressing the history of Afghanistan.

A Return to the Past: The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 2001 –10 In this phase the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which is the outcome of the Bonn agreement in 2001, replicates the 1929– 78 official curriculum and semi-official historiography on the emergence of state in Afghanistan in history, geography and literature (as far I have undertaken in my research).108 Concepts such as; Ariana, Aryians, historical and civilizational depth, Yama as the founder of the first Afghan state and Balkh as its capital, and finally the historical and the contemporary Afghanistan remain intact; an obvious attempt to return to the pre-1970 and delete the communist and Mujahedeen interventions.109 A similar imaginary around the nodal points of: the moments of emergence, the Jirga, and invasion and resistance akin to that of pre-communist revolution constructed under the auspices of state-run institutions and historians such as Ghubar, Habibi and Kohzad reproduces itself in the narrative. The construction of identity takes shape in opposition to an ‘outsider’, an ‘other’, who always attempts to block the fullness or identity of the Afghans. The Persians, Greeks, and Arabs have been represented as the ‘outsiders’, or the ‘others’.110 The arrival of Islam, the role of the people of Khurasan in the subsequent developments remains similar in the narrative, but with one fundamental shift: the Islamic Caliphate captures a central role in the narrative as the hub of the Muslim world, and this is because of the Islamization of education under the Mujahedeen. Hence all independent states or autonomous regions separated from the Caliphate are linked to the centre in one way or another. Some of the dynasties which ruled in the post-Islamic era over Khurasan or Afghanistan have been categorized

88

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

as such, while the same dynasties in the previous narratives were listed as the national independent states of Afghanistan.111 Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi is labelled as the noble and great Afghan politician who expanded the country by conquering new regions and his reign is branded as the golden age of Afghan history.112 The narrative explicitly endorses the previous construction that the land of the Afghans was divided for a long time between the Mughals of India, the Safavids of Iran and the Uzbeks of Transoxiana in today’s Central Asia.113 In the midst of this, the Afghans were fighting on three fronts to regain their independence.114 The Hotaki State of Afghanistan is attributed to the Ghilzai Pashtuns of Afghanistan, and Mirwais is entitled ‘Neka’, (grandfather in Pashto), but it is not as bold as it was in the communist era, perhaps because of the overwhelming presence of Durrani Pashtuns in the post-Bonn power structure in Afghanistan.115 The narrative affirms that Ahmad Shah Abdali, the father of the nation, was born in the city of Herat.116 On how he claimed the throne and re-established the Afghan State, the narrative replicates Ghubar’s constructed story.117 It is claimed that when he formally assumed power, the country was invaded by foreigners from all three fronts; east, west and the north. Therefore, Ahmad Shah Baba (the father) had no choice but to fight for the freedom of his fatherland and establish its natural borders.118 For this very reason, and to secure the natural borders of the country, he led his armies seven times to India, twice to the west and once to the north of the country with huge successes.119 His expeditions to India, especially his fifth expedition, have been justified under the pretext of Jihad against Hindus (non-Muslims or infidels).120 The narrative, then, by creating a natural harmony between the contradictory historical and political events of the country, attempts to eliminate the tensions from the historical imaginary of the nation by skipping the dislocatory shockwaves of post-1970 to suture the rupture and the dislocation caused by the communist, post-communist, Jihad, the national resistance and the Taliban. On the controversial figure of Amir Abdur Rahman, the new narrative claims that he returned to Afghanistan with Russian permission. It is claimed that he managed to unite the people under the banner of Jihad (i.e. holy war) against the infidels. The people in the north rallied behind him in their thousands to participate in Jihad. The political representatives of England, after realising the support of the people, on 30 July 1880 contacted the Amir. The negotiation was

RECONSTRUCTING

THE OFFICIAL

DISCOURSE

89

successful and England recognized him as the new king of Afghanistan.121 The narrative states that the borders of Afghanistan as a political entity were demarcated a century ago (1880–1935), mainly in the reign of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan. It goes on to claim that Russia and Britain had the upper hand in the process of demarcation, and this is why the state established by Ahmad Shah Durrani, which covered a larger area, was reduced to today’s Afghanistan.122 It is acknowledged that Amir accepted the British suzerainty as a pre-condition for his claim to the throne and it was Amir Amanullah Khan who reclaimed the independence of the country in 1919.

CHAPTER 3 RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION IN ENGLISH LITERATURE ON AFGHANISTAN:1809—2010

Introduction In order to deconstruct the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan, the second chapter of the book sought to reconstruct the official narrative in several phases around the master signifier of Afghanistan and the three nodal points of: (1) the myth of formation or emergence of the Afghan state, (2) the tradition of Loya Jirga (grand assembly) or governance by assembly and (3) the notion of invasion and resistance. In which Afghanistan and the Afghans functioned as the master signifier, which, on one hand, hooked together the nodal points of the state Pashtun-centric hegemonic project and, on the other, provided a distinctive meaning and identity to the entire chains of signification in the discourse. In doing so it relied on official and semi-official resources produced in Afghanistan in Farsi and Pashto, the two official languages of the country, from 1880 to 2010. The official discourse, as discussed in previous chapter, began with uncertainty, but gradually developed to embrace the Afghan state-sponsored exclusionary nationalist discourse, and finally reached a level of sophistication and advancement. In reconstructing the discourse, I brought to the fore the possible

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

91

impact of the colonial knowledge on the official narrative. However, it was difficult to establish the sources of the official discourse, the style of its presentation or examine the convergence or the reciprocal impacts of the two discourses in later stages. Furthermore, there are growing claims that Afghanistan as a concept and as a nation state in its modern sense, contrary to the official claim, is a colonial construct, which in a later stage was internalized by the Afghan state in a distorted manner to serve the exclusionary aims of the ruling family and the Pashtun elite. In exploring these possibilities in order to find answers to the questions raised in this chapter, utilizing the same methods and techniques explained in the introduction of the second chapter, I attempt to reconstruct as faithfully as possible the discourse of state formation in the knowledge produced in English by the colonial power, academics, researchers and also the Afghan state. In doing so, similar to the previous chapter, I attempt to reconstruct the discourse in English around the master signifier of Afghanistan and Afghans, and the three nodal points of the official discourse. The discourse has been reconstructed under the following three main catagories: (1) The colonial knowledge formation; (2) the convergence of the colonial knowledge or discourse with the Afghan nationalistic discourse; and (3) the beginning of dislocation, diversification and decolonization. The bulk of work on Afghanistan and the wider region in English begins with the advance of the British Empire towards India and the establishment of the East India Company in the seventeenth century in the subcontinent. The attempt to explore the region for colonial objectives intensified as the British Empire expanded eastward and the likelihood of confrontation with other European powers and the Russian Empire increased. In the beginning of what came to be known as the Great Game, several attempts were made by the British Empire to intervene militarily in Afghanistan. The desire to understand the Afghans’ socio-cultural fabric led to the production and accumulation of an abundance of books, intelligence reports and knowledge on Afghanistan and the neighbouring regions by British and Indian writers.1 In reconstructing the discourse of state formation in Afghanistan in the English literature, a threefold strategy is adopted: first, as an example of the colonial discourse and colonial representation, I begin with the first colonial attempts to study Afghanistan. In doing so, we begin with Forster and then move on to Elphinstone and his colleagues’ influential

92

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

work on Afghanistan and the Afghans. To account for the colonial knowledge on Afghanistan at this stage and how it was constructed by the British Empire, Gregorian writes: In the early nineteenth century, various official and non-official British missions, intelligence expeditions, and individual travellers visited Afghanistan. Most of these visits were undertaken under the auspices of the British government and the East India Company as part of an extensive study of the regions adjacent to British India. Their chief purpose was to extend and secure British economic interests and to neutralize foreign influences, particularly European ones that might injure British interests in India and the Middle East. The accounts of these travellers contributed much to the knowledge of the topography, geography, political developments, and history of Afghanistan.2 The most important of all colonial work on Afghanistan is Elphinstone’s (1809) remarkable two-volume book, An Account of the Kingdom of Cabaul, and his secret reports. His diplomatic mission brought the Afghans the first significant contact with Europeans, and his book, on one hand, laid the foundation of the colonial discourse on Afghanistan, and on the other, provided the first comprehensive description of the kingdom. Other major works in this period include: Moorcroft, Trebeck and Guthrie, all British agents (1810– 23). Charles Masson (1820s), James Fraser (1820s), a French officer, Arthur Conolly (1830), all travelled to Afghanistan, and Alexander Burnes (1834; 1843); Political, Geographical and Commercial Reports and Papers (1835– 7) and Ferrier (1857; 1858) History of the Afghan.3 All of these works and undertakings added further to the enrichment of the colonial knowledge on Afghanistan. After the two Anglo– Afghan wars, again large numbers of books and literature on Afghanistan emerged and the trend continued in different shapes and capacities accommodating the shifting dynamics of the region.4 This is the period I consider the phase of colonial knowledge formation on Afghanistan, in particular the Elphinstonian discourse, which had a profound impact on the constitution and development of the Afghan official discourse. Once Afghanistan was forcibly integrated into the new international system based on the Euro-centric nation state system, a process of change

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

93

took root in the country. The controlled modernization and the slow opening in the reign of Habibullah Khan (1901– 19) in Afghanistan facilitated a new movement for the publication of new books, a newspaper, translation and the production of knowledge. The state for the first time opened modern schools and hence employed teachers from British India and Turkey. The need for new teaching materials for newly introduced subjects, e.g. history, geography and science, accelerated the need for translation. This trend was followed more vigorously by the radical modernization Afghanistan experienced under King Amanullah Khan (1919– 28) and under the Musahiban dynasty (1929–78). In this period, as explained in the previous chapter, the process of rewriting history and constructing a new image of Afghanistan was institutionalized under the direct supervision and guidance of the state. It is contended that it was in this period that Afghan writers internalized the colonial knowledge systematically and reproduced it with an Afghani flavour. The major modification or development in this period is what I call the convergence of the Afghan (Pashtun)-centric statesponsored nationalism with colonial and post-colonial discourses. This is the period I call ‘the convergence of the colonial knowledge/discourse with the Afghan ethno-nationalist discourse’ or the post-Elphinstonian discourse. In the period of post-Elphinstonian discourse from 1930 to the 1970s, when the Afghan government consolidated its grip on power and established a wide range of diplomatic relations with the wider world, a new phase of research and writing on Afghanistan took shape. There are some major works produced by English-speaking scholars and researchers in this period, especially by the Americans. Furthermore the foreign teams carried out a number of archaeological excavations, which are widely cited and referred to by both national and international academics and researchers. It is argued that two books are the major productions of this period: The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan (1969) by Gregorian and Afghanistan (1973) by Dupree, which are the main focus of the chapter in the post-Elphinstonian discourse up to the 1980s. As a representative sample of the books produced after 1980s, the chapter consults Fragmentation of Afghanistan (2002) by Rubin, Revolution Understanding; Afghanistan 1979 to the Present (2000) by Dorronsoro, and Afghanistan: A Short History of Its People and Politics (2002), by Ewans. In addition to the colonial and post-colonial work produced in English, it also refers to a number of works in English either produced or

94

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

sponsored by the Afghan government or written by well-known Afghan writers, I call them state beneficiaries,5 enforcing the official narrative, sympathetic to it or influenced by it to present an Afghan perspective of the topic under discussion. In doing so the following works are consulted: Afghanistan a Brief Survey (1934), by Ahmad and Aziz, Ahmad Shah Durrani Father of Modern Afghanistan (1959), by Singh, Government and Society in Afghanistan; The Reign of Amir Abd al-Rahman Khan (1979), by Kakar, Production and Domination in Afghanistan, 1747– 1901 (1982), a PhD thesis presented at Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University by Ghani, and Afghanistan Political Frailty and External Interference (2006) by Misdaq. It is further argued that the communist coup d’e´tat of 1978, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the countrywide Jihad and resistance against the occupation, the worldwide support for the resistance, the Russian withdrawal, the collapse of the communist regime, the victory of the Mujahedeen in 1992, the emergence of the Taliban, the events of 9/11, the US intervention and the Bonn transitional process after 2001 are some of the major dislocatory events in the history of Afghanistan in post-1980. As a result of these dislocatory events, the iron walls and the government-imposed suppression and the exclusion and isolation of other ethnicities collapsed, but also a mass migration to neighbouring countries and to the wider world took place, which enabled different groups to obtain the right of self-expression with radical consequences. This is the period I call ‘dislocation, diversification and decolonization’, which opened the space for the emergence of new claims and demands. In this period, enormous amounts of academic and journalistic works on Afghanistan have been produced in English. Majority of which could be categorized generally as reproducing the Elphinstonian, post-Elphinstonian and the official discourse, but there are also works that could be considered as post-dislocatory, and critically reflecting the dislocation and challenging the colonial and official discourse, to which we refer in some detail in the deconstructive move. To recapitulate, based on the literature categorized, this chapter, in its quest to reconstruct the discourse of state formation in Afghanistan centred on the master signifier of the narrative: Afghanistan and Afghans; and the three nodal points of: the myth of emergence, the notion of governance by assembly and the concept of invasion and

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

95

resistance, will pursue its aims in three phases; (1) the colonial knowledge formation, (2) the convergence of colonial knowledge with the Afghan ethno-nationalist discourse and (3) the epoch of dislocation, diversification and decolonization. In reconstructing the discourse the chapter remain loyal to the ‘deconstructive genealogical’ method: 1) Derrida’s deconstruction technique of ‘double reading’ which, on the one hand, involves an initial endeavour to reconstruct ‘in the most faithful, interior way’ the logics of a dominant discourse or text and its intention, so as to provide the most ‘charitable’ and plausible interpretation possible, and on the other, it seeks to pinpoint ‘from a certain exterior’, the gaps, tensions, paradoxes, limits, and ‘points of undecidability’ in discourses or texts, which enable the discourses or texts to both cohere and ‘organize themselves’, and simultaneously serve to undermine their coherence and unity. 2) Foucault’s genealogy, which, on one hand, is explicitly concerned with the centrality of power and domination in the constitution of discourses and identities which involves the adoption of a critical ethos in their examination, and on the other, it studies the historical emergence of the discursive formations with a view to exploring possibilities that were excluded by the exercise of power and systems of domination.

Colonial Knowledge Formation 1808– 1901 The first part of this chapter began with the colonial discourse formation; when and how was the colonial discourse formed? What was the motive and purpose of such a move? Which tool or theoretical framework was employed to formulate the discourse? Was it reflecting a Western colonial discursive or a local one? And finally what are the practical implications of the colonial discourse for Afghanistan and the wider region? To answer these questions and reconstruct the colonial discourse at this stage, we begin with the master signifier of the discourse: Afghanistan and Afghans, and then move to the three nodal points of the narrative.

George Forster It is argued that Afghanistan’s name and perception in the English literature was coined and introduced for the first time by Forster in 1783

96

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

when he embarked on a journey from Bengal to England through parts of India, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Persia, and Russia.6 He provides a detailed account of his trip to Afghanistan; the land where Afghans i.e. Pashtuns or Pathans lived or had occupied. Forster enters the domain of Timur Shah (1772– 1793), son of Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1783. The capital of the kingdom, when he arrives, has moved from Kandahar to Kabul, and he refers to Kabul as ‘the capital of the Afghan empire’.7 He begins his journey from Kashmir, and visits Peshawar, Jalalabad, Kabul, Ghazni, Kandahar and Herat respectively. His perception of Afghanistan is the land lived in or controlled by Afghans at the time he visits the kingdom. However, according to him, north of Kabul with the city of Balkh as its capital, is not included in Afghanistan, but ruled by Tatars. When he crosses the city of Kandahar and is about to enter the city of Herat, he speaks of crossing to Khurasan, and presents a different history of the city and Khurasan. He speaks of Afghans, Persians and Tatars or Turks as the main inhabitants of the kingdom. The centres of the cities he visits are multi-cultural and populated by a large community of Jews, Georgians, Armenians, Hindus, and Sikhs. He speaks of tolerance in the cities despite the radical religiosity of the Afghans. This is how he identifies the location of the master signifier of the discourse, and the character of the Afghans: The Afghans are the indigenous possessors of a tract of country, which stretches from the mountains of Tartary to certain parts of the gulf of Cambay and Persia, and from the Indus to the confines of Persia. The inhabitants of this wide domain have no written character and speak a language peculiar to themselves. They are a robust, hardy race of men; and generally partake of a barbarous insolence, and they avow a fixed contempt for the occupations of civil life.’8 Forster differentiates between Afghans and other inhabitants of the land, especially between Afghans and Tartars, who according to him bear no resemblance. Forster, contrary to the official discourse, observes that little satisfactory history or knowledge of Afghans and their governments is known. But relying on Ferishta’s history, Dein’s memories of Timur, and Dowe’s History of Hindostan, he attempts to construct a history of Afghanistan and the Afghans and how they

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

97

emerged and developed. However, he adds that because of lack of native record and ‘the superficial manner in which the subject has been treated by foreign writers, little substantial matter can now exist for the construction of the history of the Afghans. Yet the loss is the more easily consoled when it is considered that little information or pleasure can arise to the mind from reviewing the actions of a race of men enveloped in savage ignorance, and stigmatized even by the fierce Tartars for their cruelty and rapine.’9 Forster then, in his quest to present a historical account of Afghanistan and the Afghans, similar to the official discourse, speaks of what he calls ‘the modern history of Afghanistan’, and begins from 1720 when Mahmud, son of Mirwais, chief of Kandahar attacks Persia. He further details the attack by the Abdali tribe on Herat, the famous city of Khurasan, the subsequent rise of Nadir Afshar, the defeat of both of the Afghan tribes i.e. Ghilzai and Abdali and how Nadir used the Afghan Abalies to fight alongside his army. Hence, according to him, if the ancient history of the Afghans is uncertain, their modern history, which begins from 1720, is known and has been recorded.10 Forster refers to Ahmad Khan Abdali as the founder of the modern empire of Afghanistan, and adds that he could not find accurate information about him.11 He introduces Ahmad Khan as the commander of the Afghan forces of Nadir, who, after the assassination of Nadir, retreated and successfully marched with his four to five thousand men to Kandahar, seizing a large treasure sent to Nadir, where he was acknowledged as the sovereign of the Afghan territories by the title of Ahmad Shah, and it was from there that he expanded his rule to India and other parts of Khurasan. Despite the fact that he refers to Ahmad Khan as the founder of the modern empire of Afghanistan, but contrary to the official discourse, he does not provide us any account of the nodal points of emergence, the notion of governance by assembly and the notion of invasion and resistance. However, as is observed, he refers to some of the characters of the Afghans, which could justify their bravery. Contrary to the official discourse, Forster considers the Afghans the occupiers of some of the land, and argues that it is mainly because of the weakness of India and Persia that they can rule over the present land. He further adds that if Persian forces were under an able leader, they will not only revert the dismembered division of ‘Khurasan’ to its ancient possessors, but the Afghans again would feel a foreign yoke.12

98

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Mountstuart Elphinstone Now we turn to the work of Mountstuart Elphinstone, which is by any measure the cornerstone of constituting the colonial discourse on Afghanistan. It would be beneficial if prior to constructing his side of the story, some background information is provided on his work and its importance. Elphinstone was the first British Ambassador to the court of Shah Shuja, king of Kabul, in 1808– 9. He was tasked with negotiating a treaty with the ruler of Kabul and was successful in securing it, but the most important achievement of his trip was the masses of information and data he collected on Afghanistan. This data is available in over nine volumes in the India Office. It is argued that he and his colleagues in the East India Company, as the first major group to study Afghanistan, have laid the foundation of the colonial knowledge or discourse on Afghanistan, which defines Afghanistan for the British imperial state, to the wider world and for the Afghans themselves. Elphinstone then transformed the information he and his colleagues had collected into a knowledge for the use of the colonial state, and later for the wider educated public with the publication of his pioneering book, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul in 1815.13 Much has been written and said on the importance of his work and its hegemonic role in understanding Afghans and the surrounding region. Sir Olaf Caroe, in his introduction to the book, to illustrate this importance, states: It is perhaps the most entertaining official record ever written in English. After a sojourn of less than six months beyond the Indus, Elphinstone came away with a knowledge of the country and its people which less gifted men have failed to gain in a lifetime on the Frontier.14 In a similar move to mark the importance and the hegemonic influence of Elphinstone’s discourse on colonial knowledge and academia in the West Dupree observes: Most writings on Afghan people and culture is simply a footnote to Elphinstone’s classic work (1815). Writers on Afghanistan have either copied Elphinstone or copied who have copied Elphinstone.15

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

99

In the preface of the book, Elphinstone provides a very detailed account of his methodology, sources and how they managed to collect the information during the mission’s stay in the Kingdom of Caubul, which according to him would serve the interest of the British Government. The mission collected the general information and then they drew up a plan and assigned each member of the team with a particular task. Geography, climate, soil, products, husbandry, trade, revenue, history and government were some of the fields they undertook to study. Elphinstone himself undertook the study of the government and manners of the people. He reports that he used the overall information gathered by the group to write the book and indicates that he has also consulted Afghans residing in Bombay and Poona to complete his study of the Afghans.16 On the aims of the mission, which perhaps triggered the British to send their diplomatic envoy, Elphinstone states that in 1808 there were reports from the British Mission in Persia and other sources that the French intend to carry the war into Asia, therefore it was decided to send a mission to the Kingdom of Caubul. He indicates that it was known that the Kingdom of Caubul was haughty, hence it was decided that the mission should be in a magnificent and great style. Hence he was tasked to visit the Kingdom of Caubul, and its king, Shah Shuja.

Afghanistan and Afghans; as the Master Signifier of the Discourse The Afghanistan Elphinstone visits and writes about was part of the Kingdom of Caubul rather than a separate political entity, and the Afghans he talks about are the Pashtuns, or Pathans as we know them today, rather than citizens of a nation state irrespective of their ethnic origin or affiliation, as it is understood today. In this mission he undertakes to study the Afghans (Pashtuns) living in an area he decides to demark generously and name it Afghanistan, which is not very different from Forster’s assessment.17 This is how he describes the geographical location of the Kingdom of Caubul; it is difficult to fix the limits of the Kingdom, when its sovereignty extended over a large area, but now the empire has suffered some considerable diminution. Based on the Asiatic criterion of extension of a king’s sovereignty, he adopts the principle of Khootba and coins,18 rather than the colonial

100

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

principle of territoriality and sovereignty, to provide an accurate map of the Kingdom of Caubul. In this view the present kingdom of Caubul extends from the west of Heraut in longitude 628, to the eastern boundary of Cashmeer in longitude 778 east, and from the mouth of the Indus, in latitude 248, to the Oxus in latitude 378 north.19 However, he asserts that the whole space included in this map is not part of the Kingdom of Caubul. The Kingdom, according to him, is bounded on the east by Hindoostaun, on the south by the Persian Gulf, on the west by desert and on the north by the Oxus River. Hence, according to their latest map the Kingdom of Caubul includes the following regions: It comprehends Afghanistaun and Segistan, with part of Khorassaun and of Makran; Balkh, with Tokarestaun and Kilan; Kuttore, Caubul, Candahar, Sindy, and Cashmeer; together with a portion of Lahore, and the greater part of Moultaun.20 He further estimates that the population of the kingdom is under fourteen million. He provides the proportion of the various nations inhabiting the Kingdom of Caubul as follows: Afghauns: 4,300,000, Beloches: 1,000,000, Tartars of all descriptions: 1,200,000, Persians (including Tajiks): 1,500,000, Indians (Cashmeerees, Juts, and others): 5,700,000, and Miscellaneous tribes: 300,000. After providing an account of the Kingdom of Caubul and situating it in the region, he states that the principle part of his account of the Kingdom will focus on ‘Afghauns’. It should be clarified once again that ‘Afghauns’, as he spells it, means the Pashtuns. He begins by constructing the borders of the imagined Afghanistan; the land where Afghans (Pashtuns) live, from Peshawar, where he is based: I am now enabled to describe the complicated limits of the country of the Afghauns. On the north, it has Hindoo Coosh, and the Paropamisan range. The Indus is its boundary on the east, while that river continues near the hills, that is, as far as lat. 328 20’. The plain on the right bank of the Indus, south of lat. 32 20,

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

101

is inhabited by Beloches; but the chain of Solimaun, with its subordinate ranges, and the country immediately at their base, belongs to the Afghauns. The hills, which have been mentioned as bounding Seestaun on the north, form the southern limits of the country of the Afghauns. The Afghaun country immediately to the north of these mountains, does not at first extend so far west as to reach the table-land of Kelaut; but it afterwards shoots past this on the north, and reaches the desert, which is its north-western boundary.21 After describing the geographical location, and borders of the land of Afghans, and stating that ‘the whole of Afghaunistaun, west of the range of Solimaun, is a table-land, lying higher than most of the neighbouring countries’,22 Elphinstone comes to the significant point of constructing a new identity for the master signifier of the discourse: The Afghauns have no general name for their country; but that of Afghaunistaun, which was probably first employed in Persia, is frequently used in books, and is not unknown to the inhabitants of the country to which it applies. I shall, therefore, use it in future to express the country of which I have just described the limits.23 He further affirms that much of the ‘Afghaun’ country is included in the celebrated and extensive province of Khorassaun, and the remaining part of Khorassaun, which belongs to Persia. The ‘Afghauns’, he states, generally call their country Khurasan. After constructing the geopolitical location of Afghanistan, in the subsequent four chapters of the first volume of his book he provides detailed accounts of mountains, rivers, natural and political divisions, climate, animal and minerals of Afghanistan. In the second volume, he provides a very detailed ethnographic account of the inhabitants of Afghanistan. He observes that the Afghan (Pashtun) society lacks regular courts, justice and organized police. Instability and disorder is persistent where the government has no control and every man is pursuing his own inclinations, undirected and unrestrained.24 On the origin of the name; Afghaun, which he would apply to the nation he is about to describe, he states that it is entirely uncertain. However, he thinks the name is modern, and known to Afghauns through the Persian language. The

102

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

name they use for themselves, he argues, is ‘Pooshtoons’ or ‘Pookhtauns’, called ‘Pitans’ in India, and ‘Solimaunee’ by Arabs. He further argues that the Afghans (Pashtuns) do not have any general name for their own country, sometimes applying the Persian names Afghaunistaun, Pooshtoonkhau and Sirhud, but these names are not very common. The name mostly and commonly used for the country, according to him, is ‘Khorassaun’. The name most generally applied to the whole country by its inhabitants is Khorassaun; but this appellation is obviously incorrect; for on one hand, the whole of the Afghaun country is not included within the strict limits of Khorassaun; and, on the other, a considerable part of the province is not inhabited by Afghauns.25 On the origin of Afghans, as an ethnic group, he narrates several accounts, and asserts that he knows little about the early history of the Afghans.26 However, he states that Afghans have mainly lived close to the Suleiman Mountains and from there they gradually expanded their influence to include larger parts of ‘Khorassaun’ and the whole Kingdom of Cabual.27 On the history of Pashto as a language and the education among Pashtuns he observes that Afghans use the Persian alphabet and write and read in Farsi. He adds that famous Pashto authors are more than a century and half old and there are no books in the language double that antiquity. He reports that Persian is the language of composition and almost all books of science are written in Persian.28 He further provides a detailed account of all Afghan tribes, their territory, genealogy, history, customs and their role in the government, a detailed account of the provinces of the kingdom, and an account of the royal government of the Kingdom of Caubul, its administration, revenue, justice, police, religious and military establishment. He observes that the king has unlimited power and he in the absence of any written law and constitution runs the empire. The crown in the kingdom is hereditary in the branch of Suddozai, which is a descendant of Ahmad Shah.29 Elphinstone argues that Afghans used to work as mercenaries and soldiers for different conquerors, and mainly stayed isolated in mountains till the beginning of eighteenth century. He believes that during the rule of descendants of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, the

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION 103

Afghans maintained their independence in the mountains and even at the time of Babur who conquered Kabul and moved to India, they seem to be unconnected to the outside world. Once the capital of Mughals was transferred from Kabul to Delhi, he argues, then the plains of Afghanistan were divided between the empires of India and Persia, but the mountains maintained their independence.30 The rise of Pashtuns in the political map of the region, he argues, begins with Ghilzai tribe’s conquest of Persia and the subsequent rise of Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Durrani. Naudir Shah overthrew this dynasty, and annexed most of Afghaunistaun to Persia; and, on his death, the present Afghaun monarchy was founded; which at its height extended from the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea to that of the River Jumna, and from the Oxus to the Indian Ocean.31 It is noted that Elphinstone, in his description of Kingdom of Caubul, considers Afghanistan as one of its regions, and Afghans as an ethnic group living in Afghanistan. He argues that the names Afghanistan and Afghan are usually used by Persians, but Afghans refer to Khurasan as the general name of the country, or perceive themselves to be part of Khurasan. It is worth mentioning, that according to my findings, Elphinstone, even in his genealogical study of Afghan tribes, does not mention the Aryan origin of the Afghans (Pashtuns).

The Nodal Point of Emergence After constructing, however briefly, the master signifier of the discourse in Elphinstone’s account of the Kingdom, now the chapter focuses on other nodal points of the discourse. Hence, it begins with the myth of emergence. Elphinstone, contrary to the official discourse, which speaks of historical and contemporary Afghanistan, but very similarly to the first stages of the formation and codification of the official discourse, begins the history of Afghans (Pashtuns) with the establishment of the Abdali or Durrani Empire. Khurasan is the general name of the kingdom according to him, which includes Afghanistan as one of its regions. However, the notion of Ariana as the ancient name and history of the kingdom is missing from Elphinstone’s

104

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

account. This is how Elphinstone portrays the history of the Durranies, and how they managed to rise to power: Little is known of the early history of the Dooraunees. By the best accounts I can obtain, they appear to have been entirely independent till the beginning of the seventeenth century, when, being hard pressed by the Uzbeks, they agreed to pay tribute to Persia, as the price of protection. They perhaps remained on this footing till 1708, when the Ghiljies, who had been subject to Persia, rose against the Georgian Prince Bagrathion, who was governor of Candahar on the part of the last of the Sophies. At that time the Doorannees seem mostly to have been settled in the mountains near Heraut, under the name of Abdaullees, and to have been already long engaged in hostilities with the Ghiljies. In the year 1716 the Abdaullees, under Abdoollah Khaun Suddozyes, invaded the Persian territory, defeated the governor of Heraut in the field, and took that city and many places in its neighbourhood.32 He argues that as Ghilzai Afghans became busy with their conquests in Persia, the Durrani tribe remained untouched for a long time. Finally they were defeated by Nadir Shah Afshar in 1728 and in 1731 and joined his army. He narrates a similar story that Ghilzais were defeated by Nadir and Ahmad Shah with his brother were released from prison in Kandahar and sent to Mazandaran. The Abdali Afghans, he adds, distinguished themselves in the service of Nadir, and he rewarded them with lands near Kandahar. When Nadir was assassinated in June 1747, a battle took place between the Afghans and Uzbeks under Ahmad Shah on one side and the Persians on the other. In the aftermath of this incident Ahmad Shah retreated to Kandahar and established the Durrani Empire: After this affair Ahmed Shauh fought his way through the greater part of Khorassaun, and passing the fortified places without attacking them, repaired to Candahar, where he arrived with a force not exceeding two or three thousand horse.33 Once Ahmad Shah arrives in Kandahar, according to the narrative, he finds that the people have seized a treasure coming from India to Nadir; he immediately claims that for himself.

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION 105

Some of the chiefs at first hesitated to give it up to him, though his authority as head of the Suddozyes was now backed by military force. He put some of the most obstinate to death, and met with no further opposition in his tribe.34 This is how Elphinstone narrates the coronation of Ahmad Khan, which has been constructed as a democratic conduct to symbolize the moment of formation of the contemporary or modern Afghanistan in the official discourse: In October 1747 he was crowned at Candahar: Dooraunee, Kuzailbaush, Beloche, and Hazaureh chiefs are mentioned as assisting at the coronation. Ahmed Shauh was then very young: a contemporary historian makes him only twenty three years of age. He spent the winter in Candahar, settling the country he had already acquired, and arranging his army for future expeditions. In framing his government he appears to have had the model of that of Persia before his eyes. The forms of his court, the great officers of state, the arrangement of the army, and the pretensions of the crown, were exactly the same as those of Naudir Shauh. . ..35 However, one has to approach critically Elphinstone’s idea of Bloch and Hazara supporting Ahmad Shah in his coronation. He also mentions some of the policies of the new king in establishing a patrimonial system by rewarding his tribe and establishing an ‘empire of plunder’ where different tribes would join him in the hope of getting their share of the plunder. He also argues that the climate was right for the emergence of an Afghan Empire due to the decline of existing empires in the region.36 However, the call for a grand assembly, the notion of nine days of democratic deliberation, electing or selecting the king through consent or an arbiter, Sabir Shah, is not mentioned in Elphinstone’s account.

The Nodal Point of Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) or Governance through Assemblies In his ethnographic study of the Afghan (Pashtun) tribes, Elphinstone provides a detailed account of how the tribal system functions.

106

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

He further attempts to characterize the Afghan personality and the governing code of conduct among the tribes. In doing so he refers to the code of Pashtunwali37 as the internal criminal justice system among the Afghan tribes. He sees Jirga as a mechanism through which tribes resolve disputes, internal rivalry or internal fighting, rather than as a political institution to decide on national issues. A Jeerga is generally assembled by the local chief, but in most tribes any man who is fit to be a member may summon a meeting, and in many tribes non-attendance is punishable by a fine.38 The concept of Jirga and Loya Jirga as a democratic political institution to decide on major national issues, and its prominent role in the establishment of contemporary Afghanistan, as it was constructed at a later stage as a nodal point in the official discourse of state formation, is missing from Elphinstone’s accounts of the Jirga. He only refers to it as a local tribal tool, supposedly for the first time, to mediate and resolve disputes among different tribes. However, he does refer to the Abdali government in Herat as being democratic all the time, and being managed by a Jirga or council of elders of the family for a while.39

The Nodal Point of Invasion and Resistance Despite the fact that, similar to the first stages of the official discourse, Elphinstone does not provide a systematic account of invasion and resistance, but he portrays the tribes as republicans, free, warriors and nobles. He compares the Afghans to the Highlander tribes of Scotland, where Elphinstone was originally from. The types of characters he attributes to these tribes, from being republicans, nobles, free, and at the same time savages, one can conclude that he is attempting to romanticize a primitive tribal structure. To sum up the character of the Afghauns in a few words; their voices are revenge, envy, avarice, rapacity, and obstinacy; on the other hand, they are fond of liberty, faithful to their friends, kind to their dependents, hospitable, brave, hardy, frugal, laborious, and prudent; and they are less disposed than the nations in their neighbourhood to falsehood, intrigue, and deceit.40

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

107

Apart from this brief description, and the history of tribes united for plunder, he does not provide any account of the notion that Afghans had an independent national state, with a distinctive historical and civilizational background since ancient times. In the subsequent years of the company and British engagement, volumes of books and reports on Afghanistan were produced, and the country was the subject of several enquiries and studies. Among other things, here I would like to refer to the studies focused on the notion of Ariana by Wilson in his book Ariana Antiqua: A Descriptive Account of the Antiquities and Coins of Afghanistan in 1841, and the ethnographic and several other extensive studies of Afghanistan by Bellew e.g. Afghanistan and the Afghans (1879), The Races of Afghanistan (1880), and An Enquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan (1891), which among others invokes the Greek narrative of the region. Alongside Elphinstone, these colonial undertakings also have their profound impact on the construction of ancient Afghanistan as Ariana, as a separate distinctive entity in the Afghan ethno-nationalist official discourse.41 To recap, the concept of Afghanistan and Afghans was first introduced in English literature by Forster in his short journey to the region in 1783. A major development in discovering the region after Forster is Elphinstone and his mission. He visits the ‘Kingdom of Cabaul’, the king at this time who rules some parts of the kingdom, is a Durrani Afghan (Pashtun). The shaky and unstable kingdom is inhabited by several ethnicities or nations, as Elphinstone puts it, and composed of several distinct regions and cities. Afghans are one of these nations or ethnic groups. Elphinstone, in his colonial endeavour to collect information, decides to study the Afghans (Pashtuns) during his brief stay in Peshawar, the summer residence of the Afghan king. He faces some difficulties in determining the exact location where the Afghans (Pashtuns) live in the Kingdom of Cabaul, in order to establish the scope of the region he would study, he generously demarcates a large area of the kingdom and calls it Afghanistan, as it was usual with colonial powers to draw the borders of different countries in European capitals without due consideration. He admits that the Afghans do not have a general name for their country, and the names Afghan and Afghanistan are mainly used by Persians. He states that the general name the Afghans use for their country is Khurasan, but based on his personal justifications, he prefers to re-name it Afghanistan. He constructs and textualizes for the

108

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

first time a distinctive history, customs, code of conduct, and identity for this new geographical entity. In doing so he tribalizes the Afghans (Pashtuns) and then territorializes the tribalism he constructs. He discusses in some detail the historical efforts of the Afghans to form their own government. He begins with the Durrani Empire and considers Ahmad Shah Durrani the founder of the Empire in 1747. He refers to Jirga as a local and tribal mechanism of resolving tribal or inter-tribal rivalries and conflicts among Afghan tribes. He portrays the Afghans as republicans, warriors and at the same time barbarians, similar to the Highlander tribes of Scotland. He romanticizes the notion of freedom among the tribes, which enforces, however indirectly, the notion of invasion and resistance. At later stages, as the colonial discourse develops, the colonial writers further enrich the foundation laid by Elphinstone. This colonial ethnographic construction of an ethnic group gradually transforms to apply to Afghanistan as a newly post-colonial nation state, which is fundamentally different from what is characterized and intended by Elphinstone. The power of the colonial discourse and colonial knowledge is such that, on one hand, it widely represents and introduces Afghanistan to the wider world, and, on the other, the Afghans themselves internalize it.

Convergence of Colonial Discourse with Afghan National Discourse (1901– 78) In this part of the chapter, after establishing the foundation of the colonial discourse on Afghanistan, the focus will be on the second phase of the development and convergence of the official and colonial discourses, what I also call the post-Elphinstonian discourse. After the Anglo–Afghan wars and the direct engagement of the East India Company and then the British India with Afghanistan, the accumulation of colonial knowledge of Afghanistan is enormous; covering a wide range of issues e.g. history, culture, economy and ethnography. The military and intelligence reports of British agents and officials provide a detailed account of the daily events in the country. But the theme of the study remains the same as it was structured by the Elphinstonian discourse. The majority of Western writers and experts on Afghanistan were Company employees or British officials who stayed or were forced to stay loyal to the official line of the story. Major parts of this colonial knowledge and information on

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION 109

Afghanistan, which were not considered dangerous or wild by the Afghan state, have been internalized by the Afghan state in one way or another. Generally speaking the pre-1920 English works on Afghanistan to a large extent do not reflect the ethno-nationalistic aspirations of the Afghan state as it developed in post-independent 1919s. Hence, one can argue that there is a shift in the English literature after 1920 due to state efforts to infuse its state-sponsored nationalistic discourse into works produced in English, either by foreign and Afghan researchers or by the state itself. As an example of this convergence in the work produced by Western academic researches, I focus on two main works on Afghanistan: The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880–1946 (1969) by Vartan Gregorian, and Afghanistan (1973) by Louis Dupree. The majority of the scholarly work on Afghanistan after 1920s, on one hand, replicates the core of the colonial knowledge or the Elphinstonian discourse and, on the other, it reflects the constructed statesponsored nationalistic aspirations of the Afghan state.

Afghanistan and Afghans as the Master Signifier of the Discourse in Post-1920 V. Gregorian Gregorian admits that: ‘[. . .] historical data and information about Afghan socioeconomic institutions and culture of the period are fragmentary, scattered, and negligible.’42 He also observes that ‘[. . .] it is only in recent years that Afghan historians have undertaken the task of consulting, compiling, and translating manuscripts (in the Kabul Museum and in the libraries of the Afghan Department of Press and the Ministry of Education) that provide additional information on the nature of Afghan internal politics and the development of some of the country’s institutions during the past two centuries.’43 This reveals the attempts of the Afghan Government to construct, rewrite, and invent a new identity for Afghanistan. Gregorian further explains the influence of the colonial knowledge and the internalization of this narrative by the Afghans, with special attention to the impact of ‘Elphinstonian discourse’ or his ‘hegemonic text’.44 Because of the scarcity of source material and the pioneering state of Afghan historiography, the complete history of the region has

110

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

yet to be told. Even contemporary Afghan historians like Qasim Reshtiya, who has attempted to write the first extensive political history of nineteenth-century Afghanistan, have had to rely on the very few Afghan secondary sources, more often, on English ones. To study the Afghan monarchy at the beginning of the nineteenthcentury, or to look into the origins and characteristics of Afghan feudalism or the organization of the Afghan tribes, one still has to rely heavily on the work of Mountstuart Elphinstone.45 Gregorian argues that Afghanistan as an independent political entity emerged in the middle of the eighteenth century when the Afghans imposed their rule upon territories extending from Punjab to Baluchistan. However, on the other hand, he admits that the present frontiers of Afghanistan were not established until the beginning of the twentieth century. Gregorian refers to Afghanistan as the highway of conquest, crossroads of civilizations, religions and roundabout of trade routes linking Europe with Far East and India. He argues, similarly to the Afghan writers, that Afghanistan has been the victim of its geographical location. Gregorian further states that the notion of preIslamic Ariana, and post-Islamic Khurasan and contemporary Afghanistan, as is promoted and claimed by the Afghan official historiography, is a mere product of Afghan nationalism, which emerged in 1915 and was developed in the late 1930s. He argues that the new generation of writers dwelt on the subject of nationalism by invoking themes such as a love of fatherland sanctioned by Islam, patriotism as a religious duty of every devout Muslim, modernization and progress as beneficial for the fatherland, and making this the duty of every patriotic Afghan. However, he notices an important distinction between the nationalists of the 1930s and their predecessors. The nationalists of 1915 were mainly interested in the genealogies of individual Pashtun tribes and the uniqueness of the Afghans, he argues, while the new generation of nationalists after 1930 were faced with the problem of ethnic diversity in the country, and hence, their main preoccupation was the construction of a common history, religious background and ethnic origin for the people of Afghanistan. Based on this perception, they tried hard to promote the unity of Afghanistan’s races, and link them to a common ancestry. They claimed that the two languages of the country, Persian and Pashto, were derived from the same origin; a vigorous argument for

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

111

family resemblance. History was evoked to prove that all races of Afghanistan were decedents of Aryans, and centuries of common history and culture together with Islam and its sense of brotherhood and community had erased all differences of the inhabitants of Afghanistan. To promote this discourse, they welcomed the archaeological excavations of the French team and others in Afghanistan, which uncovered the richness of the country’s Bactrian and Kushani civilizational heritage. Moreover they contended that the input of their ancestors had made a huge contribution to the Islamic civilization, and hence to the civilization of the wider world. To illustrate this claim, Gregorian quotes Ghubar: The country of the Ancient Aryans, or the Islamic country of Khurasan, that is the Afghanistan of today, presented the Islamic world with as many men of science and letters as any single constituent of the Islamic world has. . .. The contribution of the people of Afghanistan to the civilization and culture of the Islamic world is outstanding and significant. The Afghans introduced the Arabs to the philosophy and religion of the people of India long before the Arabs had even made the slightest infiltration into the land of the Indians. The contribution of the Afghans to astronomy, geometry, mathematics, philosophy, and theology of that time is admitted by all the Muslim historians. . . In the ninth century the political and administrative influence of the Afghans was so obvious in the imperial hierarchy that the Arab scholars and historians were forced to admit that the period of the Abbasid Caliphate was more Khurasanian than Arabic. This assertion was correct, because the Abbasside Caliphs were backed mostly by the Afghans.46 Gregorian further argues that this claim of Afghans should be seen in the light of the rise of the modern Afghan state and the need to legitimize the continuity and the unity of the country. This emphasis, according to him, is very obvious in its attempt to attribute an Aryan origin to most inhabitants of Afghanistan. The claim that ancient Aryans are the ancestors of today’s Afghans and Pashtuns, the story of their first kingdom in Balkh in northern Afghanistan in 3500 BC , the ancient civilization and history of Afghanistan and Pashto as its language some 5000 to 3500 BC , the systematic attempt to write

112

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

extensively on history, language and culture of Pashto and a wide range endeavour to translate all the major works by European scholars on Pashtuns and the Pashto language are some practical examples of the steps taken, and supported by the Afghan government to construct the new discourse. The Ministry of Education, various semi-official publications, such newly established organizations as the Historical Institute and the Pashto Tulana (Academy), and the anjoman-e adabi (literary circles) pursued four aims: to study and clarify the Afghan historical heritage, to study and promote Afghan literature and folklore; to study and promote the Pashto language; and to spread the knowledge about Afghanistan and its culture abroad.47 He asserts that at least for a brief period in the 1930s, perhaps under the influence of Nazi racial theories, the proponent of the Aryan descent went beyond Afghan nationalism and flirted with racism.48 However, Gregorian, despite asserting that claims of historical and civilizational background are rooted in Afghan nationalism, replicates a similar story to that of the official and semi-official historiography of post-1920 Afghanistan by providing a historical depth for the pre-Islamic and postIslamic Afghanistan. He argues that during the pre-Islamic era certain invading empires such as the Persian Achaemenid Empire (sixth to fourth centuries BC ), Graeco-Bactrian Kingdom (fourth to second centuries BC ), Kushan Empire (third to first centuries BC ) entered Afghanistan and contributed either to its development or destruction. In the post-Islamic era, he mentions the Tahirid (820–70), Saffarid (870 – 90), Samanid (874 – 999), Ghaznavid (999 – 1186), Seljuk (1038–1157), and Ghurid49 (1150–1217) as empires and dynasties that ruled Afghanistan or the wider region. Again similar to that of Afghanistan’s official account after 1930, he follows a similar historical pattern, and after establishing Afghanistan’s rich historical and civilizational background, he comes to the Mongol invasion. The conquest of Genghis Khan in 1220 led to the destruction of some of the main cities of Afghanistan, he argues. This invasion, he further states, was followed by the Turkic invaders some 160 years later under the leadership of a Turko-Mongol invader Tamerlane (1336–1405). He refers to the rise of Timurid dynasty under Shahrukh (1407–47), the successor of

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

113

Tamerlane in Herat, as the focal point of cultural renaissance in Afghanistan. Surprisingly, he claims that the rise of Uzbek Shaybanid in north Afghanistan, the Mughal in India and the Safavid Shia empire in Persia, and their invasion of Afghanistan, perhaps in line with the nationalistic project of the Afghan state, and in line with the idea of convergence of the colonial and nationalist discourses, led to the division of Afghanistan between these three empires.50 Thus, in the sixteenth century, Afghanistan was part of three political realms: the northern regions were under the Uzbek domination, and the remainder was divided between Moghul India and Safawid Persia.51 Nonetheless, Gregorian in reflecting the ethnic diversity of Afghanistan refers to Pashtuns as Afghans. But again, in the absence of a credible national census, and in line with the official claim, he estimates that Afghans constitute 50 to 55 per cent of the total population. The rest, according to him, are Tajiks, Iranians, and TrukoMongols. It is worth noting that Forster in his travels speaks of Persians or Farsiwans; Elphinstone speaks of Persians and Tajiks as a part of the Persians, but Gregorian here changes the terminology to speak of Tajiks and Iranians, which is problematic and confusing like his estimates of the population. However, his account of the Pashtuns or Afghans is not different from that of Elphinstone. He claims that the largest and most important Afghan tribes are Abdali or Durrani and Ghilzai. And the following is how he portrays the historical background of Afghans and Afghanistan: The earliest mention of Afghans in Muslim sources is to be found in the work of the Arab scholar Ibn’l Athir (926) and in the anonymous Persian geography Hudud al-Alam (982). In the Persian work the Afghans are described as a small population inhabiting the region of the Suleiman Range. . . In an earlyfourteenth-century work, Tarikhnama-i- Herat, written by alHarawi, Afghanistan is designated as the region lying between Sistan (west), Ghur-Zamindawar-Zabulistan (north), Makran (south), and Sind-Hindustan (east), and centred around Mastung (Quetta).52

114

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

The Nodal Point of Emergence On early attempts by the Afghans to establish an Afghan state, Gregorian’s account is similar to that of the official discourse of post1930, beginning with the religious movement of Roshanian in the 16th and 17th centuries under the leadership of Bayazid Ansari (1525 – 81), and other Afghan leaders such as Khushal Khan Khattak. He argues that the movement for the first time promoted the political formulation of the concept of Afghan nationality, as the tribes were inspired to defend their independence against Mughal.53 In a similar move, he then describes the rise of Ghilzais under the leadership of Mir Wais to establish an autonomous Afghan state in 1709. The elimination of Ghilzai power by Nadir Shah, he argues, made the ascendency of the Abdali tribe possible to Kandahar, and subsequently led to the emergence of an Afghan Kingdom.54 Gregorian, under the influence of the state-sponsored post-1930 Afghan nationalism, refers to Ahmad Shah Abdali as the founder of the modern Afghan state, and narrates a similar story to that of Elphinstone and the official narrative on how he ascended to power in 1747, but he does not mention Loya Jirga (grand assembly), the democratic deliberations, and finally the election of Ahmad Shah Durrani as the new king of Afghanistan by the full consent of all ethnic groups of Afghanistan, as it is claimed in the official discourse. He adds that Ahmad Shah managed to take a great part of Nadir’s treasure with him to Kandahar after his assassination.55 Gregorian speaks of an absolute monarchy established under Amir Abdur Rahman in 1880. He argues that Afghanistan had declined, but it was revived by reforms of Dost Mohammad and his son Sher Ali.56 Then it was invaded by the British Empire; it was at this time that Abdur Rahman emerged to unite the country. Amir, according to him, in his 21-year rule introduced major reforms and managed to create a standing army, curb the power of the religious establishment and some tribal chiefs. He introduced small scale machinery, established a new administration and legal system with courts. Furthermore, he credits the Amir with the administrative, political, and economic unification of Afghanistan, but in line with the official discourse he does not recognize him as the founder of modern Afghanistan, or even the modern state of Afghanistan.57

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

115

The Nodal Point of Jirga and Loya Jirga or Government through Assemblies Gregorian refers to Jirga, similarly to Elphinstone, describing it as a tribal mechanism for resolving inter-tribal issues and disputes.58 To him Loya Jirga (grand assembly), as a political institution to legitimize the pre-planned decisions and actions of the governments, emerged in the political domain in the reign of Amanullah Khan (1919 – 28); a trend then followed by all subsequent Afghan governments to legitimize their decisions with some variations in structure and administration.59 Furthermore, he distinguishes between Jirga as a tribal mechanism, and the invention of Loya Jirga as a political institution after 1920. However, he doesn’t follow the official line in giving the nodal point of government by assembly the due symbolic importance at the moment of the emergence of the contemporary Afghanistan in 1747.

The Nodal Point of Invasion and Resistance The framework within which Gregorian presents his historical account, explicitly under the influence of Afghan nationalism, accommodates the nodal point of invasion and resistance. It begins with ancient invaders and continues with Mughals, Turks, Uzbeks and British as the ‘outsiders’ who have invaded the country and threatened the identity of the Afghans. But the Afghans, the ‘insiders’, in the face of these invasions, have resisted and defended their land bravely with great sacrifices. But unlike the official narrative, which negates any foreign role in the creation or construction of Afghanistan, Gregorian discusses in detail the influence of foreign powers in Afghanistan; especially the rivalry between the European powers, the rivalry of Britain and Russia in Afghanistan, the concept of the Great Game, and the creation of a buffer state and its impact on shaping today’s Afghanistan. Gregorian, in his account of the official discourse, on one hand, accommodates the core claims of the Elphinstone discourse, and on the other, despite his admission that the post-1920 Afghan nationalism constructed a false but unifying discourse of state formation, in some parts of his research he not only replicates the official narrative, but remains loyal to the official line.60

116

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

L. Dupree The second major work on Afghanistan in post-1930, which the chapter focuses on, is the twenty years’ research of Dupree; a comprehensive attempt to present a full picture of Afghanistan from the Stone Age to tomorrow, as has been claimed by the author.61 Dupree’s account of Afghanistan is interesting not only because of the new moments and concepts he adds to the discourse, but also because of its paradoxical and contradictory claims. It is evident from the very claim of the author and the framework within which he presents Afghanistan; ‘from the Stone Age to tomorrow’ that he, despite his observations, remains loyal or operates within the colonial and official discourse. I assume any attempt to monopolize the entire history of the region and attribute it exclusively to a tribe, a name or a post-colonial nation state of the region, which did not exist at that particular time, is an unjust and an exclusionary attempt. The name Afghanistan, he says, simply means ‘land of the Afghan’, and the word Afghan might have derived from the Persian word ‘afghan’, which is defined as ‘noisy’, ‘groaning’, and ‘wailing’. But the word ‘Afghan’ in reference to people may go back as early as 982. However, he argues that tribes related to those of the modern Afghans probably have lived unrecorded in the region for many generations. The land now called Afghanistan he claims ‘sat in the centre of the action, the meeting place of four ecological and cultural areas: the Middle East, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and even the Far East, the Pamir Mountains intrude into Chinese Skinkiang.’62 To give an example of how he romanticizes the insolence of the ‘Afghans’ to echo the Afghan statesponsored nationalism, here I quote one of his characterizations: The insolence of the Afghan, however, is not the frustrated insolence of urbanized, dehumanized man in Western society, but insolence without arrogance, the insolence of harsh freedoms set against a backdrop of rough mountains and deserts, the insolence of equality felt and practised (with an occasional touch of superiority), the insolence of bravery past and anticipated.63 Dupree begins with the rich historical background of Afghanistan and speaks of indigenous Afghan kingdoms, the most important of which according to him is the Ghaznavid tenth to twelfth centuries, with great military and cultural achievements.64 Similar to that of the official

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

117

discourse, he then speaks of the Mongol and then the Turko-Mongol invasions in the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries and details how the Asian imperialists, Persian Safavid and Indian Mughal fought over Afghanistan in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. Finally, he argues that in 1747 Ahmad Shah was crowned in Kandahar and established the Durrani Empire.65 He further explains the role of European imperialism in shaping nineteenth century Afghanistan, the British and Russian rivalry and the British invasion in response to a real or imagined threat. He argues that the creation of modern Afghanistan begins with Amir Abdur Rahman in 1880–1901, where in what he calls a process of internal imperialism he managed to expand his rule within the newly demarcated borders. Using the state-produced sources, Dupree explains that Afghans themselves before the 1880s referred to their area variously: ‘Kabulistan (south of the Hindu Kush to the Indus River), Zabulistan (or Khurasan, including the Hindu Kush, Qandahar, and Herat), and Turkestan (north of the Hindu Kush and east of Herat)’.66 Dupree, like Gregorian, maintains that Afghanistan is a diverse and multi-ethnic society with extensions of some of these ethnic groups to other countries in the region.67 Dupree, who himself was involved in archaeological excavations in Afghanistan, similar to the official discourse, narrates the prehistoric sequence of events, and fully incorporates the entire narrative of pre-Islamic and post-Islamic historical depth of Afghanistan in his narrative, substituting it by archaeological findings, and linking it to other civilizations.68

The Nodal Point of Emergence More or less, Dupree replicates the official narrative on how the Pashtun tribes in the east of Afghanistan under the leadership of Khattak fought the Mughal rule, the Ghilzai Pashtuns revolted under the leadership of Mir Wais and the subsequent rise of Ahmad Shah Durrani. But on how Ahmad Shah was crowned, unlike Elphinstone and Gregorian, Dupree relies on Singh’s book on Ahmad Shah,69 official and semi-official sources and copies the narrative. However, he differs with other historians on the issue of selecting Ahmad Shah as a king or as the Abdali tribe chief. He argues that the position of king did not exist among Pashtuns, therefore they wanted to select a chief rather than a king. Contrary to the colonial and official discourse, Dupree introduces the concept of modern and pre-modern in studying the formation of the Afghan state. Based on

118

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

this new schema, he argues that modern Afghanistan was created during the reign of Abdur Rahman Khan (1880–1901) rather Ahmad Shah Abdali. The two powers of the time, the British and the Russian empires, he says, demarcated the boundaries of Afghanistan as a state and Amir attempted to exert his influence over diverse ethnic groups inhabiting the newly demarcated kingdom.70 He accuses most of the historians of misunderstanding the emergence of the modern Afghanistan. Most Afghan historians, followed sheep-like by Western scholars, consider 1747 (Ahmad Shah Durrani) the beginning of the modern Afghan State. I disagree, for, until 1880, the process of alternating fusion and fission dominated the political scene. By political fusion and fission, I mean the following pattern of events: A charismatic leader arises in a tribal society and, by military power, intrigue, and judiciously arranged marriages, unites several tribes into a confederation, which spreads as far as its accumulated power permits, creating an empire, not a nation state. With (sometimes before) the death of the emperor, fission occurs, and the great empire once again segments into a multiplicity of tribal kingdoms. Later, another charismatic leader arrives and the process is repeated.71 Hence, unlike Gregorian and the official narrative, which claims that contemporary or modern Afghanistan was established by Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1747, Dupree argues that the modern Afghan state was established by Abdur Rahman (1880–1901). To him Ahmad Shah Durrani is the founder of the Durrani Empire rather than modern Afghanistan. The newly created Afghanistan under Amir, he says, was prevented by the British and Russian empires from expanding its influence over other parts of the region, and its foreign policy was controlled by Britain until 1919. Hence, Afghanistan, according to him has been created partly as a result of imperialism; the rivalry between the British and Russian empires, which was known as the Great Game, led to the creation of a buffer state in the shape of Afghanistan.72

The Nodal Point of Loya Jirga or Governance by Councils Dupree, in line with Afghan nationalism, portrays Jirga and Loya Jirga as an old political institution, which is convened by kings at times of

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

119

national need to make final decisions. Dupree in later stages of his book explains the use and also the institutionalization of Loya Jirga as part of the Afghan constitution.73 Despite the fact that he does not provide a detailed account of the Jirga or Loya Jirga in the process of selecting Ahmad Shah Abdali, but by relying on Singh, he asserts that in order to select the chief, the Jirga lasted for nine days and two chiefs were competing for the position: Haji Jamal Khan of the Mohammadzai lineage and Ahmad Khan of Saddozai. But for the act of a bootlicking follower of the twenty-five-year-old Ahmad Shah, the leadership might have gone to Hajji Jamal, who controlled the most powerful section. Mohammad Sabir Khan, however, a noted Darwish (holy man), who had earlier predicted that Ahmad Khan would be leader of the Afghans, rose in the jirgah and said: “Why all this verbose talk? God has created Ahmad Khan a much greater man than any of you; his is the most noble of all the Afghan families. Maintain, therefore, God’s work, for His wrath will weigh heavily upon you if you destroy it” (G. Singh, 1959, 25 – 26). Ahmad Khan reputedly hesitated to accept the open decision of the jirgah, so Sabir Khan again intervened. He placed some wheat or barley (G. Singh, 1959, 27) sheaves in Ahmad Khan’s turban, and crowned him, Badshahe, Durri-i-Dauran (Shah, pearl of the age). On the basis of a dream, Ahmad Shah Abdali changed his title to Ahmad Shah, Durr-iDurran (pearl of pearls) or Ahmad Shah Durrani.74 Looking at this story, one wonders how Dupree relies on dreams and rumours to establish historical facts rather than evidence and rational argumentation. He further claims that ‘as an anthropologist, I cannot resist speculating that this fertility symbol must have an ancient prehistoric root in Afghanistan.’75

The Nodal Point of Invasion and Resistance Dupree takes full account of the nodal point of invasion and resistance in reflecting on the history of Afghanistan as constructed by the Afghan official discourse. He speaks of Afghanistan as an independent political entity, which was attacked among others by Mongol and Turk invaders.

120

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

He further speaks of the rivalry between the Mughal and Safavid empires, the division and occupation of Afghanistan by these rival forces, and finally prepares the ground for the emergence of the Afghan state after their decline. For over two hundred years the Persian Safavid Dynasty (907– 1145/1501– 1732) and the Muslim Indian Moghul Dynasty (932– 1274/1526– 1707) fought for control of Afghanistan.76 Dupree presents a mixed and confusing picture of Afghanistan. The main reason for this, I assume, is his inability to differentiate clearly between the pre-colonial and post-colonial set-up of the region, and how to reconcile the colonial and Afghan nationalism after 1920 on one hand, and the actual history of the region in the pre-colonial era, on the other.

A Post-1980 Perspective of State Formation in English As explained in the introduction, after 1980, because of radical dislocatory events in the country two categories of work in English were produced: one generally reproducing the Elphinstonian, post-Elphinstonian and the official discourse, and the second adopts a critical approach reflecting the dislocation and challenging the colonial and official discourse. To present a sample of the first category, the chapter focuses briefly on the Fragmentation of Afghanistan (2002) by Rubin, Revolution Understanding; Afghanistan 1979 to the Present (2000) by Dorronsoro, and Afghanistan: A Short History of Its People and Politics (2002), by Ewans. However, in reconstructing the discourse, similar to previous examples, I remain loyal to the master signifier, and the three nodal points of the narrative have been identified. Burnet Rubin, an American specialist on Afghanistan and a political scientist, who has written and published extensively on Afghanistan, argues that some sort of authority or empire, perhaps a traditional one as it is understood in Weberian terms, existed in Afghanistan throughout history. But this model of authority, according to him, belongs to the pre-modern rather than the modern world. The political form of modernity, he argues, is the territorial nation state system developed in the West and spread throughout the world by colonialism or voluntary adoption. Afghanistan, he argues, confronted modernity through its

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

121

forced integration into the Euro-centric state system as a buffer state between the British and Russian Empires in the middle of the nineteenth century. This transformation took shape, he states, when Russia and Britain advanced through central Asia and India. After two Anglo–Afghan wars, Afghanistan, according to Rubin, formally entered the internationally recognized state system under British suzerainty as a buffer state against Russia. To strengthen this state, he argues, the British lavished weapons and cash on Amir Abdur Rahman Khan (1881– 1901). Amir, in his turn used the resources and coercion to establish a basic state structure. This, he claims, prepared the ground for a Pashtun ruler to reign over an ethnically heterogeneous society.77 Rubin’s account of Afghanistan as the master signifier of the discourse, despite his assertion that it was created as a buffer state by Britain and Russia, is not very different from the colonial and official discourse, as he operates within the framework of the same discourse. He depicts a similar pattern to that of the official discourse for the pre-modern Afghanistan, which finally leads to the establishment of a Pashtun state in Afghanistan. The notion of invasion and resistance, the inherent character of tribal people as warriors and brave, and the struggle to build an independent state is the common theme in his account of Afghanistan and Afghans.78 However, Rubin, while incorporating the official narrative of state formation and its subsequent development, unlike previous narratives, makes a valid point that previous empires and rulers in the region were not Afghans, i.e. Pashtuns. The Afghans, he argues, emerged to play an active role in politics of the region only in the eighteenth century. Various states or empires dominated the territories of present-day Afghanistan until the eighteenth century, but none of them constituted an Afghan state, that is, one ruled by Pashtuns. When Safavid rulers structured the Abdalis and Ghilzais into confederations, these Pashtun tribes attained large-scale military organization for the first time.79 Rubin considers the nodal point of Jirga as a tribal institution, which can be convened at any time, and Loya Jirga as a sort of Electoral College, similar to the American model, which decides on national issues. Since the 1920s the Afghan state, he argues, has defined an institutionalized,

122

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

partly nontribal, Loya Jirga as the highest representative body of the Afghan state. Its composition, he states, has changed over time in accordance with the interests of the state. He further introduces a new dimension to the discourse by claiming that the state has also kept alive the traditional emergency Loya Jirga, an informal meeting of the elders of different groups chosen and summoned by the government to address a national emergency issue.80 Hence, as a devoted supporter of Jirga in Afghanistan, he emphasizes that Jirga and Loya Jirga are the representative institutions; a sort of Electoral College to elect the king, like the one ‘elected’ Ahmad Shah Abdali, and furthermore introduces the concept of emergency Loya Jirga, as a new invention to tackle national issues.81 To reinforce or reproduce the symbolic position of the nodal point of Jirga and Loya Jirga in the Afghan narrative of state formation as a symbolic manifestation of a democratic tradition in the very formation of the Afghan state, he replicates the official narrative of how Mir Wais Hotaki and Ahmad Shah Durrani’s rise to power through Jirgas. On the election of Ahmad Khan, as he puts it, again he copies the official narrative of: summoning a Jirga, the story of democratic deliberations and the role played by Sabir Shah. But, unlike Dupree, he describes Sabir Shah as a saint from the Chishti Sufi order, who mediated the selection of Ahmad Khan. Another example of a recent work on Afghanistan from a political science perspective is Dorronsoro’s book; Revolution Understanding; Afghanistan: 1979 to the Present. He also replicates the colonial and the official narrative of state formation. To him Ahmad Khan was elected in 1747 as the first king of the country, and laid the foundation of the first Afghan state. Then, similar to Rubin, he distinguishes between the premodern and modern forms of state. Dorronsoro attributes the creation of the modern state to the role of imperialism, especially Britain and Russia in Afghanistan. He argues that the institutionalization of state on the Western model came to existence with Abdur Rahman Khan in 1880.82 But the pre-modern Afghanistan, as an ancient political entity, retains its position in his narrative. As an example of a historical work on Afghanistan, very briefly, I reflect on the new short history of Afghanistan by Ewans. He, like other English historians, perhaps under the influence of the Elphinstonian discourse, and the Afghan nationalistic perspective, narrates a similar story. He begins with the historical and

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION 123

civilizational background of Afghanistan. To him the Afghan state was first established under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747. The nodal point of emergence, with full reflection of Jirga appears in the story. He speaks of the election of the king in a Jirga after nine days of deliberations through the mediation of Sabir Shah. However, despite his full description of the prominent role of Jirga, he indicates that there might be other factors contributing to Ahmad Shah’s ascent to the throne.83 He takes full account of the myth of invasion and resistance in presenting the entire history of Afghanistan.84 To conclude this part of the chapter, it is argued that a careful study of the English literature on Afghanistan after 1930 i.e. books, references, encyclopaedias, library catalogues and other online resources, with few exceptions, indicates that the majority of these works, on one hand, replicate the core claims of the pre-1930 colonial knowledge of Afghanistan, and on the other, with variations and contradictions incorporate the state-sponsored Afghan nationalism. The master signifier of the narrative: Afghanistan and Afghans, and the nodal points of the emergence, government by assembly and the notion of invasion and resistance, as reconstructed, remain the dominant theme of their narratives.85 Furthermore, the myth of Afghanistan as a graveyard of empires, a land which has defeated all invaders in history i.e. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, the British, the Russians and now the Americans symbolizes the notion of invasion and resistance, is persistent and has been romanticized in the English literature.86

An Afghan Perspective of State Formation in English In this part, in addition to the colonial and post-colonial work produced in English, the chapter refers to a number of works in English either produced or sponsored by the Afghan government or written by wellknown Afghan writers, I call them state beneficiaries. In doing so, it begins with a book published in English by the Afghan state, followed by another important work sponsored by the state on Ahmad Shah Durrani, and then moves to see how the Pashtun and non-Pashtun writers narrate the discourse in English. The book titled, Afghanistan; a Brief Survey, published in English by the Afghan state in 1934, provides an official account of the Afghan state, how it emerged, developed and functions. It discusses the

124

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

geography, history and government in Afghanistan. The book is well written and well referenced. At the end of the book there is a complete list of all the books published in English on Afghanistan, which among other things, can also reveal availability and also the extent of the impact of the colonial knowledge on the official narrative.87 The master signifier of the official discourse retains its distinctive position in the book. In reflecting on the history of Afghanistan, it begins with the ancient history of the Aryan king in Balkh and covers the preIslamic and post-Islamic history of the country, with particular emphasis on the independent states, which revolted against the Arabs. The concept of invasion and resistance became operational in the narrative with the invasion of Alexander and continues throughout the history. It attempts to claim falsely the Afghan (Pashtun) origin of the Ghori dynasty, and argues that majority of the people in the country belong to the Aryan race. It estimates the population to be around 12 million, out of which 60 per cent are Pashtuns and the rest are Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Turkomans and Noristanis. The same story of Mongol invasion and the national resistance, the rivalry between regional powers and the division of Afghanistan between the rival powers, repeats and reproduces itself in the narrative. Under the title of ‘national revival’, it explains the reasons for the national uprisings, as it calls them, in different parts of the country against the occupiers i.e. Persians, Uzbeks and Mughals. To symbolize the moment of formation, it argues that after the assassination of Nadir in 1747 Ahmad Khan was elected by the representatives of the country as the new king, and goes on to claim that it was even attempted at that time to draft a constitution for the country. It further explains that the foundation of the national Afghan state was laid in 1747 by Ahmad Shah Durrani. It refers to Jirga as a tribal practice, and to Loya Jirga as a political institution in the 1920s. There is a section in the book detailing the proceedings of the Loya Jirga of 1932.88 Another good example of state-sponsored work in English, to my understanding, is the biography of Ahmad Shah Abdali by Ganda Singh. I assume this is the most extensive work yet undertaken in English to explore the life of Ahmad Khan Durrani. The book has been written in close collaboration with the Afghan government, as is evident from the foreword, acknowledgements and the sources. It has been used widely by English writers as a valid reference, as is noticed in Dupree and

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION 125

Gregorian’s work. A close look at the methodology, and some of the narratives of the book, makes one wonder at the acceptance of the book as academic research. It is merely a reflection of the official discourse on Afghanistan, the Afghans and the other nodal points of the narrative. However, because it is dedicated to the founder of the nation, the chapter will suffice only with its reflection on the founder of the nation. According to Singh’s account Ahmad Shah was born in Multan, and once he was freed by Nadir in Kandahar it was predicted that he would be the next king. Under the subtitle of Prophecies of Nizamu-ul-Mulk and Nadir Shah on Ahmad as the next king, Singh writes: [. . .] Ahmad Khan was once seen by Nizam-ul-Milk Chin Qalich Khan Asafjah, a former prime minster of the empire (then the viceroy of the Deccan), sitting outside the Jali gate near the Dewan-i-Am. The Nizam-ul-Mulk, who was an expert in physiognomy, saw in him the signs of greatness and predicted that he was destined to become a king. Nadir, it is said, had full faith in Nizam-ul-Milk’s knowledge of face-reading. On this news being accidentally reported to him, he called Ahmad Khan to his presence and, taking out a knife from his belt, clipped his ears saying, “When you become a king, this will remind you of me.”89 Under the title of election and coronation, Singh simply replicates the nationalistic narrative of how Ahmad Khan marched to Kandahar, eight days of deliberation in the Jirga, the contest between Haji Jamal Khan, the role of Sabir Shah and finally the election of Ahmad Khan as the new king. He portrays the whole affair as very civilized and democratic. He narrates that Sabir Shah met Ahmad Khan before the assassination of Nadir and told him: I see the signs of kingship on your face. Give me a piece of cotton cloth, so that having stitched a few tents and a royal pavilion, I may pray for you and you may soon adorn the throne of the kingdom. Credulous as Ahmad Khan was, he complied with the wishes of that saint, who, like children, was thereafter seen pitching small tents by the side of Ahmad’s tent and repeating the Quranic verses. On the third day came about the death of Nadir.

126

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Ahmad Khan looked upon the darvesh as a holy saint who could foresee the secrets of the future and took care not to leave him behind in his flight.90 Singh’s story, contrary to the official discourse, indicates that Sabir Shah was with Ahmad Khan, not someone who lived as a saint or a holy man in the shrine close to Kandahar as claimed by Ghubar and other official accounts. Singh also claims that Sabir Shah was originally a resident of Lahore, again contradicting the official claim that he was from Kabul. The story also emphasizes that Ahmad Khan was hesitant to accept the position, but Sabir Shah insisted and announced him as the new king, and gave him the title of ‘pearl of the age’. Singh further argues that it was the beginning of the declaration by the Afghan chiefs of independence from the Persian rule. He also narrates that according to some historians the coronation of Ahmad Khan took place at a later date in Kandahar in a simple ceremony, but he inclines to the story that his coronation took place in the Mausoleum of Shire Surkh at Nadirabad, two miles from Kandahar city.91

Afghan (Pashtun) Writers and the Discourse of State Formation Here, the chapter refers to a few notable examples of works undertaken mostly by Afghan (Pashtun) writers to see how they approach, narrate and reproduce the official discourse of state formation. It is worth mentioning that the majority of Afghan writers in English on Afghanistan are ethnically Pashtuns. They for obvious reasons praise and reproduce the official discourse. There are only a few non-Pashtun writers who have written in English or whose work has been published. Hence one can claim that the representation of excluded voices or suppressed discourses is very limited in the English literature.92 The chapter begins with Kakar, a well known Afghan historian, and his views on the master signifier of the official discourse. Kakar in his introduction, to construct an image and identity of Afghanistan based on the dichotomy of ‘us’ and ‘others’, replicates the official discourse and argues that Afghanistan had three principle names each lasting for centuries and which distinguished this land throughout its history:

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION 127

The three principle names – Aryana in antiquity, Khurasan in the medieval era, and Afghanistan in modern times – have distinguished this land throughout its history, although at times Herat, Bactria, and Kabul had kingdoms of their own. Modern Afghanistan is almost co-extensive with the land mentioned in the Greek as Ariana, in the old Persian as Airya or Airyana, in Sanskrit as Arya-Vartta or Arya-Varsha, and in Zend as Eriene-veejo.93 Kakar, copying Ghubar and the official narrative, argues that ‘Aryana’ was a geographical and cultural name rather than a political one, situated between India and Persia. The name, according to him, lasted for 1,500 years, and then in the Islamic era the country was called Khurasan for another 1,500 years till the end of the nineteenth century. To distinguish the historical background of Afghanistan from Iran he further claims that Aryana is older than the name Iran. The latter, he says, was derived from Aryana and probably appeared for the first time during the Sassanid period (208 – 561), and it was applied as Eran Shahr to signify the land Sassanids ruled. But in the Islamic period, he argues, Iran lost its political significance, despite its persistence in the literature. Finally he says Iran was applied to modern Persia probably before the nineteenth century.94 He claims that Afghanistan is not a new name as is argued by some, or it just appeared with the accession of Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747. [Afghanistan] [. . .] was applied in political sense to a land for the first time in the third decade of the fourteenth century by Saifi Herawi in his The History of Herat. He mentions it very frequently along with other names, such as Shibergahan, Turkestan, and Khurasan. Apparently, Afghanistan had been independent after the onslaught of Chinggis Khan (reign, AD 1206–1227) and was ruled by local rulers of its own until they were overcome by the Kurt rulers of Khurasan in Heart (1245–1381). All this time the word Afghanistan generally referred to a land situated between Ghazni and the Indus River with its main centre at Mastung (Quetta). In other words, the lowlands and highlands of the Suleiman Mountains where the Afghans have lived for centuries were included in Afghanistan. Writers subsequent to Saifi Herawi have described Afghanistan with more or less the same boundaries.95

128

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

To explicate his views on the master signifier of the discourse, he presents three accounts of the concept of Afghanistan and Afghans: firstly, perhaps intentionally, he claims that Afghanistan as a name signified the same land during the height of the Durrani Empire, and it included in addition to today’s Afghanistan, Persian Khurasan, Turkestan, Punjab, Kashmir, Herat, and Baluchistan. He mentions that even Elphinstone in 1809 observed that Hindu Kush constituted Afghanistan’s northern border. It was in the second part of the nineteenth century, he explains, that the name Afghanistan applied to the land situated between Durand Line and the Oxus River. The concept in this sense became common only after the boundaries of the country were demarcated by Russia and Britain. This period, according to him, coincided with the northward migration of Afghans i.e. Pashtuns who turned the provinces beyond Hindu Kush from mere dependencies into integral parts of Afghanistan. Secondly, he says that the word Afghan was used by Persians to signify Pashtuns. Thirdly, he claims that the people, who established the Afghan kingdom were mainly Afghans (Pashtuns), hence it is called Afghanistan.96 He further tries to provide a historical depth to the Pashto language and Pashtuns in ancient times. To do this, he replicates the official narrative explored in the second chapter, and provides an account of all attempts by the Pashtuns to form a government. He endeavours, as has been attempted in the official narrative, to portray two occasions of state formations by the Afghans to credit the Ghilzai and Durrani alike with establishing the first Afghan independent state; the independent state formed by Mir Wais and the Afghan state formed by Ahmad Shah Durrani.97 Kakar appreciates the concept of Modern Afghanistan suggested by Dupree, but does not count it as the beginning of state formation in Afghanistan or perhaps the emergence of the country itself. The nodal point of invasion and resistance is manifest in his account of the Afghans and their history. However, he falls short of mentioning the Jirga as a political institution, but instead refers to it in his book as a tribal mechanism for resolving local issues. Another such example is Ashraf Ghani, who in his study of production and domination in Afghanistan, narrates a similar story and regards Ahmad Shah Durrani as the founder of the Afghan state.98 Misdq’s new book published in 2006 is a typical example of the Pashtun-centric account of Afghanistan’s history, politics and society. Similar to other Pashtun nationalists under the influence of the

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION 129

Elphinstonian discourse,99 or colonial knowledge and Afghan statesponsored exclusionary nationalism, Misdq presents his account of the master signifier and the three related nodal points of the official discourse of state formation. As a Ghilzai Pashtun, he argues that the first Afghan state was established by Mir Wais in 1709, and then by Ahmad Shah Durrani. He further claims that the modern definition of state as a political concept identifying a geographical territory under a single ruler can be applied to the Afghan state founded by Ahmad Shah Abdali. Hence he applies the Weberian model of patrimonial state to explain the Afghan state. He suggests that the idea of modern nationalism is irrelevant to the Afghan tribal society, and instead he focuses on Pashtunwali; a tribal code of conduct, as the Afghan (Pashtun) nationalism.100 Misdq formulates his narrative of the emergence of the Afghan state within the framework of the nodal point of invasion and resistance. After establishing the rich historical background of Afghanistan, and locating the Pashtuns at the heart of this civilization, he claims that Afghanistan was divided between three powers; the Uzbek Shaybanid in the north, the Safavid Persians in the west and the Mughal Indian Empire in the east. Then he repeats the same old story of the Pashtun struggle on several fronts to re-establish an independent state. The only difference with the state narrative is that he is not talking vaguely of Afghans; rather he specifically speaks of a Pashtun struggle. On the nodal point of Jirga and Loya Jirga, and the role it played in the election of Ahmad Shah in Kandahar, he provides a detailed account similar to that of the official narrative. This is how he defines the Jirga and Loya Jirga: Jirga is a Pashto term meaning meeting or assembly. Jirga is part of Pashtun social institutions, and has always played a decisive role in forcing adherence to established norms. Jirgas are the mechanism through which cohesion and stability are assured. The history of jirga is said to go back thousands of years to the original settlers of the area (Aryana) now known as Afghanistan, who then had two kinds of jirgas, the Simite/Seymati and the Subha. The first was a village meeting in which everyone concerned took part in order to settle local disputes. The second was a meeting of elders of tribes in times of national and regional emergencies to elect a king or, in his absence, to take decisions on war and peace.101

130

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Misdaq, in his elaboration on the nodal point of Loya Jirga as the democratic manifestation of governing by assemblies in Afghanistan, defines Loya Jirga, and provides a list of some of the most important Loya Jirgas in the history of Afghanistan, and how this institution developed to become part of the state establishment. The Loya Jirga is the highest Pashtun office to decide on national and inter-tribal issues. The following Loya Jirgas are landmarks in Afghan history: The Loya Jirga of 1709 mentioned above, the Loya Jirga of 1747 as explained below, and the Loya Jirgas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries regarding responses to the British invaders (1839, 1879 and 1919). The Loya Jirga of 1923 adjudicated on Afghanistan’s first constitution, and from 1923 onward the Loya Jirga became the supreme constitutional body under all five constitutions that have been passed since. All-important national decisions concerning war and peace were taken or sanctioned by Loya Jirgas or Great Assemblies, representing all the people of the country. Since 1956 the Loya Jirga has officially been considered as de dawlat ruken or the pillar of the state. In the 1963 constitution Jirga became part of the ‘state apparatus’ and since then has been an integral part of the Afghan constitution.102 His narrative of how Ahmad Khan rose to fame, Nadir’s assassination and how he was elected as the new king of Afghanistan, to present the moment of emergence, is based on Singh, Ferrier, Malleson, Ghubar and other state official accounts. A theme of democratic approach towards power, political participation, consensus and deliberations in a national gathering to elect the new king in 1747 is repeated and reproduced similar to the official narrative.103 Misdaq further argues that this move constituted the declaration of independence and Ahmad Shah subsequently moved to become an emperor. Hence, to him, like Kakar, the Afghan i.e. Pashtun state first emerged in 1709 and then for the second time in 1747. Misdaq considers Abdur Rahman a moderniser and the later attempts by the Amanullah and Musahiban dynasties as moves toward establishing a nation state.104 Zalmay Khalilzad, Anwar ul-Haq Ahady, and Ali Ahmad Jalali, to name a few, all adopt a similar approach in their writings to reinforcing the official discourse.

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

131

Last but not the least in my list is Amin Saikal, a Tajik or Persian speaker of Afghanistan, and a professor of Political Science and director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia) at the Australian National University, and author of Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival (2006), with assistance from Ravan Farhadi (another notable Tajik intellectual) and Kirill Nourzhanov. In presenting the historical image of Afghanistan, he more or less follows the same official pattern. To him, Ahmad Shah Abdali is the founder of the independent Afghan state. He, similar to Misdaq, thinks that the patrimonial model of Weberian state can explain the Afghan state.105 He portrays a rich historical background for the master signifier, and the nodal point of invasion and struggle operates in his narrative, which explains the British and the Russian invasions of Afghanistan and their subsequent defeat. The story of how the first Afghan state emerged under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Abdali in a Jirga and the subsequent events replicates the official discourse.106

Dislocation, Diversification and Decolonization 1978 –2010 The dislocatory events after the 1970s, as will be explained and elaborated further in the coming chapters, especially in chapter five, have disrupted the symbolic order in Afghanistan, its associated identities and have opened the spaces within which new political groups managed to present their discourses and the political subjects managed to identify themselves with these new discourses. These dislocatory ‘events’ or ‘crises’ that could not be represented within the existing discursive order, functioned to disrupt and destabilize the symbolic order. This ‘decentring’ of the structure through social processes has not only shattered the already existing identities but has created an identity crisis in the country. However, dislocations, as pointed out in the theoretical chapter, are not solely traumatic incidents, because they, on one hand, disrupt the partially fixed order, and on the other, open the space for a new order, which might be more open and inclusive. As a result of these dislocatory events, which have changed the power structure in the country, a new generation of scholars, writers and researchers have emerged from within and outside Afghanistan. They not only challenge the official narrative of state formation, but also the entire discourse of historiography and identity in Afghanistan. They argue that the

132

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

knowledge on Afghanistan is either produced by colonial powers, or has been officially and selectively constructed by the Afghan state. The picture the state has constructed, they argue, is exclusionary and hence problematic. In the fifth chapter, the second deconstructive move, I will engage in some detail with the critical approach of these newly emerged scholars to see how they challenge and problematize the official as well as the colonial discourse on Afghanistan.107

Concluding Remarks In this chapter I discussed the discourse of state formation in the knowledge produced in English by the colonial power, academics, researchers and the Afghan state around the master signifier of Afghanistan and Afghans, and the three nodal points of the official discourse: (1) the myth of formation or emergence of the Afghan state, (2) the tradition of Loya Jirga (grand assembly) or governance by assembly and (3) the notion of invasion and resistance, reconstructed. Afghanistan and Afghans in this endeavour functioned as the master signifier, which not only brought together the nodal points of the hegemonic project but also provided a distinctive meaning and identity to the entire chains of signification in the discourse. The discourse was reconstructed in three phases: (1) the colonial knowledge formation or the Elphinstonian discourse, (2) the convergence of the colonial knowledge or discourse with the Afghan ethno-nationalist discourse or the post-Elphinstonian discourse and (3) the beginning of dislocation, diversification and decolonization. In the first phase, as a result of the advance of colonialism in the region, especially the advance of the British Empire towards India and the establishment of the East India Company in the seventeenth century, a vigorous attempt took shape to explore the region for colonial objectives. Furthermore in the beginning of what came to be known as the Great Game, several attempts were made by the British Empire to intervene militarily in Afghanistan. This led to the production and accumulation of a large number of books, intelligence reports and general knowledge on Afghanistan and the neighbouring region. The formation of the colonial discourse on Afghanistan began with Forster in 1783, and was developed by Elphinstone and his colleagues in the East India Company until the 1920s. It was Elphinstone with his remarkable book, An Account of the Kingdom of Cabaul, that laid the foundation of the colonial discourse on

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION 133

Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s name and perception for the first time was recorded, and entered the English literature at this phase in 1783 through Forster’s work. He visited Afghanistan and some of the major cities of the region. He for the first time provided a geographical description and location of the country. To him Afghanistan is where Afghans i.e. Pashtuns live or are in control. North of Kabul to him with the city of Balkh as its capital is a dependency of the king and not included in Afghanistan, and Herat is part of Khurasan. Afghans, Persians, and Tatars or Turks are the main inhabitants of the cities he visited. A minority of Jews, Georgians, Armenians, Hindus, and Sikhs also live in the centre of the cities. Forster observes that there is little satisfactory history or knowledge of Afghanistan. He begins the history of Afghans with the rise of Mahmud in 1720, and then the rise of Ahmad Shah after the death of Nadir. He refers to Ahmad Khan as the founder of the modern empire of Afghanistan. However, he does not provide us with any account of the nodal point of emergence, governance by assembly and also the notion of invasion and resistance. Instead he refers to Afghans as occupiers of some parts of Khurasan, and speaks in some detail about the history of Persians and Turks when he visits Herat. Elphinstone’s work on Afghanistan in this phase is the cornerstone or the milestone of constituting the colonial discourse on Afghanistan. It is one of the most detailed and comprehensive colonial recordings of Afghanistan carried out by a British official. Unlike the confusing accounts of Forster, he makes it clear that he visits the Kingdom of Kabul for an assignment. On his mission he undertakes to study the Afghans as an adjacent group to India, which have always threatened its stability. Afghanistan is one of the regions or components of the Kingdom of Kabul he is visiting. To him Afghanistan means the land of Afghans, and Afghans in reference to an ethnic group means the Pashtuns. In order to study the Afghans, first he decides to demarcate the land he thinks should be called Afghanistan. However, he makes it clear that Afghan and Afghanistan is not the name used by Afghans, rather the Persians use it pejoratively. Afghans, he claims, generally called their country Khurasan. In his ethnographic study of Afghans, he concludes that they mainly lived close to the Suleiman Mountains and from there they gradually expanded to larger parts of Khurasan. On the origin of Afghans, and their unknown history after mentioning all hypotheses, despite preferring the Jew origin of the Afghans as one of the lost tribes,

134

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

he concludes that Afghans are not traced to any tribe or country beyond their present seats, and the adjoining mountains. He further tribalizes the Afghans, and then territorializes the tribes, and recodes a detailed account of their customs and traditions. Elphinstone argues that the plains of Afghanistan were divided between India and Persia prior to the establishment of the Durrani Empire, and adds that the rise of Pashtuns in the political map of the region began with the Ghilzai tribe’s conquest of Persia, and the subsequent rise of Abdalies. He begins the history of the Afghans with the establishment of Durrani Empire, and provides a detailed account of how Ahmad Khan rose to power. On the nodal point of the emergence, he simply states that once Nadir was assassinated, Ahmad Khan moved to Kandahar and declared himself king. However, he speaks of Uzbek and Hazara cooperation with the king. On the nodal point of Jirga or government by assembly, it is noticed that Elphinstone looks at Jirga as a tribal mechanism, through which tribes resolve their disputes rather than as a political institution. On the nodal point of invasion and resistance, despite the fact that Elphinstone does not provide a systematic account of the notion, but he portrays the tribes as republicans and free, warriors and nobles, which have contributed to the later manifestation of the idea. The subsequent development and enrichment of the colonial discourse and the military engagements of the British Empire in Afghanistan, in one way or other, have helped to bolster the idea, especially in what is widely perceived as the repeated ‘England’ defeats in Afghanistan. The long-term engagement of the company and British India in Afghanistan, including several military interventions, led to the extensive study of the country. Among other aspects of that study, reference was made to the work of Wilson on Ariana, and the extensive writings of Bellew, which invoked the Greek perception of the region, and subsequently had their profound impact on the official and semiofficial discourses in Afghanistan. Finally, and most important of all, this colonial construction or perhaps extensive study of an ethnic group; the Afghans, and the land they lived in had occupied or controlled, gradually but intentionally transformed to apply for Afghanistan as a newly post-colonial nation state, which is fundamentally different from what is characterized by Elphinstone. This transformation of the discourse was not only developed and accepted by colonial writers in post-Elphinstonian

RECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION

135

discourses, but also it was happily internalized and propagated by the Afghan state. This period of colonial knowledge formation, or the Elphinstonian discourse not only has its profound impact on the constitution and development of the Afghan official discourse, but on the constitution and introduction of Afghanistan for the wider world. The controlled process of openness, and internalization of colonial knowledge started by Habibullah Khan (1901– 19), was followed vigorously in the reign of Amanullah Khan (1919– 28) during the radical modernization, and reached its peak in the reign of the Musahiban dynasty (1929– 78) by establishing state institutions to enrich the official discourse. It was in this period that the Afghan government and writers internalized the colonial knowledge systematically, and at the same time reproduced it with an Afghani flavor.108 The major development and transformation in this period, was the convergence of the Pashtun-centric state-sponsored ethno-nationalism with the colonial and post-colonial discourses in post-1920. In the postElphinstonian era, once Afghanistan achieved its independence, and the Afghan nationalism was enriched and achieved a level of sophistication, the government systematically attempted to infuse the new discourse in English works undertaken on Afghanistan either by Western scholars, the Afghan government or Afghan scholars. The government not only facilitated the environment for such enterprise, but also tried to control or guide the outcome of such undertakings. The government and Afghan nationalists of post-1930, unlike pre-1915, were concerned with the problem of ethnic diversity, hence their main pre-occupation was to construct a common religious background, and ethnic origin for the people of Afghanistan to establish a symbolic order. The Western scholars and researchers at this stage, at least in the examples provided, despite their observations, and sometimes paradoxical claims, incorporate the official discourse of state formation in their historical reflection on Afghanistan. The master signifier of the discourse; Afghanistan and Afghans, transforms from an imagined Afghan land demarcated generously by Elphinstone, with a doubtful historical past. It gradually applies to a newly post-colonial state created in 1880 with a distinctive identity, historical and civilizational depth of Ariana and Khurasan. The term Afghan also transforms to refer to all subjects of the new kingdom, instead of only referring to, or signifying the Pashtuns. The Afghans at this later stage prefer to be called Pashtuns and the term

136

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Afghan should apply to the entire nation. However, the Pashtuns retain their claim to absolute majority in the absence of any credible national census to legitimize certain political practices. The three constructed nodal points of the official discourse, despite variations and contradictions, fully reflected at this phase. Ahmad Shah Durrani is recognized as the founder of the contemporary Afghanistan or the Durrani Empire. He was elected or selected in a Jirga, after eight or nine days of democratic deliberations. The historical past of the Jirga and its development after 1920 as a political institution has been recognized. Furthermore a new concept of emergency grand assembly has also been added to the discourse. The notion of invasion and resistance is traceable in the entire historical reflection at this stage. However, the integrity and unity of the discourse is undermined by contradictions and tensions in the details of the narrative, as explained. An interesting development at this phase, is the idea of a modern and pre-modern concept of state. Some argue that the modern state of Afghanistan begins with Amir Abdur Rahman in the 1880s, rather Ahmad Shah in 1747. Furthermore, the nationalistic claims of the Afghan government are supplemented at this phase by archaeological excavations. The Afghan perspective of state formation in English, contrary to the non-government-produced knowledge in English, which is occasionally marked by tensions, paradoxes and exclusions, attempts to present the discourse in a systematic and comprehensive manner similar to the phase of sophistication detailed in the second chapter. The Afghan perspective not only incorporates the exclusionary ‘picture’ constructed by the Afghan state, but reinforces it vigorously as the only regime of truth. After the dislocatory events of post-1978, the symbolic order established by the Afghan government and its associated identities are radically disrupted. And this ‘decentring’ and ‘hegemonic crisis’ has opened the space for the re-emergence of the excluded discourses and new voices to challenge the colonial and the official exclusionary discourse.

CHAPTER 4 HISTORIOGRAPHIES, TREATIES, CARTOGRAPHIES AND ATLASES:PROBLEMATIZING THE OFFICIAL DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Introduction The second and third chapter of the book, or what I termed the ‘first reading’, attempted to reconstruct the official discourse of state formation around the master signifier of the discourse; Afghanistan and Afghans, and the three related nodal points of; the moment of emergence, governance through assemblies and the notion of invasion and resistance. It was argued that the Afghan state, because of its dictatorial and suppressive nature, alongside constructing the official discourse, used the logic of difference to incorporate or silence any dissent. In this chapter, the ‘deconstructive genealogical’ move, or ‘the second reading’, I mostly rely on primary sources to problematize the official discourse. In doing so, a threefold strategy is adopted: firstly, to problematize the official discourse, and show the historicity and contingency of the identity constructed by the state, the chapter moves a step back to the historiography and history of the region to understand the present configuration and to explore their perspectives of the master signifier and three other related nodal points of the

138

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

official discourse. This, on one hand, helps us to test the credibility of the official claims that Afghanistan existed for centuries as an independent political entity as Ariana, Khurasan and Afghanistan, and on the other, enables us to have a sense of the pre-colonial discourses in the region. Secondly, it investigates the British collection of treaties, engagements and sanads (documents) in the region to trace and show step by step when and how the concept of Afghanistan as a post-colonial state emerged and developed in colonial discourse. This endeavour, on one hand, shows the gradual construction of such a concept in the colonial official discourse, and on the other, reveals the limits of the concept, as opposed to the official claim of historical and civilizational depths going back to ancient time. Thirdly, to test the credibility of the official discourse, it also carefully reviews and examines the ancient and modern maps, atlases and historical geography of the world and Asia. It attempts to establish whether an independent nation state as Ariana in the ancient times, Khurasan in the post-Islamic era, and Afghanistan in the modern time established by Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747 appears on the world map or not.

The Historiography of 1300– 1880 and the Story of State Formation in Afghanistan The Pre-Colonial Sources (1321– 1760) and the Master Signifier of the Official Discourse In the period from 1300 to 1880 a number of important historical books were written in the wider region of Iran, Khurasan and India, either by the order of the kings/rulers or in some cases by individual historians or scholars. There are notable primary sources on, for example, history, geography and politics in Farsi and Arabic, which provide us with the full picture of the region and its political discourse prior to the arrival of colonialism. But because of time and space the chapter limits itself to a small number of sources to present an example of how primary sources depict the master signifiers of the discourse; Afghanistan and Afghans and the three related nodal points. In the first part of the move, in order to problematize the Pashtun-ethnocentric discourse of state formation in Afghanistan, the chapter begins with the pre-colonial primary sources. This, on one hand, enables the research to illustrate the pre-colonial

PROBLEMATIZING

THE

OFFICIAL DISCOURSE

139

perception of the nodal points of the discourse, and on the other, to highlight the development of these concepts throughout the time of the colonial and post-colonial epoch. I begin with the Tarikh Namae Herat [History of Herat], (1321), by Saif ibn Mohammad ibn Yaqub Herawi, written in Persian at the time of Al-e Kort, an east Iranian dynasty (1245 – 1389), which ruled the region from Herat as their capital.1 Herawi is the first historian to use the term Afghanistan in Farsi, and provide a detailed account of Afghanistan and Afghans, it is argued. However, before him, the historians have recorded the history and the place of Afghans, but have not used the term Afghanistan. He provides a detailed account of Malik Shamsudin of Al-e Kort’s expeditions to Afghanistan, and how he conquered the region and suppressed the rebellions several times. Afghanistan as the birthplace of Afghans, according to him, is a province located around the Suleiman Mountains and the city of Mustang (Quetta) is its centre. According to him, Herat, Kandahar, Sistan and Ghanzni are separate provinces which are not included in Afghanistan, but all of them are part of Herat and controlled from there as the capital city of Al-e Kort. [. . .] Because Herat, being protected from troubles, is one of the greatest cities of Khurasan, and I pay more attention to its construction, for this reason, I appoint Malik Shamsudin Kort, who comes from a great and famous dynasty, and has a good and the right attitude like his father and grandfathers. I appoint him as the ruler of the city of Herat, to be protected from troubles, and its dependencies like Jamo Bakharz [. . .] Ghorjistan, Murghab, Faryab, Marjaq up to the Aamo (Oxus) river, Asafzar, Farah, Sijistan, Teknabad, Kabul, Terah, Bustistan and Afghanistan up to the Sind river and the border of Hindustan.2 The story of Malik Shamsudin and other rulers and how they subdued Afghanistan, attacked it, killed the rebellious elements, destroyed their forts and used them for their solders continues in the book. He refers to Afghans as people who cause trouble for caravans travelling to India, and sometimes refers to some of them as thieves and highwaymen. Herawi argues that on several occasions the ruler of Herat was forced to intervene to fight or neutralize the thieves who

140

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

were causing trouble for the caravans or looting them.3 Herawi speaks of Iran and Khurasan, but contrary to official discourse, Afghanistan in his narrative is a province inhabited by Afghans i.e. Pashtuns. The notion of government by assemblies and a separate political entity with a glorious historical and civilizational past is not traceable in his narrative. Instead Herawi speaks of a backward tribal society causing trouble for caravans going to or coming from Hindustan. Furthermore, his geographical description of Afghanistan is different from what was narrated by Kakar. Another important source refers to the location of the master signifier and the character of Afghans is Timur in his book Tuzuk-i Timuri, (1404). He speaks of conquering the countries of Sistan, Kandahar and Afghanistan, and points out that Afghanistan is located on the way to India (Hindustan).4 He adds that Afghans are acting as highwaymen, causing trouble for the caravans going to India and speaks of his decision to fight them to secure the way to India.5 A third primary source detailing the location and character of Afghanistan is Babur-Nama [Memories of Babur], by Zahuruddin Mohammad Babur, the founder of Mughal Empire. It was written in 1505 and translated for the first time into Persian in 1589 in the reign of Akbar. Babur in his memories provides a detailed account of his conquests and expeditions, which begin in central Asia and end in Hindustan. Once he captures Kabul and moves towards India, he narrates his account of the location and his engagements with Afghans. Similar to that of Herawi, he uses the term Afghanistan and describes its geographical location. On 14 June 1504 this is how Babur describes the location of Kabul, where he also identifies the location of Afghanistan: The Kabul country is situated in the fourth climate and in the midst of cultivated lands. On the east it has the Lamghanat/ Parashawar (Pashawar), Hash(t)-nagar and some of the countries of Hindustan. On the west it has the mountain region in which are Karnud and Ghur, now the refuge and dwelling-places of the Hazara and Nikdiri (van Nikudarl) tribes. On the north, separated from it by the range of Hindu-Kush, it has the Qunduz and Andar-ab countries. On the south, it has Farmul, Naghr (van Naghz), Bannu and Afghanistan.6

PROBLEMATIZING

THE

OFFICIAL DISCOURSE

141

He also states that once he took Kabul and Ghazni, he ‘overran Kohat, the plain of Bannu and lands of the Afghans, and went on to Ghazni by way of Duki (Dijgi).’7 In another expedition to fight the Afghans he states: The mountains (south-east of Kabul) of Khwaja Ismail, Dasht, Dugi (Duki) and Afghanistan are all alike; all low, scant of vegetation, short of water, treeless, ugly and good-for-nothing. Their people take after them, just as has been said, Ting bulmaghuncha tush bulmas [A narrow place is large to the narrowminded]. Likely enough the world has few mountains so useless and disgusting.8 He uses the term Afghanistan to refer to a separate geographical location from Kabul, Ghazni and Kandahar, located in the Suleiman ranges of today’s Pakistan. However, in his narrative he speaks of Iran and Khurasan but not of Ariana. Similar to previous accounts, one cannot trace the story of historical and civilizational depth, government by assemblies or the notion of invasion and resistance in Babur’s account of Afghanistan and Afghans. Tarikh-i Ferishta, (1606), by Mohammad Kasim Shah Ferishta, presents the history of the rise of Muslim power in India in four volumes. It also provides a detailed account of the Afghans and Afghanistan, which is widely used by colonial writers, as pointed out in previous chapters. Similar to the narratives of Herawi, Timur and Babur, he defines the location of Afghanistan as around the Suleiman Mountains, and speaks of their wars with Indians, and how they were defeated and subdued by Mahmod Ghaznavi.9 He further adds that when their population grew, they migrated towards India and Khurasan. Again contrary to the official discourse he speaks of a tribal community, which is mainly known for plunder and causing trouble for caravans to Hindustan rather than as a civilization. The most important historical book to elucidate the reign of Ahmad Shah Durrani, and confirm or otherwise the historical claim of the Afghan state is Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi, [History of Ahmad Shah] (1773) by Mahmod ul Hossaini ibn Ibrahim Jami, the official historian of the court. This book is the official biography of Ahmad Shah Durrani, which covers in details the historical events of his reign from 1747– 73.

142

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

The author by the order of the king began writing the book in 1754 in the city of Mashhad and completed it in 1773 in the city of Kandahar. This book details the reign of Ahmad Shah Durrani and constitutes the primary base of my move to problematize the official narrative.10 Ironically it is noticed that this is the only historical book written by Afghan rulers prior to the arrival of colonialism, and has not been influenced by the colonial discourse. Hossaini, the official historian of the court, to summarize it, narrates that Ahmad Shah Durrani was a trusted officer of Nadir Shah Afshar. After his assassination, along with the Afghan army, he managed to collect what they could, and marched towards Kandahar. Upon his arrival close to the city of Kandahar he sent a group of soldiers to inform the people that Nadir had been killed and Ahmad Khan was on his way to the city with his army. Once he arrived at the city, according to Hossaini, people were insisting that he should be the future king based on his hereditary rights, as his family were the rightful rulers of the Abdalies in the area, but because of his nobility he refused to accept the offer. However, his refusal did not help, as the masses were adamant that he should accept the position. At this very moment, according to Hossaini, Pir Sabir Shah, a saint who was accompanying Ahmad Shah during his service to Nadir, and had predicted that Ahmad Shah would be the next king after the death of Nadir, came forward and by putting a green herb on Ahmad Shah’s turban pronounced him to be the new king. Following this ceremony and his proclamation as the new king, his name was read in the Khotba and he circulated his coin.11 In this book, sponsored by Ahmad Shah Durrani, as he was interested in a history of his achievements similar to the history of his master Nadir,12 one cannot find the convening of a national grand assembly or Loya Jirga with the participation of all ethnic groups of the country (or their representatives) to decide on a national issue; electing or selecting the king, the nine days of democratic deliberations, the rivalry between heads of tribes and finally electing Ahmad Khan as the future king of the country, and laying the foundation of the contemporary or modern Afghanistan or the modern Afghan state as has been forcefully and repeatedly claimed in the official discourse. Contrary to this, the book speaks of the countries of Iran, Khurasan, Turkistan, India and the famous cities of Kandahar, Herat, and Balkh, but not of Afghanistan. To my surprise, I noticed that the very word Afghanistan is not

PROBLEMATIZING

THE

OFFICIAL DISCOURSE

143

mentioned even once in the entire book. However, he uses the word Afghan(s) to refer to Pashtuns as an ethnic group or their tribes signifying the subjects of a particular political entity or a geographical location. Ahmad Shah in this book and also in his letter to the Ottoman Caliph calls himself the king of Khurasan and Iran. It is also mentioned explicitly and in some detail that he ruled over parts of Iran, Khurasan, Hindustan, and Turkistan, but it is not mentioned in the book whatsoever that he established the country of Afghanistan or he is the rightful ruler of the country. Another important primary document I came across is the letter by Ahmad Shah Durrani addressed to Ottoman Caliph or Sultan Mustafa III (1757– 74) written in the early 1760s. In this letter, he explains in some detail and justifies his ascent to power. He states that once Nadir Shah, the tyrant, had been assassinated, he went to Kandahar. But despite the fact that his family had been the rulers of Afghans for generations, he avoided being the next king. He further argues that over 2.4 million Afghans, i.e. Pashtuns, live in Kandahar, within the borders of Kabul, Ghazni and Peshawar. The elders and chiefs of Afghans, according to him, visited him one by one in Kandahar and asked him to accept the position. Hence in the tradition of Islam and Caliphs of the prophet he accepted to be the new king. He states that Nadir had conquered Iran, Turkistan and India, and after his death he established his new kingdom in Iran, Turkistan and Hindustan. In this letter, he calls himself the ‘king of Iran, Khurasan, Turkistan and Hindustan’. However, once again there is no mention of Afghanistan, Jirga, Loya Jirga and nine days of democratic deliberation, nor of his election in an assembly near Kandahar, as has been claimed by the official historiography.13 To summarize, it can be argued that in the pre-colonial Persian and Arabic literature the word ‘Afghan(s)’, ‘Afghani’ and other related derivatives or paronyms can be traced dating back some one thousand years ago, which refers to a particular ethnic group i.e. Pashtuns.14 The term Afghanistan is mentioned for the first time by Herwai in Persian some seven hundred years ago, which refers to a wilayat (province) or locality around the Suleiman Mountains, inhabited by Afghans. The ruler of Herat governed it at that time, and it was a separate entity from Kandahar, Ghazni, Kabul, and Sistan. However, as the population grew, the Afghans migrated towards India and Khurasan. The historical evidence does not portray a civilized, modern and progressive nation of

144

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Afghans, instead it refers to it as tribal, backward and mainly causing trouble for caravans going to India.15 The myth of democratic emergence, governance by assembly, and the notion of invasion and resistance, as nodal points of the official discourse to link the chains of signification or justify a particular set of practices are not traceable in the pre-colonial literature. The pattern of legitimacy at this stage is a combination of Islamic concepts and pre-Islamic traditions. Hence, it is possible to speak of Shura or Darbar rather than democratic assemblies. Furthermore, the tribes and dynasties have certainly conducted wars and made conquests, but for reasons other than defending or expanding a nation state as we perceive it today, or as it has been claimed by the Afghan official discourse.

The Post-Colonial Sources (1850– 1885) and the Master Signifier of the Official Discourse A number of credible primary sources are available in Persian in what I have termed post-colonial sources. On one hand, they reflect the discourses of the time and their developments and, on the other, they shed light on the impact of the colonial knowledge on the local narrative. As I have noticed during my research, the official and semiofficial historians in Afghanistan, e.g. Ghubar and Habibi, often rely on these books as authentic domestic sources, but contrary to their claim, a vigorous scrutiny of these post-colonial sources indicate the impact of colonial knowledge upon their content, which render them problematic.16 The chapter begins chronologically with the first of the post-colonial primary sources:17 Tarikh-i Ahmad [History of Ahmad] (1850) by Munshi Mohammad Abdul Karim, which discusses the reign of the Durrani Dynasty. In his introduction in 1850, Karim refers to the entire region as Khurasan and says that after he finished his book on the ‘return of Shah Shuja from Hindustan to Khurasan supported by Britain,’ he decided to write a new book on Durrani Kings. It is evident in his narrative that even at this time the master signifier of the official discourse, Afghanistan, is part of Khurasan, and a separate region from that of Kabul, Turkistan, Kandahar and Herat. All these provinces, according to him, are part of Khurasan as the general name of the region. Afghans in reference to an ethnicity, referred to a particular ethnic group, i.e. Pashtuns. On the myth of emergence, which is mainly symbolized in the Ahmad Shah Durrani’s coronation, and how he was

PROBLEMATIZING

THE

OFFICIAL DISCOURSE

145

proclaimed king, Karim, similar to other historians, begins from Nadir Shah and his relation with Ahmad as a young officer. He says Sabir Shah, a saint from Lahore, who was accompanying Ahmad Shah, had predicted that he would be the next king after the death of Nadir, and Nadir had asked Ahmad Shah to be kind to his family after him. Unlike the official narrative of the biography of Ahmad Shah, Karim narrates that once Nadir was assassinated, Ahmad marched towards Kandahar with his army. Shortly after they left the place, the saint asked him to become the new king, but Ahmad Shah told him that he lacked the money and the power to become king. He narrates that Sabir Shah made a bench/seat from the soil and took Ahmad’s hand and seated him there. Once he sat, the saint put a green herb on his head and told him that ‘this is your throne, and this is your crown of the Caliphate, hence you are the new king’. He continues that once they arrived at the city of Kandahar, Ahmad announced the death of Nadir and proclaimed himself the new king. He further explains that after he had claimed power, he appointed his friends to new posts, and by getting hold of the treasure which was heading to Nadir from Hindustan he began his new military campaign. Again, one cannot trace the idea of laying the foundation of modern Afghanistan, convening a Loya Jirga, nine days of democratic deliberations and finally the ‘election’ of the new king in a national gathering, or the notion of ‘invasion and resistance’ as portrayed in the official discourse. Contrary to Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi, Karim states that the decision to announce Ahmad as the new king was made very shortly after they left Nadir’s headquarters. He provides a full description of Ahmad Shah’s stamp and says that a Persian poem was written on his new coin. Karim in his book regularly refers to Iran, Khurasan and Hindustan and their cities as centres of power, e.g. Kabul, Kandahar, Afghanistan, Herat and Turkistan.18 Karim, while discussing the Durrani kings, their several military expeditions and also internal rivalries, usually refers to them as kings of Khurasan and Iran, rather than as kings or rulers of Afghanistan.19 A second source around this time that I have consulted is: Tarikh-i Waqayea wa Sawaneh-i Afghanistan [History of Events and Biography of Afghanistan] (1856) by Ali Quli Merza, a Persian prince. The book begins by stating that Afghanistan was originally part of Iran, and Western writers called it Eastern Iran, and that it was subsequently separated from Iran. The book details the genealogy of the Afghans and

146

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

how they emerged and came to power. On how Ahmad Shah became the new king of the Durrani Empire, he tells a similar story to that of his contemporaries. But there is no mention of Loya Jirga in his story or the claim that Ahmad Shah laid the foundation of modern Afghanistan. Merza claims that, after the death of Nadir, they looted the camp and went straight to Kandahar.20 It is obvious that his narrative, similar to that of Karim, is influenced by colonial knowledge, as both refer to colonial writers and how they have described the history and geography of the Afghans, i.e. Pashtuns. A third source that has emerged a decade later from that of Merza is: Tarikh-i sultani [History of the King] (1864) by Sultan Mohammad Khan Ibn Musa Khan Durrani/Barikzai. In endeavouring to detail the history of the Afghans from the beginning to the Anglo– Afghan war, he provides a good account of the myth of emergence and how Ahmad Shah Durrani declared himself king of the Durrani Empire. In his introduction the author acknowledges that, besides other Persian history books, he has benefited from Goldsmith’s Grammar in describing the geography of Afghanistan, and also from The History of Persia, from the Most Early Period to the Present Time by Sir John Malcolm; a clear indication of the influence and internalization of the colonial knowledge in constructing the history of Afghanistan from a very early time.21 Barikzai’s account of the geographical location of Afghanistan is very similar to that of Elphinstone’s construction. However, in his account, Turkistan and the north of the Hindukush mountain ranges are still not included in Afghanistan or the areas where Afghans usually lived.22 He further argues that part of Afghanistan was controlled by Hindustan and the other part by Persia, and English writers used to call it Eastern Persia.23 On the myth of emergence and how Ahmad Shah was chosen as the new king, by introducing new dimension for the first time in the discourse he writes: once Nadir assassinated, Ahmad Shah marched towards Kandahar with the Afghan army, and upon their arrival in Kandahar, the elders of the Durrani tribe and other Afghans got together at Mazare Shir Surkh for consultation. In the meeting, according to him, the elders stated that they were no longer part of the Iranian government; hence it would be wise to accept someone from their tribe as the new king. While they were discussing the issue of the new king, Sabir Shah, a resident of Lahore, who had accompanied Ahmad Shah during his trip, stepped forward and declared Ahmad as the new king

PROBLEMATIZING

THE

OFFICIAL DISCOURSE

147

and put a spike of wheat on his head.24 Barikzai’s description of Afghanistan is similar to that of Elphinstone’s, and as noticed he does not refer to Ahmad Shah as the founder of Afghanistan. The very concept of Jirga and the Loya Jirga is not mentioned in his narrative, especially when he details the declaration of Ahmad Shah as the new king of the Durrani Empire. For the first time, contrary to the statement by Ahmad Shah’s official historiographer, Barakzai speaks of a meeting of Durrani elders who chose Mazare Shir Surkh as their meeting point. He is a Barikzai Afghan and due to the rivalry between Sadozai and Barikzai tribes, he argues that the reason Ahmad was chosen as the new king was because his tribe was the smallest and the weakest of all the Durrani tribes, hence the elders, especially the Barikzai chiefs, thought it would be easy for them to control him in the future, otherwise a Barikzai, preferably Haji Jaml Khan, would have been chosen as the new king rather than Ahmad Khan. This newly added moment to the narrative, because of the later power of the Barakzai tribe, became an essential part of the official discourse as explained in chapter two of the book. Another available source at this time in Persian is: Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi Durrani or Tarikh-i Durranian [The History of Ahmad Shah Durrani or The Durrani History] (1885), which seems to be a more fluent version of Tarikh-i Ahmad [History of Ahmad] (1850) by Munshi Mohammad Abdul Karim in Persian.25 Its narrative on Afghanistan and the Afghans is similar to Tarikh-i Ahmad.26 Nawa-i Marek [Tone of Wars] (1854) by Merza Atta Mohammad, which covers the events in the region from 1800 to the British military intervention, Gulshan-i Imarat [Rosary of the Government] (1870) by Nur Mohammad Nuri of Kandahar, which mainly covers the reign of Shir Ali Khan, Tarikh-i Padshahan-i Mutaakhir [History of the Late Kings of Afghanistan] (1907) by Mirza Yaqub Ali Khafi, and Ain alWaqayi [The Real Events] (1905) by Mohammad Yusuf Riyazi Harawai, all provide a detailed account of the region in the post-colonial era, and a similar story. Nawa-i Marek for instance explicitly speaks of Khurasan, and the British advance to Khurasan. They do not consider Ahmad Shah Durrani as the founder of Afghanistan, and there is no mention of Loya Jirga; its glories, historical depth, and how it was convened to elect the new king. To recapitulate, the chapter argued that the post-colonial primary sources (1850–85), I managed to consult, do not generally speak of

148

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

historical and modern Afghanistan: Ariana, Khurasan and then contemporary Afghanistan respectively. The notion of Ariana or Ariayee to signify a nation or a country is missing from the literature altogether. Instead it frequently mentions Iran and Khurasan as the general name of the region. At the beginning the literature refers to Afghanistan as one of the regions of Khurasan and to Afghans as one of the ethnicities of the region, but later, under the influence of colonial knowledge, it presents a description of Afghanistan, which is similar to that of Elphinstone. However, still the north of today’s Afghanistan and Turkistan is excluded from the Afghanistan they describe. They do not refer to Ahmad Shah Durrani as the founder of Afghanistan; instead he is called the founder of the Durrani or Abdali Empire in the region. The three nodal points of the official discourse: the myth of formation or emergence, the notion of governance by assemblies and the idea of invasion and resistance are missing from the narrative they provide. But, as pointed out, there are new moments and dimensions invented and slowly added to the narrative, e.g. meeting of the elders of the Durrani tribe in Shiri Srukh to appoint the new king. Last but not least is the influence of the colonial knowledge, especially that of the Elphinstonian discourse and John Malcolm’s History of Persia, on the post-colonial historiography of Afghanistan.

Genesis of the Afghan State in the Light of Treaties and Official Engagements with the East India Company and the British Empire In this part of the chapter, it is attempted to genealogically explore how the East India Company and the British Empire in their official treaties and engagements with kings and rulers of the region (1809– 1930s) portray the master signifier of the official discourse; Afghanistan and Afghans. I mainly focus on the master signifier of Afghanistan and what it meant at different stages, and how and when it developed to refer to an independent nation state. The part ‘Collection of Treaties, Engagements and Sanads: Relating to India and Neighbouring Countries’ covers Persia and Afghanistan, begins with a brief history of the country and then moves on to describe the first British engagement. It argues that after the fall of Nadir, three powerful dynasties emerged and contested for the control of his domain. The most powerful of the three was Ahmad Shah Durrani, who chose Kandahar as his capital and established the

PROBLEMATIZING

THE

OFFICIAL DISCOURSE

149

Durrani Empire extending from Herat to Kashmir and from Balkh to Sind. It also provides a detailed account of how the Empire collapsed as a result of internal rivalries, its division into small independent localities, the Anglo–Afghan wars, and the subsequent demarcation of new borders for a new political entity, which came to be known as Afghanistan. According to the collection, Elphinstone’s mission in 1808 was the first British official diplomatic delegation to engage with the Durrani Empire. The purpose of this mission was to consult with Shah Shuja, king of Kabul, about the means of mutual defence against the threatened invasion of India by the French in confederacy with the Persians through the domains of the Durrani Empire. The mission was well received at Peshawar by Shah Shuja, and resulted in a treaty of alliance in 1809. It was on this trip that Elphinstone produced his famous book; An Account of the Kingdom of Caboul. The narrative provides a very detailed account of events in the country up to the 1930s. As is usual with the colonial discourse, it begins the history of the country from the early days of the Durrani Empire and continues to the establishment of an independent state with demarcated territory and recognized sovereignty.27 The first treaty signed on 17 June 1809 is titled: ‘Treaty with the King of Cabool’, and refers to the land under the control of Shah Shuja as ‘the dominions of His Majesty the King of the Dooranee’, ‘State of Cabool’ and also ‘the country of Cabool’.28 This, contrary to the official discourse, indicates that in the 1800s the British colonial officials knew the country as the kingdom of Kabul rather than Afghanistan. In a memorandum of certain wishes and expectations signed on 9 June 1839 with Yar Mahomed Khan, vizier of His Majesty Shah Kamran of Herat, the East India Company deals directly with Herat as an independent and separate country, and refers to it as the government of Herat ‘vested in the person and descendants of Shah Kamran.’29 In a separate Treaty of Friendship and Alliance between the Honourable East India Company and His Majesty Shah Kamran of Herat, concluded on the 13 August 1839, and ratified by the Governor-General of India on 16 March 1840, the Company officially recognizes the government of Herat and Shah Kamran, his heirs and successors, as the kings and rulers of Herat. The treaty explicitly indicates that Herat is a separate government, and not included in the domains of Shah Shuja as part of the Kingdom of Kabul.30

150

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

The treaty concluded on 1 May 1855 reads; ‘a Treaty between the British Government and His Highness Amir Dost Mohammad Khan, Walee of Cabool and of those countries of Afghanistan now in his possession.’ Here the treaty uses the term Walee of Cabool for Dost Mohammad Khan, which means the ‘governor of Kabul’, instead of king or ruler of Kabul. The second development is that the treaty for the first time uses the term Afghanistan, which indicates, as explained before, that Afghanistan is one of the regions of the kingdom of Kabul rather the country as a whole.31 In a similar treaty on 26 January 1857 signed in Peshawar, the Company calls Amir Dost Mohammad Khan the ‘ruler of Cabool.’32 It is in the treaty between the British Government and Yakub Khan, Amir of Afghanistan and its dependencies, concluded at Gandamak on the 26 May 1879 that the British Empire for the first time refers to Yakub Khan as the Amir of ‘Afghanistan and its dependencies.’ As with other treaties, the British Empire continues to maintain the right to control the foreign policy of Afghanistan.33 However, a new development in the text of the treaty is that Afghanistan replaces Kabul, but with a new addition into it as its ‘dependencies’, which again indicates that there were still regions, which were not part of Afghanistan. Another feature of the collection on Afghanistan is the details of border demarcations, which clearly explain the arbitrary demarcation of Afghanistan’s borders under the direction and supervision of the British and Russian Empires to create a buffer state. The commissions of the two empires were involved in demarcation of the border between Russia and Afghanistan, but on demarcating the border with the British Empire, there were only British and Afghan commissions, which completed the process in several stages until 1896 and 1905.34 Similar to the previous treaty, the agreement signed on 12 November 1893 ‘between His Highness Amir Abdur Rahman Khan, and the British Government of India,’ refers to Amir as the ‘Amir of Afghanistan and its dependencies.’ Henceforth the term ‘Afghanistan and its dependencies’, was used in all treaties signed with the British Empire during the reign of Abdur Rahman Khan, and Afghanistan remained under British suzerainty.35 The same trend continues with Amir Habibullah Khan (1901–19), and the treaty with the British Government signed on 21 March 1905, refers to him as the ‘independent King of the State of Afghanistan and its dependencies.’ In this treaty he agrees to honour all the treaties signed by his father.36 It is

PROBLEMATIZING

THE

OFFICIAL DISCOURSE

151

only in the peace treaty concluded at Rawalpindi on 8 August 1919 that the British Government for the first time uses the terms ‘independent’ ‘Afghan Government’, and ‘Government of Afghanistan’, instead of ‘Afghanistan and its dependencies.’ The reason for this change is the formal renunciation of suzerainty and the recognition of Afghanistan as an independent nation state by the British Government.37 Hence, it was only after the August 1919 independence declaration that Afghanistan was allowed to establish formal diplomatic relations with other nation states, and recognized as an independent state. It is argued that it was only after the independence declaration, which is celebrated on 19 August each year by Afghanistan as ‘Independence Day’38 that upon the request of the Afghan state, the suffix ‘dependencies’ was removed from the name of Afghanistan and its official correspondence and treaties. To summarize, I argue that the official treaties and engagements of the East India Company and the British Empire, not only contradict and problematize the officially constructed perception of the master signifier, Afghanistan, but also confirm my observation that it was an Elphinstonian colonial construction, which was gradually developed by Britain and Afghan rulers to replace Khurasan and Kabul, as it was depicted in the early colonial literature. The treaties refer to the region in 1809 as the Kingdom of Kabul. Later Herat is recognized as a separate government. They refer to Amir Dost Mohammad as the governor of Kabul and ruler of parts of Afghanistan, and finally use the term Afghanistan and its dependencies after the two empires complete the process of drawing the borders of the newly created post-colonial buffer state of Afghanistan. The country retains the suffix of ‘dependencies’, which meant that north of the country, was still not officially part of Afghanistan. It was only in 1919 that British suzerainty was given up and Afghanistan officially entered the realm of the international system as an independent post-colonial nation state, and the suffix was removed.

Cartography, Maps, Atlases, Historical Geography and the Master Signifier of the Official Discourse: Ariana, Khurasan and Afghanistan The third strategy to problematize the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan in this chapter is a detailed study of

152

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

cartography, maps, historical geography and historical atlases of the world, Asia, Southeast and Central Asia. I have to confess that my knowledge of cartography, maps, atlases and geography is limited, hence any critical engagement with these documents is avoided. Despite my strong reservations about the colonial visual representation of different regions, in this case I only examine whether the available sources affirm the official claims or prove otherwise. The official discourse argues that today’s Afghanistan was called Ariana in ancient times for some 1,500 years, but in the post-Islamic era the name was changed to Khurasan, which again lasted for another 1,500 years, and finally in 1747 Ahmad Shah Abdali, the founder and father of the nation, named the same political entity after its reintegration Afghanistan. In this historical cartographico-atlases survey the chapter begins with Afghanistan, the master signifier of the official discourse, and then moves to Ariana and Khurasan to see whether such a political entity existed before Afghanistan or not. However, contrary to the official discourse, a careful survey of the atlases confirms my findings in the first and second parts of this chapter. To establish this, some of the old and modern maps of the world, Asia, Southeast and Central Asia from early times to the present geographical and political divisions of the world based on nation state systems and their internationally recognized borders have been examined. The most important of all the maps I came across are: the largest collection of ancient maps of Asia and Persia in the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies, part of School of Oriental and African Studies, which displays some 121 original maps of the region from the sixth century to 1965,39 the Texas University Library,40 the Digital South Asia Library,41 and the Columbia University42 official websites. Another important source of geographical history consulted is: A Historical Atlas of South Asia by Schwartzberg.43 Furthermore I have scrutinized in detail the map provided by John Malcolm of Persia and adjacent countries in The History of Persia, the map sketched by Elphinstone in An Account of the Kingdom of Caboul, the map of Persia in the eighteenth century by Laurence Lockhart in The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia,44 and finally the Antique Maps of Persia.45 To examine the notion of Ariana in Greek resources, the colonial reproduction of the Greek geographical discourse of the region and how it developed to enter the Afghan official discourse, I referred to the

PROBLEMATIZING

THE

OFFICIAL DISCOURSE

153

Geography of Strabo, the Ariana Antiqua of Wilson (1841) and to Bellew’s An Enquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan, (1891). A chronological survey of pre-historic, ancient, medieval and modern maps detailing the geography of the region to 1800 AD in Arabic, Persian and other European languages reveal the fact that no state exists as Afghanistan on the world map.46 A careful study of the Historical Atlas of South Asia, which discusses the region in fourteen chapters with great detail from pre-history to post-independent and modern geographical history also supports the argument. The maps in this atlas provides us with an insight into the dynamics of power shifts, empires and dynasties emerging in the region throughout history until the establishment of post-colonial nation states. It is worth mentioning that it is impossible to have an accurate account of the borders of these dynasties or empires, as the pre-modern empires and dynasties of the region had no fixed borders as we perceive them under the modern nation state system.

Afghanistan The words ‘Augans’, ‘Afghans’ or ‘Pathans’, as a small locality or region under the city of Candahar, appear in the maps of 1700 – 1800, which identified several times the Suleiman Mountains between Kandahar and the Indus River as the birthplace of the Afghans, located in today’s Pakistan.47 From 1800 – 60 it develops in the new maps produced by the colonial powers to include the area demarcated as Afghanistan by Elphinstone in his celebrated book; An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, but still Cabool or Caubul remains the dominant name on the maps. But gradually in the new colonial generations of maps Afghanistan first replaces Candahar, and then expands to include regions adjacent to Kabul. From 1860 – 90 it develops to replace Cabool on the new colonial maps, but it is still limited to the Elphinstonian signification of Afghanistan, and does not include the north of the country or what are later known as Afghanistan’s ‘dependencies’. From the 1890s onward, once the processes of demarcation of the borders are completed by the Russian and British Empires and in limited cases in the presence of the Afghan border commissions, Afghanistan, the master signifier of the discourses, appears in the colonial and state-produced maps as a post-colonial nation state in its present form and shape.

154

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

However, the colonial maps present a confusing picture of Cabool and Khurasan post-1800. But in the pre-1800, Khurasan and Persia are the dominant names in the region, while Cabool/Caubul, Candahar, Herat and other major cities appear to be part of Khurasan. Hence, Afghanistan in the colonial maps at the beginning signifies the region attempted to reconstruct in the first part of this chapter. The inhabitants of this area, for reasons which cannot be explained here, gradually expanded towards India and Khurasan. In Khurasan they gradually, step by step occupied Kandahar, Herat, and other major cities and managed to establish the Hotaki autonomous region in Kandahar, and then the Durrani dynasty in 1747. However, Afghanistan as a geographical location still remained to signify the region adjacent to the Suleiman ranges which are located in today’s Pakistan, rather than an independent state, and Afghans in reference to an ethnicity signified the Pashtuns. The general name of the region remained Khurasan, but the colonial maps, after the Elphinstone mission, attempted to portray some parts of Khurasan as Caubul, and the southern part of Caubul as Afghanistan. Gradually, the colonial officials, and in a later stage the Afghan government (after the 1890s) both adopted Afghanistan as the official name of the newly post-colonial state, which also included its dependencies i.e. Turkistan, Balkh, Kundoz and Badakhshan.48 Contrary to the official discourse, all available resources referred to indicate that a separate political entity as contemporary Afghanistan, as a nation state and even as an empire did not exist on any map of the world prior to the 1890s. Ahmad Shah Durrani, as explained, does not even mention the name of Afghanistan in his book; let alone the claim that he has called himself the founder of the so-called contemporary Afghanistan in 1747. Instead there is irrefutable evidence that he used to refer to himself as the king of Khurasan and Iran. It is also visible in all maps before the 1800s that Afghanistan and Afghans were part of Khurasan. It is only after the arrival of colonialism, and as a direct outcome of colonial construction, especially that of Elphinstone and the power of visual representation that Afghanistan appears as a nation state in the world map after the 1890s. This new representation; Afghanistan and Afghans, on one hand excludes the diverse and civilizational identity of the region, and on the other, imposes a single identity; the identity of a single ethnic group, on the rest of the inhabitants of the country: Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and other seventy plus ethnic groups.

PROBLEMATIZING

THE

OFFICIAL DISCOURSE

155

Ariana and Khurasan as Ancient and post-Islamic Names of Afghanistan Due to time and space, and also lack of special knowledge of the ancient history, I cannot engage in a critical analysis of the complicated and controversial historical concepts of Ariana, Iran, Persia and Khurasan. However, in this very brief geographical survey, I attempt to elucidate these concepts to the extent they are related to the research and to see whether they fit the official discourse or present a different outlook. Historically it is argued that Arya and Aryans have been mentioned in Rig Veda in 1200 BC ,49 and in Gathas of Zarathushtra around 1200– 900 BC .50 Furthermore the Greek geographical and historical sources also use the term Ariana to designate a country alongside India in 20 AD . The most famous of the Greek sources in this regard is Strabo’s geography. He in his account of the region provides a geographical description of Ariana, which has been a source of historical inventions for the Afghan nationalist historians. He makes India the first section of the southern part, and Ariana the second; these two countries possessing a good outline, he has been able not only to give us an accurate statement of their length and breadth, but an almost geometrically exact description of their figure. He tells us that the form of India is rhomboidal, being washed on two of its sides by the southern and eastern oceans [respectively], which do not deeply indent its shores. The two remaining sides are contained by its mountains and the river [Indus], so that it presents a kind of rectilinear figure. As to Ariana, he considered three of its sides well fitted to form a parallelogram; but of the western side he could give no regular definition, as it was inhabited by various nations; nevertheless he attempts an idea of it by a line drawn from the Caspian Gates to the limits of Carmania, which border on the Persian Gulf. This side he calls western, and that next the Indus eastern, but he does not tell us they are parallel to each other; neither does he say this of the other sides, one bounded by the mountains, and the other by the sea; he simply calls them north and south.51 Wilson, who studies the Greek geographical construction of the region, especially Ariana in the light of coins and antiques discovered by

156

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

colonial officials in the region provides a detailed and a reasonably fair account of the Greeks’ perception of Ariana. ‘The eastern boundary of Ariana is the Indus; the southern is the Indian Ocean, from the mouth of the Indus to the Persian Gulf. The western limit is said in one place to be an imaginary line drawn from the Caspian Gates to Carmania.’ 52 However, he further explicates the different Greek narratives, which also present a smaller version of Ariana. And it is this later version that has been adopted by the Afghan nationalist discourse as the ancient location, name and perception of Afghanistan. In another, Eratosthenese is cited as describing the western boundary to be a line separating Parthiene from Media, and Carmania from Paratakene and Persia– that is, taking in the whole of Yazd and Kerman, but excluding Fars. The northern boundary is said to be the Paropamisan Mountains, or the same mountains of which the continuation forms the northern limit of India. It is elsewhere observed, upon the authority of Apollodorus of Artemis, that the name is applied to some parts of Persia and Media, and the northern Bactrians and Sogdians.53 [. . .] It cannot now be reasonably doubted that Aria and Ariana, and a variety of ancient denominatives, of which Aria is a component element, are, as pointed out by M. Brunouf, connected with the Hindu term Arya, ‘excellent, honourable.’ According to Manu, Aray-vartta, ‘the country of excellent men,’ extends between the Himalaya and the Vindhya mountains, or rather between the same parallels of the latitude, to the Western Sea, that is, to an indeterminate boundary westwards.54 Wilson also names the nations inhabiting Ariana as enumerated by Strabo, and adds that ‘elsewhere Pliny speaks of India comprehending four satrapies beyond the Indus, Gedrosia, Arachosia, Aria, and the Paropamisus; although, according to some, these belong to Ariana.’ Wilson states that the reason Strabo includes some of the eastern Persians, the Bactrians and Sogdians with the people of Ariana is the affinity of their language. ‘The languages of the people were, no doubt, for the most part, very much akin, as they were in fact natives of one and the same country’ he asserts. Wilson further argues that this single language of the people of Ariana, despite their tribal differences, was

PROBLEMATIZING

THE

OFFICIAL DISCOURSE

157

Persian, which is still spoken in the region, made them natives of one and the same country.55 Wilson further explains that the ancient Persian term Eriene-veejo applies to the same region, and concludes that despite variations in the usage; Ariana, Arya and Iran, they are old Persian words, and used to denominate the same geographical region with Farsi or Persian as their common language. We may, therefore, admit that Airya, or Airyana, are old Persian words, and the names of that region to which Hindus extended the designation of Arya, which the coins of the Sassanian princes denominate Iran, and which the Greeks of Alexander’s time understood as Ariana.56 Bellew in his study of Afghanistan, especially in his An Enquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan, upon which the chapter focuses, reproduces the Greek account of the region, and argues that it opens an independent study alongside the inquiries carried out by the East India Company on Afghanistan. Despite the fact that previous inquiries had been carried on the subject, looking at the scale of Bellew’s work, one can argue that his work has played a major role in developing the concept of Ariana to impact the Afghan nationalist aspirations at a later stage. He begins with Strabo, who died in 24 AD , and who speaks of Eratosthenes’s account of the region at the time of Alexander’s invasion of Ariana and India. After detailing and quoting the description of Ariana by Strabo, which we referred to, he further defines the borders of Afghanistan, despite his admission that Afghanistan is a new name, and concludes: ‘The country now called Afghanistan is the Ariana of the ancient Greeks’.57 The Persian literature available to us only uses the term Iran and Iran-shahr, which, as explained, applies to the same geographical sphere. However, in the Arabic literature beside the term Iran, they extensively use the term Furs (Persians). In the maps produced in the seventeenth century by colonial powers based on the re-discovery of the Greek geographical knowledge of the region, amongst other things, they show ‘Ariana’ as a separate entity. As I explained, the major colonial entertaining of the idea of ‘Ariana’ and how the concept was perceived by the Greeks, began with Wilson in the colonial-knowledge formation period, and then it was further elaborated by Bellew who decided to apply

158

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

the concept of ancient ‘Ariana’ to today’s Afghanistan. This colonial construction was then adopted as a theme by the government and the nationalist elite of Afghanistan in post-1930 knowledge production. Despite tracking the traces of the notion in the literature produced in Afghanistan after the 1920s, the major work about Ariana as the ancient name of Afghanistan was produced by Kohzad in the 1940s,58 what I termed ‘the convergence of colonial and Afghan ethno-nationalist discourses’. To create the social and political border of the otherness between Iran and Afghanistan as two separate nations with two distinctive historical backgrounds, the official discourse vigorously argued for the concept of Ariana as the historical identity of the Afghanistan as opposed to Iran, and its historical identity. Thus, Ariana, as it has been described by the Afghan official discourse, does not exist, and what exists historically does not match the Afghan ethno-nationalist description.

Khurasan, Iran and Persia Khurasan, Iran and Persia are prominent features of the maps of Asia and the world. However, Khurasan as a geographical concept has radically transformed throughout history, and has been used to denominate sometimes a larger and at other times a limited number of cities in the ancient and post-Islamic eras. In ancient Iran or Iranshahr geography, Khurasan is the largest and the most flourishing territory in the eastern part of Iran. At the beginning of the Islamic period, Khurasan denominated, among other things, the city of Balkh, Tokharistan, Herat, Transoxiana, Sujistan, Tehran, Kerman, Kandahar, Multan, Kashmir, Marva, Nishapur and Kabul. However, at a later stage it became famous for denominating four major cities of the region: Nishapur, Marve, Herat and Balkh. But finally, after a long history of ups and downs, the colonial powers redrew the map of the region, and the historical region of Khurasan gave way to the emergence of a number of post-colonial nation states in the region. Khora¯sa¯n, also spelled Khurasan, a historical region and realm comprising a vast territory now lying in north-eastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan. The historical region extended along the north, from the Amu Darya (Oxus River) westward to the Caspian Sea and, along the south, from the fringes of the central Iranian deserts eastward to the mountains of

PROBLEMATIZING

THE

OFFICIAL DISCOURSE

159

central Afghanistan. Arab geographers even spoke of its extending to the boundaries of India. The history of the area stretches back to very ancient times. It was part of the Achaemenid Empire of the 6th and 5th centuries BC and the Parthian empire of the 1st century BC . (Khora¯sa¯n is sometimes loosely identified synonymously with Parthia.) Khora¯sa¯n was first named, however, by the Sa¯sa¯nians (beginning in the third century BC ), who organized their empire into four quarters (named from the cardinal points), Khora¯sa¯n being literally the “Land of the Sun.” After the Arab conquest in 651 – 652 CE , the name was retained both as the designation of a definite province and in a looser sense. At first the Arabs used the area as a march, or garrisoned frontier, but soon large colonies of Arabs moved in, especially around Merv, and a meld of Islamic and eastern Iranian cultures ensued. Later Khora¯sa¯n regained virtual independence under the Ta¯hirid, Saffa¯rid, and Sa¯ma¯nid ˙ ˙ dynasties (821 – 999). Successively it formed part of the Ghaznavid, Seljuq, and Khwa¯rezm-Sha¯h kingdoms but was overrun by Genghis Khan in 1220 and again by Timur (Tamerlane) about 1383. The Iranian Safavid kings (1502 – 1736) ˙ fought over it against Uzbek invasions. It was occupied by the Afghans from 1722 to 1730. Na¯der Sha¯h, born in Khora¯sa¯n, broke the Afghan supremacy and made Mashhad the capital of his Iranian empire. Ferdowsı¯, author of the Sha¯h-na¯meh (“Book of Kings”), and Omar Khayyam, the celebrated poet and sage, were born in the region. Khora¯sa¯n’s current Iranian frontiers were defined in 1881 and in a convention of July 8, 1893. This gave form to the modern Iranian province of Khora¯sa¯n, which was split into three smaller provinces in 2004.59 Hence, Khurasan was not a nation state as such, or an empire with fixed borders, but a historical and civilizational sphere name covering a wider region with no ethnic connotations. The term Persia is mainly used in Greek, Arabic and English literature to denote ancient or historical Iran. However, since the Sassanid Empire, contrary to Greek and English literature, the primary Persian literature and manuscripts use the term Iran, and Iranshahr to designate the Iranian plateau. To present an idea of what the Iranian

160

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

plateau meant historically, I quote Malcolm’s description of the geographical dimension of the region: The boundaries of Iran, which Europeans call Persia, have undergone many changes. The limits of this kingdom, in its most prosperous periods, may however be easily described: the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean to the south, the Indus and the Oxus to the east and north-east, the Caspian Sea and Mount Caucasus to the north, and the River Euphrates to the west.60 Thus, the Iranian plateau, or historical Iran, to contextualize it in practical terms, includes the modern state of Iran, Central Asian Republics, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, parts of China and the western half of Pakistan. Similarly Khurasan, taking into account its historical changes and the areas it denominated as the eastern part of Iran includes parts of today’s Central Asian Republics, parts of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan or even larger areas if one uses it interchangeably with Iran. Several empires and dynasties, sometimes simultaneously, have ruled this vast area with fluctuations which, on one hand, reflects the dynamics of power and, on the other, their ability to defend or expand their boundaries in the region. It is claimed that the greatest territory of any Persian/Iranian Empire was that established by the Achaemenid and the Sassanid Empires, and the last to establish such an empire was Nadir Shah Afshar (1736– 47). Therefore, Ariana and Khurasan historically have never been a state or an empire, let alone the idea that it was the same as today’s Afghanistan or Iran, instead they refer to a vast geographical region with huge cultural and ethnic diversity, to which I refer as the ‘common civilizational sphere’. My argument is that all the empires, dynasties and states beginning with the pre-historic, to medieval and pre-colonial era that have ruled this region are integral parts of this sphere, and belong to the common history and civilization of the Iranian plateau. Hence, Iran before the arrival of Islam, and Khurasan after the arrival of Islam, are historical and civilizational names and concepts used for the entire Iranian plateau and different empires and dynasties are recognized as such. Thus, all the dynasties and empires ruled the region were Iranians in the pre-Islamic period or Khursanians in the post-Islamic epoch,61 as they have claimed to be part of Iran or Khurasan. Furthermore, none of the post-colonial states of the region,

PROBLEMATIZING

THE

OFFICIAL DISCOURSE

161

including Afghanistan, Iran, Central Asian Republics match the historical and geographical description of Ariana and Khurasan; hence it is wrong and misleading if any of the post-colonial nation states of the region claims monopoly over the pre-colonial history or pride of the region.

Concluding remarks This chapter, in an archaeological and deconstructive-genealogical move, adopted a threefold strategy to problematize the official narrative of state formation in Afghanistan. It stepped back to the history in order to understand the present and open the space for the possibility of shaping a new discourse. The deconstructive move problematized the master signifier and three intertwined nodal points of the official discourse. It began with analysing and studying the primary literature available in Persian in chronological order from 1300–1880. It argued that historical facts and narratives of pre-colonialism, on one hand, provide us with a different political language and setup of the entire region, and on the other, contradict the constructed official discourse. The primary sources strongly dispute the mythical invention of the master signifier of the narrative in its several forms: (1) Ariana in the pre-Islamic era for more than 1,500 years, (2) Khurasan in the post-Islamic era for 1,500 years, and finally (3) Afghanistan after the emergence of the contemporary Afghan state under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747. It also disputes and problematizes the official account of the three invented nodal points of the discourse. It further refutes the idea of ‘historical Afghanistan’, which traces its distinctive roots as opposed to the ‘others’ in the region deep in the history as far as 5000 BC as an independent functioning state with periodical breakdowns due to foreign invasions; and the historical and civilizational character of the Afghans constructed for this imagined entity and supported by archaeological excavations. It argued that Afghanistan in reference to a place is a distinctive geographical location around the Suleiman Mountains; the birthplace of Afghans, i.e. Pashtuns. The term Afghan in reference to people or ethnicity signifies a particular ethnic group, i.e. Pashtun or Pathan. Herawi (1321) is the first to use the term Afghanistan in Persian literature to signify the region. Afghanistan after the 1300s is a province of Khurasan located between the Indus River,

162

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Kandahar and Herat, the city of Mustang is its centre, which is located in today’s Pakistan. The historical account speaks of Iran, Khurasan, Hindustan and other main cities of the region i.e. Herat, Kandahar, Kabul, Bokhara, and Samarqand, but there is no mention of Ariana, Khurasan or Afghanistan as an independent state with the same geographical borders, which only changes name in the course of history. Ariana is a wider region and Khurasan is a geographical location east of Persia or Iran rather than an independent state or empire like Iran. The pre-colonial primary sources, especially the biography of Ahmad Shah Durrani, explicitly contradicts the official Pashtun-centric discourse of the country that Ahmad Shah Durrani is the founder and father of modern or contemporary Afghanistan. Instead, the pre-colonial sources indicate that Ahmad Shah Durrani is the founder of Durrani Empire, and calls himself the king of Khurasan, Iran and Hindustan, rather than the founder of the isolated province of Afghanistan. Furthermore, he never uses the term Afghanistan in his entire history, and does not refer to himself as the king or founder of Afghanistan, which may support the assumption of a pejorative connotation of the term Afghanistan. The pre-colonial sources dispute and problematize the very foundation of the official discourse on the democratic emergence of the modern Afghan state, which manifests itself in the Loya Jirga of 1747 and the election of Ahmad Shah Durrani as the first king of modern Afghanistan after nine days of democratic deliberations in the presence of the representatives of all ethnic groups of Afghanistan. The history of Ahmad Shahi explicitly narrates that once he entered the city of Kandahar with his strong army he declared himself to be the next king, and by crushing his opponents he began his conquests and military expeditions. The post-colonial official and non-official Persian literature, as pointed out, provide conflicting accounts of his ascent to power. This in itself, on one hand, demonstrates the uncertainty, tensions and paradoxes of the narrative and, on the other, contradicts the official account of Ahmad Shah himself in his Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi. Furthermore, the post-colonial literature reveals the impact of colonial knowledge on the official and non-official discourses in Afghanistan from an early time. The primary historical sources also contradict and problematize the official discourse of invasion and resistance, which was invented after 1900 in Afghanistan to justify and legitimize certain political practices. Furthermore the primary sources do not support the

PROBLEMATIZING

THE

OFFICIAL DISCOURSE

163

idea of a sovereign, independent and territorially defined nation state, which is targeted by invaders and defended by the subjects of that state. Instead the primary sources in the post-Islamic era, mostly operate within the traditional Islamic patterns of legitimacy; the king, Caliph, Caliphate, Muslims and non-Muslims, faithful and infidels, and Dar ulIslam (the Muslim land) and Dar ul-Kufr (the infidels’ land). The sources further speak of tribal and inter-tribal power struggle. In the postcolonial sources of the region, on one hand, the impact of the colonial discourse, especially that of Elphinstone, is self-evident, and on the other, despite their contradictions, they attempt to internalize the colonial narrative and add new moments and dimensions to the discourse. The Elphinstonian construction of Afghanistan gradually opens the space to replace Khurasan and other pre-colonial concepts, but still, as indicated, the primary sources contradict the official discourse. The second part of the chapter focused on treaties and official engagements of the East India Company and British Empire with the region’s kingdoms and rulers. It is evident that the company officials began their relations with the King of Kabul rather than Afghanistan in their first mission of 1808, because Afghanistan was still a region and part of Khurasan or Caubul as described by Elphinstone. The documents speak of the Durrani Empire and dynasty, and assert that the region was called Khurasan, and the Afghans also considered themselves part of Khurasan. The treaties use the term Afghanistan first for a limited geographical location, similar to what was described by pre-colonial historians, and an expanded version as constructed by Elphinstone. Gradually it develops to replace Kabul and then to include the entire country after 1890, but still it retained the suffix of ‘its dependencies’ to refer to the north. It is only in 1919 that Afghanistan emerges as an independent state in the treaties. The treaties also indicate that the land of today’s Afghanistan was very much divided in the post-Durrani Empire between several contenders for power i.e. Kabul, Herat, Kashmir and Peshawar. Based on this account, modern Afghanistan, contrary to the official discourse, emerges as a buffer state as a result of the British and Russian rivalry and the security concerns of Great Britain in the region. Afghanistan takes shape as a de facto entity during the second reign of Amir Dost Mohammad Khan, and its borders are demarcated during the reign of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan. Modern state institutions were introduced at the end of the second Anglo–Afghan

164

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

war, and the country moved towards centralization and modernization during the reign of Habibullah Khan, but still remained under British suzerainty. It was only in 1919 that Afghanistan developed a de jure status by coming out of British suzerainty and entering the realm of the international system as an independent nation state. The genealogical study of treaties and official engagements also indicates that the master signifier of the narrative; Afghanistan is a colonial construction, shaped and drawn by colonial powers without the consent of the residents of the country only to serve the colonial strategic goals in the region, and to impose a new exclusionary project. The study and analysis of cartography, maps and historical atlases of the region, similar to that of the pre-colonial primary sources, and a genealogical study of treaties and official engagements of the East India Company and the British Empire, problematize the official narrative of state formation. The survey of historical maps and atlases show that a distinctive independent nation state called Ariana in ancient times, Khurasan in the post-Islamic era, and Afghanistan in post-1747 does not exist on the world map. The atlases and maps show that first Afghans and then Afghanistan emerge as a small geographical location around the Suleiman Mountains and gradually develops to replace the kingdom of Kabul on the map, and then becomes the official name of the country after the 1890s. There is a need for a separate research project to study the political discourse of the region prior to the arrival of colonialism and the rise of Euro-centric nationalism, to show in a comparative manner how the post-colonial identity of the nation states in the region are different from that of the pre-colonial epoch. A second research question needs further elaboration is the extent to which, and the way in which, the colonial officials and researchers have used the primary sources available to them in the region in producing their works. Finally it is argued that the Afghan official historiography in the twentieth century applies an eclectic and selective approach to the pre1880 literature, especially to the pre-colonial literature detailing the history, geography and politics of the region. In doing so, it chooses to amend, rewrite and exclude the way it serves the general purpose of Afghan ethno-nationalism.

CHAPTER 5 DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION AND DECOLONIZATION OF THE OFFICIAL DISCOURSE OF STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Introduction Discourse theory argues for the open texturedness and at the same time for the partial fixation or closure of identity. The philosophy behind the conceptualization of nodal points and empty signifiers in hegemonising a political project is the partial fixation or temporary closure of identity. It is argued that discourses and identities produced in an articulatory set of practices are political constructions involving antagonisms and the exercise of power. Because the social systems have a fundamentally political character, they are always vulnerable to the forces excluded in the process of political constitution or to dislocatory events beyond their control. The category of dislocation in discourse theory accounts both for the disruption of symbolic orders, their associated identities, and the opening of the spaces within which creative political subjects can emerge to identify themselves with new discourses. Dislocation can thus be defined as ‘events’ or ‘crises’ that cannot be represented within an existing discursive order, as it functions to disrupt and destabilize the symbolic order. This ‘decentering’ of the structure through social processes shatters the already existing identities and creates an identity crisis for

166

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

the subject, and at the same time accounts for disruption of the symbolic order. Dislocations, on one hand, disrupt the partially fixed order and, on the other, open the space for a new order, which might be more open and inclusive. It is also argued that dislocation, while disrupting identities and discourses, also creates a lack at the level of meaning that stimulates new discursive constructions, which attempts to suture the dislocated structure. Hence, it is the dislocation, which opens the space for hegemonic practices to formulate a new identity for the de-centered, undecidable, and floated elements. However, despite the fact that hegemonic projects attempt to construct and stabilize the systems of meaning, no discourse is capable of completely hegemonising a field of discursivity by eliminating the experience of dislocation and social antagonism. In the first ‘deconstructive genealogical’ endeavour, or the ‘second reading’, I relied on primary sources from 1300–1880 to problematize the official narrative of state formation in Afghanistan. In this chapter, which is the second ‘deconstructive genealogical’ move to problematize the official discourse; the main focus is on secondary literature from 1978 to 2012, in the period I term ‘dislocation, diversification and decolonization’. It was after 1978 that some major radical dislocatory events unfolded: the communist coup d’e´tat of 1978; the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979; the countrywide Jihad, and resistance against the occupation, and the worldwide support for the resistance; the mass migration of the population to neighbouring countries and to other parts of the world; the Russian withdrawal; the collapse of the communist regime; the victory of the Mujahedeen in 1992; the emergence of the Taliban; the 9/11 events, and the US and its allies’ military intervention, and finally the Bonn transitional process after 2001. As a result of these dislocatory events, among other things; the old power structure or symbolic order is disrupted; the official discourse as the only regime of truth is challenged and destabilized, and a new condition of possibility has opened for the emergence of new discourses. It was in this period, the era of radical dislocation, that a number of scholars and researchers from inside and outside the country undertook some unprecedented steps to produce new critical works, which I term ‘critical post-dislocation literature’. They not only managed to study the country from a new perspective challenging the official narrative, but also presented a more democratic and exclusive alternative. For the purpose of understanding the internal and external perspectives of the

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

167

post-dislocation literature on the master signifier of the official discourse, and its nodal points, the literature is divided into two main categories: the English, and the indigenous post-dislocation literature in Farsi and Pashto. Again to have a clear picture of the details of the emerging discourses, the English literature is further divided into the works undertaken by Western academics and scholars from Afghanistan representing different ethnicities and political groups. This chapter systematically engages with this critical literature to explore how they approach the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan, and what their major critique is. It begins with the English literature, and discusses briefly the ideas and findings of the major contributors separately and then moves to the indigenous literature in Persian and Pashto. The discussion again begins with their perception of the master signifier and, because of the intertwined nature of the debate, it may move to tackle other related nodal points of the discourse, or related issues while focusing on the master signifier of the discourse, but for the purpose of clarity, it discusses the nodal points of the discourse separately, and pay special attention to the nodal point of Loya Jirga or governance through assemblies. In the post-dislocation hegemonic crisis in Afghanistan, on one hand, the Afghan or Pashtunist camp attempts to repair their ruptured and radically dislocated symbolic order by returning to the past and imposing the old pre-dislocation ‘only regime of truth’ and, on the other, the radically dislocated antagonistic Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek camp, as reflected in this chapter, argue that they are prevented from fully attaining their identity by an ‘outsider’; the Pashtuns, and deem them responsible for their identity blockage. To overcome this confrontational and conflictual antagonistic relationship, the Afghans or Pashtuns employ the logic of difference to disrupt or incorporate their opponents, and the opposing post-dislocation non-Afghan camp attempts, however unsuccessfully, to employ the logic of equivalence to challenge the official discourse.

The Post-Dislocation English Literature and the Master Signifier of the Official Discourse: Afghanistan and Afghans The first part of this chapter, ‘the English literature and the master signifier of the official discourse’, focuses on the newly emerged discourses in the last three decades of the post-dislocation era to explore

168

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

how they challenge the official narrative of state formation and attempt to decolonize the knowledge and understanding of Afghanistan and the wider region. These newly emerged discourses arguably were excluded or suppressed by the dominant powers as part of their endeavour to maintain the hegemony of their established official discourse.

Jonathan L. Lee Let us begin with Jonathan Lee’s work in his much-celebrated book; The ‘Ancient Supremacy’; Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731 – 1901, which is the outcome of some sixteen years of research in the region.1 Lee argues that he has adopted an unconventional approach to study the history of the wider region of Central Asia and Afghanistan. He claims that, based on this new perspective, his work is possibly the first post-colonial history of Central Asia and Afghanistan, by which he wishes to oblige the next generation of scholars to re-examine conventional approaches not only to the region’s past but more importantly to its present.2 He argues very strongly that without contextualizing Afghanistan and other newly emerged political entities after the arrival of colonialism in the right historical context of the pre-colonialism in the region’s history, one would be trapped into misreading and misunderstanding of not only the past but the present too. To do so, he, on the one hand, contextualizes the history of the region by focusing on Balkh and, on the other, tries to present a detailed critique of the colonial knowledge of Afghanistan, especially of Balkh and other non-Afghan parts of the country. Lee robustly argues that Afghanistan as a nation state is the product of colonialism, especially the British Empire. In a retrospective move, he presents a detailed historical account of the region from the Stone Age to the Arab conquest, with special attention to Balkh as the political and economic heart of the region. He explores the Arabs and Mongols era (651 – 1220), Timur Lang (1220 – 1381), Timurid (1381 – 1501), the Shaybanid (1526 – 99), Tuqay-Timurid (1599 – 1722), the emergence of Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Durrani (1722 – 72) and finally the colonial era and the redrawing of the region’s map to locate Balkh and the wider region in their rightful historical context.3 Chingizid, Safavid, and Mughal and the emergence of Nadir Afshar after the collapse of the Safavid dynasty were the last

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

169

great rival powers in the region, he argues. After the assassination of Nadir Shah, Lee says, the empire he had carved out broke into parts: in Persia Nadir’s family and other contenders emerged, in Kandahar Ahmad Shah of the Abdali tribe and in Bukhara Ataliq Rahim Bi Manghi established their dynastic rules. By 1892, however, the three great, rival empires of Central Asia had passed away and the map of Central Asia had been redrawn to such an extent as to be unrecognizable to some of the previous generations. The Mughal Empire had imploded and been absorbed into British India. The Safawid rulers had been dealt a death blow by the transient but bloody career of Nadir Shah Afshar, out of the ashes of whose ephemeral empire the Qajar dynasty emerged to rule over a trenched and weakened Persia. The Chingizid dominions north of the Oxus had gradually broken up into small, mutually hostile, Khanates and were picked off one-by-one by the expanding power of Tsarist Russia.4 Lee further argues that once the colonial powers expanded to reach the dominions of each other, a struggle began between the two great European imperial powers of the day; Britain and Russia, for the control of Central Asia. By the last decade of the eighteenth century, the East India Company had extended its authority westwards and northwards to Punjab. Hence, Britain’s interest in Central Asia revolved on the issue of how best to protect India’s north-western frontiers from periodic Afghan invasions. Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah were the last rulers of the region who had attacked India repeatedly. Following the death of Timur, son of Ahmad Shah, the Afghan threat receded with the outbreak of civil war over succession, which eventually led to the breakup of the Durrani Empire into a number of semi-independent city states.5 Once this threat had subsided, following Napoleon’s victory in Egypt, the authorities in Calcutta had a new reason to fear for security of the north-western border of India. They feared that the French Emperor might emulate Alexander the Great and attack India overland through Persia and Kandahar. However, by 1815 the French threat also dissipated, and soon after it was replaced by Russo-phobia and the Russian threat, which, unlike the Afghan and French, did not go away, and dominated British foreign policy for more than a century.

170

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

In order to protect India from Russian invasion and subversion, from the middle of the 1830s Calcutta abandoned its support of Persia and sought instead an alliance with the Afghan Amir of Kabul. As a consequence of this shift in policy, British interests became increasingly more intertwined with the fluctuating fortunes of the Afghan Amirs and eventually led to the creation of the buffer state of Afghanistan which, it was believed, would be the bulwark by which Russian power and influence was held in check. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that British historians of this era gave priority to issues related to Russian-British rivalry, known as the ‘Great Game’, and Anglo– Afghan relations. The other side of the coin was that it was not in British interests to examine too deeply the awkward issues of the pre-Durrani situation of Central Asia and particularly the embarrassing claims of sovereignty made by Persia and Bukhara over certain of the regions which Britain was determined to include in the state of Afghanistan.6 Hence, these colonial strategic rivalries and policies, according to Lee, led to the creation of the buffer state of Afghanistan.7 In line with what was established in the fourth chapter of the book relying on primary sources, Lee also argues that Afghanistan was a region where Afghans, i.e. Pashtuns, lived, rather than a state as portrayed by the official discourse. The homeland of the Afghans (i.e. Pushtun or Pathan) tribes lay south of the Hindu Kush, on either side of the Khyber and Bolan Passes, and consequently histories of Afghanistan written in the colonial period concentrated on the developments of this region to the detriment of what was deemed to be ‘provincial’ affairs.8 Furthermore on the impact of the colonial knowledge and its creditability in the region and Afghanistan, Lee states that until the second half of the twentieth century the individuals regarded as authorities on the area were the same people who either had formulated the British Central Asia policy or had implemented it. Hence, he concludes that their publications contain elements of imperial polemic to justify their governing patterns and also immortalize their own achievements in redrawing the map of Central Asia.

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

171

Western scholars in the present, post-colonial age have merely inherited this ideological mantle and even in the present postcolonial era historical studies on Afghanistan and Central Asia still tend to be variations of the ‘Great Game.’9 According to him the imperial historical approach, which still permeates modern scholarship, is obsessed by ‘a narrow-minded, Cartesian view of the last two centuries of Central Asian history.’ It is as if the people of the region had not existed before the British arrival, and if the colonial discourse pays any attention to the region, that is a selective and eclectic approach to serve their own interests. Consequently, certain periods of Afghanistan’s chequered history have been mulled over ad nauseam whilst other eras have either been totally ignored or simply passed by: Elphinstone’s mission to the court of Shah Shuja in 1808; European (and particularly British) exploration of Central Asia; the various Anglo–Afghan treaties; Russian advance in Central Asia; the Persian sieges of Herat and the several frontier commissions; are all given pride of place.10 In criticizing the imperial discursive formation and its impact on writing the history of the region, Lee fleshes out some of its shortcomings and deficiencies. He argues that the imperial world view has produced the most extraordinary selectivity when writing about the region’s events. Another flaw in the imperial history, which is still perpetuated by contemporary scholarship, according to him, is the scant attention to the centuries prior to the Durrani dynasty and Ahmad Shah’s rise to power in 1747. Hence, according to Lee, it fails to contextualize the ‘Afghanistan period of Central Asia’, and its proper organic relationship to the past. Indeed, such histories are often marred by an underlying anachronism, namely, the presupposition that Afghanistan, as it was defined, say, by the end of nineteenth century, existed as a homogenous, distinct and independent nation state as early as 1747. In fact the name ‘Afghanistan’ was almost certainly a term coined by the English (Forster 1789) and was not in vogue even

172

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

amongst officials in Calcutta until around the third decade of the nineteenth century. Regrettably, this world view has now been recycled back to the peoples of Afghanistan themselves through the media of western-sponsored school textbooks and European and American-trained Afghans. At a recent conference I attended, an eminent Afghan intellectual solemnly declared that Sultan Husain Biaqara, Zahir al-Din Babur, Timur Lang, the Herati poet Jami, amongst others, were ‘Afghans’. This narcissistic view of Afghanistan has left us regrettably ignorant of internal developments in the region over the last three centuries.11 As a factor in shaping the perception of the Europeans of Central Asia, which has played a significant role in determining Amu Darya or the Oxus River as the natural border of Afghanistan, Lee refers to the impact of Greek discourse on the subject formation of the colonial employees, because all members of the India administration had been brought up from an early age on what he calls the ‘diet of Greek and Latin texts.’ They understood the region through the classical history and geography of Quintus Curtius, Ptolemy, and Herodotus. To them, Balkh and the Oxus River, instead of representing the centre and vein of the region for political, economic and cultural developments, symbolized the border between civilization and barbarism.12 Lee in his endeavour to decolonize the history of the region and break free from what he calls ‘the shackles of imperialism and classical heritage’, investigates in detail the prominent role of colonial powers in drawing the map of the region and creating the buffer state of Afghanistan. He maintains that Britain in a coordinated manner allowed Dost Mohammad Khan, Amir of Kabul, to conquer the north of today’s Afghanistan, on one hand, to limit the expansion of Russia and, on the other, to expand Afghan (Pashtun) rule beyond Hindu Kush in order to compensate the loss of Peshawar and establish a friendly British-reliant country.13 Lee considers the case of annexation of Peshawar or NorthWest Frontier, Baluchistan and the expansion of Afghan rule northward, the ‘most successful and longest surviving example of the British strategy of Divide and Rule.’ This new approach, according to him, had its roots in the theory of ‘Scientific Frontiers’ for India, and that is the extension of British influence either by direct conquest or via proxy to the south bank of the Oxus.14

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

173

Lee is of the opinion that Abdur Rahman Khan truly was a disaster for the ordinary people of Afghanistan but a case of success for Britain; it was under him that Britain could achieve its long-lasting goal of a unified and pro-British Afghanistan. Amir, while relying on the British military and financial support, accepted the placing of Afghanistan under British suzerainty and at the same time promoted an Islam-centric discourse of anti-infidels to legitimize his authority. Lee claims that Amir’s rule had some serious implications for objective scholarship, as Britain kept Afghanistan in political and ideological quarantine. Furthermore, he argues that any publications by British travellers or visitors to Afghanistan were subject to the most rigorous censorship. Any work considered either outspoken or independentlyminded was suppressed and filed confidential, ensuring that only the official narrative reached the public.15 He elucidates that the promotion of Amir Abdur Rahman as the great reformer and founder of the modern political institutions in Afghanistan is probably the most lasting legacy of imperial media manipulation. To him Amir was a brutal dictator suffering from a chronic disease, which affected his sanity, and the news was kept secret by Britain. Instead of taking action against his brutalities, the British officials publicly created a myth to justify the mayhem by stating that Amir’s firm and decisive rule was beneficial for the people of Afghanistan, but senior officials, according to secret documents, termed his reign the ‘Reign of Terror’. He questions the conventional view of regarding Amir as the founder of modern Afghanistan, and argues that during the formation and construction of Afghanistan and redrawing the map of the region to suit European needs, a great deal of cultural material of the region was lost or intentionally destroyed.16 Interestingly, Lee explains the way the Afghan court and the British officials tried to introduce new geographical vocabularies to reinforce their newly constructed discourse in the region. In the case of the Balkh, he points out that the Afghan court used the designator term Turkistan (i.e. land of Turks), the British and other Europeans, once interested in the region, first followed the Afghan court and favoured Turkistan, but some preferred the medieval name; Tatary. As the British later began to promote the idea of ‘Greater Afghanistan’, it became very uncomfortable to use the tern Turkistan, thus in 1869 Sir Henry Rawlinson in his Memorandum on the Frontier of Afghanistan, recommended that for

174

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

political reasons Britain should no longer use the term Turkistan, but Afghan Turkistan. He further elaborates that, based on this new recommendation, new maps of Afghanistan were published, and since then the other side of the Oxus River was officially called Russian Turkistan and this side of the Oxus Afghan Turkistan.17 To problematize the colonial knowledge, Lee further explains that during the British formative period up to the middle of the 1850s officials in Calcutta were giving priority to certain works and excluding others. Officials in Calcutta gave precedence to certain well-known authorities often to the exclusion of the others, Mountstuart Elphinstone (1809) and Alexander Burnes (1834: 1843; 1835– 7), in particular, were held in high esteem. Yet however remarkable Elphinstone’s work was, both his published book, An Account of the Kingdom of Caboul and the secret reports on his mission filed in the P&S records, rely heavily on intelligence acquired during a few short weeks’ residence in Peshawar. Elphinstone himself never set foot on the other side of the Khyber, let alone in Kabul, Herat, Qandahar or Balkh.18 Lee further in his critique of colonial knowledge discloses how the officials routinely excluded criticisms and reports, which were not in line with the official narrative. He also provides examples of neglecting the reports and writings of the natives without any justification by the colonial authorities. Meanwhile he doubts the accuracy of the information provided for the British Government by native wakils (news writers), agents and also the influence asserted by the Afghan government on news writers to report only what the government wanted.19 Lee, despite his radical approach and interventions, sometimes, maybe under the influence of the dominant narrative, uses the term ‘election’ for choosing Ahmad Shah Durrani as the new king. It is also worth pointing out that Lee’s approach to the north and Balkh is very Turk-centric, which negates to some extent the multi-cultural and pluralist character of the north or what Lee himself calls the right historical context of the region. To summarize, contrary to the official discourse, and in confirmation with what argued in chapter four, Lee problematizes the

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

175

master signifier of the official discourse as a colonial construction, and questions the credibility of the colonial knowledge.

Benjamin David Hopkins Another important work at this stage, which challenges the colonial construction of Afghanistan, is The Making of Modern Afghanistan (2008) by Hopkins.20 He tries to explore ‘how the English East India Company framed and understood the Afghan political entity and how the subsequent conceptualization affected the formation of the Afghan state.’21 Hopkins, similarly to Lee, argues that the Company or perhaps the British involvement in Afghanistan was due to security concerns. However, he questions the validity of the Great Game as it has been portrayed in the colonial and post-colonial era to be the main cause of the involvement. Hopkins argues that it was unrealistic to believe that Russia would invade India through Afghanistan, but the very fact that the Russian army would be on the border of India was something unacceptable to the British. He further claims that the Company, after emerging from the economic recession at that time, more or less wanted to extend its trade to the Kingdom of Kabul and to Central Asia, and find new markets for British goods. The company officials believed that the British flag would follow the trade wherever it goes. According to Hopkins, limiting the influence of the Sikh Government in Punjab with some 80,000 troops can also explain the British involvement in Afghanistan. Similar to Lee, he explicitly states that Afghanistan is a product of the East India Company and then the British Government in the nineteenth century. He refers to the issue of redrawing the map of the region and delimiting the borders of the newly created buffer state of Afghanistan to serve the British security interests. Hopkins in his discussion of ‘the meaning and making of Afghanistan’, similar to that of Lee, argues: The area now known as ‘Afghanistan’ did not assume its present form until the end of the nineteenth century when its political borders were delineated by neighbouring British and Russian imperial powers.22 Contrary to that of the official narrative and similar to that of Lee, Hopkins when contextualizing Afghanistan in the history of the region,

176

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

states that important dynasties have emerged from the area. The Mughals of north India, Safavids of Persia and Tuqay Timurid of Central Asia were the last of the dynasties ruling the entire region. It was the collapse of these empires in the early 1700s that led to the destabilization of the region. In South Asia post-Mughal successor states emerged. The TuqayTimurids survived, but later was replaced by the Manghits dynasty, and Persia faced a period of turmoil until the rise of Nadir Shah who then managed to establish his empire over the entire region.23 Finally it was the collapse of the Nadir Empire that led to the rise of new powers in the region and one of the newly emerged empires was that of the Durrani Empire established by Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747. Under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Abdali, these Afghans served as his personal bodyguard. With Nadir’s assassination in 1747, they seized their opportunity. Looting the Persian treasury, Ahmad Shah returned to the Pashtun heartland around Kandahar, where he was elected the first Afghan shah, establishing the Durrani Empire. Under his leadership, the Afghans exploited north India’s instability to finance their ‘plundering polity’, based on extracting treasure from richer neighbours. But the window of opportunity securing his rule closed with Ahmad Shah’s death, and his less able heirs presided over the contraction and the eventual collapse of the Durrani Empire by the early nineteenth century. The empire Ahmad Shah Abdali founded in the mid-eighteenth century more closely resembled the great Muslim ‘gunpowder empires’ out of which it arose than the European-constructed state system into which its successors were forced to fit.24 Of course neither Lee and Hopkins provide us with any account of the nodal points of the emergence and Loya Jirga (grand assembly) in choosing the first Afghan (Pashtun) king, but surprisingly they both use the term ‘election’ when it comes to the kingship of Ahmad Shah, which implicitly indicates the impact of the official narrative even on postdislocationary pioneers. Hopkins further argues that the period after the collapse of the Empire is important as it marks the beginning of the encounter between the Afghans (Pashtuns) and the British Empire, which largely shapes the history of the region. The story, according to him, starts in 1808 with

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

177

the dispatch of the first diplomatic mission to Shah Shuja’s Court. He makes it clear that to use and conceive Afghanistan as a unified state in a post-Durrani Empire is a mistake and that such an entity did not exist at that time. During the first half of the nineteenth century, ‘Afghanistan’ was an extremely fluid political environment which the interventions of and interactions with British India made even more so. The collapse of the Durrani Empire makes it historically inaccurate to conceive of a unified Afghan political entity during this period. At most some British colonial administrators thought of the area as ‘Afghanistan’, while most informed individuals continued to conceive it in terms of multiple, often overlapping centres of suzerain authority. Nonetheless, I employ the term as one of convenience, with the understanding that ‘Afghanistan’ was in the process of formation at this time, rather than an established reality.25 Hopkins in confirmation of my argument, on the one hand, recognizes the heterogeneity of the country, and on the other, considers the master signifier of the official discourse, Afghan and Afghanistan, to be problematic and exclusionary. This difficulty has been further compounded by the heterogeneity of Afghanistan’s populace, throwing together diverse communities by the force of external circumstances to create an Afghan nation and state. The heterogeneity of its social ecology makes the use of the term ‘Afghan’ as problematic as the term ‘Afghanistan’. In its proper sense, ‘Afghan’ refers only to the Pashtun, the largest ethnic group inhabiting the territory of ‘Afghanistan’, ‘land of the Afghans’. As the name indicates, the Pashtuns have dominated the independent history of Afghanistan, often to the detriment of the other ethnic groups such as the Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Nuristanees (formerly known as Kafirs). Much of the British colonial interaction with the inhabitants of the area centred on the Pashtuns, who receive an arguably disproportionate amount of attention both in the colonial archives as well as in the subsequent historiography.26

178

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Hopkins, when it comes to the impact of colonial knowledge and its conceptualization on the formation of Afghanistan, argues that in the post-Mughal era in India, it was the East India Company who filled the vacuum of authority, and came into contact with new entities beyond the Sutlej and Indus River. Hence the company workers realized the need to construct a framework to understand these new entities and deal with them. This new framework, according to him, transformed the raw information the Company collected into knowledge of the colonial state. This colonial knowledge in turn was deployed to relate and influence indigenous powers to the advantage of the company. Hence, besides the exercise of power through deployment of information, the colonial state was in the process of conceptualizing and defining these entities. In inception, ‘Afghanistan’ is largely a product of the colonial conceptualization given form through imperialism. The area we now know as Afghanistan had no previous existence as a united, independent political unit. Indeed, it did not convincingly achieve this status until the reign of Abdur Rahman Khan in the late nineteenth century. However, in the early nineteenth century the conceptual framework in which Afghanistan could come into being was constructed.27 Eventually, Hopkins argues, after the establishment of colonial rule in the region in the early 1800s, the British Indian Empire delineated the Afghan state in the 1870s and transformed that conceptualization into a political reality. Once the state was established and its borders were arbitrarily demarcated, the British satisfied themselves with the erection of state borders, and leaving the Afghan (Pashtun) to govern it the way they wanted, but with the power to influence the direction of internal policy through subsidies and supporting specific candidates for the leadership. To Hopkins, Elphinstone and what he terms as ‘Elphinstonian episteme’ had a profound impact on conceptualizing Afghanistan. It was Elphinstone with later Company servants, according to him, who laid the foundation of the colonial knowledge, which defined Afghanistan not only for the British Empire but also for both the wider public and later for the Afghans themselves. Hopkins also narrates the story of how the knowledge about Afghanistan was familiar to the Scottish members of the Company because of their experience of Scotland. Elphinstone in

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

179

his account presents a philosophical history of the Afghan society explaining Afghans’ place in a hierarchy of civilizations. Hopkins also pays attention to the intellectual formation of Elphinstone and the impact of that discursive formation on writing his book. He also points out that Elphinstone was influenced by Scottish enlightenment intellectuals, David Hume and Adam Smith’s writings. As a result of this, one can notice that Elphinstone employs that universe or horizon, what we call discursive formation in discourse theory, in writing the history of Afghanistan. Elphinstone compares the Afghan (Pashtun) society to that of Chaucer’s England and some of the Afghan (Pashtun) tribes to the Scottish highlanders. Both Elphinstone and Sir John Malcolm with their An Account of the Kingdom of Caboul, and The History of Persia, respectively, have played a significant part in conceptualizing the history of the region.28 Hopkins also mentions in some detail the impact of the other Company servants who in one way or another followed Elphinstone in their work on Afghanistan.29 He argues strongly against Elphinstone’s romanticization of tribalism in Afghanistan and its impacts on imperial administration and even on academics. The colonial knowledge on Afghanistan, according to him, on one hand, attempts to ‘tribalize the country’, and ‘territorialize tribalism’ with positive connotations, and, on the other, constructs a false image of the wider society based on a generalization of southern tribes. Hence the colonial knowledge exclusively documents the Afghans (Pashtuns) and neglects other ethnic groups of the country, e.g. Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and Aimaqs. The focus on the southern and eastern Afghan tribes also narrowed British understanding of Afghan political society to one almost solely constituted by the Pashtun. Elphinstone’s Account documents an exclusive vision of Pashtun political society, with Afghanistan’s other ‘ethnic’ groups, such as the Uzbeks, Aimaqs, Hazaras and Tajiks relegated to chapters listed under ‘Book IV: The Provinces’ in the second volume. Similarly, later colonial travellers, administrators and ethnographers perpetuated this focus on the Pashtun, noting other ethnic groups largely for their subservience to Pashtun political authority. Anglophonic scholarship and attentions continue to focus on the Pashtun, with the elision of Pashtun and Afghan a common occurrence in

180

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

popular depictions. While this privileging of the Pashtun is understandable in historical origin – Elphinstone did visit the court of the Durrani monarch – it has led to an underlying presumption that political power ultimately rests with the Pashtun. The British were at pains to stress the tribal and genealogical legitimacy of those they supported, either directly or indirectly. They conceived an Afghan political entity where none but the Pashtun could be the ultimate arbiters, if not exercisers of power. This ‘Pashtunization’ continues to hold sway over both foreign interventions and popular conceptions of political authority in Afghanistan.30 Hopkins further argues that the Company’s information order and the colonial knowledge it produced were more constitutive of the later Afghanistan for the British and the Afghans than earlier political activities of Ahmad Shah Durrani.31 Hopkins in detailing the logics of the Afghan state considers the nodal point of Jirga as an important restraint on the authority of the king or the ruler in the tribal system or in the confederation of tribes during the Durrani Empire and post-Durrani Empire. Hopkins, contrary to the civilizational depth of the contemporary Afghanistan in the official discourse, labels the Durrani Empire and the subsequent post-Durrani authorities until the arrival of colonialism, as ‘the empire of plunder’. Furthermore, he emphasizes that the Durrani Empire was a replica of Nadir Shah’s court in military and administration, rather than a distinctively separate Afghan political entity. Within the context of the Afghan tribal mechanism, Hopkins consider Jirga part of the Pashtunwali code among the Pashtuns, and claims that it had a decisive role in the ascent of Ahmad Shah Durrani to power, and portrays his ascent to power through the Jirga as being ‘elected’ after being nominated by a religious leader in the Jirga in 1747. Hopkins, in discussing the myth of emergence and the role of Jirga or governance through assembly, falls short of mentioning the term ‘Loya Jirga’ and rather limits himself to the word ‘Jirga’. However, despite his attempts to consider it part of the social norms among the Pashtuns, the impact of colonial and official discourse is evident in his assertion. Hopkins in his description of the Jirga relies on the following sources: Elphinstone’s An Account of the Kingdom of Caboul, Ganda Singh’s Ahmad Shah Durrani: Father of Modern Afghanistan, Fayz Muhammad Katib’s

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

181

Siraj Al-Tavarikh and Christine Noelle’s State and Tribe in Nineteenth Century Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan, 1826– 1863.32 Noelle, by turn, in her narrative of the concept relies on J. P. Ferrier (1858), History of the Afghans, Singh and Katib.33 In the third chapter the deficiencies and shortcomings of these sources, especially the book by Singh and how the concept of Loya Jirga, as a political institution, was constructed and invented by the Afghan government after the 1920s, was highlighted. As far as Elphinstone is concerned, he doesn’t speak of the Jirga as a political institution or as a decisive instrument in how Ahmad Shah Durrani ascended to power; instead, he portrays the Jirga as a tribal mechanism for resolving disputes. Furthermore, Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi, [History of Ahmad Shah], (1773) by Mahmod ul Hossaini clearly exposes the fallacy of these state sponsored post-1920 claims. However, such examples clearly demonstrate the impact of colonial and official discourse even on researchers attempting to de-colonize the history of state formation in Afghanistan.

Christine Noelle-Karimi Another example of the post-dislocation critical writer is Noelle,34 a historian and researcher on Afghanistan. In her book Noelle attempts to reconstruct the political setting in the post-Durrani Empire during the reign of what she calls the first Mohammadzai ruler; Amir Dost Mohammad Khan (1826– 63), and presents an understanding of power configuration in nineteenth-century Afghanistan. Despite the fact that, similar to other non-Afghan scholars, cannot differentiate between the history and genealogy of Pashtuns as an ethnic group and the emergence and history of Afghanistan as a post-colonial nation state, she tries to trace the origins of the Afghan state to Ahmad Shah Durrani’s ascent to power in 1747. She explicitly asserts that the term ‘Afghan’ in the last century was reserved largely for an ethnic group known as ‘Pashtuns’. Similar to Lee, she argues that the north or the Lesser Turkistan was forcefully integrated into the ‘would-be Afghanistan’ during the Amir Dost Mohammad Khan’s rule. While discussing the impact of colonial knowledge and its deficiencies and shortcomings, she, like Lee and Hopkins, states that the British pre-occupation with the Pashtuns, on one hand, has marginalized the representation of other ethnic groups in the colonial literature and, on the other, it has created

182

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

some of the most enduring stereotyping of Pashtuns. Notions such as ‘republicans’, ‘turbulent’, and ‘hungry’ hillmen, according to her, still influence the modern historiography and adds to the fascination of ‘Khyber’ in the Western mind. This body of colonial literature, according to Noelle, incorporates the whole of Afghanistan into the local perspective of British frontier officials and thus looks at the country as the region immediately west of Peshawar. When she comes to the nodal point of invasion and resistance she argues that instead of contextualizing the fighting and turbulence in Afghanistan in the nature of the unpredictability of tribal politics, the idea of Afghan invincibility has been optimized by the first and second Anglo–Afghan wars (1839–42 and 1878–80) by modern Afghan and Soviet historians. The notion of the invincibility of the Afghans rather than reflecting the reality on the ground is rooted in the nascent of Afghan nationalism and patriotism.35 Noelle in an assessment of her sources in English, similar to that of Lee and Hopkins, points out the shortcomings, paradoxes and tensions related to data collection by and for the colonial powers, and warns against the reliability and credibility of the colonial sources. However, she argues that the colonial knowledge had a profound impact on shaping the map and history of the region. She, similar to Lee and Hopkins, asserts the internalization of the colonial narrative by the Afghans themselves. [. . .] although Afghanistan was never ‘swallowed up’ by the British Empire or incorporated as fully into the colonialist discourse as neighboring India, most of the data available concerning its history in the nineteenth century have been processed and passed along by British observers. The relative weight of the existing British narrative is also reflected in the histories produced by modern Afghan authors.36 However, on the ascent of Ahmad Shah Durrani to power and the myth of emergence, Noelle, as mentioned before, replicates the official narrative, and argues that Ahmad Shah gained the leadership at a Jirga held in the vicinity of Kandahar.37 Noelle further argues that the Durrani Empire collapsed because of the internal and tribal rivalry and due to the arrival of imperialism in the region. The British and Sikhs managed to annex Punjab, Kashmir, Peshawar and Baluchistan from the Empire. Hence,

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

183

the remaining parts of the Empire were divided among Mohammadzai brothers, e.g. Kabul, Kandahar and Herat were controlled by descendents of Ahmad Shah Durrani and Mohammadzai Sardars, but Turkistan, Badakhshan, Kundoz and Nuristan remained independent entities. In the midst of this chaos Amir Dost Mohammad emerged as a powerful person benefitting from new British policy and managing to conquer Turkistan, Kandahar and Herat in last days of his life. Unable to enforce a steady government presence ‘on the ground’, the Amir had to rely on the assistance of local middlemen to give substance to his claims to authority. This web of personal loyalties could only be maintained by the distribution of privileges, and its stability was a function of the king’s ability to obtain and dispense wealth.38 Noelle concludes that the British and Russian Empires played an important role in shaping the new map of the region, and that Afghanistan as a new political entity has been shaped and created by the colonial powers.

Thomas Barfield A final example of critical work in this chapter is Barfield’s book. Barfield is an American anthropologist and specialist on Afghanistan who similar to Lee, Hopkins and Noelle argues that many empires have ruled the region, and Afghanistan in its modern guise began in the nineteenth century as it was caught in the rivalry between the British and Russian Empires.39 Based on Singh’s narrative, Barfield replicates the story of how Ahmad Shah Durrani ascended to power in a Jirga after a debate, and the role played by Pir Sabir Shah, but he dismisses the story and argues that it was his fame, force and wealth as a commander in the army of Nadir which allowed him to claim the title rather than the will of the people.40 In his study Barfield distinguishes between the pre-modern empires of the region dominated by Turks, Mughals, Persians and the Durrani Empire by Pashtuns and finally the emergence of the nation state in Afghanistan as a colonial product. He elucidates that the modern Afghan state, as currently constituted, was shaped during the reign of Abdur Rahman Khan by the direct support and subsidies of Britain. It was during his reign that the

184

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

borders of the country were demarcated, and a central government with a standing army and public administration was established. It was Abdur Rahman who for the first time managed to forcefully integrate all parts of the country under a central government, and impose direct taxation. Hence, he argues, the move to crush all rebellions, and impose the strict centralized government, led to the creation of what he terms a ‘Pashtun State’ in Afghanistan.41 From 1881 until 1888, Abdur Rahman directed most of his campaigns against the Pashtuns, particularly the Ghilzais. Yet for the next ninety years, the Pashtuns as a whole would see themselves, and be seen by others, as the privileged ethnic group in the country. For if the Pashtuns were the prime victim of Abdur Rahman’s early wars they were the beneficiaries of his later ones. For example, Amir’s suppression of the Ghilzai revolt coincided with his recovery of Afghan Turkistan in 1888. This allowed him to punish large numbers of rebellious Pashtuns from the south by exiling them to Turkistan, a territory then inhabited primarily by Uzbeks and Tajiks. The deported Pashtuns were given rich agricultural lands and access to pastures.42 Hence, according to him, one can say that Afghanistan became a unitary state under Abdur Rahman and the people of different ethnic origins were forced to accept the newly top-down imposed national identity of Afghans (Pashtuns) and Afghanistan (the land of Pashtuns), as the Amir enforced his authoritarian rule by relying on foreign aid and at the same time pretending to be the defender of the land and that of the faith.43

Indigenous Post-Dislocation Discourses in English Challenging the Official Narrative This part of the chapter focuses on some major indigenous postdislocation works published in English challenging the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan. In engaging with their work to problematize the official discourse, for the purpose of cohesion and systematic deconstruction, their critique and ideas have been explored around the master signifier of the official discourse; Afghanistan and Afghans, and its nodal points: the emergence, governance through

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

185

assembly and the idea of invasion of and resistance. In summarizing their alternative or counter-arguments, to provide a taste of different discourse, I mention the ethnic origin of the writer.

M. Nazif Shahrani This part begins with Professor M. Nazif Shahrani44 an Uzbek US-based anthropologist who has written extensively on Afghanistan. Shahrani, similar to Western scholars, begins with contextualizing the emergence of Afghanistan, but similar to the colonial and pre-1920 official historians, he does not distinguish between Afghanistan as a postcolonial nation state and the history of Afghans (Pashtuns), and begins with the Durrani Empire. I do agree with the contextualization, but not with the approach to muddle up the history of Afghanistan as a state with the history of Pashtuns as an ethnic group, because Afghanistan is a diverse society accommodating several ethnic groups. One has to differentiate between the ethnographic study of the ethnicties of the country and the emergence of Afghanistan as a state. In order to understand the socio-economic and political developments in the region, Shahrani sets out a chronological schema of five phases to study the developments in Afghanistan: (1) the rise of frontier feudalism (1500– 1747), (2) the rise of the Durrani Empire (1747– 1800), (3) the disintegration of the Durrani Empire (1800–80), (4) the creation and consolidation of a buffer state (1880–1955), and (5) toward the creation of a nation state (1955–79). He claims that ‘the sociology of Pashtun dominance over other ethnic communities in the country forms the very substance of political developments and state building in Afghanistan. Yet, the fact of Pashtun dominance is often taken for granted rather than as a subject for inquiry.’45 In the section where Shahrani discusses the rise of feudal frontiers, and contextualizes the subsequent political developments, but maybe under the influence of the official narrative, he speaks of a divided Afghanistan similarly to that of the official historiography. As I understand, Afghanistan at that time did not exist on the world map, if something is absent, one cannot understand how it is possible to speak of its division. As is evident from his schema, Shahrani distinguishes between the empire, the buffer state and the move toward the establishment of a nation state. On how Ahmad Shah Durrani ascended to power, despite the fact that he does not speak of the Jirga or Loya Jirga, he

186

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

vaguely speaks of his ‘election’ by tribal, ethnic, and religious leaders as the king of Afghanistan. This, in turn, seems problematic as it contradicts the findings of this research. It was argued that concepts such as ‘election’ and ‘Afghanistan’ were not familiar terms at the time. Shahrani acknowledges the role of Britain in supplying money, technology and weapons to Afghan rulers to establish a centralized system. As the Great Game intensified during the 1870s, he says, the role of the monarchy and the survival of the country became part of British goals in the region. He further argues that at the end of the second Anglo–Afghan war of 1878– 80 Britain decided against the direct annexation of Afghanistan into British India, and instead retained control of its foreign relations and chose Abdur Rahman Khan to govern the country. By doing so, he believes, a buffer state between Russia and British India was created. By the time of Amir Abdur Rahman’s death in 1901 he had, for the first time, created an Afghanistan that had recognized international boundaries, was politically unified, and governed directly by a centralized authority, within the framework of fairly well-defined and universally applied administrative and judiciary rules and regulations. Thus, during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, a clear transition was made from the period of indirect rule based on feudal ties, which had been instituted by the rulers of the Durrani Empire in the mid-eighteenth century, to establishment of a centralized government based on superior military force.46 It is noticed here that Shahrani, despite being a staunch critic of the Afghan state and its Pashtun centric approach, operates, mostly, from within the official discourse. This shows the unconscious impact of the official discourse, and how even a staunch critic of the Afghan-centric discourse can unintentionally reproduce the same narrative he is problematizing. He begins with the emergence of the Afghan state from the Durrani Empire and links it to the rise of Pashtuns in the political arena. Within this schema he traces the development of the state in several stages, but as appears from the above quote, he explicitly states that a modern Afghan post-colonial nation state emerged only in the 1880s. Hence, similarly to others, he considers Abdur Rahman Khan the founder of the modern Afghanistan.47 However, Shahrani disputes

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

187

the official account of inventing a historical depth for Afghanistan, and the notion of its historical continuity as a separate political entity. He further highlights the very active role of colonial writers in promoting the Amir as an iron man and neglecting his atrocities against the people of Afghanistan.48 Last but not least, in his rich arguments for the condition of possibility of dislocation in Afghanistan after the communist coup d’e´tat of 1978, the national Jihad of the people of Afghanistan against the communists and the Russian invasion of 1979, and finally the resistance against the Taliban, he says: The radically altered political environment of populist Jihad resistance – and the consequent collapse of Pashtun-dominated central authority in Afghanistan – opened unprecedented opportunities for self-expression (military, political, verbal and textual) to all the peoples of Afghanistan. The real essence of the altered conditions in Afghanistan, especially for the Central Asian exiles and the Turkic and Tajik peoples of Afghan Turkestan, proved to be their newly found political freedom for self-expression.49 Hence, he disputes the idea of historical and modern Afghanistan. To him Afghanistan as a political entity is a colonial construction, and the identity imposed on the country is exclusionary. He as an Uzbek has argued all along for the recognition of the Uzbeks and decentralization of power in Afghanistan.

Sayed Askar Mousavi The second example of radical post-dislocation critique is Sayed Askar Mousavi, a Hazara academic and researcher at St. Antony’s College at Oxford University in the UK. Mousavi in his book Hazaras of Afghanistan speaks of a new approach to Afghanistan studies, an approach which, according to him, undermines the accepted premises and findings of the majority of scholars in the field until now. He further argues that Afghanistan studies must be opened to new perspectives, as the old perspective is dictated by Afghan nationalism. Sooner or later, like every other academic topic, Afghanistan studies will have to open itself to new perspectives and analyses.

188

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

The old perspective, arrived at as much by the dictates of Afghan nationalism as serious scholarship, in any case no longer applies to today’s Afghanistan, as the confusion of commentators faced with current events demonstrates [. . .] Most Afghanistanis, not blinded by the dogmatism of Afghan nationalism, openly accept and discuss the need for a new understanding of Afghanistan, both by themselves and by the outside world.50 To him the dominant discourse of Afghanistan is based on what he terms the ‘Afghan nationalist view of the country’s history and society.’ He argues that Afghan nationalism was the outcome of the end of colonial rule in the region. The Afghan nationalism as an ideology was created by Afghans (Pashtuns) to control and dominate the area known as Afghanistan. Afghan nationalism [. . .] was the outcome of the end of colonial rule in the region. It was an ideology created and sustained by the Afghan or Pashtun people with the aim of establishing political control over the area known today as Afghanistan. In order to exercise this control it needed to deny the existence of the area’s other ethnic groups, cultures and languages. To do this it had to rewrite history and redefine the area’s cultural heritage. So that what the outside world got to know as Afghanistan was a country inhabited for thousands of years by the Afghan or Pashtun people, whose language was Pashto, an ancient language of the region, i.e., a narrow exclusive view.51 Contrary to this old and dominant narrative, he says, the new approach will look at the country from the experience and history of its fifty or more other ethnic groups; an ethnographic approach which opens the space for a new understanding of the country. He argues that the country known today as Afghanistan was called Khurasan until 150 years ago. Khurasan, according to him, despite changes in its geographical boundaries, was a bigger country. He asserts that Afghanistan as a new name with its present borders have been gradually formalized in the last 100 years. When contextualizing the emergence of Afghanistan in the region, he argues that the collapse of Safavid Dynasty (1500– 1736), followed by the assassination of Nadir Shah Afshar (1736–47), the break-up of the Mughal Empire (1500– 1800) in India, on the one hand,

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

189

and the expansion of Tsarist Russia and British India, on the other, brought about fundamental changes in the political and social structure of the region. Hence, the outcome of this new change was the emergence of new borders, frontiers, nations and countries in the region. The collapse of the Persian Empire, according to him, led to the emergence of Iran and what would be called Afghanistan. He argues, based on indigenous and foreign writers historical evidences, that this newly emerged country was called Khurasan for a century during the Durrani Empire and the post-Durrani Empire until the second half of the nineteenth century. He further states that because of the sensitivity of the ruling Afghans no serious research has been allowed to establish when, by whom, and for what reason the name of Khurasan was replaced by Afghanistan. Hence, he concludes that the ‘name of Afghanistan was chosen by foreign powers for the people of Afghanistan; rather than by the people of the land themselves.’52 He adds that the name Afghanistan is composed of two words, ‘Afghan’, and ‘stan’ ( ¼ place, land), which means the place or land of Afghans. Mousavi further argues that as such it originally referred to areas inhabited entirely or mostly by Afghans (Pashtuns) covering Kandahar53 and its environs up to the Sind River. Afghanistan, as it is known today, he says, is composed of different ethnic groups, only one of which is the Afghans (Pashtuns). To use this name for the entire country, on one hand, signifies the monopoly of power by Afghans (Pashtuns) and, on the other, it denies the respective identities of other people inhabiting in the land. For this reason, he argues that other ethnic groups have never accepted the name ‘Afghanistan’, a fact little known outside the country. While preferring the name Khurasan for the country, he justifies his choice by stating that Khurasan is a name, which has no ethnic or tribal connotation, and as a historical name of the land for centuries, is respected by all inhabitants of the region. Furthermore it is closely linked to a rich cultural heritage found in thousands of Farsi volumes on history, philosophy, science, geography and poetry accumulated over some fourteen centuries. Khurasan, according to him, in the case of Afghanistan and its ethnic and cultural diversity can act as an ‘empty signifier’ or ‘nodal point’ to unite the people of the country. Otherwise, he argues, it would be incorrect to call other ethnics of the country Afghan or to refer to their country as Afghanistan (Afghan land). To do so without linguistic or historical justification, on the one hand, it is wrong similar to calling the United Kingdom of Great Britain and

190

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Northern Ireland just England, Scotland, Wales or Ireland, or calling an Englishman Scottish, Irish or vice versa and, on the other, it denies the principle of representation and the right to identity. Hence, Mousavi concludes that it is wrong to call a Hazara Afghan, an Afghan Uzbek, an Uzbek Baluch, and a Nuristani Tajik and so on.54 Mousavi, while stating that touching Afghan nationalism is still a taboo, argues that the drive to invent myths and stories to monopolize the power and identity is mainly rooted in Afghan nationalism. To him, Afghan nationalism refers to a whole raft of attitudes and beliefs which relies on the notion held by the Afghans of their racial supremacy over and above all other ethnic groups in the country, which gives them the right to rule over the country known as Afghanistan and manage it the way they desire. He further elaborates that, according to this particular Afghan nationalistic discursive, the country is Afghanistan and its inhabitants are Afghans. Furthermore, it was founded by Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747 and later revived by Abdur Rahman in 1880, but despite the fact that all inhabitants of the country are called Afghans, the Pashtun tribes are more Afghans than others. Similarly, the history of Afghanistan is regarded as consisting of no more than the accumulated histories of the reigns of Afghan Amirs and Pashtun tribes and people. With respect to regional relations, it is claimed that even before Ahmad Shah, Afghanistan enjoyed mutual relations with Iran, Central Asia and India. The origins of the Afghan people have been traced back to prehistoric times, while today their more recent Aryan roots are emphasized. Neighbouring peoples such as the Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Nuristanis, Baluchis and others are acknowledged only on the margins of Afghan studies and history, and are in themselves regarded as being of little historical significance or value. It is by extension of this approach that Afghan domination and rule is justified and its success hailed.55 To hegemonize this approach, Mousavi argues that successive Afghan governments implemented a strategy of forceful assimilation by teaching Afghan history, romanticizing the image of Pashtuns and launching compulsory Pashto language courses. Without referring to the power and impact of colonial knowledge and the process of its

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

191

internalization by Afghans, he refers to the role of foreign powers, scholars and writers, albeit at times unwittingly, in reinforcing a false image of Afghanistan for the wider world. The result, Mousavi argues, has been the mythologization of this false image to the extent that some of these unreal and romantic portrayals have even surprised the Afghans themselves. On analysing the factors contributing to the emergence and sustainability of this myth, Mousavi argues that these factors have played an important role: first, the emergence and rise of nationalistic feelings around the world at the beginning of twentieth century and its impact on the formation and development of Pashtun-centric nationalism among the urban elite of Pashtuns in Afghanistan. At this stage, according to him, a lack of political stability, and the vulnerability of intelligentsia, followed by its practical annihilation after the coup d’e´tat of 1929, coupled with the growth of fascism in Europe, particularly in Germany, prepared the ground for the growth of extremist Pashtun nationalism in Afghanistan. These extremist elite, according to him, who enjoyed the full support of the Afghan government, made the Afghanization (Pashtunization) of the country the official policy of the state. Hence, the policy was manifested in all areas of life and government, e.g. major economic investments were made in Afghan (Pashtun) inhabited regions, hundreds of thousands of Afghans (Pashtuns) were brought over from Pakistan and settled throughout Afghanistan, Afghan (Pashtun) tribes enjoyed exemption from both tax and national military service, special Pashto-language schools and universities with grants to Pashtun students even from Pakistan were established, and Pashto was recognized as the national official language of administration and education. Perhaps the most consequential steps taken as a result of this new policy was the total rewriting of the history of Afghanistan on the basis of this Pashtunist ‘ideology’ by the Anjoman-e Tarikh (Historical Society) under the strict supervision of the Pashto Tolona (Pashto Academy) from the 1930s into the 1970s. To further these aims extensive research was carried out on Pashto language, culture and traditions, in order to establish and justify these as a superior body of thought and beliefs.56 The second factor, according to him, is the portrayal of an inaccurate picture of Afghanistan by Western scholars and media. When they use

192

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

the word Afghan or Afghans, usually they think of Pashtuns, and forget the other ethnic groups who constitute the majority of the inhabitants of the country. The country prior to the arrival of British India was called Khurasan, as the British marched towards Hindu Kush, first they encountered the Afghans to deal with in the Kingdom of Caboul, short of reaching to other parts of the land, and ignorant of the presence and identity of other ethnic groups in this new land, they began referring to all its inhabitants as Afghans. The three Anglo–Afghan wars and other engagements in 120 years, ‘led to the creation of a particular romantic image of the people beyond the Khaibar by many British travellers and diarists of the time.’ And the Afghan government, Mousavi argues, later internalized this colonial discourse. Later, these characteristics, some admirable, others less so, were attributed more widely to all Afghanistanis, to include those inhabiting both sides of the so-called Durand Line. With the emergence of the Pashtunistan issue and the peaking of the domination of the ‘Pashtunists’ in Afghanistan, these exaggerated and unrealistic accounts and portrayals were in time taken up by the Afghans themselves, who then proceeded to further exaggerate and romanticize them. Virtually all the foreign works that have been written and published on Afghanistan are a reflection of this romanticism, including such authoritative studies as The Pathans by Olaf Caroe (1986) and Pathans by Ridgway (1983).57 He further states: The work of many scholars has been on the whole little more than translations or reproduction of the imaginative rewriting of history by Afghan nationalists disseminated by the Ministry of Information and Culture of Afghanistan. A very good example of this is Afghanistan by L. Dupree (1980). Most of what has been written to date does not and cannot coincide with the social, political, historical and economic realities of Afghanistan.58 Mousavi contemplates that this originally British-created myth of ‘invasion and resistance’ has been further perpetuated by the Russian invasion and the heroic stories of the Afghan resistance in the Western

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

193

media by journalists, film-makers, poets, fiction and non-fiction writers. Hence, it has now become an image so universally hegemonic that few consider questioning it. He also points out that after the consolidation of the Pashtun centric discourse in Afghanistan after 1920, the official discourse had a profound impact on the work of many scholars, foreigners or indigenous. He argues that with few exceptions,59 the work of the majority of scholars has been merely a reflection of the established official Afghan nationalism. Mousavi believes that as the outcome of the colonial imposition of new unnatural borders and the discrimination of the ruling Pashtun elite, the country suffers from an identity crisis; a ‘disparity between nationhood and nationality.’ The non-Afghan population of the country, which, according to him, constitutes the majority, has found itself ‘excluded and discriminated against by the very name of their country, mythology, political structure, economy, language, and national culture, and forced to suffer humiliation, intimidation and isolation’ which has further enhanced the identity crisis in the country. However, despite the painful and negative impacts of the post-Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Mousavi argues that the events since 1980 have dismantled the tribal power structure in Afghanistan, and the taboo of Afghan nationalism has been broken. For the first time, he argues as a result of this radical dislocation, some serious discussions have taken place to address the need for revising and re-writing the history of Afghanistan. Finally, on elaborating his new approach to the study and understanding of Afghanistan, in a retrospective move, Mousavi suggests that this aim can only be fulfilled through the ethnographic study of various ethnic and tribal groups of the country. To achieve this, one has to go well beyond the contemporary tribal history of Afghanistan, and study the entire history of the region and Central Asia. It would be impossible to comprehend the Afghanistan of today without a thorough understanding of its rich and long history. It is in this way that the study of relations between any and all the peoples of Afghanistan, such as the Nuristanis, Uzbeks, Afghans, Hazaras, Tajiks, and others within the context of the ancient and long history of the region can aid us in arriving at a more accurate and objective understanding of society in today’s Afghanistan. Such an understanding requires a journey to the other side of

194

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

contemporary frontiers, and into the hinterlands of contemporary history.60 However, it is worth mentioning here that the notion of Khurasan as a state is problematic, as explained in the previous chapter, instead one can perceive it as a geographical and civilizational sphere. Mousavi is right that Khurasan has no ethnic connotations, unlike Afghanistan. Despite Mousavi’s emphasis on the pluralist character of Afghanistan, he adopts a very strong Hazara-centric approach in his study of Afghanistan, and attempts to construct a historical depth and mythology for Hazaras in his ethnographic studies.

Angela Pervanta A third example of the post-dislocatory events discourse, which challenges the official discourse, is an article by Angela Pervanta.61 In this article she questions the historical and civilizational depth invented by the official discourse for the master signifier of the narrative. According to the official historiography, she argues, Afghanistan is unquestionably the country of Afghans, and it was founded in 1747 by Ahmad Shah Durrani. Its history stretches from ancient Ariana to Khushan, Bectria, to Islamic Khurasan, and finally its peaks of contemporary Afghanistan when Ahmad Shah Durrani laid the foundation of the country. Pervanta argues that the truth of the matter is that Afghanistan was neither named by the Durrani tribal confederation nor by their successors. She further states that Afghan means Pashtun, and Afghanistan was the name of a particular area settled by Afghans (Pashtuns). She claims that the name Afghanistan has been used for the first time by neighbouring powers in their treaties with rulers of the country, instead of a name chosen by people of the country. On the reason why Afghan and Afghanistan has been chosen as the name, she provides two justifications: (1) this term was used by foreign powers and it (2) prevailed because the country was dominated politically by Pashtuns until 1978. Pervanta asserts that the names Afghanistan and Afghan cannot represent the diversity of the people, as they only represent the Pashtuns. Additionally they are still not accepted by other ethnic groups of the country as they exclude their identity. Pervanta in providing a more inclusive alternative speaks of several un-successful

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

195

attempts to rename the country Khurasan because it has no ethnic connotation. Pervanta considers the Afghan nationalism a driving force behind inventing this myth and history, which first was formulated by Mahmud Tarzi through his journal Sarajul Akhbar-i Afghaniya (1911– 18). Subsequently the Pashtun-dominated government, through establishing several state-sponsored institutions, rewrote the history of the country and largely concentrated on representing the Afghan history as a continuum. Thus a common origin of all inhabitants of the ‘Aryan’ and continuity over thousands of years was propagated for the area of Aryana, Bectira and Khurasan, leading to Afghanistan as a historic entity. These ideas were incorporated into the schoolbooks and so passed on to the following generations.62 Finally, similar to Shahrani and Mousavi, she argues that the resistance against the Soviet Union, the large-scale immigration and the surfacing of new forces, has opened the space for the emergence of new discourses to challenge the identity and loyalties in Afghanistan. This, according to her, has led to ethnic emancipation inside and outside the country. As a result she says ethnic and regional identities have been strengthened and the resistance, on one hand, has opened the space for the emergence of new discourse and, on the other, it has enabled the subjects for the first time to break many taboos in Afghanistan.63

Shah Mahmoud Hanifi The fourth example of the post-dislocatory literature is Shah Mahmoud Hanifi’s64 book Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier (2008) and his other related articles. Hanifi, a Ghilzai Pashtun living in the United States, argues, similar to Hopkins and Lee, that ‘despite the military results of the two wars, Afghanistan is in fact a colonial construct in political, economic, and intellectual terms, at least.’65 He argues that during the rule of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan, who was appointed by the British as the new ruler of the country, Afghanistan developed its state institutions, configured and assumed its structural position on the periphery of modern global capitalism. Similar to the argument I developed, and contrary to

196

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

the official discourse, Hanifi asserts that modern states, unlike the empires or pre-modern political authorities, are fundamentally territorial entities. Furthermore, in his evaluation of the colonial knowledge, Hanifi highlights the shortcomings and deficiencies of the colonial knowledge on the region, especially on Afghanistan. The first challenge in using colonial material on Afghanistan is navigating through the uncertainty of what the term designates in time and space. A sampling of maps produced in the United States, Europe, and British India during the nineteenth century indicates that before the first Anglo–Afghan war, Afghanistan, if it was represented at all, was dwarfed in significance by Kabul and Qandahar. For example, Mountstuart Elphinstone’s authoritative map emphasizes the “Kingdom of Caubul,” as in the title of his book. It is important to note that the term Afghanistan appears occasionally in his text and faintly on Elphinstone’s map. But it is more important that for Elphinstone, like Babur before him, Afghanistan is a reference of secondary or even tertiary significance, particularly when considered in light of the overwhelming emphasis on Kabul. The term Afghanistan received greater cartographic weight after the first Anglo–Afghan war, and in the 1850s and 1860s Afghanistan and Kabul are more evenly but still unequally weighted. In the 1870s and 1880s, Afghanistan is firmly on the map, so to speak, but it is only in the 1890s that borders regularly appear. Maps are political and intellectual exercises, and Afghanistan’s nineteenth-century cartographic lineage reads partially as follows. Afghanistan first emerges from within the Kabul radius, then competes with the city for primacy, and, finally, the term Afghanistan surmounts and subsumes Kabul.66 Hanifi not only acknowledges the colonial construction of Afghan history but also explains how it was written by colonial powers. Another dimension of his argument focuses on the notion of British subsidies for the newly constructed Afghanistan. In terms of its political economy the newly created Afghanistan, according to him, became what he terms a ‘fiscal colony of Britain.’67 Hanifi, similar to Lee, says in order to understand Afghanistan it is necessary to understand the history of today’s Iran, India, Pakistan, Central Asia, the phenomenon of

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

197

colonialism and contextualize it historically in the wider region. He states that despite a ‘long past animated by rich cultures, Afghanistan is a relatively new, highly contingent and vulnerable nation state. The emergence of a relatively strong state in the nineteenth century generated spiralling impoverishment and lasting interethnic hostilities that continue to plague the country to this day. Historically and culturally, the political space now known as Afghanistan has been an interstitial link between Iran and India (and Central Asia) that became commonly identified as Afghanistan only in the late nineteenth century when the state as known today took shape.’68 In a pioneering article to problematize the colonial construction of Afghanistan, Hanifi attempts to trace the intellectual fault lines in the framework of knowledge about Afghanistan. In doing so, he traces the genealogy of Afghanistan and the knowledge about it in three interrelated arguments: 1) Afghanistan as currently understood is a British colonial construction in both material and ideological terms, 2) Afghan elites have uncritically absorbed and reproduced colonial frameworks of reckoning about themselves and their homeland, and 3) that American and other neo-colonial actors in the country today are perpetuating the contradictions and inconsistencies of classic colonial forms of knowledge.69 In an attempt to reconstruct the origin of the Afghan state and the role of its founder Ahmad Shah Durrani, as portrayed in the official discourse, Hanifi argues that the issue has not been academically interrogated. He further states that even a cursory examination of the available evidence raises a number of theoretical questions which destabilize the dominant narrative about Afghanistan’s origin and cultural constitution; the fact that Ahmad Shah was born in Multan (today’s Pakistan), his rearing was in Persia (i.e. Iran) and his burial took place in Kandahar (today’s Afghanistan) makes it very difficult to fit him within a Kabul-centric conception of Afghanistan. He even questions the statement that Ahmad Shah united the Pashtuns or Afghans to create a country, and claims that even the word Afghanistan was absent from the world view of Ahmad Shah and one has to trace it in colonial knowledge. The regrettably stultifying normative intellectual posture towards Afghanistan operative today has its origins in British colonialism.

198

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Indeed the word Afghanistan that was absent in Ahmad Shah’s lexicon and world view comes to us through the still determining effects of British colonialism.70 Hanifi is of the opinion, as pointed out in the third chapter of the book, that the colonial knowledge has a profound impact on the very configuration of Afghanistan. Contrary to usual renditions about the inconsequential impact of British colonialism on Afghanistan, it is becoming increasingly clear that British colonialism exerted a formative impact on Afghanistan in territorial, economic, political, demographic and intellectual terms, at least.71 Hanifi claims that the very idea of Indo-European common ancestral language and the Jewish descent theory of the Pashtuns specifically, were constructed by colonial writers. He argues that it was Elphinstone who at a later stage, with the help and support of other officials of the East India Company, laid the foundation of Afghanistan colonial discourse. ‘Elphinstone’s understanding has remained intact and unassailable until today, and in that sense his work established the epistemological parameters within which Afghanistan has been and can be understood.’72 To him it was the British colonial power that created and visualized the very image of Afghanistan on the world map. Afghanistan began to appear consistently on maps in the 1860s and 1870s, but it was not until after the second Anglo–Afghan war (1878–1880) during the reign of Abd al-Rahman (r. 1880–1901) that all of its borders were established. Abd al-Rahman was enabled by and dependent upon British money, weapons, and technical expertise to execute his internally aggressive form of rule.73 Hanifi further argues that the Afghan officials and intellectuals in the inter-war years and American academics and policymakers in the Cold War era internalized and reinforced the British colonial perception of Afghanistan. In time the Afghan state also attempted to present an organized official discourse, and in doing so Hanifi recounts the following official steps by the Afghan state:

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

199

In the twentieth century the Afghan state undertook a number of domestic initiatives to cultivate a sense of an Afghan nation. These activities included archaeological investigations, museum displays, and military parades, and some of the government texts that promoted Afghan nationality were the annual Salnama series, the newspapers Anis and Islah, and school textbooks. These techniques and formats for locating and narrating the nation were in large measure inspired and mediated by regional developments in the Middle East and South Asia as well as by the global historical course of colonialism. The traditions invented by the Afghan state for the Afghan nation include three colonial apparitions that assumed particular appeal during the period between the two world wars.74 These three colonial apparitions, according to him, are first the notion of Afghans as Aryans, excavated in practice but intellectually situated with the Indo-European framework of historical reasoning developed by Jones.75 He details a number of foreign archaeologist teams including French, German, Italians and Japanese to work on objects of Afghan historical values between the 1920s and the 1940s; a trend later continued with the Russians. Second, the notion of a community of Muslims who united historically in the service of Jihad against nonMuslims, especially Hindus and Christians, developed by the Afghan state, and the third apparition is the move by the Afghan state to reproduce a colonial vision of itself through an exclusive focus on Kabul, as Kabul represents Afghanistan and vice versa. Hanifi also details the official steps to Pashtunize Afghanistan through several government policies, e.g. promoting the Pashto language, re-labelling administrative divisions, state medals and civil and military titles using mainly Pashto to the disadvantage of Persian as lingua franca of the country. A new development in Hanifi’s insight is his approach on the impact and spread of the British colonial knowledge on Afghanistan to the United States. Hanifi provides a firsthand insight, which sharpens further our understanding of the power of colonial discourse and the impact of being captive of a false image or a narrative. American academic and political engagement of Afghanistan is fully nested within Cold War politics and intelligence gathering.

200

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Louis Dupree, a World War II veteran and trained archaeologist who studied under the physical anthropologists Carleton Coon and Ernest Hooton at Harvard became the point person or new colonial “man on the spot” for the American global project that was emerging out of the British one. Despite the obvious distinctions between the two, there are a number of important similarities between Louis Dupree and Mountstuart Elphinstone. These include a decidedly Kabulcentric view of Afghanistan, an extremely weak or fully absent command of the Persian language, and a nearly complete lack of attention to the Pashto language. Dupree’s primary book Afghanistan (1973) is encyclopedic in scope and as such resembles Elphinstone’s holistic account of the Kabul kingdom. Just as a number of variables conspired to have Elphinstone set the standard for British colonial ways of knowing Afghanistan, as the first fully credentialed American academic emissary, dedicated Cold Warrior, and self confessed lover of the country, Dupree’s voice was the first word of expertise and authoritative knowledge about Afghanistan in American policy-making circles.76 Hanifi situates the impact of Dupree on shaping the understanding of Afghanistan in the United States as that of Elphinstone on British colonial discourse. To acknowledge the authority of Elphinstone on Afghanistan studies, Hanifi says, Dupree has forcefully argued that anything on Afghanistan after Elphinstone is ‘just a footnote.’ He further argues that Elphinstone and Dupree appear to be two panes of the same colonial window to view Afghanistan. It was through their writings, according to Hanifi, that American imperial apparatus reproduced much of the British mindset. Finally Hanifi comes with his radical intervention to call for destabilization of the colonial knowledge formation to save the nation by more evidence and alternative reading. However, I argue that Hanifi, despite his sharp critique, as a pro-Ghilzai figure tries to problematize the notion of Pashtun domination in Afghanistan, and questions the Pashtun-ness of the Durrani dynasty as they were for many generations, similarly to Ahmad Shah Durrani himself Persianized. One may find some justification in his claims, but I do not agree with his assertions and conclusions as such. I assume the aim of problematizing the colonial

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

201

knowledge on Afghanistan should focus on the possibility of opening the space for the emergence of a new inclusive, plural and democratic discourse, rather than discrediting, empowering or introducing a new clan i.e. Ghilzais on the expense of the rest.77 Last but not the least is Ahmad Shayeq Qassem’s PhD thesis on Afghanistan; ‘Afghanistan: Prospects for Stability in Relation to Geostrategic Dynamics in Central and South Asia’. Despite the fact that he mainly deals with the issue of stability in Afghanistan and the country’s relations with its neighbours, he presents a new perspective by looking at border disputes between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the rise of ethno-nationalism in Afghanistan and the impact of the last three decades of dislocatory events on changes in the country.78

Indigenous post-Dislocation Discourses in Persian Challenging the Official Narrative This part of the chapter, again as an example of the post-dislocation discourse, refers to a number of major works in Persian challenging the exclusionary Afghan government’s Pashtun-centric discourse. However, these newly emerging discourses are yet considered ‘wild’ or ‘exterior discourses’79 by the opposing camp, and still in the process of taking shape in the marginal to develop to a level of sophistication.

Muhaiddin Mehdi I begin this part with Mehdi’s Persian article on theories of stability and the issue of ethnicity in Afghanistan. Mehdi, an ethnic Tajik intellectual, participated in the war against Russian invasion, the communist regime and also has fought the Taliban under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Massoud, and now works as a member of the Afghan parliament, begins his article by briefly providing a theoretical foundation. He refers to four discourses, some already applied and some to be applied to solve ethnic relations in Afghanistan in order to achieve stability. First on his list is the classical Marxism or what Mehdi calls the famous universal international proletariat approach, employed widely by the Afghan Marxists and leftist parties. Second, the universal theory of Muslim Ummah (Muslim community) or ‘one community’, widely used by Islamist parties in the country. Third, the ethnocentric or racial theory of

202

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Afghan Melat, which argues for the assimilation, adoption or the forceful imposition of Afghan (Pashtun) identity in the country, and argues for the establishment of a Pashtun-led state.80 Fourth, the democratic theory based on citizenship and social justice, which recognizes the ethnic diversity of the country. Mehdi, without referring to or using the term ‘colonial knowledge and its impacts’, argues that Pashtun academics and writers, supporting the ethnocentric theory of Afghan nation not only tried to enforce this idea internally but also internationally, which, according to him, has misrepresented Afghanistan as a Pashtun entity in the Western world. Mehdi deconstructs and problematizes three of the above-mentioned discourses, and details their failure in Afghanistan, and argues in favour of a democratic, diverse and multicultural Afghanistan based on citizenship rights. While elaborating on the components of the Afghan Mellat’s ideology which seeks racial supremacy in Afghanistan, Mehdi states that this ultra-Pashtun nationalist ideology is based on three wrong assumptions: first, the Afghan government was established by Afghans (Pashtuns) under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Durrani, and other minority ethnic groups in the country should accept the Pashtun identity of the Afghan state, second, Pashtuns constitute the absolute majority in Afghanistan, and finally other ethnic groups in Afghanistan lack an ‘empty signifier’ to unite them. Hence it is less likely that they can form a government in Afghanistan or form a united front or an equivalential chain to challenge the Pashtun domination employing the logic of equivalence, which reinforces and perpetuates the idea of the Pashtuns’ right to govern and the others’ duty to obey. Mehdi problematizes the Afghan Mellat’s false assumptions and calls for a radical rethinking in favour of a pluralist democratic discourse. He differentiates between the Durrani Empire and the Afghan post-colonial state, and considers the Durrani Empire one of the dynasties that ruled in the region as part of a long list of pre-modern dynasties of the civilizational sphere. Mehdi insists that Afghanistan was not known to Ahmad Shah Durrani, and he did not use the term, rather it was used at a later stage by the British. To him Afghanistan as a historic-geographical space located around the Suleiman mountain range, which is located in today’s Pakistan. Mehdi’s most radical intervention is the idea that the Pashtuns are the last of the tribes who migrated from their original habitats to Khurasan and gradually expanded their influence, and this is one of the

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

203

reasons they cannot fit themselves into the socio-cultural ecology of the region. On problematizing the second assumption, he argues, as no national census in the country could be trusted, the majority of the sources available on Afghanistan, contrary to the claims of the state-sponsored historiography, assert that Afghanistan is a country of minorities and no single ethnic group forms fifty plus per cent in the country.81 Mehdi suggests that the notion of majority and minority in the context of Afghanistan is linguistic rather than racial; in this case, Farsi or Persian is the lingua franca of the country. To suggest an alternative, Mehdi argues in favour of pluralism, decentralization of power and recognizing Afghanistan as part of the wider civilization and setup of the region.82

Abdul K. Lalzad The second example of the post-dislocation work in Persian, which radically challenges the official discourse, is the work of Lalzad; a Tajik researcher based in the UK, and former Kabul University professor. He has contributed immensely in supporting and enriching the postdislocation critical literature. Lalzad in his radical interventions attempts to destabilize the official discourse and problematize the master signifier of the narrative; Afghanistan, and Afghans. He has written extensively on history and identity in Afghanistan. Employing a chronological methodology to genealogically trace the roots of the official discourse and flesh out the tensions and contradictions, Lalzad tries to present an alternative reading. To question and problematize the invented pre-historical antiquity and post-Islamic distinctive history for Afghanistan, he uses the primary English, Arabic and Persian texts, e.g. history and geography. In doing so he details genealogically the names and political terminologies used to signify a particular geographical location, on one hand, to trace their development and transformations, and on the other, to problematize the core claims of the official discourse on historical depth of the master signifier i.e. Ariana, Khurasan and then Afghanistan. Lalzad firmly rejects the official claims that Afghanistan has a history of more than 5,000 years, and its division to ancient Ariana, Islamic Khurasan and then Afghanistan, established by Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1747. He further claims that in order to establish a racial link between the Pashtuns and the Nazis in Germany, the official historiography in

204

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

1942 invented the word Ariayee (a Farsi/Persian translation of Aryan) as the origin of the Pashtun race and Ariana as the ancient name of Afghanistan, which was then included in the official curriculum of schools and universities textbooks. Lalzad argues that it is true that Strabo mentions Ariana in Greek sources but it signifies a vast geography, which today includes several newly established nation states, i.e. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Central Asian Republics. This term, according to him, was then transferred to English sources by Wilson in 1841 and from there it was borrowed by the Afghan official historian Kohzad in 1942 for political reasons. The term Khurasan, according to him, was used for the first time at the end of the fifth century signifying east of Iran (again including parts of present Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asian Republics). Finally he argues that historically and geographically these names (Ariana and Khurasan) have never been used as a name for any specific country. Instead, they signified a much larger geographical region, which simply does not fit the borders of any particular nation states of the region. According to him, the term Iran was used for the first time by the Sassanid kings, while contrary to this one can observe that in English and other Western literature they use the term ‘Persia’ or ‘Persian Empire’ to signify Achaemenid, Parthian, Sassanid and the other Iranian dynasties until the 1930s. Discussing the creation of Afghanistan, based on historical maps, international treaties and historical references, Lalzad argues that the word Afghan in reference to an ethnicity has a history of about 1,000 years, and it mainly signified the people who lived around the Suleiman Mountains, located in today’s Pakistan, while the term Afghanistan, as a region and sometimes as a province, has a history of 700 years, signifying the same region, but Afghanistan as a nation state with marked borders only emerged in the reign of Abdur Rahman Khan (1880– 1901) and obtained its independence under Amanullah Khan in 1919– 21. Before Abdur Rahman Khan, Lalzad claims no ruler in this region called himself the ruler of Afghanistan, instead they were referred to as the rulers of Iran, Khurasan or Hindustan or by their dynasties, tribes and individual names, e.g. Samanids, Ghaznavids, Mughals, Shaybanid, Safavids, Durranis and so on and so forth. The geographical regions these dynasties ruled were in constant change and at the same time included areas which do not fit the geographical limits of the newly created

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

205

nation states. Hence, Lalzad concludes that a country by the name of Afghanistan with its current geographical location did not exist before Abdur Rahman Khan and the borders of this new and artificial buffer state were imposed by the British and Russian Empires to serve their colonial objectives. He also acknowledges the fact that it was Elphinstone’s discourse which paved the way for Khurasan and the Kingdom of Caboul to be named Afghanistan at a later stage by colonial powers without the consent of the people. He notes that, after the establishment of a centralized buffer state under the leadership of some Pashtun elites, the processes of Afghanistanization of Khurasan and then the Pashtunizaion of Afghanistan took root.83 However, Lalzad’s work, apart from its chronological approach and tracing the names and terminologies in multiple sources, lacks cohesion and theoretical foundation or framework.

Aziz Arianfar The third post-dislocation example is the work of the Tajik writer and researcher, Aziz Arianfar, based in Germany.84 In his recent work, which could be labeled as a radical intervention on re-writing the history of Afghanistan, on the one hand, he challenges the dominant official discourse, and, on the other, attempts to provide an alternative reading. He argues that the history of the country has been fabricated and distorted to a level that it would be simply impossible to find a similar example anywhere in the world. Hence, he argues for an urgent need to rewrite the history of the country. He believes that the twentieth century was the golden age of fabricating and inventing history under the pretext of ultra-nationalism in the world. Arianfar categorizes the historical schools on Afghanistan as follows: (1) Russian school, which he thinks looked at the history of Afghanistan from a Marxist perspective; (2) Western bourgeoisie, based on imperialistic interests, which has its positive and negative aspects, and as examples he refers to Elphinstone; Dupree, Adamec and Gregorian as the main historians of this school; (3) indigenous Afghanistan school of historiography, which, according to him, is subdivided into:

206

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

(a) classical historiography from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, (b) semi-classical historiography in the first decade of twentieth century, and a good example of that, according to him, is Sarajul Tawarikh by Katib, (c) official historiography from the 1950s onward, (d) semi-official nationalist historiography, some of the writers at this stage, according to him, are influence by Marxism, and some by ultra-nationalistic tendencies under the influence of Nazi Hitler, and finally (e) the chaotic historiography of post-immigration, and (f) the Iranian school of historiography on Afghanistan. Arianfar argues that trying to invent a separate and distinct history for Afghanistan from its neighbours, especially from Iran, is contradicting the historical facts. By questioning the official periodization, he suggests an alternative schema to look at the history of Afghanistan (1) the history of the Iranian plateau as a common history of the region, because it covers a wider geographical location; (2) the Durrani Empire; (3) the beginning of the Great Game and the creation of Afghanistan by the British and Russian Empires. Arianfar argues that, after a period of internal rivalry, during the second reign of Amir Dost Mohammad Khan, today’s Afghanistan took shape as a de facto entity, and during the reign of Amir Abdur Rahman in 1893 its borders were defined by the Russian and British Empires, and it emerged as a de jure entity, but still lacked independence and remained under British suzerainty. Afghanistan, according to him, finally managed to secure its independence from Britain in 1919. To summarize, one can argue that the creation of a country called Afghanistan is the result of the Great Game and the direct outcome of the geopolitical, geostrategic and geo-economic rivalry of England and Russia as major superpowers in the nineteenth century. Hence Afghanistan is a new country similar to that of artificial new

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

207

political entities in the eighteenth century, i.e. Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Pakistan, Arab and African states.85 On the name of Afghanistan and how it developed, Arianfar draws similar conclusions to those of Lalzad. He argues that Iran and Khurasan are civilizational, historical, cultural and geographical names rather than a country in its post-colonial form. It was only the eastern part of Iran that after the arrival of Islam in the region became known as Khurasan. In a very lengthy discussion based on primary sources, i.e. history, geography, maps and poetry, he details the above three historical stages, and how the region was called Iran, Eastern Iran and then Khurasan prior to 1880. He further explains that the exclusive claim of the newly created Islamic Republic of Iran to be the rightful successor to the historical Iran is neither valid nor credible. Similarly, insisting on Afghanistan as an alternative to Iran, Eastern Iran or Khurasan excludes the identity of the region and deprives the inhabitants of this part of the region of their historical and civilizational past. Hence Arianfar proposes a new idea to overcome this dilemma, and that is to call the region: Iranistan, and then categorize the newly post-colonial countries of the region to western, eastern and northern Iran to offer them the right historical identities. He strongly refutes the official historiography’s claim to Ariana, Khurasan and then Afghanistan as baseless, and asserts that there is a difference between a state and a cultural-geographical sphere.86

Seddiq Rahpoe Tarzi The fourth example of a critical post-dislocation literature, is the work of Seddiq Rahpoe Tarzi, a Pashtun intellectual, writer and researcher based in Germany. Tarzi adopts a critical approach to the country’s past and, instead of relying on historical myths and blind narratives of ethnocentric nationalism in constructing the history of the country, he suggests a geographical and archaeological approach. Tarzi believes that the age of overvaluing the phenomenon of race and racial classification is over, and hence a geographical approach to the study of human history is needed. He argues that in the prehistoric narrative of history of Afghanistan, knowledge and rationality have little role to play, as it is mainly based on myths, epics and exaggerated stories; an example of

208

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

which can be found in Shahanama (the Book of the Kings) which itself is copied from Khdye Namaq (Book of Kings or Stories of Kings). He further explains that this mythical and oral history without a critical evaluation has opened the way for itself to enter the realm of modern historiography in Afghanistan. As an alternative Tarzi suggests that modern history ought to begin with the discovery of new inscriptions through archaeological excavations. This new approach, on the one hand, might help us demystify Afghanistan’s past, and also, on the other, might provide us with the right tools to critically review our history. Tarzi is not a fan of the myth of state formation and the subsequent identity construction in Afghanistan, which is closely linked to the rise of nationalism after 1930 under the impact of Nazism and the racially motivated concept of Aryan race. He problematizes the very foundation of the official historiography and accuses the historians of being incompetent and meanwhile operating under the direct influence of the dynastic dictatorship of Musahiban rule, especially Daoud and his brother Naiem. To him, Ariana, Khurasan and then Afghanistan in 1747 are mythical inventions of the new-Afghan nationalism of the 1930s rather than historical facts. He disputes the claim that Ahmad Shah Durrani was the founder of the contemporary Afghanistan, and insists that he used to call himself the king of Abdali/Durrani and king of Khurasan. On the emergence of the Afghan state, Tarzi is of the opinion that modern Afghanistan took shape in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. It was at this time that Afghanistan’s borders were demarcated; prior to that time there were only areas or spheres of influence rather than officially recognized states with demarcated borders. He also asserts that Afghans had no major role in drawing the borders, which were mainly created by the British and Russian Empires. To him, this arbitrary demarcation led to the division of ethnic communities of the region in an unnatural way, which in turn paved the way for the creation of a country composed of ethnic minorities. Tarzi insists in order to understand Afghanistan and its history, there is a strong need to contextualize it in the wider region and move well beyond the borders of the current political entities with particular emphasis on culture and civilizational aspects of the region. Tarzi, unlike other Pashtun writers, or perhaps as an exception among Pashtun intellectuals, opposes the ethnocentric discourse of the forceful Pashtunization of Afghanistan and compelling others to identify themselves as Afghans if they are not willing to do so. To him, Afghan means Pashtun

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

209

and it cannot reflect the identity of non-Pashtuns in the country. He favours consent rather than force, and argues that democratization is the right answer to border and other current issues with Pakistan.87

Changiz Pahlavan In this part of the chapter, I briefly refer to the interventions of Changiz Pahlavan, an Iranian professor, academic and scholar who has written extensively on Afghanistan in the past few decades. I assume he is the first to theorize systematically the notion of dislocation in Afghanistan in his book Afghanistan: The Age of Mujahidin and the Emergence of the Taliban. Furthermore, he has promoted the discourse of common civilization as an alternative, to which I turn in detail in the next chapter. Pahlavan argues that before the era of dislocation in Afghanistan, especially before 1992, the power structure was only in favour of Pashtuns. Their monopoly of power, according to him, allowed them to develop a theory of ethnic supremacy, which he calls ‘Pashtunism’. Afghanistan as a multi-ethnic society has suffered from this particular ideology for a long time. To him, Pashtunism has the following characteristics (1) the Pashtuns established Afghanistan, and the Kingdom of Ahmad Shah Durrani is the symbol and the beginning of this establishment; (2) Pashtuns have a long history which goes back to ancient times, and Afghanistan has existed since ancient times as an independent political entity; (3) to internalize and perpetuate the above-mentioned concepts, the Pashtun historians began a process of constructing and inventing historical depth for an imagined political entity called Afghanistan; they attempted to achieve this goal at the expense of the common history of the region by constructing a distinct history of the Pashtuns or Afghanistan; (4) Pashtunism believes that, if Afghanistan exists, then the Pashtuns have the right to rule; if the people of Afghanistan do not accept this leadership role, then Afghanistan does not exist; (5) Pashtunism allows itself to receive and ask for help from foreign countries, but if other ethnic groups became involved in similar activities they would call them traitors or the puppets of foreign powers;

210

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

(6) royalism, nationalism, communism and even Islam are instruments at the service of this ideology to maintain the supremacy of the Pashtuns; (7) local and tribal traditions and customs of Pashtuns are considered or portrayed as national traditions and customs; if anyone tries to deny it or reject it he would be accused of being in the service of foreign powers and non-Afghan. Pashtunism in this context tries to promote a harmful cultural policy under the pretext of ‘national unity’, and has utilized the policy of assimilation to deny the multi-cultural character of the country; (8) despite the fact that Ahmad Shah Durrani has been introduced as a national symbol of the Pashtuns; the history of the region contradicts this account.88 Similar to other post-dislocation scholars, Pahlavan argues that sociopolitical and military changes in Afghanistan in recent decades have led to a radical dislocation. Hence, the monopoly of power by a particular ethnic group has ended and the old power structure has radically changed. Taking Pahlavan’s points into account, I argue that under the influence of nationalism, not only Afghanistan, but the majority of the post-colonial nation states of the region have a similar exclusive claim to own the history and pride of the region. But surprisingly the divisions and categorizations only begin after the death of Nadir Afshar in 1747. The nation states of the region, when it comes to the pre-1747 era, usually refer to it as their own historical past.89 To my surprise, I found a lot of similarity between the contents and approach of Sir John Malcolm’s celebrated book: The History of Persia, from the most early period to the present time (1815); and the modern official historiography of Iran90 and Afghanistan. He separates the history of Iran from Afghanistan after the death of Nadir, and the same colonial trend and categorization continues in both countries until today.91

The Post-Dislocation Literature and Nodal Points of the Official Discourse In detailing the post-dislocation literature, the chapter mainly focused on the master signifier of the discourse, which binds together the entire chains of signification. However, in conjunction with the elucidation,

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

211

deconstruction and problematization of the master signifier of the official discourse, it referred where needed to the three intertwined nodal points of the discourse; the myth of emergence, the notion of governance through assemblies and the idea of invasion and resistance. In this part of the chapter, it is attempted to focus on these three nodal points, on the one hand, to explore how the post-dislocation literature approaches them, and on the other, to see which one is most challenged and which still flourishes even in the post-dislocation era.

The Myth of Emergence and the Nodal Point of Loya Jirga The first part of the chapter tackled the lately constructed myth of emergence under the auspicious of the Afghan nationalism while problematizing the master signifier of the discourse; the ancient Ariana, post-Islamic Khurasan, and contemporary Afghanistan. In this part, it only focuses on the nodal point of emergence, which is intertwined with the nodal point of governance through assemblies. The official discourse attempted to portray the coronation of Ahmad Shah Abdali, the first king of contemporary Afghanistan, as a democratic affair; the convention of a grand national assembly, nine days of democratic deliberations and finally electing the king by consent. Because the two nodal points are intertwined when it comes to the concept of Jirga or Loya Jirga, hence, they are deconstructed and problematized together. To do so, the chapter relies on the work of Hanifi the senior and Noelle-Karimi, as two post-dislocation scholars, who have critically challenged the nodal point of governance through assemblies.92 M. Jamil Hanifi (the ‘senior’ or the ‘father’) in his pioneering article: ‘Editing the past: colonial production of hegemony through the “Loya Jerga”93 in Afghanistan’, deconstructs and problematizes Loya Jirga. He argues that Loya Jirga ‘has been hailed in the West as a triumphant exercise in democracy and representative government; so much so that some United States government leaders and international leaders and the international press have recommended its application to the political reconstruction of the state in Iraq.’94 He claims that Euro-American scholars, local intellectuals and politicians view Loya Jirga as the highest source of legitimacy for the Afghan government and its policies. Hanifi is of the opinion that no systematic studies of Loya Jirga exist from the past century except a descriptive study of the 1941, 1955 and 1964 Loya Jirgas.

212

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

He asserts that Loya Jirga has been the most important ‘consent’producing hegemonic prerogative of post-1919 monarchs and heads of the government in Afghanistan. Employing Antonio Gramsci’s concept of ‘hegemony’ to mean the practices of the dominant class, Hanifi considers Loya Jirga to be one of the elements in the ‘hegemonic apparatus’ of the Afghan state as part of a complex set of institutions, ideologies, practices and agents. He believes the Western view of Loya Jirga as a legitimizing device is largely derived from the ‘ideology’95 promoted by the Afghan government. Hanifi argues that in order to understand Loya Jirga it is important to critically address how the European and Afghan elite and monarchy in the past two centuries have located the Afghan state and its founder in one single historical event of 1747. That event, according to Hanifi, viewed as a model for the structure and conduct of Loya Jirga for Afghan governments at a time of crisis. He contends: ‘essentially, the Loya Jirga is a framework in which the Afghan state has adopted distortions of Western ideas of popular representation in the government and has attached to them Paxtu labels’.96 Hanifi begins his study of Loya Jirga by tracing the ethnographic location of the Jirga and Loya Jirga. He states that Jirga has been a tribal arrangement to solve local conflicts among the settled and nomadic Pashtuns of central Asia. It functions as a sodality, it dissolves when the need for it disappears. It is the symbol of tribal autonomy and it operates, in traditional setting, on the margins of the state government. The word Jerga in Paxtu means assembly, council, or gathering. It is occasionally interchangeably used with Maraka – discussion, or dialogue. The initiative for convoking a Jerga comes from local individuals or groups, and not from an external agency such as the state.97 Hanifi claims that it is Elphinstone in the colonial period that provides the first written reference to Jirga, and the early dictionary reference to the term is provided by Henry George Raverty, Henry Walter Bellew and J. G. Lorimer, all colonial officers of British India. He provides a theoretical account of Jirga’s procedures, how it functions and resolves local and inter-tribal conflicts. Hanifi also adds that the word Jirga is familiar to the non-Pashtuns of Afghanistan but their preferred label for local assembly, council, deliberative or advisory body is Shura-ye Mahali

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

213

or Majles-e Mahali. In Iran, he says, Jirga refers to a ring, group, coterie or clique but is not used for a mechanism of tribal conflict resolution.98 Hanifi, contrary to the official and semi-official narrative, asserts that one cannot find the term Loya Jirga in pre-1922 literature in Afghanistan. The available pre-1922 ethnographic and historical record dealing with tribes and states in Afghanistan and the surrounding region does not contain specific reference to the concept or apparatus of Loya Jerga. However, Afghan nationalist writers like Mir Gholam Mohammad Ghobar and Mohammad ’Alam Faiz-zad insist that the Loya Jerga, as a feature of central government in Afghanistan, dates back to pre-Islamic times. An intellectual of the Afghan diaspora in north America claims that a “great Afghan Loya Jirga [was] convened by Emperor Kanishka a little less than two thousand years ago.” There is no historical or archaeological evidence in support of these claims, however. There is no record of assemblies or councils or other specifically named representative bodies that the government convened or with which the rulers of Afghanistan consulted prior to 1922.99 Hanifi problematizes the account of several prominent Afghan and foreign scholars of Afghanistan on the historical depth and the origins of the Loya Jirga. He begins with Ghobar and his claim that Amir Sher Ali (r.1863– 1866 and 1868–1879) convened a ‘Loya Jirga’ in 1866, and says the source Ghobar quotes mentions a majles (gathering), rather than Jirga or a Loya Jirga. Then Hanifi moves to Hasan Kawun Kakar, a British-trained Afghan historian of nineteenth-century Afghanistan and his claim that Amir Abdur Rahman (r.1880–1901) convened three Loya Jirga during his reign, and accuses him of not offering any document in support of his claim. Likewise, he argues that Louis Dupree claims that Abdur Rahman convened the Loya Jirga but like Kakar, he does not offer any evidence in support of this assertion. Similarly, Barnett R. Rubin, an American political scientist who has written extensively on Afghanistan also claims that Amir Abdur Rahman modified the tradition of tribal representation by establishing the Loya Jirga.100 Ludwig W. Adamec, an American political scientist, claims that in 1915 Amir Habibullah (r.1901– 19) had convened a Loya Jirga to decide on Afghanistan’s position in World War I, and offers a British archival document as his

214

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

source. Ghobar, on the other hand, without documentation, cites a 520member ‘Jerga-e ’omom-ye rah- baran-e ehtemali-ye jehad’ (Persian: general assembly of the leaders of the impending Jihad) that Amir Habibullah had convened in Kabul for this purpose. Hanifi further argues that there is no application of the Loya Jirga label to any social mechanism among Pashtun tribes. He claims that the earliest use of the label can be traced to the proceedings of the assembly of 1922 convened by the order of Amir Amanullah Khan in Jalalabad to discuss the approval of the first Afghan constitution; hence he argues the term Loya Jirga has been invented by government of Afghanistan to justify certain practices: The label Loya Jerga as invented by the governments of Afghanistan in 1922 is derived from the colonial reconstruction of events in 1747 surrounding the rise of Ahmad Khan Abdali (r. 1747– 72) to political prominence – the foundational moment of the Afghan monarchy. These events are originally variously described in several local Persian chronicles of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.101 Hanifi argues that the dominant powers in constructing and inventing the myth of Loya Jirga have linked it, again to the very falsely invented narrative of the establishment of contemporary Afghanistan and how Ahmad Khan rose to power by a Loya Jirga to rule an extensive territory from which Afghanistan was carved out in late nineteenth century. To problematize the myth of Loya Jirga, he begins by deconstructing the very official narrative of how Ahmad Khan rose to power and the myth of emergence of first state of Afghanistan. Ahmad Khan, the legendary founder of the Afghan state, was allegedly elected by consensus and crowned king of Afghanistan in 1747, according to texts produced by the Afghan government and intellectuals and popular ideas about the tribal assembly in which the event occurred. These accounts are inspired by various whimsical European representations of local Persian chronicles. The earliest and most comprehensive pre-colonial account of Ahmad Khan’s rise to political power is provided in a chronicle written during 1753–1774 by Mahmud al-Hosaini al-Munshi ibn

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

215

Ibrahem al-Jami, the court historian of Ahmad Khan Abdali. This account makes no mention of an organized assembly in which the election and coronation of Ahmad Khan took place. Nor is there any mention of the acts of election or coronation per se. Hosaini’s narrative clearly states that during a gathering in Qandahar in 1747, Saber, a mendicant, placed blades of green grass, giyah-e sabz on Ahmad Khan’s cap and proclaimed him king. This mendicant had earlier foretold that Ahmad Khan would become king after Nader Shah Afshar’s death. Hosaini writes, not of consensus, but of much violence surrounding the accession of Ahmad Khan, including armed conflict between his supporters and opponents and the trampling to death by elephants of his major detractors. There are several variations of Hosaini’s account of Ahmad Khan’s rise to political leadership in the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth-century chronicles. Like Hosaini’s narrative, these accounts do not mention coronation, election, consensus, Afghanistan, Paxtuns, or Loya Jerga.102 Hanifi further explains that it was the colonial writers who converted the local narratives of the event of Ahmad Khan’s accession into a ‘variety of whimsical, orientalist portrayals.’ To support his claim, Hanifi provides examples of these representations by colonial and post-colonial foreign writers on Afghanistan, and how this distorted narrative then was copied by Afghan officials. Because of the relevance of his findings to my research, here I quote him at length. Mountstuart Elphinstone, the earliest of these colonial authors, writes that “[I]n October 1747 [Ahmad Khan] was crowned: Dooraunee, Kuzzulbaush, Beloches, and Hazaurah chiefs are mentioned as assisting at the coronation.” Writing in 1852 James Fraser repeats Elphinstone’s distortion: “Ahmed. . . assumed the ensigns of royalty at Candahar, in the month of October, 1747, the Dooranee, Kuzzilbash, Beloches, and Hazara chiefs assisting in his coronation.” Joseph Pierre Ferrier, a French traveller who visited Afghanistan during 1844– 1845 states that the mendicant “took a handful of barley from an adjoining field, and having formed it into a wreath, placed it on the head of Ahmed Khan, adding, ‘and may this serve as your diadem’[. . .] Ahmed Khan, who took the

216

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

title of Shah, was crowned in the mosque at Kandahar towards the end of 1747. The ceremony of his coronation was of the most simple kind: the Mollah of the highest rank poured a measure of wheat on the head of the new monarch, announcing to the assembled Afghans that he was the chosen of God and the nation.” Henry George Raverty, the most prolific English colonial writer on Afghanistan, confirms what his predecessors have invented: “In October of the same year (1747), Ahmad, [. . .] assumed the title of Shah or King of Afghanistan, and was crowned at Kandahar, with great pomp, the different chiefs of the various Afghan tribes, with but few exceptions, and the Kazalbashes, Baluchis, and Hazarahs, assisting.” Other European colonial writers have followed suit: Ahmad Khan was “crowned King of the Afghans at Kandahar in October 1747”; the mendicant produced “a tiny sheaf of wheat, and placing it in Ahmad Khan’s turban, declared that no one in that assembly was so fit for the kingship as Ahmad Khan, the flower of the Duranis.” These European inventions have had a profound impact on how Afghans and others have constructed the history of Afghanistan and how they have addressed the genesis of the Afghan state and the Durrani dynastic rule in Afghanistan. The reference to barley and wheat in these European accounts of Ahmad Khan’s “coronation” (on the authority of Ganda Singh) led the archaeologist Louis Dupree, in describing Ahmad Khan’s career, to state that “[a]s an anthropologist, I cannot resist speculating that this fertility symbol must have an ancient prehistoric root in Afghanistan.” The Afghan monarchs have used European embellishments of this legend as the source of their legitimacy and the basis of their hereditary right to the kingship of Afghanistan. Addressing the Loya Jerga of 1924, Amir Amanullah exclaimed “the crown made of a cluster of wheat that this nation bestowed on our dynasty – a dynasty whose descendants rule to this day – makes them [the descendants] proud.” Starting with Amanullah’s rule, clusters of wheat have had a prominent place in the official state emblems, insignias, and banners of Afghanistan. Following these distortions and adding to them, Louis Dupree, who is known as a “specialist” on Afghanistan, refers to the Loya Jerga as the “Great National Assembly – partly elected, partly

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

217

appointed.” Leon Poullada, an American political scientist, views the Loya Jerga as the “Great Tribal Assembly.” M. Nazif Shahrani, an American-educated Afghan anthropologist, considers the Loya Jerga as the “National Grand Assembly.” Another Americaneducated Afghan anthropologist, Ashraf Ghani, states: “The power elite of the country was given a voice in the determination of state policies through the convening of Loya Jergas or grand assemblies. Such an assembly had elected Ahmad Shah Dorrani king of Afghanistan”, Ghani’s assertion is puzzling since he apparently had access to Hussaini’s text as it is listed in his bibliography. The British anthropologist Richard Tapper writes that “Ahmad Khan. . . was elected leader by a Jirga assembly of Nadir’s Afghan generals, as something of a compromise [. . .] and his leadership among the tribal chiefs indeed remained that of primus inter pares.” The American anthropologist Robert L. Canfield, however, with implicit caution, asserts: “The ‘founder’ of the country, Ahmad Shah Abdali, took a religious title after he was ‘crowned’ amir by a notable religious authority, and every other ruler after him similarly claimed a special Islamic title (at least until 1973).” The French sociologist Olivier Roy notes that: “War was a short-lived affair and decided upon by the council of clan chiefs [a limited Jirga]”. Of Ahmad Khan Abdali, Roy writes: “He was first and foremost a warrior chief, with whom his followers entered into a contract. His right to lead was based upon the fact that he had been enthroned by a great tribal jirga [an assembly of all the warriors]. The great jirga was the founding myth of the Afghan state and was to be re-enacted in periods of crisis [as for the enthronement of Nadir Khan in 1929].” D. Balland, a French social scientist, states that “Ahmad Khan was thus elected king of the Afghans by a Jerga or tribal council of Pashtun chiefs; in October of the same (1747) year he was crowned at a location not far from Qandahar.”. . . Finally, here are the views of Barnett R. Rubin whose ideas about Afghanistan are widely used by academics, United States policy-makers, and the media: “[T]he jirga of the tribes was simultaneously a representative institution, a sort of electoral college for the Shah, and a military force. Just such a jirga had chosen Ahmad Shah as leader of the Abdalis [. . .] Afghans referred to previous large jirgas, such as the one that

218

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

elected Ahmad Shah, as Loya Jirgas, but the term had never been given a legally codified meaning.” Referring to the 1955 Loya Jerga, Rubin states: “The Loya Jirga showed the encapsulation of the tribes, not their continuing power”; the 1964 Loya Jerga was “probably the freest and most effective such body ever convened by the state.”, “At a controlled Loya Jirga in 1977 he [Mohammad Daud] promulgated a new constitution.”, “[T]he institution of the Loya Jirga developed out of the state’s attempt to modify Pashtun tribal tradition in order to create a tribal-nationalist legitimation for state power.”103 Hanifi, citing Bailey’s book: The Prevalence of Deceit, asserts that Loya Jerga is ‘a basic hegemonic lie [that] says, to rulers and the ruled alike, that only the elite are fit to govern.’ He radically deconstructs and problematizes the myth of emergence and governing through assemblies by claiming that they are merely fabricated tools devised by the governing Persianized Pashtun elite to justify their domination. The distortions and misrepresentations contained in the colonial constructions of Ahmad Khan’s “election” and “coronation” in a participatory “tribal” context – the founding legend of Afghanistan, the Afghan monarchy, and the legitimizing basis of the Loya Jerga – have been reproduced virtually intact by the Afghan government and by local and Western post-colonial writers interested in political processes and leadership in Afghanistan. The Afghan government portrayed the Loya Jerga as an arrangement derived from Paxtun social and symbolic elements when in fact, as we will see from the record of the first Loya Jerga in 1924, there was virtually nothing (except the label) Paxtun in practice about this hegemonic apparatus. The Afghan monarchy’s claim to Paxtun identity has little ethnographic and historical validity. The royal lineage had been Persianized; its members neither spoke Paxtu nor exhibited other behavioral and cultural features of Paxtun identity. By identifying themselves with the Paxtun label “Loya Jerga” the monarchy attempted to boost their own dubious claim to Paxtun identity, coopted the Paxtun tribes, and intimidated the non-Paxtun population with the alleged numerical majority of Paxtuns and the latter’s historical reputation

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

219

as brave warriors. The Paxtun numerical majority was a mere speculation and notions about their bravery were a matter of interpretation valid only in the framework of their long-standing opposition to state structures. Western academic writers have uncritically accepted the Loya Jerga as a primordial and legitimate fixture of the Afghan polity. While these writers virtually unanimously promote the invalid thesis of Paxtun domination of Afghanistan, none have critically addressed or acknowledged the transparent, non-Paxtun character of the Loya Jerga in practice. These uncritical views portray the Loya Jerga as the framework for popular participation in the affairs of the Afghan government. These views of the Loya Jerga and the idea that this assembly was the mechanism through which political leadership was produced and legitimated through tribal participation are widely shared by western academic writers who view the Afghan state as an amalgam of Paxtun tribes and the Afghan monarchy as a Paxtun tribal construction. Most academic writings on Afghanistan convey the impression that there are no non-Paxtun tribal and non-tribal communities in Afghanistan. These perceptions of Afghanistan, the Loya Jerga, and the Afghan monarchy evaporate when confronted with ethnographic and historical facts. Although there has never been a systematic headcount in Afghanistan, it is likely that nonPaxtuns comprise the majority of the people of the country. NonPaxtun communities have played prominent roles in the affairs of the country.104 Hanifi is of the opinion that it was in post-1919 Afghanistan that the myth of Loya Jirga was constructed. It was during this period, according to him, that a small group of Afghan elite produced numerous texts that strengthened the legitimacy of Loya Jirga. As the government enhanced its domination through coercive power by acquisition of modern weapons from Europe and Russia, similar to other state-sponsored hegemonic devices, e.g. mass media, literature and school textbooks, Loya Jirga was imposed as a legitimizing device. He argues that after confronting modern European ideas during Amir Habibullah’s reign under the influence of Tarzi and his biweekly newspaper Siraj al-Akhbar (1911– 19), a new constitutional movement took shape but it was crushed by the King in a later stage because of its revolutionary steps

220

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

against the monarchy. Once Habibullah was assassinated and his son Amanullah took over, he approached the members of the constitutional movement with sympathy and released all the members of the movement jailed by his father. Amanullah was close to this circle and used to discuss Afghanistan’s foreign relations and internal issues with this group. Hanifi claims that it was during these discussions that the idea of Loya Jirga was hammered out or invented for the first time. The idea of the Loya Jerga was hammered out at these discussions. The progressive amir and his Afghan intellectual elite subjects saw in the Loya Jerga a framework in which both sides could promote their objectives; the amir, by using a Paxtu label, could portray himself as a Paxtun to gain popular support for his reforms and modernization programmes; the intellectuals would have a real opportunity for participation in the affairs of the government, influencing both the amir and the Loya Jerga proceedings.105 Hence, according to him, the first Loya Jerga was convened in 1922 by the amir in the city of Jalalabad, his unofficial winter capital. Once this legitimizing ideological state apparatus was invented, the consecutive states in Afghanistan attempted to present Loya Jirga as an old purely Afghani tradition. In this conjunction he pays special attention to the establishment of a literary and history society in the 1930s. In early 1931 Mohammad Nader instituted the Anjuman-e Adabi (Persian: literary society) which, in one form or another, became home to the core of the Afghan intellectual elite during much of the next fifty years, its influence spanning to the present. The Anjuman was under the supervision of the king’s secretariat and housed in the northern tower of the royal palace in Kabul. Its basic aim was “to reform (improve) and promote the literature of the country and to adopt fine (humanistic) methods or methods from the humanities.” The Anjuman-e Adabi, with thirteen charter members, published the influential monthly journal Kabul starting in June 1931. Most members of the society could translate from English, French, or Urdu. Many of the writings of the members of the Abjuman-e Adabi were published in Kabul, or as individual titles, translations of texts from foreign languages

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

221

into Farsi. Mir Gholam Muhammad Ghobar was a charter member of the literary society. As one of the most prolific writers of Anjuman-e Adabi, Ghobar contributed numerous texts dealing with the history of Afghanistan to virtually every issue of Kabul during its first year. His 1943 publication Ahmad Shah Baba-ye Afghan (Persian: literally, Ahmad Shah, the Afghan Father or Ahmad Shah, the Father of Afghan[s]) was his major work until his 1967 Afghanistan dar Masir-e Tarikh (Persian: Afghanistan in the Course of History). The latter book is probably the most widely circulated work published in Afghanistan.106 Citing Roger Keesing’s observations in discussing the texts produced by intellectuals of the Pacific Islands, Hanifi delivers one of his most accurate and harsh sentences on the authenticity of the discourses produced by affiliates of the state-sponsored institution of rewriting the history of the country. Roger Keesing, inspired by Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, writes that there seems to be ‘a gulf between the authenticity of actual pre-colonial societies and cultures and the inauthenticity of the mythic pasts now being invented.’ Hanifi argues that Afghan intellectuals sponsored by the state in their representations of the past provide a corollary to Keesing’s observations. In the texts relevant to the Loya Jerga the Afghan intellectuals produced images of the past that were dramatically inconsistent with local historical accounts but similar to the distorted colonial representations of the Afghan past. These texts supported the rulers’ claims to legitimacy and facilitated access to the hegemonic process of the Loya Jerga. Among the Afghan intellectual elite, as in the Pacific Islands, although intended as nationalistic and anticolonial, the counter-hegemonic discourse pervasively incorporates the structures, categories, and premises of (colonial) hegemonic discourse. In part this is because those who are dominated internalize the premises and categories of the dominant. . . in part, because it defines the semiology through which claims to power must be expressed. In other words, “the discourse of the dominant shapes and structures the discourse of the dominated”. The Afghan intellectual elite employed by the government of Afghanistan wrote extensively in support of their employer, the

222

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Afghan monarchy, and its sources of legitimacy. The government was regularly depicted as Islamic, and the king as the “shadow of God.” The government’s most important source of hegemonic and ideological domination, the Loya Jerga, was memorialized and promoted by the Afghan intellectuals as primordially Afghan. As noted earlier, the Afghan intellectual elite saw in the Loya Jerga a realistic hope for a constitutional monarchy and for their participation in the affairs of the state. Paralleling the emergence of the Loya Jerga, but especially after 1930, various texts appeared in Afghan government official publications about a legendary assembly in 1747 in which the alleged founder of the Afghan state Ahmad Khan Abdali was portrayed as having convened a Loya Jerga or large assembly composed of various Afghan groups in which he was, by consensus, “elected” and “crowned” king of Afghanistan. As mentioned earlier, Amir Amanullah had alluded to this in passing during the 1924 Loya Jerga. Ghobar is the first Afghan historian who attempted to establish a relationship between the Afghan monarchy and the Loya Jerga as the basis and context of its legitimacy, and the prominence of Sufi networks in the civil society and government of Afghanistan. He is the author of the first local contemporary work on Ahmad Khan Abdali. The book was awarded the “Second Order of Aryana” prize by the Afghan government and was translated into Russian in 1959 under the title “Ahmad Shah, the Founder of the Afghan State” and published in Moscow that year. This was the first work by a contemporary Afghan writer to be translated into a European language.107 Hence the idea of Loya Jirga with its historical depth became an integral part of the official narrative of state formation in Afghanistan. A visual representation of the event of Ahmad Khan’s coronation drawn by famous artist of the day was presented to re-enforce the image, Hanifi adds. Ever since its invention in 1922, the Loya Jirga has been a fixture of political life in Afghanistan. Starting with the 1920s, every decade except the 1990s has seen the convening of at least one Loya Jerga. Loya Jerga is institutionalized constitutionally and recognized with variations in its composition in several regimes as the ‘the supreme manifestation of the will and power of the people.’ Hanifi further argues that the same

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

223

old non-democratic device was re-invented as a neo-colonial production and used by the United States as a legitimizing tool in post-2001 Afghanistan. On the other hand, he claims that ‘the internationalization of the 2002 and 2003– 4 Loya Jergas made this hegemonic assembly transparent and open to critical scrutiny by outsiders.’ He further asserts that: ‘for the first time in its history this tool of deception was exposed for what it really is – a consent-producing machinery constructed out of colonial misrepresentations unrelated to the Paxtuns, Afghan tribes, or tribalism, and independent of the wishes and aspirations of the people of Afghanistan.’108 Hanifi concludes by stating that the falsehood of the 1747 assembly, the ‘coronation’ of Ahmad Khan Abdali, and his ‘election’ as king is self-evident. He believes that ‘the prospects of a stable, independent, and democratically reconstituted Afghan state depend on how successfully loyal and devoted daughters and sons of Afghanistan can dissociate its architecture from the falsehood of its democratic past.’ According to him ‘the Afghan people need to be informed about the reality of the colonial construction of their political past and the hegemonic device of the Loya Jerga with which their consent was extorted from them by the Kabul government.’ He finally states that: ‘outsiders have played a profound role in the construction of the Afghan state. They have constructed the very labels “Afghan” and “Afghanistan”; in essence, Loya Jerga is a colonial and neocolonial construct imposed on the people of Afghanistan by rulers who were and continue to be undisputed puppets of outsiders.’109 The second critical work, which problematizes the nodal point of Jirga and Loya Jirga in post-dislocation era is Noelle-Karimi’s article on historical overview of Loya Jirga. Karimi in her quest to examine Loya Jirga since 2001, similarly to Hanifi, provides a good insight and, at the same time, destabilizes the romanticized image of the concept. She argues that Loya Jirga is historically a young phenomenon and owes its invention less to Pashtun traditions than to the political needs of the centralized government in Afghanistan that emerged in the early twentieth century.110 On the genealogy of the term Jirga, Noelle-Karimi, similar to Hanifi, begins with Elphinstone, who for the first time in the English literature described it as the ‘internal government’ of Pashtun tribes. She argues that the term Jirga to denote tribal assembly does not suggest that it was exclusively a Pashtun terminology; on the contrary, she claims that the term Jirga is of Mongolian origin and means circle. In hunting or

224

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

military combat it meant a circle or semi-circle men formed when closing in on their prey or enemy. In the Persian literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the term, according to her, has also been used to designate assembly, i.e. circle of nobles.111 Similarly she argues that not all Pashtun tribes use only the term Jirga for their tribal meetings, rather they use other terms such as majlis or maraca. Hence she concludes that the usage of the term is not limited only to Pashtuns, and it may have shifted because of migration patterns in the region. On adding the Pashto word ‘Loya’, ‘big or grand’ to Jirga, she claims that it was added in the early twentieth century ‘as part of a larger state effort to create a national Afghan identity under the umbrella of Pashtun culture and language.’112 Karimi, similar to other scholars of Afghanistan, provides a descriptive insight into the nature of Jirga as a tribal mechanism of dispute or conflict resolution; it is not a permanent institution, only called to tackle specific issues requiring the immediate attention of the community, and it is only open to male members of the community and ends once a decision is made. Furthermore she exposes the operation of power structure in local Jirgas contrary to the claim that it operates free of any external or internal influences.113 How this inter-tribal mechanism developed into a ‘grand’ national institution, Noelle-Karimi akin to Hanifi refers to the modern official historiography of Afghanistan which links the emergence of the Jirga as a supra-tribal institution to the genesis of the Afghan state. But she goes one step further in history, as explained in previous chapters, and begins from Mir Wais Hotaki in 1709. From the perspective of modern Afghan historians, it emerged at a point in time when the various segments of the population gave up their mutual animosities and united to free Afghanistan from the yoke of foreign oppression. This occurred in 1709 when Mir Wais Hotak ousted the Safawid governor of Kandahar with the support of a number of tribal chieftains. A further milestone was the assembly of 1747, which nominated Ahmad Khan Sadozai as paramount leader of the Pashtuns and thus marked the foundation of the Durrani empire after Nadir Shah’s demise at Sultan Maidan near Mashhad. Henceforth, it is said, the kings of Afghanistan resorted to this instrument in times of crisis, securing the national consensus with the help of the tribal leadership from all parts of

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

225

the country. From this point of view, the beginnings of the Jirga as a supra-tribal institution are indelible linked to the genesis of the Afghan state.114 Parallel to Hanifi, Noelle-Karimi claims that Afghan official historiography attempts to project the modern Afghan state into the past, and portray these meetings as some sort of national gatherings with full participation of not only Durrani and Ghilzai, but also Tajiks, Hazarazs, Baluch and Uzbek leaders and representatives. Their description of the meeting of 1747 especially prefigures the creation of Afghanistan as a territorial entity. But Noelle-Karimi, based on the primary sources to which I referred in the third chapter of the book, problematizes the official account and argues that historically the term Loya Jirga did not exist until the early twentieth century, and there was no state institution suggesting the implementation of the tribal concept of Loya Jirga on the national level.115 Contrary to Hanifi’s assertion that the term was invented in 1922, Noelle-Karimi claims that the first Loya Jirga took place in 1915, when Habibullah Khan (1901–19) invited 450 delegates to Kabul to explain the reasons for Afghanistan’s neutrality in World War I. She further argues that ‘under Habibullah Khan’s successors the Loya Jirga became a regular feature of Afghan politics and grew along with the efforts of the Mohammadzai kings to establish a central state. Even so, it was not convened at regular intervals.’116 It was in the twentieth century that Loya Jirga was finally institutionalized and became part of the Afghan political establishment. Neolle-Karimi concludes that Loya Jirga may be viewed as a political phenomenon, which owes its existence to the ruler’s efforts to establish a central state. At the core of Loya Jirga’s genesis, she argues; lays ‘the tension between state and tribe, between centre and periphery.’117

The Nodal Point of Invasion and Resistance In the post-dislocation era I could not locate any independent work which genealogically and systematically studies and problematizes the construction of the nodal point of invasion and resistance, despite its prominent impact on the discursive formation and political subjectivity of the people in Afghanistan. However, some of the literature I referred

226

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

to does challenge the notion, either implicitly or when discussing colonial discourse or the rise of Afghan nationalism. For instance Mousavi in his critical approach attributes the nodal point to colonialism and argues that the three Anglo – Afghan wars and other engagements in the last 120 years, ‘led to the creation of a particular romantic image of the people beyond the Khaibar by many British travellers and diarists of the time.’ This colonial construction was later internalized by the Afghan government, and was further perpetuated by the Russian invasion and the heroic stories of the Afghan resistance in the Western media by journalists, film-makers, poets, fiction and non-fiction writers. Hence, it has now become an image so universally hegemonic that few even consider questioning it.118 Hanifi senior also refers to it as a colonial construction, which was later enriched and developed by the Afghan ethnocentric nationalism to be used as a domination tool by Afghan rulers to further strengthen their grip on power.119 Noelle-Karimi attributes it to the unpredictable nature of tribalism and argues that instead of contextualizing the fighting and turbulence in Afghanistan in the nature of unpredictability of tribal politics, the idea of Afghan invincibility has been optimized by the first and second Anglo – Afghan wars (1839 – 42 and 1878 – 80) by modern Afghan and Soviet historians. Hence, the notion of invincibility of the Afghans, instead of reflecting the reality, is rooted in the nascent Afghan nationalism and patriotism.120 Finally, Barfield also states that people in Afghanistan are proud of their historical ability to maintain their autonomy, and have cultivated a puffer fish121 strategy to repel outsiders. Afghanistan uses a hyperbole of history (unconquerable and the graveyard of empires) to exaggerate its strength in order to deter invaders. It has relied on its indigestibility to get them to leave. But like the puffer fish, this is a tactic employed by the weak and vulnerable, not the strong and secure. It comes with a high price tag too, since when deterrence failed, the ensuing conflicts, particularly over the past thirty years, devastated both the country and its people.122 Barfield believes that this self-perception of being warrior and fighter perpetuates violence and conflict in the subconscious of the subject.

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

227

Hence, to change the status quo, there is a strong need to modify this false perception for good. However, as the only example of new critical work inspired by postdislocation literature, I can refer to Christian Caryl’s article ‘Bury the Graveyard’, published in Foreign Policy on 26 July 2010. Inspired by Barfield’s latest book, Caryl attempts to problematize the literally ‘universally hegemonic’ notion of ‘Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires.’ He begins by stating that ‘If you want to figure out a way forward for Afghanistan, fake history is not the place to start.’ To provide us with a sense of this representation he writes: It’s the mother of all cliche´s. Almost no one can resist it. It’s wielded by everyone from thoughtful ex-generals to vitriolic bloggers. It crops up everywhere from Russia’s English-language TV channel to scruffy Pakistani newspapers to America’s stately National Public Radio. The Huffington Post can’t seem to live without it, and one recent book even chose it as a title. Afghanistan, we’re told, is “the graveyard of empires.” The Victorian British and the Soviet Union, the story goes, were part of a long historical continuum of arrogant conquerors that met their match in the country’s xenophobic, fanatical, trigger-happy tribesmen. Given a record like that, it’s obvious that the effort by the United States and its NATO allies to stabilize the shaky government in Kabul is doomed to fail.123 Quoting Barfield, he asserts that ‘for most of its history Afghanistan has actually been the cradle of empires not their graves.’ In his book Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History, Barfield argues that the myths that Afghanistan is inherently unconquerable because of the fierceness of its inhabitants and the formidable nature of its terrain is not proved by historical facts. Contrary to the official discourse, he asserts that all major invaders and powers have easily occupied Afghanistan. To contextualize Afghanistan in the region and recount the history of the region, it became evident that the region has experienced many wars and turbulences throughout centuries. However, the notion of a unified independent national state of Afghanistan, which has been invaded by foreigners throughout history and defended successfully by the people of Afghanistan, is not proved by historical facts. It could be argued that the

228

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

nodal point of ‘invasion and resistance’, similar to the nodal point of ‘the emergence of the Afghan state and its historical depth’, and the nodal point of ‘Loya Jirga’, is rooted in the ethnocentric Afghan nationalism of the 1920s and after.

Concluding Remarks This chapter deconstructed and problematized the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan using secondary sources of the period termed; ‘dislocation, diversification and decolonization’. To do so, I consulted a wide range of internal and external sources and focused on the master signifier and the three intertwined nodal points of the official discourse: Afghanistan, Afghans and the myth of emergence, the notion of governance through assemblies and the concept of invasion and resistance. The chapter argued for the impossibility of closure, and added that the Afghan government, for the purpose of partial fixation of identity to hegemonize its ethnocentric discourse of state formation, conceptualized the master signifier and the three related nodal points. The official discourse, which produced in a set of articulatory practices, was a political construction involving antagonism, exclusion and the exercise of power. Hence, the official discourse rendered vulnerable to forces it had excluded and to dislocatory events beyond its control. Once the dislocatory events unfolded after the 1970s, both the symbolic order and its associated identities were disrupted. This disruption, crisis and structural breakdown were not represented within the existing discursive order. Hence, it opened the space for new discourse to emerge, and enabled the subjects to not only challenge the official discourse but also to identify themselves with new identities. The chapter systematically demonstrated that the critical postdislocation literature problematizes, contradicts and refutes the official account of the Afghan government on the master signifier and three related nodal points of the discourse. The critical post-dislocation literature not only confirmed the findings of the previous chapter on Afghanistan and Afghans, but also disclosed how Afghan governments have invented and imposed the nodal points of the discourse and a particular exclusionary reading of the past, subverting any dissent.

DISLOCATION, DIVERSIFICATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

229

The literature, contrary to the official discourse, contextualized Afghanistan in the wider region, and presented a new horizon. It argued for a common history and civilization of the region and emphasized the ethnic and cultural diversity of the civilizational sphere. The literature also systematically argued for a difference between the pre-colonial and post-colonial political setup of the region. It argued that the new nation states of the region based on the two Euro-centric principles of territoriality and sovereignty are post-colonial entities rather than ancient independent national states that existed even before the Common Era. The critical post-dislocation literature asserted that the colonial powers, in order to understand the region for imperial objectives, began a wide range studies and explorations, which later became known as the colonial knowledge. The chapter on the one hand, problematized the credibility of the colonial knowledge, and on the other, it spoke of the power of colonial discourse in constructing new identities in the region. The literature argued, albeit with variations, that it was mainly the East India Company and the British Empire that conducted a wide range of studies in what they wrongly introduced as the kingdom of Kabul. The major part of this study was focused on Afghans, i.e. Pashtuns as neighbours and as an immediate threat to British India and neglected other ethnicities of the country. It contended that Afghanistan as a name, as a perception, as a buffer state and as a post-colonial nation state, is a colonial product of the British and Russian Empires’ strategic rivalries in the region. The literature made it evident that this colonial construction was gradually but selectively internalized by the Afghan state and the Afghan elite. They in turn not only reproduced the colonial knowledge but also reinforced it through state-hegemonic institutions. The mythologies and traditions manifested in the official discourse were largely the invention of the Afghan ethnocentric nationalism of post-1920. The Afghan state, in constructing the state-sponsored nationalism, heavily relied on colonial powers and the European experience. The literature systematically showed the exclusionary nature of the official discourse, and how the identify of a single ethnic group was internally imposed upon a diverse society of over fifty ethnicities, and presented as the dominant image of the country internationally. And finally, to conclude the chapter, I argue that in this postdislocation hegemonic crisis in Afghanistan, on one hand, the Afghan or

230

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Pashtun-centric camp, using the logic of difference, attempts to suture the rupture by returning to the past and imposing the old predislocation regime of truth, and on the other, the mainly Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek dislocated antagonistic camp use, however unsuccessfully, the logic of equivalence, to argue that they are prevented from fully attaining their identity by Pashtunists, or Pashtun rulers and deem them responsible for their identity blockage.

CHAPTER 6 TRANSFORMING RADICAL ANTAGONISM TO PLURAL AGONISM

Introduction It is argued that after the radical dislocatory events in the region brought about by the arrival of colonialism, the post-colonial state of Afghanistan was created. In turn the Afghan state in several stages constructed among other things a discourse of its emergence. It was illuminated in detail that the official discourse is constructed around the master signifier of Afghanistan, and Afghans and three intertwined nodal points; the emergence, governance through Jirgas and Loya Jirga and the idea of invasion and resistance. During the instability of the political frontiers, and the presence of contingent elements or ‘floating signifiers’, in the dislocation period, the Afghan government articulated its distinctive political project for the purpose of permanent closure. In doing so, the dominant Pashtun elite, to enrich and justify the discourse among other things, invoked history and religion and forcefully excluded the opposing political projects to hegemonize the only regime of truth it had constructed. The Afghan ethno-centric exclusionary discourse and identity, as the production of an articulatory set of practices as a political project involved the construction of antagonism and exercise of power. The government employed the logic of difference to further strengthen its narrative through cooption or suppression and to block the identity of other ethnicities of the country. Furthermore the production of the

232

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

official discourse was controlled, organized and the opponents’ discourses were actively forbidden or suppressed. In this process power and knowledge were joined together directly implying one another to reinforce the official narrative. The official discourse, because of the domination of the Pashtunist elites and the wide support of the government, among other things, has constituted the majority of the Afghans as its political subjects who think and act within the discursive structure or the symbolic order it has created for them. The grip of ideology and the fantasmatic logics constructed by the Afghan state invoking history and religion have made the subjects complicit to realize or understand the radical contingency of the social relations by identifying themselves with this particular discourse and its set of practices. The ‘grip of ideology’ as a myriad of practices through which individuals are turned into subjects with an identity, and through which such identities are sustained and reproduced has made the Afghan subjects ‘forget the political origins’ of the discourse and live as if their practices are natural. On the other hand, the power of fantasmatic logics has played a key role in filling the void in the subjects and structure of social relations by bringing about closure. Furthermore, the fantasy has given the Afghans the direction and the energy, as it has concealed or closed off the radical contingency through the fantasmatic narrative that promises fullness to come once the obstacle of the ‘enemy’ is over. The discourse theory, as elucidated, argues for the irreducibility of antagonism, the impossibility of closure, the open texturedness of the society and the contingency of identities. Despite the fact that hegemonic projects attempt to construct and stabilize the systems of meaning, no discourse is capable of completely hegemonising a field of discursivity by eliminating the experience of dislocation and social antagonism. Hence, any discourse as a political act is always vulnerable to the dislocatory events beyond its control, to the ‘discursive exterior’ and to the forces it has excluded in the process of its constitution. Thus, the official discourse in Afghanistan, as a contingent and historical construction was always vulnerable to the political forces it had excluded in its production, as well as to the dislocatory events beyond its control. As explained, it was in the post-1970 and later dislocatory events that a structural disruption took place in the country. The disruption of the symbolic order and its associated identities opened the space for the

TRANSFORMING RADICAL ANTAGONISM

233

re-emergence of the excluded groups to formulate their new modalities of hegemony in an attempt to hegemonize the floated, undecidable and dislocated agents, and at the same time to challenge the official narrative. The non-Afghan communities and their new generations of the postdislocation era realized that their identity was blocked by the official discourse. As the blockage of identity is a mutual experience for both the antagonising force and the force being antagonized, this in turn opened the space for radical antagonism in the post-dislocation Afghanistan. The absence of a hegemonic discourse has led to hegemonic crisis in the country. In a situation like this, the supporters of the official discourse, mainly the Pashtunist elites, attempt to ‘suture’ or ‘cover over’ the dislocated space by returning to the past using the logic of difference, and the dislocated Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara elites using the logic of equivalence, however unsuccessfully, attempt to challenge the official discourse and at the same time to form new modalities to hegemonize the dislocated agents. But no one in their struggle has managed to transform to the level of the myths, imaginary or horizon. In discourse theory ‘politics’ aims at the creation of unity in the context of conflict and diversity based on ‘us’ and ‘them’. The relations between the competing groups here can take two forms; radical antagonistic in the form of ‘us’ the ‘insiders’ and ‘them’ the ‘outsiders’; a ‘friend/enemy’ relation, or plural agonistic relations in the form ‘adversaries’. Hence, the novelty of democratic politics is not to overcome this us/them opposition, which is ‘impossible’ to eliminate, but to establish the ‘us/them’ discrimination in a way that is compatible with pluralist democracy. To defuse this tension, and to open the space for a social division in terms other than ‘friends/enemy’ relations, discourse theory distinguishes between ‘enemies’ and ‘adversaries’. Thus, from an ‘agonistic pluralism’ perspective, the aim of democratic politics is to construct ‘them’ in a way that they are not perceived as an ‘enemy’ but as an ‘adversary’. The modality of the relations between self and other in Afghanistan, as argued, is a ‘friend/enemy’ relation, resulting from the construction of ‘us’ the ‘insider’ and ‘them’ the ‘outsiders’ or ‘the ones who have blocked our identity’. This model is not limited to the domestic, social and political antagonism within the country between the opposing camps but also extends to their perception of the regional and the majority of the world’s nation states either as foreigners or infidels. To create unity in

234

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

the context of conflict and diversity, and to defuse this tension and to lay the theoretical foundation of ‘us/them’ as adversaries rather than ‘enemies’, I propose the ‘common civilizational sphere discourse’, henceforth called ‘civilizational discourse’, as an alternative and compatible with ‘agonistic pluralism’ to transform the existing antagonism into agonism in Afghanistan. Thus, in this chapter, first, it is attempted to present the general observations. Second, very briefly discuss the two major dominant discourses on how to approach the official narrative of state formation in Afghanistan: (1) the nationalist exclusionary discourse, and (2) the pluralist inclusive post-dislocation discourse, and finally, present the civilizational discourse as an alternative.

General Observations I believe in the region1 prior to the arrival of colonialism, Russian, British and French Empires, had a different political setup.2 The new states of the region, including Afghanistan, were created and forcibly integrated into the new Euro-centric international system based on nation states by colonial powers, and this is why the term ‘post-colonial states’ is used when I refer to Afghanistan and other states of the region, to stress the fact that they are, contrary to their exclusionary claims, new political entities created unnaturally by colonialism. Once these states were created as the outcome of dislocatory events, a new power structure emerged in the region. The new developments in some cases empowered a single ethnic group in the newly created post-colonial states and divided the others to become part of several states to constitute a minority. It entails that the borders of the post-colonial state are not based on the ethnic, cultural or geographical mosaic of the nations of the region. The newly Western-oriented empowered elite of these newly created states, in cases supported by the colonial masters, tried to copy and impose the European model of the nation state and nationalism as the essential part of state and nation building. In doing so, contrary to the European experience, the elites of these newly emerged countries began a top-down government sponsored process of state and nation building. In the case of Afghanistan, the Pashtun elites, despite being divided between India, later Pakistan and Afghanistan, were empowered by the colonial powers to rule over the newly created state of Afghanistan as the interests of the then empires demanded. Once the Pashtun ruling elite

TRANSFORMING RADICAL ANTAGONISM

235

managed to establish their domination in the newly demarcated Afghanistan, again supported by colonial powers, especially Britain, they began the process of constructing the new narrative for the newly created post-colonial state. In doing so, as I explained in Chapter 1 the Pashtun elite, in constructing the official discourse, copied the European model through British India, Turkey and Iran. The Euro-centric experience, similar to the story of the state itself, was exported to the newly post-colonial nation states in Asia and Africa by colonialism or copied by these states. The new Pashtun elite in Afghanistan adopted a similar pattern to that of the European experience to construct the new discourse, but at different stages, depending on the ability and sophistication of the Pashtun elite and the state. However, when the government officially and actively began to lay the foundation of the narrative, it relied immensely on European or colonial experience but paradoxically at the same time using religion, history and Pashtun tribal values to construct the ‘picture’. At the foundation stage, when the newly empowered Pashtun elite attempted to construct the image, they adopted a twofold strategy: first, they relied heavily on colonialknowledge on Afghanistan, and second, on the limited history books available to them in Persian, but with a selective approach. In the subsequent stages, once they internalized the colonial-knowledge, the state and the government-sponsored elite managed to develop and add new dimensions to the official narrative. Furthermore, they not only imposed the new-Afghan (Pashtun) nationalistic model of the narrative on the domestic population but also infused it to the Western episteme on Afghanistan. In doing so, successive Afghan governments relied heavily on history to invent and construct the story of the state formation around the master signifier and the three intertwined nodal points of the discourse, which are fully reflected in the Western episteme. Afghanistan as a post-colonial state is a diverse, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural country. It is a country of ethnic minorities, where none of the major ethnic groups: Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, constitute the fifty-plus per cent simple majority.3 Pashtuns, contrary to the official narrative, are the new arrivals in the region, prior to that the region was either ruled by Persians or Turks, and the Persian language has been the lingua franca of the region for centuries. But this diversity and multiplicity is not reflected in the construction and invention of the official discourse. Non-Pashtunist discourses, which

236

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

have challenged this exclusionary narrative and asked for the representation of other ethnic groups of the country, have been brutally suppressed, silenced or marginalized by the Pashtun-dominated governments of Afghanistan. On the other hand, the official discourse not only denies the representation of other ethnic groups of the country, but also justifies certain claims and state polices, e.g. portraying the Afghan (Pashtuns) as the real owners of the land, and the absolute majority4 who are legitimately entitled to rule over Afghanistan, and the remaining communities, as immigrants who should accept the Afghan character of the state. The official discourse continued as the only regime of truth promoted by tyrant rulers until the beginning of ‘dislocation and diversification’. It was only at this stage that new discourses surfaced and began to challenge the official narrative openly for the first time.

Contextualizing Afghanistan in the Wider Region This part of the chapter, after presenting the general perspective, focuses on some major themes excluded from the official discourse, themes which are crucially important in order to understand Afghanistan and to prepare the ground for presenting the civilizational discourse as an alternative. In order to understand Afghanistan, however not as a separate, distinctive, ancient independent political entity, as it has been portrayed in the official discourse, but as a post-colonial state, forcefully created and integrated into the new Euro-centric international system, it has to be contextualized in the right historical context of the wider region of Iran, Central Asia and India. The same applies to all post-colonial nation states of the region, i.e. Iran, Pakistan and Central Asian Republics. The construction and invention of a separate historico-civilizational past for Afghanistan from that of its neighbours in the region, especially the story of state formation, is rooted in the Afghan (Pashtun) statesponsored nationalism rather than historical facts. The very idea of classifying the history of state and that of Afghanistan as a whole into: (1) ancient where it was called Ariana and then Khurasan with a long list of independent national states, or into pre-Islamic and post-Islamic and (2) contemporary Afghanistan established by Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747 is deceptive and false. The truth of the matter is that it was only in the 1880s that this new political entity was created and named

TRANSFORMING RADICAL ANTAGONISM

237

Afghanistan, after one of the ethnic groups of the country, by Britain, but still remained under British suzerainty, until it was declared an independent state in 1919.

Differentiating between Pre-Colonial and Post-Colonial Political Maps of the Region In accounting for the emergence of the Afghan state, as with the principle of historical contextualization, it is crucial to differentiate between the pre-colonial and post-colonial political maps of the region. Prior to the arrival of colonialism several dynasties with different ethnic origins, as explained repeatedly, have ruled the region, some with limited jurisdictions and others ruling the entire Iranian plateau. The political system(s) and political language of the entire region, because of the influence of Islam and other regional political traditions, were different compared to the post-colonial experience.5 The region became familiar with the Euro-centric political system, or perhaps was forced into the new international system based on nation states, after the arrival of colonialism. The very notion of state and government, as it is known today, similar to many other European political terminologies and concepts, are new to the region, hence to claim that an independent nation state existed for hundreds of years in Afghanistan is false and misleading.

Differentiating between Afghanistan as a Political Entity and Afghans (Pashtuns) as an Ethnic Group The official narrative, similar to that of the colonial and post-colonial discourses, misrepresents and muddles the history of Afghanistan as a political entity with the history of Afghans or Pashtuns. In other words, the ethnographic study of one of the ethnic groups in the country has predominantly occupied the history, politics and identity of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. This misperception is so widespread that some, especially in the West, can hardly differentiate between Afghanistan as a diverse political entity and Afghans (Pashtuns) as one of the ethnicities of the country. This in turn not only denies the right of representation of other ethnicities, but also leads to wide range of misunderstandings and misperceptions on both levels of academic studies and policies.

238

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

The ethnographic studies by colonial writers, especially those of the British, conducted from India had mainly focused on Afghans (Pashtuns) because of their geographical location adjacent to India. That malformed, fragmentary, incomplete and politically biased colonial knowledge was not only reproduced, internalized and incorporated into the official school curriculum and official historiography by the Afghan (Pashtun) government and elite, but also remained a dominant theme in Western discourse on Afghanistan. To understand Afghanistan as a political entity and open the space for representation of all the ethnicities of Afghanistan, it is strongly suggested that there is a need first, to rethink, rewrite and decolonize the official and colonial discourse of Afghanistan in favour of a more democratic and inclusive perception, and second, to differentiate between the history of Afghans (Pashtuns) as an ethnicity and the history of Afghanistan as a political and multicultural entity. It was because of the exclusionary nature of the official discourse and lack of inclusive representation that the official discourse, despite its domination, failed to reach the level of hegemony or transform to imagainary or horizon. And as a result of its exclusionary nature, in the period of post-dislocatory events and the breakdown of the symbolic order it had created, it faces new unprecedented challenges.

How to Approach the Official Discourse In this part of the chapter, before presenting the civilizational discourse as a possible candidate to defuse the radical antagonistic tension in postdislocation Afghanistan, I briefly engage with the two major antagonistic camps on how to approach the official discourse and resolve the question of identity crisis. I understand that representing the point of view of all discourses while engaging critically or otherwise with the official narrative of state formation in one way or another, if not impossible, it would be certainly a huge undertaking. Thus, it is attempted to accommodate them in two major discourses, which incorporate the majority of the current post-dislocation discourses if not all of them: (1) the ultra-Afghan nationalist exclusionary discourse, which broadly represents the Pashtun elites or the Pashtunists,6 and those of the non-Pashtuns with similar perceptions, and (2) the pluralist inclusive discourse, which represents the majority of the Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara elites, and also a small minority of Pashtun elites. Of course

TRANSFORMING RADICAL ANTAGONISM

239

there are variations and differences in the details of both discourses, depending on the groups, ethnicities and parties presenting these discourses. To give an example, there are differences in the details of the Pashtun-centric discourse presented by secular and non-secular radical Pashtuns, similarly there are differences in the details of discourses presented by the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras of Afghanistan despite their common denominator to challenge the official Pashtun-centric narrative.7

Ultra-Afghan (Pashtun) Nationalist Exclusionary Discourse Before detailing the ultra Afghan/Pashtun nationalist exclusionary discourse, it should be asserted that I do not treat the Pashtuns as a totality, instead I recognize their diversity and hence their discourses. One has to differentiate between the masses, the elites, and also take into account the ideological trends and differences among the Pashtuns. Likewise I strongly disagree with the notion of presenting the Pashtuns as a homogeneous totality, or even purifying them as a single race or ethnicity. However, despite this diversity, there is a strong argument among other ethnicities of Afghanistan that when it comes to the question of identity, history and what I termed the government-sponsored selectively constructed and invented past, or perhaps the official discourse, the majority of Pashtuns, irrespective of their political-ideological differences or even inter-tribal quarrels, as subjects of the official discourse or as interpellated subjects, defend it as a primordial sacred entity. The chapter attempts to present a brief description of the core claims of the ultra Afghan (Pashtun) exclusionary ethnocentric-nationalist discourse: First, it embraces the official narrative8 and propagates it as a sacred value of the Afghan nation. Second, it fully incorporates the Afghan nationalism9 that took root in the reign of Habibullah (1901– 19), was developed in the reign of Amanullah Khan (1919– 28) and enriched and implemented as a state official policy in the reign of the Musahiban dynasty (1930–78).10 Third, it opposes any move to challenge or even question the official discourse or its symbolic representations. Fourth, it strongly argues that Afghanistan was/is established by the Afghans (Pashtuns), they constitute the absolute majority in the country, and the Pashto language is/should be the only official/national language. Fifth, it strongly supports the irredentist move to reclaim the so-called lost Pashtun territories in Pakistan. Sixth,

240

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

it strongly favours the Pashtonizaion of Afghanistan and defends the Pashtun character of the Afghan state as its core objective. Seventh, it believes that Pashtuns are the natural rulers of the country and no one except Pashtuns is entitled to govern. Eight, it allows the Pashtuns to establish contacts with foreign countries, while considering such a move by any other ethnic groups or their leaders a national treason. Ninth, it argues that Afghanistan is the only Pashtun state in the world, and adds that all other ethnic groups in the region have their own independent states: Persians, Tajiks, Turks and Uzbeks respectively have Iran, Tajikistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan, hence the same should apply to Afghans and Afghanistan and the Pashtuns (Afghans) are entitled to have Afghanistan as their homeland. Thus, it calls upon all other ethnic ‘minorities’11 to accept and recognize the Afghan (Pashtun) character and identity of the state.12 Tenth, it pursues vigorously the policy of internal colonization and demographic changes in favour of Pashtuns to ensure longterm domination. Eleventh, its radical supporters accuse non-Pashtuns of being agents of foreign countries with the intention to destroy or disintegrate the country, and hold them responsible for the last three decades of war, conflict and instability. Twelfth, its radicals argue that, apart from the Pashtuns who are the indigenous inhabitants of the country, all other ethnic minorities are immigrants to Afghanistan, hence not ‘original’ or ‘pure’ ‘insiders’ as the Afghans, and could be returned to their homelands if needed. Thirteenth, it argues very strongly and passionately that since Afghans have established Afghanistan in ancient times they have defended the land proudly and defeated all invaders, e.g. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the British Empire and the Soviet Union to reinforce and reproduce the nodal point of invasion and resistance. Finally, the ethno-nationalist Pashtun elite or the Pashtunists, who defend and propagate the exclusionary discourse and have a dominant role in the post-Bonn government of 2001 under the leadership of Hamid Karzai using the logic of difference attempt to return to the 1960s, skipping the dislocation era, as explained in the second chapter of the book. To do so, they try to portray the reign of Mohammed Zahir, especially the decade of democracy (1963– 73), as the golden age in the history of Afghanistan. To the surprise of many in the post-2001 transition in Afghanistan under the influence of the Pashtun elites, the US, UN and their allies adopted the 1964 constitution only by abolishing the chapter

TRANSFORMING RADICAL ANTAGONISM

241

allocated to the king. By doing so, they managed to restore the old statesponsored narrative and its symbolic Pashtun-centric representation. The state symbols, e.g. the flag, the national anthem and official name of the state which were removed or changed previously depending on the ideological orientation of the new regimes or powers as signs of dislocation replaced by the old ones in post-Bonn. They managed to reintroduce Loya Jirga as the only mechanism to resolve important national issues and rescue the country. As a result, Loya Jirga was restored in the new 2004 constitution of the country as the highest manifestation of the will of the people of Afghanistan, besides legitimising the socalled Traditional Loya Jirga. To maintain the Pashtun character of the Afghan state, the same elite, supported by President Karzai, illegally added a controversial paragraph to the new constitution of 2004, after it was ratified by the constitutional Loya Jirga, stating that: ‘Academic and national administrative terminology and usage in the country shall be preserved.’13 In practice this means that anyone using a new terminology other than the Pashto terminologies, invented and imposed by suppressive governments to weaken the Persian language, would be accused of violating the constitution.14 Furthermore the same elite managed to impose a Pashto national anthem despite the widespread protest of other ethnic groups. Similarly, in order to ensure Pashtun domination, they introduced an exclusive centralized presidential system to ensure Pashtun domination, and prevented the establishment of a decentralized parliamentary system.15 Recently in pursuit of the same policy the Ministry of Education announced that it will not include the post-dislocation history in the national curriculum, under the pretext of de-politicization and de-ethnicizaiton of history.16 This clearly indicates that the Pashtun ethno-nationalist exclusionary discourse not only accepts the official narrative, but also implements it as a state policy and tries to internationalize it as the only ‘regime of truth’.

The Democratic Pluralist Inclusive Discourse The pluralist inclusive discourse, which can loosely serve as the auspices for several newly emerged discourses of Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and other communities, emerged in the dislocation period, and provides us with a new perspective on how to approach the official narrative. However, there are differences and variations in the details of the discourses of these ethnicities, but here I only focus on their common

242

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

understanding on how to approach the official discourse. The pluralist ‘non-exclusionary discourse’ is rooted in the twentieth-century political history of Afghanistan, but because of suppression and forced marginalization it emerged in the dislocation period and developed as an alternative discourse in the post-2001 period. The pluralist discourse not only challenges the official narrative but also vigorously argues for rewriting the entire meta or macro narrative. Here the chapter attempts to bring to light some of its main counter-arguments and claims. First, it attempts to problematize the core claims of the official narrative: Afghanistan, Afghans, the two nodal points of emergence, and governance through assemblies, arguing that the official discourse is based on fabrication, lies and forging of history by the Pashtun rulers and the Pashtunist elite. Second, it strongly argues that the narrative is Pashtun-centric, exclusionary and does not represent the ethnic and cultural diversity of the country, especially the identity of the nonAfghans. Third, it argues that the official narrative and the ethno-centric state-sponsored Afghan nationalism has been imposed forcibly by the suppressive Pashtun governments without the consent of the people. Fourth, it questions the biased, Pashtun-centric Western episteme on Afghanistan, which still remains dominant, directs or dictates and justifies Western policies in Afghanistan. Fifth, it recognizes the Pashtuns as one of the major ethnic groups in the region, but rejects the claim that the contemporary or modern Afghanistan was established by Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747. Contrary to this, it argues that Afghanistan as a political entity with its current international borders was created by the British and Russian Empires in the 1880s, and even the name ‘Afghanistan’ was coined by Britain and imposed on the newly created country without the consent of its residents. Sixth, it argues that Pashtuns are the new arrivals in the region, having mainly expanded their influence from the Suleiman Mountains in today’s Pakistan to occupy new lands in Khurasan or the eastern part of Iran. Seventh, it argues that Tajiks or Persians and Turks have ruled the region for centuries; on one hand, this past is not related to Afghans, and on the other this historical past is not reflected accurately in the official narrative to represent the glory of non-Afghan communities. It further argues that the region, prior to the arrival of colonialism, was ruled by several dynasties employing a different political system, and that their history should be studied separately from the history of Afghanistan as a

TRANSFORMING RADICAL ANTAGONISM

243

post-colonial state. Eighth, it argues that Khurasan, the post-Islamic name of the eastern part of Iran, is the right name for the country, which has a historical significance and at the same time has no ethnic connotation. Ninth, it argues that the entire narrative of Afghan nationalism is biased, Pashtun-centric, and does not represent or reflect the diversity of the nation. Tenth, it calls for recognition of the diversity and its representation in state symbols and policies, e.g. national history, national symbols, historical figures, national events, schools/universities, military establishment, national institutions and administration. Eleventh, to achieve that, it calls for the rewriting of the entire official meta-narrative and the redefinition of Afghanistan as a pluralistic, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural society internally and externally/ internationally. Twelfth, it complains that Western nations, especially Britain, do not understand, or are prevented from understanding the diversity of the country under the influence or power of the biased colonial discourse or the influence of the Pashtun governments or Pashtunist elite, which dominate the Western academia and discourses on Afghanistan. It further claims that Britain and other Western nations have supported the Pashtuns in government since the colonial time as the only legitimate rulers and owners of the land, despite the dissatisfaction of other ethnic groups and the realities of the society. Thirteenth, it accuses the West of not paying adequate attention to the study and understanding of the non-Pashtun population of the country compared to their attention to the Pashtuns. Fourteenth, it accuses some of the Pashtuns, contrary to the official narrative, of being backward and tribal, trapped in the darkness of the medieval ages. It further claims that Pashtuns, contrary to their claims, lack any significant civilizational, historical or cultural depth to be proud of, hence they had to forge and invent a historico-civilizational past. Fifteenth, it argues in favour of a moderate interpretation of Islam as opposed to the radical understanding of the religion among Pashtuns, i.e. the Taliban and other Islamist groups. Sixteenth, it calls for the promotion and guarding of the dominant role of the Persian language as the civilizational lingua franca of the entire region. Seventeenth, the radical supporters of the discourse call for changing the name of Afghanistan to Khurasan, and accuse the Pashtunist elite and Pashtun rulers for the destruction and backwardness of the country. Finally, they reject the official story of state formation and consider Loya Jirga a backward tribal non-democratic institution.

244

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

The discourse, however, supports the notion of ‘invasion and resistance’, but with greater emphasis on the role of non-Pashtuns in fighting or defeating the invaders.

Critique and Evaluation of the Two Discourses The ‘Ultra-Afghan (Pashtun) Nationalist Exclusionary Discourse’, as the continuation of the official narrative, is in direct conflict with newly emerged or emerging discourses of the dislocation period questioning or challenging the official narrative. It is rooted in the Pashtun-centric perception of Afghanistan representing the pre-dislocation era of absolute Pashtun domination. Hence, it does not account for the radical dislocations in the country since the 1970s, and does not recognize the new demands of the newly emerged discourses. Furthermore, it has a radical approach towards new discourses and because of its flat denial and militant confrontations, occasionally backed by the government, it is the source of tension in the society. The ‘Pluralist Inclusive Discourse’, rooted in the dislocation period, on one hand, accounts for structural disruptions, and on the other challenges the official Pashtun-centric meta-narrative of ‘Afghanistan’. It is argued that the inclusive discourse has emerged as a direct reaction to the suppressive exclusionary official narrative; hence it not only challenges the Pashtun domination but also engages in a bitter ethnocentric conflict with the Pashtuns, accusing them of unjust rule and discriminatory policies. Furthermore, the supporters of the pluralist discourse, i.e. the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras, in the absence of the other, in this case, the Pashtuns, have a lot of inter-ethnic unresolved religious, historical and political issues. The tension became evident when the Pashtun-dominated government used the logic of difference to ally with one of the ethnic groups in order to create the needed majority. The pluralist discourse, unlike the Pashtunist hegemonic discourse, is still patchy, disorganized and at its preliminary stages, as it lacks the required sophistication and cohesion. At the same time, the new discourse is somehow not familiar with the notion of colonial and postcolonial knowledge, as I could hardly find any reference to the colonial knowledge in the work or literature of the supporters of the discourse, despite the fact that they generally refer to the role of colonialism and the misunderstanding or misperceptions of the West. Apart from these two discourses, there are others, including the Western discourses on

TRANSFORMING RADICAL ANTAGONISM

245

Afghanistan which I have divided into two categories: first, predislocation discourses, and second, the post-dislocation discourse. The first, as a dominant discourse, reiterates the colonial and the official narrative, and the second, which has emerged recently, not only challenges the official narrative, but vigorously calls for the decolonization of the entire narrative. It is obvious that because of the irreducibility of antagonism, the impossibility of closure, the open texturedness of the society, and the contingency of identities, and because any discourse as a political construction is always vulnerable to dislocatory events beyond its control, to the ‘discursive exterior’ and to the forces excluded in the process of its constitution, no discourse or identity is complete. Hence, the official discourse as a political, historical and contingent construction, due to the re-emergence of the excluded discourses and the effects of the dislocatory events, has been radically disrupted. Now the ‘Ultra Afghan (Pashtun) Nationalist Exclusionary Discourse’ in the instability of the political frontiers in the dislocation period, attempts to ‘repair’ or ‘cover over’ the rupture in the pre-dislocation symbolic order to hegemonize the floating elements. In doing so, it uses the logic of difference, and at the same time vigorously attacks the antagonistic supporters of ‘the pluralist inclusive discourse’, invoking history and the identities linked to the master signifier of the official discourse; Afghanistan and Afghans. To them the political frontiers between ‘us’ the Afghans, and ‘them’ the foreigners already exist and anyone who challenges this ‘status quo’ or the ‘Afghan-ness’ of the subjects is a traitor or agent of foreigners, especially Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan or a ‘foreign enemy’ who deserves elimination. On the other hand, as argued, the disruption of the symbolic order and its associated identities since the 1970s has opened the space for the emergence of ‘the pluralist inclusive discourse’ as a radical reaction to the official discourse. In turn, it attempts to formulate a new modality of political project to hegemonize the floating, undecidable dislocated elements that cannot be represented in the old discursive structure. The non-Afghans, especially the new generations of the dislocation period, argue passionately that their identity is blocked by the official discourse. Hence, they attempt at different levels to construct their identity in opposition to an ‘Other’, mostly the ‘Pashtuns’, who are deemed responsible for the ‘identity blockage’ and are seen as an obstacle to the

246

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

promises of fullness to come. In doing so, they not only challenge and problematize the constructed taboos of the official discourse, but work vigorously for the hegemony of their political projects. The blockage of identity as a mutual experience for both the antagonistic force and the force being antagonized has opened the space for radical antagonism in post-dislocation Afghanistan. Hence, the absence of any hegemonic discourse for temporary closure has resulted in a hegemonic crisis in the country. In a situation like this, the relation between the political subjects of these discourses has taken a radical form of ‘friend/enemy’, ‘us’ the ‘insiders’ and ‘them’ the ‘outsiders’. This clearly indicates that the chances of dialogue between the exclusionary and inclusive discourses are rare, as they attempt to deny, negate and undermine each other, instead of dialogue and understanding. Hence, there is a need for a third way to bridge the gap and present a cohesive theoretical ground to bring these conflicting identities together. As ‘politics’ in discourse theory aims at the creation of unity in the context of conflict and diversity, and the novelty of democratic politics is to establish the ‘us/them’ discrimination in a way compatible with pluralist democracy. To defuse this tension and to lay the theoretical foundation of ‘us/them’ as adversaries rather than ‘enemies’, I employ the concept of agonism. It is fully understood that agonism doesn’t eliminate antagonism, but defuses it, because the ‘adversary’ in this context still remains an enemy, but a legitimate enemy, with whom we have some common grounds, share adhesion to the ethico-political principles, belong to the same political association or share a common symbolic space within which conflict takes place. Hence, agonism is a struggle between adversaries with the aim of opening the space for dissent. In the absence of agonistic relations, there is a potential threat that ‘the democratic confrontation will be replaced by a confrontation between essentialist forms of identification or non-negotiable moral values’. Hence, the civilizational discourse is proposed as an alternative, compatible with ‘agonistic pluralism’, to transform the existing antagonism into agonism in Afghanistan. The civilizational discourse proposed, first, accounts for the radical dislocation and the structural disruption, second, it recognizes the diversity and multiplicity of the country, third, it can bridge the gap between the two conflicting discourses, and fourth, it can create an atmosphere of harmony and coexistence between the ethnicities and nation states of the region to curtail the devastating impacts of the

TRANSFORMING RADICAL ANTAGONISM

247

distorted constructed concept of ‘friend/enemy’ relations with neighbours and furthermore, open the space for dialogue and regional cooperation.

Civilizational Discourse as the Empty Signifier of Unity and Coexistence It is known from Laclau that the formation of a hegemonic discourse is only possible through the creation of an ‘empty signifier’, which has the capability to bring together different discourses, the ability of a single equivalence to, at least, link together the entire chain of equivalences by emptying its contents and through exclusion of some meanings; a situation where a discourse comes to represent all the other discourses, or some of their major nodal points. I understand that in a plurality of demands, they differ from each other and sometimes they could even be in conflict with each other, as is the case in Afghanistan. But still it is possible to create a chain of equivalence through creating an ‘empty signifier’. To do so, the civilizational discourse is presented as an ‘empty signifier’ to defuse the tension and create a new symbolic order. In order to understand the civilizational discourse, the argument recapped briefly to contextualize the discourse, the three major responses to the wider dislocations and structural disruptions in the region after the arrival of colonialism summarized and then the civilizational discourse is presented as an empty signifier with its nodal points as a candidate to fill the gap and create a new configuration in the discursive field for partial fixation. It is argued that after the arrival of the colonial powers in the region, especially the Russian and the British Empires, the political map of the region changed forever. Based on their geo-strategic, military, economic and political needs, the colonial powers redrew the political map of the region. They created what I termed ‘new post-colonial nation states’ in the region, replacing the old kingdoms and empires, and then forcibly integrated the newly created states into a new Euro-centric international system based on sovereign nation states. Intellectuals and political movements in the region reacted in several ways to this structural disruption after the arrival of colonialism. Amongst others, one can refer to three major reactions: Pan-Turkism, Pan-Iranism, and state-sponsored nationalism. Pan-Turkism and Pan-Iranism were the two major responses to the new developments in the post-colonial era. Pan-Turkism as a nationalist

248

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

movement originated among the Turk intellectuals in the Russian Empire in the 1880s, and developed as a political movement seeking the cultural and political unification of all Turkish-speaking people of the Ottoman Empire, Russia, China, Iran and Afghanistan. Pan-Turkism or Turanism are used interchangeably to describe the idea of political, cultural and ethnic unity of all Turkic-speaking people. It glorifies the common legendary past and the future of the Turkish race, and remains a racially based movement. The idea of Turkic re-unification is still popular among the Turk nationalists influenced by the discourse.17 PanTurkism as a response to the new dislocations and structural changes focuses on the racial unity of Turks in the wider region on one hand to resist colonialism, and on the other to guarantee the hegemony of Turks. The second major discourse that emerged in the region after the arrival of colonials as a reaction to the new geo-political dislocations in the region is Pan-Iranism. It was developed by Iranian intellectuals, especially Mahmoud Afshar, in the early 1920s in opposition to colonial intervention, Pan-Turkism and Pan-Arabism that threatened the territorial integrity of Iran. Unlike other movements, Pan-Iranism was ethnically and linguistically inclusive and solely concerned with territorial nationalism, rather than ethnic or racial nationalism. While strongly defending the superior character of the Iranian people throughout history, it advocates the solidarity and re-unification of the Iranian people living in the Iranian plateau. It called for the unity of Persians, Afghans, Azeris, Kurds, Baluchs, Tajiks and all regions with significant Iranian cultural influence. However, it recognizes the Persian language as the cultural basis of this unity.18 The third major response, of course, as explained, was the promotion of the newly created post-colonial nation states and the imposition of a ‘top down’ nation-building strategy based on an exclusionary statesponsored nationalism constructed by the elites of a single or a few dominant ethnic groups. Pan-Turkism, obviously, because of its exclusionary nature could not succeed in achieving its objectives. Its racial and irredentist tendencies not only caused tensions among ethnicities of the region, but met with resistance from the newly created post-colonial states in the region. Pan-Iranism, despite its inclusive perspective, also failed to achieve its goals, mainly because of its Irancentric and irredentist approach. Pan-Iranism, similarly to Pan-Turkism, forced some of the newly independent states to justify their radical drive

TRANSFORMING RADICAL ANTAGONISM

249

to ethno-nationalism and reliance on colonial powers under the pretext of internal or foreign threat to their independence, history and cultural heritage. The third discourse, as detailed in the case of official discourse in Afghanistan, cannot account for the diversity and multiplicity of the newly emerged states as it tries to claim a monopoly on history, civilization and pride of the entire region for a specific ethnicity, race or state, especially when it comes to writing the history of the emergence of these new post-colonial nation states. Furthermore this one-sided approach not only limits the scope of cooperation among the newly emerged post-colonial nation states of a civilizational region or sphere, but also increases the likelihood of tension and rivalry because of the exclusionary nationalistic claims and tendencies, as is the case in Central and South Asia. The failure of these three major discourses to defuse the radical ‘friend/enemy’ relations and achieve internal harmony, regional coexistence and cooperation as ‘adversaries’ opens the space for the new inclusive discourse in an age of global and regional cooperation. A balanced and realistic discourse to bridge the gap and reconcile the conflicting paradoxical narratives in Afghanistan and in the wider region is the civilizational discourse developed by Pahlavan.19 It was after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the newly independent republics in Central Asia, that Pahlavan presented his theory of civilizational discourse as a middle ground to bridge the gap and account for the deficiencies of pan-Turkism, pan-Iranism and statesponsored nationalism in the age of globalization.20 He argues that his approach is different from that of pan-Iranism, pan-Turkism and that of the nation states. He believes that a comprehensive discourse to account for the existence of the independent nation states emerged in the geographical sphere of Iranian civilization in the post-colonial era, and at the same time to recognize the diversity of the region is not presented or developed yet. Such an approach, he claims, on one hand, recognizes the diversity and provides a theoretical ground for regional cooperation, and on the other, resists the Western cultural imperialism in the age of globalization in favour of preserving civilizational diversity. Pahlavan, while justifying his focus on Afghanistan, states that at the beginning he was thinking that Iranians are Asians; hence by forming an Asian Alliance it would be possible to resist the west’s cultural assimilation drive and safeguard the Asian civilization. Pahlavan asserts

250

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

that this understanding changed during the course of his studies and he realized that Asia is not a united continent rooted in a single civilization or identity. The civilizational plurality in Asia, according to him, makes it difficult to speak of Asian unity, based on a single civilization. But it is possible to rely on one of the Asian civilizations and then through intercivilizational relationships and dialogue it is feasible to speak of Asian unity or cooperation among civilizations. Asian civilizations, according to him, not only lack a common source but they are also different from each other. Chinese civilization for instance is different from that of the Arabic civilization and the Indian civilization is not similar to the Iranian. Hence, to him, being Asian is conceptually different from being European. Europe, he argues, despite its cultural plurality, is rooted in a single civilization with a common historical background, but that is not the case in Asia, Africa or the American continent. Hence, being an Asian means being part of one of the civilizations constituting what is known as the Asian continent. This interest, he argues, led him to focus on understanding the Iranian civilization. Pahlavan argues that Iranian civilization in the last two centuries, especially after the arrival of colonialism and re-drawing the map of the region, has been harmed, weakened and divided into several parts.21 Pahlavan critically assesses the attempts of the pan-Iranists, the intellectuals and also the governments of the region to understand the Iranian civilization, and how to unite the people and the regions belonging to this civilization. He claims that all the efforts were either rooted in nationalism or were simply focusing on Persian literature. Contrary to the Pan-Iranists and the exclusionary drive of the governments of the region, he claims that his civilizational discourse, while emphasising the common root of the Iranian civilization, recognizes the political, social, ethnic and linguistic diversity of the region.22 Pahlavan believes that the people, cities, ethnicities, prides, scientific achievements and governments of this sphere belong to a greater civilization that took shape in the course of history. Contrary to the exclusionary claims, he points out that all ethnicities of the region have played a significant role in the establishment, development and productivity of this common civilization, hence, it belongs to all of them. The Iranian civilization, he argues, is one of the most prominent, diverse and democratic civilizations of the world, where different ethnicities, religions, and languages have lived in peace, coexistence and

TRANSFORMING RADICAL ANTAGONISM

251

cooperation for centuries without any discrimination. Pahlavan explains that his civilizational discourse, unlike the racially motivated or narrow nationalistic state-sponsored discourses, not only creates harmony and coexistence among ethnicities, but also acts as a theoretical foundation for regional cooperation, and free movement of skills and goods in the region similar to that of the European Union and other regional organizations. Pahlavan’s civilizational discourse, in order to materialize, relies on common history, myths, literature, culture, customs and language rather than state-sponsored exclusionary nationalism, panTurkism, or pan-Iranism’s extra-territorial unrealistic discourses.

The Nodal Points of the Civilizational Discourse In this part of the chapter, after briefly presenting the civilizational discourse as the empty signifier of unity and coexistence, I attempt to present some of its major nodal points.

Political Plurality within Civilizational Unity Pahlavan asserts that the Iranian civilizational sphere has been divided into several political entities, mostly as a result of colonial interventions without the consent of the people. But he not only opposes the creation of a single unitary state to forcefully merge all the post-colonial nation states in the sphere of Iranian civilization into one state or confederation, but considers it unrealistic and unachievable. He believes that the ethnic and political differences of these countries literally make it impossible to speak of an Iranian federation or the creation of a single state. He further argues that his civilizational discourse not only does not call for political assimilation, but on the contrary recognizes the political diversity as a powerful positive feature of this civilization. He argues that this political plurality adds to the strength of the civilizational sphere, because in case of any threat or instability in one part of the region, the rest will continue preserving the features and keeping the the common civilization alive.23 Farsi as Lingua Franca of the Region Pahlavan argues that Persian is the cultural and civilizational language of this region. But it has been repeatedly targeted by colonials, e.g. Britain in the sub-continent, and the Soviet Union in Central Asia. He further argues that Persian has been the lingua franca of the Iranian civilization

252

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

and the language of science, literature, politics, art and communication for centuries, extending from the Caspian Sea to India and Turkey. He believes Persian is the richest cultural heritage of the region, and if it is weakened or taken away, the region will be left with a number of ethnicities without history and civilization. But this attention to Persian, according to him, does not mean eliminating other languages of the region, on the contrary, the civilizational discourse argues for recognition of all languages and their promotion alongside Persian.

A Civilizational Approach to Understanding Islam Pahlavan argues that Islam as a religion has played a significant role in shaping the life and civilization of the region and considers it to be the most important common denominator among the inhabitants of the Iranian civilization. He further argues that the understanding of Islam in this region has been influenced by Sufism and Persian culture, hence, the civilizational approach not only recognizes this religion, but also respects different Islamic sects or juridical interpretations within Islam. He further adds that a civilizational approach to the understating of Islam will lead to a different set of results overcoming or reducing the risks of juridical differences or the persistent conflicts between Shia and Sunni. Pahlavan elucidates that such an approach will ultimately lead to religious tolerance and create more space for a democratic coexistence between all great religions of the region. Rejecting Exclusionary Discourses Rejecting claims of monopoly and any exclusionary approach to the civilizational heritage of the region is another feature of the theory. Pahlavan argues that Iranian civilization and its achievements belong to all people and inhabitants of the region, thus one cannot restrict it to a particular political geography, ethnicity or to any of the post-colonial nation states of the region. He emphasizes that one must adopt a civilizational approach towards heritages such as Nowruz, and personalities such as Avicenna,24 Rudaki,25 Molavi (Rumi),26 Hakim Sanai Ghaznavi,27 Ferdowsi,28 Hafiz,29 Saadi,30 Nezami31 and others. Pahlavan further adds that civilizational heritage and cultural pride are not the products of post-colonial nation states; hence one cannot restrict or assign them to a particular country, e.g. Iran, Afghanistan or Tajikistan. But such claims of monopoly, Pahlavan argues, are a common

TRANSFORMING RADICAL ANTAGONISM

253

theme in the post-colonial nationalistic historiography and discourses of the region, e.g. in Iran and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan it is argued that Molavi and Sanai are Afghans, and in Iran contrary to this claim they would argue that they are Iranians, but the truth of the matter is that they all belong to the Iranian civilization and to the wider region of the Iranian Plateau. It is argued that because Molavi was born in Balkh and Sanai in Ghazna, they are Afghans, or Hafiz and Saadi were born in Shiraz so they are Iranians, or Nezami was born in Ganja in today’s Azerbaijan so he is an Azeri, or Rudaki was born in Rudak in today’s Tajikistan so he is a Tajik and belongs only to Tajikistan. Pahlavan argues that the current post-colonial nation states are a new phenomenon in the region, and these great heritages or cultural and scientific prides of the region belong to Iranian civilization in its wider context. This civilizational approach to the past, which avoids any exclusionary claims, according to him, on one hand, creates a common cultural, civilizational and historical background internally, and on the other, establishes the ground for regional cooperation.

Constructing Inclusive Civilizational Discourses Instead of Ethno-nationalistic Exclusionary Discourses Pahlavan at this juncture refers to the official historiography and the construction of ethno-nationalistic discourse by nation states that intentionally create a separate and distinctive historical depth based on the ‘friend/enemy’ dichotomy. As an example of this approach it was attempted, however briefly, in chapter five, to reconstruct Pahlavan’s understating of Pashtunism in Afghanistan and how it uses historiography to justify its exclusionary ethno-nationalistic claims and practices. Likewise he opposes all other similar moves in the region, and instead argues for a civilizational discourse, which calls for an inclusive, common, tolerant, pluralist and democratic historical narrative. Recognition of Ethnic Diversity within Civilizational Unity Another dimension of Pahlavan’s civilizational discourse is the recognition of ethnic diversity within the sphere of the Iranian civilization, especially in the case of Iran and Afghanistan. He argues that this diversity constitutes the beauty and strength of this civilization; hence, he emphasizes that this diversity should be recognized, represented and promoted equally within the civilizational unity.

254

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Civilizational Foreign Policy The final dimension of Pahlavan’s civilizational discourse is a civilizational foreign policy. As a staunch critic of Iran’s foreign policy in Afghanistan, which was/is mainly based on Wilayat-e Faqih and Shia ideology instead of a civilizational approach, Pahlavan argues for a new and more comprehensive civilizational direction in the foreign policies of the countries located in the Iranian civilization domain. This new approach, according to him, should not be limited to the immediate national interests of the nation states but should also actively seek to promote and take into account the interests, prosperity and wellbeing of the entire civilizational sphere. Such an approach, he elucidates, can increase the level of cooperation and decrease the likelihood of disputes and conflicts among the nation states in the region.32 It is argued that Pahlavan’s civilizational approach has influenced state policies in Iran during the presidency of Khatami, who then advocated the civilizational dialogue and reducing tensions in Iran’s foreign policy.

Critique of Civilizational Discourse Some argue that Pahlavan’s civilizational discourse is influenced by Samuel P. Huntington’s theory of ‘clash of civilizations’, where he argues that global politics is reconfigured along cultural lines and the people and countries with similar cultures are coming together to form alignments and regional cooperation organizations defined by culture and civilization.33 However, others claim that the theory does not provide a framework on how to create this regional unity.34 The other major problem in Pahlavan’s civilizational discourse is the issue of delineating the borders of the Iranian civilization. He speaks of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan as the main nation states of the region where Persian is the official language but refers vaguely to Central Asia, the Persian Gulf and other parts of the Iranian plateau. In my personal correspondence with Pahlavan, I raised these criticisms and he replied that his theory of civilizational discourse dates well before the article and the book published by Huntington. He refers to his articles, interviews and work before the Iranian revolution while he was working as the head of UNESCO’s Asian office in Tehran. Pahlavan further explained to me that in his theory he speaks of civilizational harmony and cooperation, while contrary to that Huntington speaks of

TRANSFORMING RADICAL ANTAGONISM

255

civilizational confrontations, hence there is no question of copying his theory. On the question of delineating the borders of this civilizational sphere, he argues that one has to differentiate between cultural and political borders. He further states that the core of the civilization is important rather than its centres, as the centre of this civilization, similarly to political borders, has been fluid and has changed from one city to another during the course of history, e.g. Ghazni, Herat, Balkh, Shiraz and Samarqand-o-Bukhara have been the centre of this civilization at different junctures. Hence, the civilization as such covers the entire region of the Iranian plateau.

Concluding Remarks In this chapter, after theoretical elucidations, the general observations on how to understand and contextualize Afghanistan in the wider Iranian civilization are presented. It is argued that in order to comprehend the discourses of the region, one has to differentiate between the pre-colonial and post-colonial political and historical set up of the region. It is explained that the nation states of the region, including Afghanistan, are new colonial construction. Once Afghanistan was created by the British and Russian Empires, the Pashtunist elites empowered by colonialism and relying on power and knowledge, constructed, in different stages, a distinctive exclusionary discourse of state formation manifested on the master signifier of Afghanistan, Afghans and three nodal points of emergence, governance through assemblies and the idea of invasion and resistance. The official discourse neither represented the history of the region nor the diversity of Afghanistan as a post-colonial nation state. To understand the region, the post-colonial transformations and the process of exclusion in the construction of the official discourse, it is suggested that one has to take full account of the following steps: contextualize Afghanistan in the wider history and civilization of the region, differentiate between pre-colonial and post-colonial history and political maps of the region, and finally differentiate between Afghanistan as a political entity and Afghans (Pashtuns) as an ethnic group. In the second part of the chapter it is explained that, as a result of the dislocatory events after 1970, on one hand, the official discourse and its associated identities were disrupted, and on the other, the excluded and suppressed groups emerged in the post-dislocation period and formed

256

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

new modalities to hegemonize the floating elements. The absence of a hegemonic discourse in the dislocation period has led to a ‘hegemonic crisis’ in the country. It is argued that the ‘Ultra-Afghan (Pashtun) Nationalist Exclusionary Discourse’ at the period of crisis and dislocation attempts to ‘suture’ or ‘cover over’ the rupture in the official discourse by returning to the past to maintain the continuity of the official discourse as the ‘only regime of truth’. On the other hand, the newly emerged supporters of the ‘Pluralist Inclusive Discourse’ not only challenge the official discourse as undemocratic, exclusionary and blocking their identity, but call for the redefinition of the entire narrative. This, in turn has opened the space for radical antagonism between the antagonistic forces based on ‘friend/enemy’ relations. In the third part of the chapter, to defuse this tension, and lay the foundation of ‘us/them’ as adversaries rather than enemies, and to create unity in the context of diversity, the civilizational discourse is presented as an empty signifier and as a possible candidate to transform the radical antagonism into a pluralist agonism.

CONCLUSION

The first chapter of the book presented a combination of theoretical tools and categories to study, reconstruct, deconstruct and problematize the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan. The core assumptions of the discourse theory were presented and the conception of discourse and special techniques of research developed by Derrida and Foucault, with special attention to the methods of deconstruction, archaeology, genealogy and problematization elucidated. The discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe and its theoretical tools and concepts as the base of the research were discussed in detail. I further illuminated the normative concept of ‘agonism’ and Mouffe’s perception of ‘agonistic pluralism’ in post-structuralist tradition of enquiry to function as the theoretical base of civilizational discourse presented to defuse the radical antagonism in the period of hegemonic crisis in Afghanistan. A number of theoretical tools and categories combined with discourse theory to conduct the research comprehensively. Colonialism and post-colonial discourses and their developments and impacts and the concept of colonial knowledge relying on the idea of power/knowledge developed by Foucault and advanced by Said was explained. To understand the very idea of the state, its relation to the concept of nation and nationalism, where and how it emerged and developed, and when and how it reached other parts of the world, the contemporary state debate and nationalism elucidated in some details. Finally in conjunction with the state debate and nationalism, the notion of post-colonial state was explicated and it was made evident how Afghanistan as a post-colonial state emerged in the world map.

258

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

In the first part of the book Derrida and Foucault’s ‘deconstructive genealogical’ methods combined as a first step to reconstruct and explore the gradual configuration of the official discourse of state formation in Afghanistan. Employing the method of ‘double reading’ the logics of the official discourse of state formation was reconstructed as faithfully as possible in order to provide a plausible interpretation. Meanwhile ‘from a certain exterior’, the gaps, tensions, paradoxes, limits and points of undecidability in the official discourse pinpointed to undermine its coherence and unity. Taking into account the centrality of power and domination in the constitution of discourses, identities and institutions, the ‘lowly origins’ and ‘play of dominations’ that produced the discourse were uncovered, while also the possibilities excluded by the dominant powers were highlighted. Finally what was considered to be a unitary entity is fragmented and the ideas are decomposed into their constituent elements; as historical, contingent and a possibility out of many others. The second chapter of the book explained that as the outcome of some major dislocatory events, the post-colonial state of Afghanistan articulated a new discourse of its formation centered around the master signifier of Afghanistan and three intertwined nodal points: (1) the moment of emergence, (2) the notion of governance through assemblies and (3) the idea of invasion and resistance as the ‘privileged signifiers to structurize the elements into a meaningful system of moments in the official discourse’ as reference points to bind together a particular system of meaning or ‘chain of signification’ for the purpose of closure. To reveal the measured configuration of the official discourse, the first chapter of the book gradually but systematically reconstructed the very constitution of the official discourse in five distinctive phases: (1) the codification and establishment of the discourse (1880 – 1901 and 1901 – 19); (2) the enrichment of the discourse (1919 – 28); (3) the sophistication and advancement of the discourse (1930 – 78), (4) the diversification and dislocation of the discourse (1978 – 92), and finally (5) an attempt to return to the past to re-impose the old regime of truth (2001 – 10).

CONCLUSION

259

The chapter detailed how and when the master signifier of the official discourse, and the three nodal points constructed, were piecemealed and developed by the Afghan state to hegemonize the floated elements. It explained how the discourse began patchy, fragmented, inconsistent, and at times confusing, but slowly and steadily developed to internalize the colonial discourse and embrace the Afghan ethno-nationalism as the government used all its ideological tools to impose the official exclusionary discourse as the only regime of truth. The chapter also elucidated how the dislocatory events at the age of ‘dislocation and diversification’ as incidents beyond the control of the state disrupted the structure constructed by the Pashtun elite and opened the space for the political forces excluded in the process of formation of the official discourse to re-emerge and construct their political projects. The third chapter of the book reconstructed the discourse of state formation in the literature produced in English by the colonial power, academics, researchers and the Afghan state centred on the master signifier of the official discourse and its nodal points. The discourse reconstructed in three phases: the colonial knowledge formation or the Elphinstonian discourse; the convergence of the colonial knowledge/discourse with the Afghan ethno-nationalist discourse and the beginning of dislocation, diversification and decolonization. It argued that at the first stage the British Empire advanced towards India and established the East India Company in the seventeenth century and explored the region for colonial objectives. In the beginning of what came to be known as the Great Game, several attempts were made by the British Empire to intervene militarily in Afghanistan. This led to the production and accumulation of volumes of books, intelligence reports and knowledge on Afghanistan and the neighbouring regions. Elphinstone work on Afghanistan in this phase is the corner stone of constituting the colonial discourse on Afghanistan as it is one of the most detailed and comprehensive colonial records of Afghanistan carried by a British official. In his Kabul-centric approach he undertakes to study the Afghans i.e. Pashtuns who always threatened India’s stability and security. Hence he demarcates the land he assumed should be called Afghanistan. However, he makes it clear that Afghans themselves call their country Khurasan. In his study he tribalizes the Afghans, and then territorializes the tribes and for the first time records their customs and

260

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

traditions. This extensive colonial study of an ethnic group: the Afghans, which later expanded on a massive scale, and the land Afghans lived, controlled, or occupied gradually but intentionally transformed to apply for Afghanistan once it was created as a post-colonial nation state to function as a buffer state, irrespective of its diversity and plurality. This transformation, on one hand, was accepted by colonial writers in postElphinstonian discourses, and on the other it was happily internalized, reproduced and propagated by the Afghan state. The chapter further argued that in the second phase, the Afghan government and Afghan writers systematically internalized the colonial knowledge, and reproduced it with an Afghani flavour, especially after 1920. A major development and transformation in this period was the convergence of the Afghan (Pashtun) ethno-centric state sponsored nationalism with the colonial and post-colonial discourses. The majority of Western scholars and researchers at this stage, despite their observations, and sometimes paradoxical claims, incorporate the official discourse in their historical work on Afghanistan. The master signifier of the discourse: Afghanistan and Afghans, transform from an isolated region and an imagined Afghan land demarcated generously by Elphinstone to include north of the country and in a later stage apply to the newly postcolonial state of Afghanistan. Furthermore the term Afghan also transforms to refer to all subjects of the new kingdom, instead of referring only to one single ethnic group i.e. the Pashtuns. The three constructed nodal points of the official discourse, despite variations and contradictions in some cases, enter the Western discourse and fully reflected in the writings of Western scholars, researchers and supplemented by archaeological excavations. It is also argued that the discourse of state formation in the English language produced by the Afghan government, unlike the knowledge produced by Western scholars in this phase, which is occasionally marked by tensions, paradoxes and exclusions, presents the official discourse in a coherent and systematic manner similar to the level of sophistication, explained in the second chapter of the book. The chapter also argued for the impossibility of closure, and added that the Afghan government for the purpose of partial fixation to hegemonize its ethnocentric discourse of state formation conceptualized the master signifier and the three interrelated nodal points of the discourse. It made it evident that the official discourse is produced in a set of articulatory practices as a political construction involving

CONCLUSION

261

antagonism, exclusion and the exercise of power. But it always remained vulnerable to forces it had excluded in the process of its formation and to the dislocatory events beyond its control in the country. Once the dislocatory events unfolded in post-1970, it is argued that both the symbolic order and the associated identities established by the official discourse were disrupted. Due to the outcome of this disruption, crisis and structural breakdown, the space opened for new discourses to emerge, and this in turn enabled the subjects to identify themselves with the new modalities and challenge the official discourse at the time of ‘hegemonic crisis’. The fourth chapter as the first deconstructive-genealogical move adopted a threefold strategy to problematize the official discourse. In a retrospective move it went back to the history of the past in order to understand the present, reveal the contingent nature of the official discourse, and open the space for the possibility of shaping a new discourse. The primary literature available in Persian from 1300 to 1880 provided a different political language and setup of the entire region prior to the arrival of colonialism and at the same time problematized and contradicted the constructed official discourse. It disputed the mythical invention of the master signifier of the discourse in its several forms: (1) Ariana in the pre-Islamic era for more than 1500 years, (2) Khurasan in the post-Islamic era for 1500 years, and finally (3) Afghanistan established by Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747. It explained that Afghanistan in reference to a place signified a geographical location around Suleiman Mountains; the birth place of Afghans i.e. Pashtuns, Pakhtons or Pathans which is located in today’s Pakistan, and the term Afghan in reference to people or ethnicity signified a particular ethnic group i.e. Pashtun, Pakhton or Pathan. It also specified its geographical limits and the character of its people. Furthermore the treaties and official engagements of the East India Company and British Empire with the regions’ kingdoms and rulers, made it evident that the Company officials began their relations with the King of Kabul rather than Afghanistan in their first encounters, because Afghanistan was a welayat (province) and part of Khurasan or kingdom of Caubul. The documents revealed that the region generally was called Khurasan, and the Afghans also considered themselves to be part of the country of Khurasan. The treaties at the beginning use the term Afghanistan to refer to a limited geographical location and then to an

262

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

expanded version as constructed by Elphinstone, but gradually it developed to replace Kabul, then to include the north, and gradually the entire country in post-1890. But still it retained the suffix of ‘its dependencies’ to refer to the north as a separate entity, and it was only in 1919 that Afghanistan emerged as an independent state. The cartographies, maps and historical atlases of the region also problematized the official discourse. They reveal that a distinctive independent nation state as Ariana in the ancient time, Khurasan in the post-Islamic era and Afghanistan in post-1747, as claimed in the official discourse, doesn’t exist on the world map. They also disclosed that Afghans and then Afghanistan emerge as a small geographical location around the Suleiman Mountains, but gradually develops to replace the kingdom of Kabul, and then becomes the official name of the country in the post-1890 maps produced by colonial powers. It was made clear that the Afghan official history in the twentieth century applies an eclectic and selective approach to the pre-1880s literature, especially to the precolonial literature, which details the history, geography and politics of the region. In using this historical heritage it chooses, amends, rewrites and excludes the way it serves the general purpose of the Afghan ethnonationalism of post-1920. The fifth chapter deconstructed and problematized the official discourse using secondary sources in the era of what I termed ‘dislocation, diversification and decolonization’. It showed systematically how the critical post-dislocation literature problematizes, deconstructs and refutes the official account of the master signifier and the three related nodal points of the discourse. It explained in some detail how it contextualizes Afghanistan in the wider region, and presents a new horizon to understand it as part of the common history and civilization of the region, which, among other things, emphasizes the ethnic, religious and cultural diversity of the country and the entire region. It argued that in order to understand the country one has to differentiate between the pre-colonial and post-colonial political setup of the region, and made it clear that the new nation states of the region, based on the two Euro-centric principles of territoriality and sovereignty, are post-colonial entities rather than ancient independent national states that existed thousands of years ago. It maintained that Afghanistan as a name, as a perception, as a buffer state and as well as a post-colonial nation state, is a colonial construction of the British and Russian Empires’

CONCLUSION

263

strategic rivalries in the region. It made it evident how the colonial discourse, gradually but selectively was internalized by the Afghan state and the Afghan elite. The latter in turn not only reproduced the colonial knowledge but reinforced it through state-dominant institutions. Hence, it claimed that the mythologies and traditions manifested in the official discourse are largely the invention of the Afghan ethnocentric nationalism of post-1920. It disclosed systematically the exclusionary nature of the official discourse and how the identity of a single ethnic group is imposed internally upon a diverse society of over fifty plus ethnicities and presented internationally as the only image or representation of the country. The chapter argued that in the post-dislocation hegemonic crisis in Afghanistan, the Pashtunist camp, using the logic of difference, attempts to suture the rupture by returning to the past, and imposing the old pre-dislocation only regime of truth. But the mainly Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek dislocated antagonistic camp using the logic of equivalence, however unsuccessfully, oppose the Pashtunist camp by forming new modalities of identity. They argue that they are prevented from fully attaining their identity by Pashtunists and deem them responsible for the blockage of their identity. Hence, the two camps are involved in a bitter ‘friend/enemy’ radical antagonistic exchange. The last chapter of the book argued that in order to understand Afghanistan it is crucial to take full account of the following factors: contextualize Afghanistan in the wider history and civilization of the region, differentiate between pre-colonial and post-colonial history and political map of the region, and finally and most importantly to differentiate between the history and identity of Afghanistan as a political entity and Afghans i.e. Pashtuns as an ethnic group. It upholds the idea that the absence of a hegemonic discourse in the dislocation period has resulted to ‘hegemonic crisis’ in the country. The ‘ultra Afghan (Pashtun) nationalist exclusionary discourse’ in the period of crisis and dislocation, attempts to ‘suture’ or ‘cover over’ the rupture in their official symbolic order by returning to the past to maintain the continuity of official discourse as the ‘only regime of truth’. On the other hand the newly emerged ‘pluralist inclusive discourse’ challenges the official discourse, as un-democratic and exclusionary and call for the re-definition of the entire narrative. This, in turn, has opened the space for radical confrontational antagonism between the two antagonistic

264

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

forces. To defuse this tension, and lay the foundation of ‘us/them’ as adversaries rather than enemies, and to create unity in the context of diversity, the chapter presented the civilizational discourse with its nodal points as an empty signifier as a third way out and as a possible candidate to transform the radical antagonism into a pluralist agonism. To conclude, I want to reiterate that modern Afghanistan, contrary to the claims of the official discourse, emerged as a buffer state as a result of the British and Russian rivalry and the security concerns of Great Britain in the region. It took shape as a de facto entity during the second reign of Amir Dost Mohammad Khan. Its borders were demarcated during the reign of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan (1880– 1901). Modern state institutions were introduced at the end of the second Anglo–Afghan war, and the country moved towards centralization and modernization during the reign of Habibullah Khan (1901–19), but still remained under British suzerainty. It was only in 1919 that Afghanistan developed a de jure status after leaving the British suzerainty and entering the realm of the international system as an independent nation state. Western academia, as I explain throughout the book, has paid adequate attention to the study of Afghans (Pashtuns) and has represented their discourse to the detriment of other ethnicities of the country, especially the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks. On one hand, the non-Afghans of the country are not studied sufficiently in the West, and on the other, their discourses and demands are under-represented. I hope this study contributes to the study of all marginalized and un-represented communities of the country and opens a new condition of possibility in Western academia to look at Afghanistan from a new perspective. Furthermore, I assume there are two related research questions that I could not accommodate in my research which need further enquires. First, to study the political discourse of the region prior to the arrival of colonialism and the rise of Euro-centric nationalism in the region, to show in a comparative manner how the post-colonial identity of the nation states in the region are different from the pre-colonial epoch. Second, to present a detailed account of the sources and the texts the colonial officials and researchers have used as their primary sources in producing their works on Afghanistan.

NOTES

Prelims 1. See http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/bokhara_1838.jpg 2. See http://dsal.uchicago.edu/maps/gazetteer/images/gazetteer_V5_pg64.jpg.

Introduction 1. Owen, D. (2003) ‘Genealogy as Perspicuous Representation’ in C. J. Heyes (ed.), The Grammar of Politics: Wittgenstein and Political Philosophy, New York, Cornell University Press, p. 85. 2. I believe the Afghan government, in constructing the discourse of state, has always invoked the religion of Islam to legitimize its rule. However, because of allocating part of my reseach independentnly to accounting for the logic of the Afghan state or its legitimacy, I do not discuss in detail the use of religion by the state as a nodal point in the quest of constructing the narrative of state formation. Otherwise, I strongly believe that religion of Islam, especially the Hanafi school of thought, was/is one of the important nodal points of state formation in the country, which has been invoked repeatedly, especially in time of crisis. 3. For details of Afghan ethno-nationalism see Anthony, H. (2002), ‘Nationalism in Afghanistan’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 34, pp. 299 – 315, Ahady, A. (1991), ‘Conflict in Post –Soviet – Occupation Afghanistan’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 21: 4, pp. 513– 28, and Ahady, A. (1995), ‘The Decline of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan’, Asian Survey, Vol. 35, No. 7, July, pp. 621 – 34. A full list of the literature covering the Pashtun ethnocentric discourse and what it means will be provided as we progress with the construction of the official discourse. 4. See Geertz, C. (1973), The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, New York: Basic Books Inc, pp. 9 – 13.

266

NOTES

TO PAGES

6 –23

5. See M. N. Shahrani (1986), ‘State-Building and Social Fragmentation in Afghanistan,’ in Ali Banuazizi and Myron Weiner (eds), The State, Religion, and Ethnic Politics in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, New York: Syracuse University Press; Amin Saikal (2004) Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival, London, New York: I.B.Tauris; Sayed Askar Mousavi (1998) The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical, Cultural, Economic and Political Study, London: Curzon Press. 6. As far as I know no one has applied the theory of discourse to study Afghanistan, especially the ‘discourse of state’ before. Thus, I can say that this is the first endeavour of its kind to study state formation in Afghanistan. 7. http://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/ 8. However, I tried to pay attention to the principle of fair representation in selecting the sources to avoid being biased in the process of selection. 9. There are some doubts about the authenticity of this book, whether Timur himself wrote it or not. Abo Talib Hussaini Turbati wrote the Persian version of it sometime between 1627 and 1637. 10. There might be other works challenging the official narrative of state formation in Afghanistan which I have not accessed or did not come to my attention. But these are some of the major critical works as far as I know.

Chapter 1 Theoretical Framework 1. For more details see Glynos, J., and Howarth, D. (2007), Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory, London: Routledge, and Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse, Open University Press, p. 129. 2. Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse, Open University Press, p. 129. 3. Ibid., p. 4. 4. Ibid., p. 40. 5. Ibid., p. 41. 6. Ibid., p. 37. 7. Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse, Open University Press, pp. 41 and 135, Gutting, G. (2001), French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press, pp. 289–317, Deutscher, P. (2005), How to Read Derrida, London: Granta Publications, Hill, L. (2007), The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Derrida, Cambridge University Press, and Norris, C. (1982), Deconstruction: Theory and Practice, London: Methuen & Co. 8. Foucault, M. (2004), The Archeology of Knowledge, London: Routledge, p. 54. 9. Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse, Open University Press, pp. 77 – 78. 10. Foucault, M. (2004), The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction, New York: Pantheon Books, pp. 101– 2. 11. Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse, Open University Press, p. 56. 12. Foucault, M. (2004), The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction, New York: Pantheon Books, p. 100. 13. Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse, Open University Press, p. 49.

NOTES

TO PAGES

23 –28

267

14. Ibid., pp. 49/71–73, Gutting, G. (2001), French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press, pp. 258–88, and Rabinow, P. (1991), The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault’s Thought, Penguin Books. 15. Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse, Open University Press, p. 67. 16. Ibid., p. 135. 17. See Laclau E., and Mouffe C. (1985), Hegemony and Social Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso. 18. Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse, Open University Press, pp. 101– 102. 19. Ibid., p. 8. 20. Ibid., pp. 8 – 9. 21. Ibid., p. 9. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid., p. 105, and also Howarth, D., and Stavrakakis, Y. (2000), “Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis”, in Howarth, D., Norval, A. J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 7. 24. Laclau E., and Mouffe C. (1985), Hegemony and Social Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso, p. 105. 25. Ibid., pp. 112 – 13, and Howarth, D., and Stavrakakis, Y. (2000), “Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis”, in Howarth, D., Norval, A. J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 8. Take the example of state, freedom and democracy if articulated around the signifier ‘communism’, here communism occupies the structural position of the nodal point. Because of the intervention of this nodal point, these elements are transformed into internal moments of communism discourse. 26. Laclau E., and Mouffe C. (1985), Hegemony and Social Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso, p. 122. 27. Laclau, E. (2007), Emancipation (s), London: Verso, p. 53. 28. Ibid., p. 44. 29. Howarth, D., and Stavrakakis, Y. (2000), “Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis”, in Howarth, D., Norval, A. J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 9. 30. Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse, Open University Press, p. 103. 31. Ibid., p. 104, and Howarth, D., and Stavrakakis, Y. (2000), “Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis”, in Howarth, D., Norval, A. J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 9. 32. Howarth, D. (2006), “Hegemony, Political Subjectivity, and Radical Democracy”, in Critchley, S., and Marchart, O. (eds), Laclau: A Critical Reader. London: Routledge, p. 259.

268

NOTES

TO PAGES

29 –33

33. Laclau E., and Mouffe C. (1985), Hegemony and Social Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso, p. 125. 34. See Zizek (2010), “Beyond Discourse-Analysis”, in Interrogating the Real, London: Continuum International Publishing Group, Laclau, E. (1990), New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, London: Verso, pp. 251– 53, and Zizek, S., Laclau, E., Butler, J. (2000), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, London: Verso. 35. Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse, Open University Press, p. 105, Howarth, D., and Stavrakakis, Y. (2000), “Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis”, in Howarth, D., Norval, A. J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 9–10, and Howarth, D. (2006), “Hegemony, Political Subjectivity, and Radical Democracy”, in Critchley, S., and Marchart, O. (eds), Laclau: A Critical Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 259–60. 36. Howarth, D., and Stavrakakis, Y. (2000), “Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis”, in Howarth, D., Norval, A. J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 11. 37. Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse, Open University Press, p. 107, and also for details of the logic of equivalence and difference see Laclau E., and Mouffe C. (1985), Hegemony and Social Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso, pp. 127– 34. 38. Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse, Open University Press, p. 108, and Howarth, D., and Stavrakakis, Y. (2000), “Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis”, in Howarth, D., Norval, A. J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 12–13. 39. Howarth, D., and Stavrakakis, Y. (2000), “Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis”, in Howarth, D., Norval, A. J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 14. 40. Glynos, J., and Howarth, D. (2007), Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory, London: Routledge, p. 117. 41. Howarth, D. (2006), “Hegemony, Political Subjectivity, and Radical Democracy”, in Critchley, S., and Marchart, O. (eds), Laclau: A Critical Reader. London: Routledge, p. 261. 42. Laclau E. (1990), New Reflections on the Revolution of Our time, London: Verso, p. 39. 43. Howarth, D., and Stavrakakis, Y. (2000), “Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis”, in Howarth, D., Norval, A. J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 13, and Glynos, J., and Howarth, D. (2007), Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory, London: Routledge, p. 14.

NOTES

TO PAGES

33 – 36

269

44. Howarth, D. (2006), “Hegemony, Political Subjectivity, and Radical Democracy”, in Critchley, S., and Marchart, O. (eds), Laclau: A Critical Reader. London: Routledge, p. 259. 45. Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse, Open University Press, pp. 110–11, Howarth, D., and Stavrakakis, Y. (2000), “Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis”, in Howarth, D., Norval, A. J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 14–15, Laclau E., and Mouffe C. (1985), Hegemony and Social Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso, pp. 134–45, and Howarth, D. (2006), “Hegemony, Political Subjectivity, and Radical Democracy”, in Critchley, S., and Marchart, O. (eds), Laclau: A Critical Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 256–71. 46. Laclau E., and Mouffe C. (1985), Hegemony and Social Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso, pp. 134– 5/6. 47. Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse, Open University Press, p. 111, Howarth, D., and Stavrakakis, Y. (2000), “Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis”, in Howarth, D., Norval, A. J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 15–16, and Howarth, D. (2006), “Hegemony, Political Subjectivity, and Radical Democracy”, in Critchley, S., and Marchart, O. (eds), Laclau: A Critical Reader. London: Routledge, p. 261. 48. For more details, see Chambers, S. A., and Carver, T. (ed.) (2008) William E. Connolly: Democracy, Pluralism and Political Theory, Routledge. 49. Tully, J. (2006), Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an age of diversity, Cambridge University Press. 50. For details of different models of democracy, and how they differ from each other see Gabardi, W., ‘Contemporary Models of Democracy’, Polity (Summer, 2001),Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 547–68, and for radical democracy see Laclau E., and Mouffe C. (1985), Hegemony and Social Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso, pp. 149–93. 51. It is important to understand what Mouffe means by the two concepts of ‘the political’, and ‘politics’. Politics in her vocabulary refers to the ‘ontic’ level, while ‘the political’ has to do with the ‘ontological’ one. She looks at ‘the political’ as the space of power, conflict and antagonism. She states; ‘by “the political” I mean the dimension of antagonism which I take to be constitutive of human societies, while by the “politics” I mean the set of practices and institutions through which an order is created, organizing human coexistence in the context of conflictuality provided by the political.’ Mouffe, C. (2005), On the Political, UK: Routledge, pp. 8–9. Similarly, in Democratic Paradox she defines ‘the political’ as ‘the dimension of antagonism that is inherent in human relations, antagonism that can take many forms and emerge in different types of social relations.’ Mouffe, C. (2000), The Democratic Paradox, London: Verso, p. 101. 52. For details see Mouffe, C. (2000), The Democratic Paradox, UK: Verso, pp. 101–2. 53. Mouffe, C. (2005), On the Political, London: Routledge, p. 30.

270

NOTES

TO PAGES

36 –38

54. Mouffe, C. (2000), The Democratic Paradox, London: Verso, pp. 99–103, Mouffe, C. (2005), On the Political, UK: Routledge, pp. 1–20, Mouffe, C. (1993), The Return of the Political, London: Verso, Norval, A. J. (2000), “Trajectories of Future Research in Discourse Theory”, in Howarth, D., Norval, A. J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 220–30, and Norval, J. Aletta (2007), Aversive Democracy: Inheritance and Originality in the Democratic Tradition, Cambridge University Press. 55. Colonialism according to Britannica Encyclopaedia is used to denote ‘a political-economic phenomenon whereby various European nations explored, conquered, settled, and exploited large areas of the world. The age of modern colonialism began about 1500, following the European discoveries of a sea route around Africa’s southern coast (1488) and of America (1492). With these events sea power shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and to the emerging nation states of Portugal, Spain, the Dutch Republic, France, and England. By discovery, conquest, and settlement, these nations expanded and colonized throughout the world, spreading European institutions and culture. Available at http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/126237/colonialism -Western (accessed on 23/12/2012). 56. Hiddleston, J. (2009), Understanding Postcolonialism, UK: Acumen, p. 2, and Loomba, A. (2005), Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London: Routledge, p. 8. 57. Hiddleston, J. (2009), Understanding Postcolonialism, UK: Acumen, p. 2. 58. Young, J. C. (2001), Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1–69. For details of defining and the controversies surrounding the scope and development of the terms: colonialism, imperialism, newcolonialism, and also the difference between ‘postcolonialism’, ‘post-colonialism’ with hyphen and ‘postcoloniality’ see ibid., Hiddleston, J. (2009), Understanding Postcolonialism, UK: Acumen, pp. 2–3, and Loomba, A. (2005), Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London: Routledge, p. 8. 59. Hiddleston, J. (2009), Understanding Postcolonialism, UK: Acumen, p. 1. 60. Loomba, A. (2005), Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London: Routledge, pp. 22–23, and Gilbert, M. M. (1997) Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics, London: Verso. 61. Fanon, F. (1967), The Wretched of the Earth, UK: Penguin, Fanon, F. (1968), Black Skin, White Masks, London: Paladin, Fanon, F. (1980), A Dying Colonialism, London: Writers and Readers Cooperative. 62. Sartre, J. (2001), Colonialism and Neocolonialism, London: Routledge, Sartre, J. (1948), Black Orphans, Paris: Pre´sence Africaine. 63. Among other members of the group see Guha, R. (1997), Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India, US: Harvard University Press, Chatterjee, P. (2010), The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus: Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, The Nations and Its Fragments, and A Possible India, Oxford University Press, and Chakrabarty, D. (2000), Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton University Press.

NOTES

TO PAGES

39 – 45

271

64. Hiddleston, J. (2009), Understanding Postcolonialism, UK: Acumen, p. 71. 65. Ibid., pp. 77 – 80. 66. Ibid., p. 85; Gilbert, M. M. (1997) Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics, London: Verso, 34–40, Young, J. C. (2001), Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 383–394, and Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/colonialism/. 67. Hiddleston, J. (2009), Understanding Postcolonialism, UK: Acumen, p. 77. 68. The impact of his method is obvious in postcolonial discourse, notably in the work of Homi K. Bhabha. 69. See Loomba, A. (2005), Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London: Routledge, pp. 53 – 4. 70. Said, E. W. (2003), Orientalism, UK: Penguin Books, p. xiv. 71. Roque, R., and Wagner K. A. (2012), “Introduction: Engaging Colonial Knowledge”, in Roque, R., and Wagner K. A. (eds), Engaging Colonial Knowledge: Reading European Archives in World History (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series), UK: Palgrave and Macmillan, p. 7. 72. Kaviraj, S. (2010), The Trajectories of the Indian State: Politics and Ideas, UK: Permanent Black, pp. 43– 4. 73. Leftwich, A. (2005), “Theorizing the State”, in Burnell P., and Randall V. (ed.), Politics in the Developing World, Oxford University Press, pp. 140 – 44. 74. Ibid., pp. 140 – 1, and Tilly, C., and Blockmans, W. P. (ed.) (1994), Cities and the Rise of States in Europe, A. D. 1000 to 1800, Westview Press. 75. Ayubi, N. N. (1995), Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East, New York: I.B.Tauris and Co Ltd, pp. 10– 11. 76. Migdal, J. S. (2004), State in Society: Studying how states and societies transform and constitute one another, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 16. 77. Birch, A. H. (2007), The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy, 3rd edition, UK: Routledge, p. 13. 78. Gerth, H.M and C. Wright Mills (eds) (1970), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 77– 9. 79. Leftwich, A. (2005), “Theorizing the State”, in Burnell P., and Randall V. (ed.), Politics in the Developing World, Oxford University Press, p. 141. 80. Migdal, J. S. (2004), State in Society: Studying how states and societies transform and constitute one another, UK: Cambridge University Press, p. 16. 81. Birch, A. H. (2007), The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy, 3rd edition, UK: Routledge, p. 13. 82. Gramsci, A. (1971), Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans., London: Lawrence and Wishart, p. 244. 83. Mitchell, T. (1991), The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and their Critics, American Political Science Review, Vol. 85, no. 1, March, pp. 78 – 98. 84. Kedourie, E. (1961), Nationalism, 2nd edition, London: Hutchinson, p. 9. 85. Birch, A. H. (2007), The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy, 3rd edition, UK: Routledge, p. 13.

272

NOTES

TO PAGES

45 –50

86. Ibid., p. 17. 87. Birch, A. H. (1989), Nationalism and National Integration, London: Unwin Hyman, p. 5. 88. Ibid., p. 6. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid., p. 13. 91. Kedourie, E. (1961), Nationalism, 2nd edition, London: Hutchinson, p. 9. 92. See Birch, A. H. (2007), The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy, 3rd edition, UK: Routledge, and Baycroft, T. (2007), Nationalism in Europe, 1789– 1945, Cambridge University Press. 93. Birch, A. H. (2007), The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy, 3rd edition, UK: Routledge, pp. 15 – 16. 94. See Baycroft, T. (2007), Nationalism in Europe, 1789– 1945, Cambridge University Press. 95. Birch, A. H. (1989), Nationalism and National Integration, London: Unwin Hyman, p. 4. 96. Ibid., p. 7. 97. Anderson, B. (2006), Imagined Communities, London: Verso, p. 3. 98. Ibid., p. 6. 99. Ibid., p. 4. 100. Gellner, E. (1964), Thought and Change, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, p. 169. 101. Hearn, J. (2006), Rethinking Nationalism: A Critical Introduction, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 7. 102. Spencer, P., and Wollman, H. (2002), Nationalism: A critical Introduction, UK: Sage Publications, pp. 2 – 3. 103. Calhoun, C. (1997), Nationalism, UK: Open University Press, pp. 3 – 4. See also Ozkirimli, U. (2010), Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction, 2nd Edition, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 187–190. 104. Smith, A. D. (2000), ‘Theories of Nationalism: Alternative Models of Nation Formation’ in Leifer, M. (eds) Asian Nationalism, UK: Routledge, pp. 3 – 4. 105. Ibid., p. 12, and also Smith, A. D. (1998), Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism, UK: Routledge. 106. Ozkirimli, U. (2010), Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction, 2nd Edition, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. 107. Birch, A. H. (2007), The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy, 3rd edition, UK: Routledge, pp. 19 – 21. 108. Baycroft, T. (2007), Nationalism in Europe, 1789–1945, Cambridge University Press, pp. 24 – 25. 109. Hall, S. (1992), ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’, in Hall, S. Held, D. and McGrew, T. (eds), Modernity and its Futures, Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 294. 110. Spencer, P., and Wollman, H. (2002), Nationalism: A Critical Introduction, UK: Sage Publications, pp. 49 – 51.

NOTES

TO PAGES

51 –54

273

111. Bhabha, Homi, K. (1990), Nation and Narration, London: Routledge, pp. 3 – 4. 112. To some, the difference between post-colonial with hyphen and postcolonial without hyphen in post-structuralist tradition of thinking is that post-colonial with hyphen refers to a distinct historical period following the end of direct colonial rule e.g. post-colonial Algeria, and postcolonial without hyphen is larger and it refers to both colonial and post-colonial rule. It also covers the postcolonial studies which challenge the colonial knowledge. 113. Kaviraj, S.b (2010), The Trajectories of the Indian State: Politics and Ideas, UK: Permanent Black, p. 52. 114. See Kazancigil, Ali (ed.) (1981), ‘Paradigms of Modern State Formation in the Periphery’, in Ali Kazancigil (ed.), The State in Global Perspective, London: Gower/UNESCO. P. 119– 25, Kaviraj, S. (2010), Imaginary Institution of India: Politics and Idea, Columbia University Press, and Kavirag, S. (2009), The Postcolonial State: The Special Case of India, available at: http://criticalencounters. wordpress.com/2009/01/19/the-post-colonial-state-sudipta-kaviraj/ (accessed on 24/12/2012). 115. See Turmanidze, T. (2009), Buffer States: Power Policies, Foreign Policies and Concepts, New York: Nova Science Publishers Inc, Rubin, R. (1995), The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State to Failed State, USA: Yale University Press, p. 16, Ross, T., Maila, J., Ingalls, G., Jenkins, D., Chay, J. (eds) (1986), Buffer States In World Politics, Westview Press, and David McLean, D. (1979), Britain and Her Buffer-state: Collapse of the Persian Empire, 1890– 1914, UK: Royal Historical Society Studies. 116. See Dumont, Louis (1986), Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective, Chicago and London: Chicago University Press. 117. See Badie, Bertrand and Pierre Birnbaum (1983), The Sociology of the State, Chicago: Chicago University Press, pp. 97– 101 and 135 – 6. 118. See Jackson, Robert H. and Carl G. Rosenberg (1985), ‘Juridical Statehood in the Crisis of Tropical African States’, Paper presented at the International Political Science Association’s 13th World Congress, Paris, 1985. Also Jackson Robert H. (1993), Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 119. See Alavi, H. (1979), ‘The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh’, in Harry Goulbourne (ed.), Politics and the Third World, London: Macmillan. 120. The word ‘dawlat’ (state) is originally Arabic, and it is used in Farsi with the same meaning and connotation. 121. See Lewis, B. (1988), The Political Language of Islam, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 122. See Ayubi, N. N. (1991), Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World, London and New York: Routledge. Also Ayubi (1992), Al-Arab wa mushkilat al-dawla (The Arabs and the Problem of the State), London: Al-Saqi.

274

NOTES

TO PAGES

54 –62

123. Ayubi, N. N. (1995), Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East, New York: I.B.Tauris and Co Ltd, p. 5, Lewis, B. (1991), The Political Language of Islam, The University of Chicago Press, and Alam, M. (2004), The Language of Political Islam: India 1200– 1800, University of Chicago Press. 124. See Ayubi, N. N. (1995), Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East, New York: I.B.Tauris and Co Ltd, pp. 16 – 17. 125. Rubin, B. R. (1995), The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State to Failed State, USA: Yale University Press, p 16. 126. See Hanifi, S. M. (2008), Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier, Colombia University Press, and Hopkins, B. D. (2008), The Making of Modern Afghanistan, London: Palgrave Macmillan. 127. Rubin, B. R. (1995), The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State to Failed State, USA: Yale University Press, p. 18. 128. Shahrani M. N. (1986), “State Building and Social Fragmentation in Afghanistan”, in Ali Banuazizi and Weiner M. (eds), The State, Religion, and Ethnic Politics in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, USA: New York, Syracuse University Press, p. 39, and Farhang, M. (1992), Afghanistan dar Panj Qarne Akheer [Afghanistan in the Last Five Centuries], Iran: Qom: Kamison-e Farhangi Hizbe Wahdat-e Islami Afghanistan, pp. 150 – 2.

Chapter 2 Reconstructing the Official Discourse of State Formation in Afghanistan: 1880 –2010 1. See David Owen (2002), ‘Criticism and Captivity: On Genealogy and Critical Theory’, European Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 10: 2, 216 – 230. 2. Amir uses a rather strange term ‘the God-given state of Afghanistan’; a term used for different kingdoms of the land till the early 1920s to emphasise the divine right of the rule. 3. There were no formal schools at the time of Abdur Rahman Khan (1880 – 1901), therefore no official history books have been published during this time in Farsi or Pashto. However, in the books written by Amir himself, mainly dealing with political, religious, military, and administrative affairs of the state, he refers to himself as the king of the God-given state of Afghanistan. For a complete list of publications during the reign of Amir see Afghanistan Digital Library at: http://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/ 4. Mir Munshi Sultan Mahomed Khan (1900), The Life of Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan (ed.) John Murray, London: Albemarle Street, Vol. 2, p. 4 (my italics). This book is published in English in two volumes and the author claims to be the state secretary of the Amir. It provides a good insight into the official narrative of state formation and its development in the reign of the Amir. Amir’s personal life, how he reached the throne in Kabul, his reforms, external relations and his advice to his successors, or the vision he had for the future of

NOTES

TO PAGE

62

275

Afghanistan are the main chapters of the book. However, Afghan historians have questioned the authenticity of the book and the claim of the author to be the state secretary of Amir. The language of the book, the political concepts put forward as ideas and visions of Amir are far from representing the realities of Afghanistan and its political horizon at the time of Amir. This book is the main source of reference for all researchers of the Amir’s reign in English language. Even the official historian of the court of Amir Habibullah Khan (1901–1919), Abdur Rahman Khan’s son, Faiz Mohammad Katib, questions the authenticity of the book. For details see Farhang, M. (1992) Afghanistan dar Panj Qarne Akhir, [Afghanistan in the Last Five Centuries], Vol. 2, Qum: Ismaileyan Publications, pp. 435–436. The terminology and socio–political concepts used in the book and the ideas put forward, especially in the second volume of the book, are very modern and represent a reasonable level of development, which were absent in Afghanistan for years to come. For instance, in the above quote he describes Ahmad Shah Abdali as a constitutional monarch who was proclaimed king by the representatives of different tribes. The very concept of constitution and representation, as two modern concepts, had not entered the political language of Afghanistan even in the reign of Amir himself – let alone the reign of Ahmad Shah Abdali. Hence one can wonder how it is possible to describe Ahmad Shah Abdali as a constitutional monarch in the 1740s. It is also baffling that the language of this argument is reminiscent of Hobbes when it says that different tribes ‘wanted to have one king at their head for the sake of peace’. Thus this book sounds more in tune with a European mind of the nineteenth century than an indigenous Afghan one. 5. On Mahmud Tarzi and his reformist ideology and its impact on Afghan nationalism see Nawid, S. (2009), ‘Tarzi and the Emergence of Afghan Nationalism: Formation of a Nationalist Ideology’, available at: http://www. bu.edu/aias/nawid_article.pdf, and Gregorian, V. (1967), Mahmud Tarzi and Saraj-Ol-Akhbar, ‘Ideology of Nationalism and Modernism in Afghanistan’, The Middle East Journal, Vol. 21, no. 3, Washington DC, pp. 345 – 68. On Afghan nationalism, its roots, components and how it developed also see Anthony, H. (2002), ‘Nationalism in Afghanistan’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 34, pp. 299– 315. 6. Tarzai’s writings and its long-lasting impacts on constructing the official narrative, shaping new nationalistic and modern discourses in Afghanistan, is an important development in the political history of the country. For details of Mashrota Khahan (the constitutionalist movement), the first and the second movement, and how it emerged, developed and impacted on the politics of Afghanistan, particularly the patterns of pre-modern legitimacy; see Habib, A. H. (1993), Jonbesh-e Mashrotiyat dar Afghanistan (The Constitutional Movement in Afghanistan), 3rd edition, Qom: Ismailian, Hashimi, S. S. (2006), Nukhostin Ketab dar Bara-e Mashrotiyata Khahi dar Afghanistan (The First Book on Constitutional Movement in Afghanistan), Iran: Sunbola Publications, Gregorian V. (1969) The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan,

276

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

NOTES

TO PAGES

62 –63

Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880–1946, California: Stanford University Press. The official history to present an indigenous origin of modernity for development in Afghanistan argue that the modernization process begin at the reign of Amir Shir Ali Khan (1863 – 79) with inspiration from ideas of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838– 97). But it is a problematic argument, as the steps taken by Amir were very limited with no significant impact on the subsequent developments in the country. Faiz Mohammad Katib (1952) Sarajul Tawarikh, [Lamp of Histories], Volume 1, Kabul: Dar Matbai Horofi Darul Saltana, p. 1. The direct order of the King to write a history book and the subsequent review of what he had written by the King and his close circles clearly indicate the process of censorship and state sponsored historiography to construct a new exclusionary discourse. Katib explicitly states that the words of the King were the final verdicts in what to include and what to exclude in his history. Katib, when ordered to write the history, according to his statement, the King provided him with sixteen books as references in writing the history. Among these books he mentions two; A History of Persia (1815), by Sir John F. Malcolm (1769 – 1833), and Hayate Afghani [Life of Afghans] (1865) by Hayat Khan, which is influenced by Elphinstone’s book. Mohammad Hayat Khan, author of Hayate Afghani [Life of Afghans] (1865), wrote his book in three volumes. It covers in great detail the life, customs and traditions of Afghan (Pashtun) tribes and the history of Afghanistan. It is argued that Hayat Khan copied major parts of his book from Mountstuart Elphinstone’s book, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, as he was working as an employee of the British India Government at the time of writing his book. This alongside other evidence, which I will mention, reveals the impact of colonial knowledge on the construction of the Afghan discourse of state formation. For details see the introduction of Professor Reshad in Mohammad Hayat Khan ([1865] 1991), Hayate Afghani, [Life of Afghans], Kabul: Directorate of Cultural Affairs and Publications, Ministry of Borders. To some the impact of Mountstuart Elphinstone’s book, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, on the formation of the image of Afghanistan as a ‘picture’ is similar to the story of Said, when he looks at the impact of the Napoleonic conquest of Egypt and the knowledge or the image he produces of Egypt and the Orientals. See Hopkins (2008), The Making of Modern Afghanistan, London: Palgrave Macmillan. By Afghans he means Pashtuns. In the literature till the late 1930s, when they wanted to speak of Pashtuns they refer to them as Afghans. It is in the later stages, especially after the 1930s, that the term Pashtun replaces Afghan and the state decides to call its subjects Afghan irrespective of their ethnic affiliations; a move which clearly denies the identity of all the other ethnic groups comprising the majority of the population in the country. This is the Persian name for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is also similar to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which means the land of Arabs, Uzbeks, and

NOTES

12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

TO PAGES

63 –65

277

Turkmens or where Arabs, Uzbeks and Turkmens live; a rather exclusionary move in a multi-ethnic society. Faiz Mohammad Katib (1952) Sarajul Tawarikh [Lamp of Histories], Volume 1, Kabul: Dar Matbai Horofi Darul Saltana, p. 3. Afghanistan geographically according to Katib from the south bordered Baluchistan, from the East Indus River (this river in Farsi and Urdu called Sind and in Pashtu some refer to it as Abasin), from the west Sistan and Herat, from the north again Herat and Hindokush separated Afghanistan from Balkh, Badakhshan and Takharistan. This description of Katib resembles the Elphinstonian imagined Afghanistan, as it be explained in chapter three of the book. Faiz Mohammad Katib (1952) Sarajul Tawarikh, [Lamp of Histories], Volume 1, Kabul: Dar Matbai Horofi Darul Saltana, p. 8. The new Afghanistan, which Katib refers to, is today’s Afghanistan with its recognized international borders. Faiz Mohammad Katib (1952) Sarajul Tawarikh [Lamp of Histories], Volume 1, Kabul: Dar Matbai Horofi Darul Saltana, p. 9. The narratives of dreams by people of faith and authority or by rulers and kings to predict something or some events are persistent in the history of Afghanistan to construct or establish some sort of superstitious legitimacy. There is an emphasis on the prominent role of Haji Jamaludin Khan Barikzai in the narrative, which is repetitive through the official history of Afghanistan constructed under the Musahiban dynasty. This I assume could be understood in terms of power/knowledge to construct or use an already existing discourse of legitimacy. In this case, because the ruling family is from the Barakzai clan, they attempt to construct such a narrative to carve a niche for themselves by extolling the position of Jamaludin Barakzai from the outset, and to reinforce their own historical credibility and presence in Afghanistan’s politics. Faiz Mohammad Katib (1952), Sarajul Tawarikh, [Lamp of Histories], Volume 1, Kabul: Dar Matbai Horofi Darul Saltana, p. 10. Ibid. Maḥmud Ṭarzi (1912), Aaya chih bayad kard?, [What to do?], Kabul: Dar al – Salṭanah. Here he refers to Za¯l also transliterated Zaal, and his son Rustam, a legendary Persian warrior created by Abolqasem Ferdowsi in his famous book, Shahnameh: the Persian Book of Kings, in the late tenth and eleventh centuries. Shahnameh is the national epic of Iranian civilization and Persians, comprising 50,000 lines and nine volumes of poets in Farsi. It is similar to Western epics such as the Iliad and the Odyssey but with a wider scope, which covers the history of ‘Iran Zamin’ (Iran Land) and its people from the creation of the world up to the Arab conquest. For details see the introduction of Ferdowsi Abolqasem (2006), Shahnameh: the Persian Book of Kings, translated by Dick Davis, USA: Penguin Group. Ṭarzi Maḥmud (1912), Aaya chih bayad kard?, [What to do?], Kabul: Dar al – Salṭanah, pp. 104– 6.

278

NOTES

TO PAGES

65 –66

22. The term ‘Isteqlal’ (independence) in Farsi is very new in the political language of Afghanistan. It has arrived here with colonial powers and mainly refers to the struggle of colonized nations to gain independence from colonial powers. To use it for the move by Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747, seems problematic and out of context. 23. Ṭarzi Maḥmud (1912), Aaya chih bayad kard?, [What is to be done?], Kabul: Dar al– Salṭanah, see Afghanistan’s section. 24. Mohammad Ḥusayn (1923), Jughrafiya-yi Afghanistan [Geography of Afghanistan, school textbook], Kabul: Ministry of Education, pp. 5 and 57. 25. Ibid., p. 7. 26. See Sayyid Mohammad Hashim (1921), Khulasah-i tarikh-i vatan, [A Brief History of the Homeland, a textbook], Kabul: Matbae Wezarate Moarif, [Ministry of Education Press], p. 9. This book was written in the reign of Amanullah Khan, and furnishes the structure of historiography in the country for generations to come. 27. It is worth mentioning here that the book, similar to other school textbooks, does not provide any date or time for these kingdoms, but it mentions their names, the successors to the throne and for how long they ruled. 28. Chief of Pashtuns, the word Afghan in the old texts refers to Pashtuns, not to the people of Afghanistan, or to the subjects or citizens of the country, as we understand it today. 29. This official version of the constructed history obviously, on one hand, contradicts the so-called colonially constructed principles of Pashtunwali e.g. hospitality and honouring the guest and on the other, it legitimizes the killing of the foreigners in defence of the homeland. 30. Sayyid Mohammad Hashim (1921), Khulasah-i tarikh-i vatan [A Brief History of the Country, a textbook], Kabul: Matbae Wezarate Moarif, [Ministry of Education Press], pp. 57–9. 31. Ibid. This attack took place prior to the establishment of the newly colonial or post-colonial nation states in the region. Hence, one can look at it as the usual attacks and counter-attacks of tribes settled in the wider region of Iranian civilization. But the official historiography of Afghanistan portrays the incident as the national uprising of the Afghans against the Iranian invasion and the conquest of the Safavid capital, Isfahan, as the glorious conquest of Iran by Afghans. Contrary to this, the Iranian official historiography constructs the incident as the riot or rebellion of the Afghans and as a criminal act with devastating consequences for the civilized state of Iran by backward tribesmen. While the story is constructed on the basis of a radical antagonism to constitute an identity based on ‘us/them’ dichotomy, the reality is that this story has nothing to do with the new nation states of Iran and Afghanistan as it happened well before the creation of these states, but sadly the Iranian and the Afghan official account of the history portrays the story in a way to reinforce the hatred between the two nations. It is ironic when noticed that majority of Iranians even do not understand the diversity of Afghanistan and the fact that

NOTES

32.

33.

34.

35. 36. 37.

38.

39.

TO PAGES

66 – 68

279

major cities and centres of historical Iran are located in today’s Afghanistan perhaps as the outcome of the official Iranian nationalist discourse. Mohammad Ali Khan (1927), Afghanistan: mutabiq – i proghram– i chaharum – i rushdiyah wa dara al – maullimin [Geography of Afghanistan, a textbook for high school and teacher training], Kabul: Ministry of Education, p. 59. The claim that the country was divided between Iran and India is very important, as it develops soon to three countries and remains the same throughout the entire narrative. Sayyid Mohammad Hashim (1921), Khulasah-i tarikh-i vatan, [A Brief History of the Country, a textbook], Kabul: Matbae Wezarate Moarif, [Ministry of Education Press], p. 64. See also Mohammad Ali Khan (1927), Afgahnistan: mutabiq – i proghram – i chaharum – i rushdiyah wa dara al – maullimin [Geography of Afghanistan, a text book for high school and teacher training], Kabul: Ministry of Education, p. 60. Mohammad Ali Khan (1927), Afgahnistan: mutabiq – i proghram– i chaharum – i rushdiyah wa dara al – maullimin [Geography of Afghanistan, a textbook for high school and teacher training], Kabul: Ministry of Education, p. 64. Ibid., p. 67. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid. Surprisingly, the author admits in the introduction that his book has been based on the colonial knowledge and he for reasons beyond his comprehension cannot endorse the authenticity or credibility of some of his findings. The teaching resources and literature or the books produced at this time indicate that majority of the teachers employed, whether Indians, Turks or Afghans had to rely on English sources published in India or Britain. According to Arian Encyclopaedia the establishment of academic and research institutions in Afghanistan begin in the reign of Amir Amanullah Khan. The first of these organizations was Pashtu Maraka (1922), and then in the reign of the Mosahiban Dynasty the process was followed by the establishment of ‘Anjumane Adabi Kabul’ [Kabul Literary Association] (1931), ‘Anjumane Adabi Herat’ [Herat Literary Association] (1937), ‘Anjumane Adabi Pashtue Kandahar’ [Kandahar Pashtu Literary Association] (1932), and ‘Pashtu Toluna’ [Pashtu Association] (1937), later the Kabul Literary Association was replaced by the new Pashtu Toluna, ‘Anjumane Tarikhe Afghanistan’ [Association of Afghanistan History] (1942), ‘Anjumane Daeratul Maarief Ariana, [Association of Encyclopedia of Ariana] (1948), ‘Ameriate Bastan Shunasi’ [Directorate of Archaeological Research] (1966) and finally the establishment of Afghanistan Academy of Science (1970). Subsequently all these organizations were united under the auspices of the Afghanistan Academy of Science. See Daeratul Maarief Ariana, [Encyclopedia of Ariana ] (2007), Kabul: Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Afghanistan’s Academy of Science, Directorate of Encyclopaedia, p. 576. I strongly believe that in order to open the space for the possibility of change in Afghanistan, one has to engage critically with the knowledge and discourses

280

40.

41.

42.

43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48.

NOTES

TO PAGES

68 –71

constructed and produced by this state-run institution, which still functions at several fronts to safeguard the continuity of what it has produced. The official discourse introduces the notion of ‘natural borders’ to claim that the greater Afghanistan is the one which was established by Ahmad Shah Abdali, and at the same time to feed the irredentist movement among the Pashtuns of Afghanistan that half of today’s Pakistan belongs to the so-called historical Afghanistan. See Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, pp. 6 – 7. Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1965] 2009), Tarikhe Afghanistan bad az Islam [History of Afghanistan after Islam], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand. Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1967] 1998), Tarikhe Mukhtasare Afghanistan [A brief History of Afghanistan], Peshawar: Danish library. Kohzad, Ahmad Ali ([1946] 2008), Tarikhe Afghanistan [History of Afghanistan in three volumes], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand, Daeratul Maarief Ariana, [The Encyclopedia of Ariana] (2007), Kabul: Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Afghanistan’s Academy of Science, Directorate of Encyclopaedia. Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, p. 9. See also Daeratul Maarief Ariana, [The Encyclopedia of Ariana] (2007), Kabul: Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Afghanistan’s Academy of Science, Directorate of Encyclopaedia, pp. 567– 74. See Kohzad, Ali Ahmad ([1941] 2007) Ariana, [Ariana], second Edition, Kabul: Entesharate Amiri. Habibi, Abdul Hai (2007), Jughrafiae Tarikhie Afghanistan [Geographical History of Afghanistan], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand, pp. 257–63. See Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, p. 9. See also Daeratul Maarief Ariana, [The Encyclopedia of Ariana] (2007), Kabul: Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Afghanistan’s Academy of Science, Directorate of Encyclopaedia, pp. 567– 74. See Kohzad, Ali Ahmad ([1941] 2007) Ariana, [Ariana], second Edition, Kabul: Entesharate Amiri. Ibid., p. 35. For details see Ferdowsi Abolqasem (2006), Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, translated by Dick Davis, USA: Penguin Groups. See Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, pp. 32 – 35 and 36 – 38. Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1967] 1998), Tarikhe Mukhtasare Afghanistan [A brief History of Afghanistan ], Peshawar: Danish library, pp. 1 – 30. Kohzad, Ahmad Ali ([1946] 2008), Tarikhe Afghanistan [History of Afghanistan in three volumes], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand, pp. 4 – 219. For the central role of Afghanistan in the history of the region also see Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1961] 2002), Sahme Afghanistan dar

NOTES

49.

50.

51.

52. 53.

54.

55.

TO PAGES

71 –72

281

Enteqale Farhange Asiae Meyana, [Role of Afghanistan in spreading the culture of Central Asia], Afghanistan: Markaze Tahqeqate Alama Habibi. See Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1965] 2009), Tarikhe Afghanistan bad az Islam [History of Afghanistan after Islam], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand, Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1967] 1998), Tarikhe Mukhtasare Afghanistan [A brief History of Afghanistan], Peshawar: Danish library, Habibi, Abdul Hai (2007), Jughrafiae Tarikhie Afghanistan [Geographical History of Afghanistan], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand and Kohzad, Ahmad Ali ([1946] 2008), Tarikhe Afghanistan [History of Afghanistan in three volumes], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand. Habibi constantly tries to construct the image of Pashtuns as original inhabitants of Afghanistan, as great rulers of the country and link their customs to pre-historic periods. In a later stage he claims that the Ghuri dynasty was Pashtun who managed to establish one of the great empires in the region. The subsequent developments in the history of Afghanistan by Pashtuns have been portrayed in a way to indicate that by doing so they wanted to reclaim their lost glory. They use the Persian term ‘begana’, which among other things means the ‘other’, the ‘foreigner’, the ‘outsider’, and the ‘barbarian’, similar to its use by the ancient Greeks to distinguish between Greeks and non-Greeks. Naturally, when you draw a clear social and geographical border between self and the other, you open the space for a radical antagonism based on a ‘friend/enemy’ relationship. In this case, the Achaemenids Empire belongs to Iranians and their extension to the territory of Afghanistan is considered an act of aggression by a foreign power. Kunar is one the provinces of Afghanistan located in the north-eastern part of the country, and Bajaur is an Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. See Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1967] 1998), Tarikhe Mukhtasare Afghanistan [A brief History of Afghanistan], Peshawar: Danish library, pp. 41–43. See Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1 ], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, pp. 39–56, Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1967] 1998), Tarikhe Mukhtasare Afghanistan [A brief History of Afghanistan ], Peshawar: Danish library, pp. 30–78, and Kohzad, Ahmad Ali ([1946] 2008), Tarikhe Afghanistan [History of Afghanistan in three volumes], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand, pp. 222–614. Ibid. Also see Kohzad, Ahmad Ali ([1946] 2008), Tarikhe Afghanistan [History of Afghanistan in three volumes], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand, pp. 613– 25. Habibi and Kohzad pay special attention to the concept of independent local rules, as decedents of Khusani-Yaftalin dynasties of Afghanistan, who resisted the Arab domination in a later stage. See also Daeratul Maarief Ariana, [The Encyclopedia of Ariana] (2007), Kabul: Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Afghanistan’s Academy of Science, Directorate of Encyclopaedia, pp. 567– 74. On Abu Muslim Khurasani (718– 54) a Persian leader of a revolutionary movement in Khurasan who was instrumental in the downfall of the Umayyad

282

56.

57.

58.

59.

60.

NOTES

TO PAGES

72 –73

caliphate and in placing the Abbasids on the throne; see: The Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia at: http://www.cgie.org.ir/shavad.asp?id¼123& avaid ¼ 2545 and also the Encyclopaedia Britannica at http://www.britannica. com/EBchecked/topic/2268/Abu-Muslim. See Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, pp. 59 – 87, Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1967] 1998), Tarikhe Mukhtasare Afghanistan [A brief History of Afghanistan], Peshawar: Danish library, pp. 89 – 112, Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1965] 2009), Tarikhe Afghanistan bad az Islam [History of Afghanistan after Islam], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand, pp. 139– 330 and Kohzad, Ahmad Ali ([1946] 2008), Tarikhe Afghanistan [History of Afghanistan in three volumes], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand, pp. 694– 757. See Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, pp. 86 – 142, Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1967] 1998), Tarikhe Mukhtasare Afghanistan [A brief History of Afghanistan], Peshawar: Danish library, pp. 113 – 170, Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1965] 2009), Tarikhe Afghanistan bad az Islam [History of Afghanistan after Islam], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand, pp. 235– 415 and Kohzad, Ahmad Ali ([1946] 2008), Tarikhe Afghanistan [History of Afghanistan in three volumes], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand, pp. 757– 88. Habibi in his book; Afghanistan after Islam, tries to illustrate the civilizational side of the story, where the Afghans have played a significant role in scientific, political, social and cultural development of Islam in the region. In his book A Brief History of Afghanistan, alongside the above mentioned independent states, he also adds two Pashtun dynasties and some local rules to the list. The Ghurid dynasty, according to him, is Pashtun, and perhaps the great rulers of the region. The impact and ideological grip of the constructed nodal point of invasion and resistance is so predominant in Afghanistan that when people speak of their bravery and historical pride they refer to the defeat of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the English and the Russians by Afghans throughout history. See Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1 ], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, pp. 250 – 80, and Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1967] 1998), Tarikhe Mukhtasare Afghanistan [A brief History of Afghanistan ], Peshawar: Danish library, pp. 171 –194. According to the narrative Safavid is a Persian-Iranian state, Shaybanid is an Uzbek state and Baburi is a Mughal/Uzbek state. It is called Baburi to refer to the founder of the Mughal Empire in India; Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur. Again, three ‘outsiders’, in the form of an enemy invented to justify the struggle and resistance of the people of Afghanistan and prepare the ground for the re-emergence of a national state.

NOTES

TO PAGES

73 –75

283

61. See Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, pp. 303 – 307, and Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1967] 1998), Tarikhe Mukhtasare Afghanistan [A Brief History of Afghanistan], Peshawar: Danish library, pp. 195 –217. 62. See Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, pp. 308 – 315. In studying the origin of Afghans (Pashtuns), Ghubar admits that prior to their influx into other parts of Khurasan they were living around the Suleiman Mountains, located in today’s Pakistan. It was from this location that they migrated to southern, eastern and western parts of today’s Afghanistan and also towards India. He argues that Afghanistan, as a name to denote a particular place, was used for a very limited area around the Suleiman Mountains, where the Afghan (Pashtun) tribes used to live. 63. Officially Loya Jirga had entered the political realm, or it was invented, in the enrichment period, during the reign of Amanullah Khan (1919 –1928), but it was only in the period of sophistication that it is incorporated in a massive scale in the official historiography and education curriculum. 64. See Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, pp. 316 – 49, and Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1967] 1998), Tarikhe Mukhtasare Afghanistan [A brief History of Afghanistan], Peshawar: Danish library, pp. 218 – 53. Habibi allocates chapters of his book to different tribes of Afghans/Pashtuns to highlight their common struggle for independence to re-establish or reclaim the lost glories of the Afghan state. The struggle of Roshanians, Tokhies, Abdalis, and Hotakis has been constructed in detail. 65. Probably they were trying to translate the famous quote; ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’, but got it somehow messy and disorganized. It is worth mentioning that the speech itself was delivered by the then American President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, on 19 November 1863, a century later than the date claimed by the narrative. See http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/gettysburg.htm (accessed on 22/01/11). 66. Daeratul Maarief Ariana, [The Encyclopedia of Ariana] (2007), Kabul: Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Afghanistan’s Academy of Science, Directorate of Encyclopaedia, p. 574 (my italics). This constitutes a false claim on a massive scale. The notion of nation and nation states, as explained in theoretical framework, traces its origin even in the west to the French revolution, which has entered the political realm in our region at later stages by the arrival of colonialism. To claim that the Afghans were among the first to establish the first nation state in the world, some eighty years before the French revolution, is preposterous. 67. Ahmad Shah Abdali is called ‘Ahmad Shah Baba’, to denote or signify ‘father of the nation or founder of the state’. In the post-Bonn agreement, the same title

284

68.

69. 70. 71.

72. 73.

74.

75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80.

81.

NOTES

TO PAGES

75 –80

of ‘father of the nation’ was granted to the former king Mohammad Zahir Shah. See Afghanistan’s 2004 constitution, article 156. See Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, pp. 349 – 354, and Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1967] 1998), Tarikhe Mukhtasare Afghanistan [A brief History of Afghanistan], Peshawar: Danish library, pp. 254 – 256. Also see Ghubar, G. M. (1939), Ahmad Sha¯h Ba¯ba¯-yi Afgha¯n, ˙ [Ahamad Shah Father of Afghanistan], available online in Digital Library of India at: http://www.new1.dli.ernet.in/scripts/FullindexDefault.htm?path1¼/ data8/upload/0205/137&first ¼ 1&last ¼ 391&barcode ¼ 2030020039610, pp. 1–4. I have also accessed a copy of the book at British Library System number 013151076: Ghubar, G. M. (1944), Ahmad Sha¯h Ba¯ba¯-yi Afgha¯n, ˙ [Ahamad Shah Father of Afghanistan], Kabul: Matbaah-i Umumi. ˙ Ghubar, G. M. (1939), Ahmad Sha¯h Ba¯ba¯-yi Afgha¯n, [Ahamad Shah Father of ˙ Afghanistan], pp. 3 – 4. Ibid., pp. 1 and 35– 41. These names change in the narrative, an indication that they have been chosen to be there by the authorities to represent the power relation or strengthen a particular legitimacy. The very hierarchical positioning of figures to present a tribe or an ethnic group is very interesting, as it reflects the real political landscape of the country for a long period. He uses the Islamic term ‘baiat’, which has a religious connotation. In the original Persian text it uses the term ‘Khusha-e Gandum’, which could mean a single spike of wheat or a sheaf of wheat. I assume this is why it has been translated by different scholars as clusters of wheat and sheaf of wheat. I preferred to use the term spike of wheat or wheat spike. See Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, pp. 354 –5. Ghubar, G. M. (1939), Ahmad Sha¯h Ba¯ba¯-yi Afgha¯n, [Ahamad Shah Father of ˙ Afghanistan], pp. 85– 89. ‘Mazare’ is a shrine and based on Habibi’s account, Sabir Shah was living there and looking after it. Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1967] 1998), Tarikhe Mukhtasare Afghanistan [A brief History of Afghanistan], Peshawar: Danish library, pp. 256 – 7. Daeratul Maarief Ariana, [The Encyclopedia of Ariana] (2007), Kabul: Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Afghanistan’s Academy of Science, Directorate of Encyclopaedia, pp. 567– 74. Ibid., p. 313. The book provides an official account of Ahmad Shah’s kingdom and has been produced under his direct supervision, to which I will return in my deconstructive move. Khutbah is an Arabic term; it serves as a religious ritual and as public preaching in Islam. It is delivered weekly at Friday prayers and on the two Muslim

NOTES

82.

83. 84.

85.

86.

87.

TO PAGES

80 –82

285

festival days (Eids). Once someone has become the new king, his name would be mentioned in the Khutbah to let the Muslims know of their new ruler. This tradition is followed even today in some Islamic countries e.g. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Popalzai, Azizuddin Wakili (1976), Ahmad Shah: vares wa mojadede amparatori Afghanistan, [Ahmad Shah: The Inheritor and the Re-establisher of the Empire of Afghanistan] Volume 1, Kabul: Ministry of Information and Culture, p. 58. Ibid., p. 39. See Ghubar, G. M. (1939), Ahmad Sha¯h Ba¯ba¯-yi Afgha¯n, [Ahamad Shah Father ˙ of Afghanistan], pp. 98 – 99, and Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, pp. 356– 359. Ironically, Afghan historians try to Afghanize the origin of all major developments; here, instead of studying the impact of the Iranian court on the structure of Ahmad Khan’s administration, they argue that he inherited his political set up from Mirwais Hotaki. In Afghanistan most commonly they use the term Englistan, Englis or Angris (England/English) to refer to Britain, but ironically, when they write or talk about British India, the use the term Hind Bartanavi (British Indian). The term Englis or Angris both have pejorative connotations in colloquial language i.e. mischief and hypocrisy. See Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad (1967) Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh, [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate, pp. 517 and 643– 99, and Habibi, Abdul Hai ([1967] 1998), Tarikhe Mukhtasare Afghanistan [A brief History of Afghanistan], Peshawar: Danish library, pp. 279 –96. For more details see Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad ([1976] 1999) Jughrafiae Tarikhie Afghanistan [Geographical History of Afghanistan], Peshawar: Markaze Nasharati Maiwand, Saba Ketab Khana; Yamen, Mohammad Hussain (1999), Afghanistan-e Tarikhi, [Historical Afghanistan], Kabul: Entesharate Said; Farahi, Abdul Ghafar (2003), Afghanistan da democracy aw jamhoriat pa kalonoki, [Afghanistan during Democracy and Republic years], Peshawar: Danish Ketabtoon; Habibi, Abdul Hai (2001), Tarikhe Tajziae Shahanshaie Afghan, [History of the disintegration of the Afghan Kingdom], Peshawar: Markaze Tahqeqati Alama Habibi; Ghubar, Naeemi, Farhang and Mohibi (2008), Da Afghanistan Tarikh, [History of Afghanistan], Kabul: Entesharate Amiri; Kabuli, Mehdizada (2007), Daramadi bar Tarikhe Afghanistan, [An Introduction of the History of Afghanistan], Kabul: Chap Khanae Nahzat (He repeats the official narrative and rejects the Iranian historical claims over Afghanistan); Sistani Barikzai, Azam (2006), Aya Afghanistan yak name Jaliest? [Is Afghanistan a false name?], Peshawar: Danish Ketab Khana; Arzoo, Abdul Ghafoor (2003), Chegonagi Howaite Meli Afghanistan, [The National Identity of Afghanistan], Tehran: Mohammad Ebrahim Shariti Afghanistani; Panjshiri, Aziz Ahmad (2008), Afghanistan wa Rahe Abreshim, [Afghanistan and the Silk

286

88. 89.

90.

91.

92.

NOTES

TO PAGES

82 –83

Route], Kabul: Entesharate Said; Ansari, Faroq (2007), Feshardae Tarikhe Afghanistan, [A brief history of Afghanistan], Kabul: Afghanistan Strategic Studies and Research Centre; Faiz, Ali Akbar (2002), Tarike Afghanistan az Aghaze Zohore Islam, [History of Afghanistan from the Emergence of Islam, Vol. 1], Iran: Nashre Sunbela; Merza Atta Mohammad (1952), Nawai Mairek, [Sound of Battles], Peshawar: Markez Nasharati Maiwand; Rishtiya, Sayed Qasim ([1967] 1998), Afghanistan dar Qarne Nozdah, [Afghanistan in the nineteenth century], Peshawar: Markez Nasharati Maiwand; Sistani, Mohammad Azam (2000), Khezushai Mardom Kandahar, Herat and Sistan bar zedi sultae Safaviane Iran wa Baburiane Hend dar Qarne 18, [Revolt of people of Kandahar, Herat and Sistan against the domination of Safavids of Iran and Baburis of India in 18th century], Sweden: Zagros Media; Darez, Aminullah (2001), Afghanistan dar Qarne Bestom, [Afghanistan in the twentieth century], Peshawar: Danish Ketab Khana; Bahkteyari, Mohammad Qasim Danish (2002), Barasi Moqaesai Siyasate Kharijie Iran wa Pakistan dar Qebale Afghanistan, [A Critical Comparison of Iran and Pakistan’s Foreign Policy toward Afghanistan ], Teheran: Negaresh Ieada. Mohammad Usman Sidqi (1971), Tarikhe Sunfe Dahom, [History for Year Ten], Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Authorship and Translation, p. 87. To him the Aryans were the first people to live in Afghanistan. It was from 1900 to 1400 BC that they migrated to India and formed their governments there. Part of their book Rig Veda was created in the south of Afghanistan. Aryans were equals when they used to live in our country, he claims, but when they migrated to India, in order to distinguish themselves from the outsiders and the blacks, they created the four castes; Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Sudra. The first three of these castes are Aryans, but the latter is indigenous Indian. For details see Kohzad, Ahmad Ali (1968), Tarikhe Sinfe Haftom, [History for Year Seven], Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Authorship and Translation, pp. 45 – 6. Once the narrative establishes a separate historical background for the Iranians, it moves swiftly to construct a new historical root for the Afghans. Kohzad claims that approximately 5 to 10 thousand years ago our ancestors were living in the north of Afghanistan. Our ancestors at that time used to call themselves Aria. Aria means noble, sincere, truthful, and brave. Our ancestors, in order to distinguish themselves from the black people living in the neighbouring countries, and because of their features – being hansom – used to call themselves Aria. Therefore, we are Aria and the ancient name of our country is Ariana. We are from the same ethnicity and carry the same blood in our veins. He uses the term ‘elected’ to give a sense that even Yama the first king of Afghanistan was ‘elected by the people’, perhaps in a democratic way, although the political language in Afghanistan lacked the term ‘election’ as a political concept till very recently. This is the first attempt in the narrative at the school level to introduce the notion of the Jirga (assembly) as the most common way of governing and

NOTES

93.

94.

95.

96.

97.

98.

99. 100.

TO PAGES

83 –84

287

consulting the people. I will explain the concept of Jirga and how it was constructed to legitimize the rulers and their decisions in the following chapters. However, it is important to note that in studying the history textbooks one can observe that the concept has been introduced in the textbooks only since the 1930s. ‘Atan-i Mili’ (i.e. National Attan) is the Afghan (Pashtun) traditional dance. Men or children move in circles while clapping their hands. The Attan is often performed during the Afghan national days as well as at weddings. There are different kinds of Attan in Afghanistan, mostly in Pashtun areas: Wardak, Logar, and Khost. For more detail see: http://www.afghanistan-photos.com/ crbst_28.html (accessed on 30/05/2010). Ahmad Ali Kohzad (1968), Tarikhe Sinfe Haftom (History textbook for year seven), Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of authorship and translation, pp. 64– 85. See Mohammad Usman Sidqi (1971), Tarikhe Sinfe Dahom, [History for Year Ten], Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Authorship and Translation, pp. 92– 102. Afghanistan based on the official account declared its independence on 19 August 1919, but the narrative gives a sense that the country was an independent entity all along, which extends to 5– 10 thousand years ago. However, this independent sovereign state has witnessed many invasions at different stages of its history, but the brave and courageous people of Afghanistan, especially Afghans (Pashtuns), have fought to regain their independence. Hence, based on this logic, one can conclude that Afghanistan had many wars of independence and one of them was the war of independence in the seventh century, in which the Afghans defeated the Muslim Arabs. Mohammad Usman Sidqi (1971), Tarikhe Sinfe Dahom, [History for Year Ten], Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Authorship and Translation, pp. 123 –34, also 92. Alongside Ghaznavid and Ghurid rule in India, the narrative claims that Qutbian Kings, Khilji Kings, Taghluq Kings, Khatur Khanian Kings and Ludies or Sories also have established separate kingdoms and states in India. See Kings of Ludhi in Mohammad Usman Sidqi (1971), Tarikhe Sinfe Dahom, [History for Year Ten], Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Authorship and Translation, pp. 135–42. Hamayoon, Mohammad Sarwar (1966), Tarikh Barie Sinfe Nohum, [History for Year Nine], Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of authorship and translation, pp. 18– 20. He uses the term ‘Qaom’, which denotes, among other things, ethnicity, tribe and also the people. Hamayoon, Mohammad Sarwar (1966), Tarikh Barie Sinfe Nohum, [History for Year Nine], Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Authorship and Translation, p. 24. Hamayoon, Mohammad Sarwar (1966), Tarikh Barie Sinfe Nohum, [History textbook for year nine], Kabul: Ministry of Education,

288

101.

102.

103.

104.

105. 106. 107. 108. 109.

NOTES

TO PAGES

84 –87

Directorate of Authorship and Translation, pp. 34 – 64, also see Sidqi, Mohammad Usman (1965), Tarikhe Barie Sinfe Duwazdahum, [History for Year Twelve], Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Authorship and Translation, pp. 1 – 60. It is worth mentioning that Ghubar’s book, Afghanistan in the Course of History, was first published in the reign of Zahir Shah, during the so – called ‘the decade of democracy’, but it was soon confiscated by the government. With the victory of the 1978 communist coup d’e´tat, the confiscated copies of the book were released to the public, which was widely welcomed by the new revolutionary forces and some three thousand copies were sold in a short period, which seemed to be a revolution in itself in Afghanistan at that time. The new regime has not produced any well known history book apart from school textbooks, articles and pamphlets. Because the main focus was shifted to infuse the classical Marxist theories into the national curriculum and at the same time to bring to the fore the notion of class struggle to justify the revolution. Based on this new ideology, the communists tried to construct a new model inspired by the Soviets. It looks as if they have relied heavily on Ghubar and his influence on the construction of the official discourse of state formation in this era. However, they have injected their ideological inferences to the narrative by accepting or rejecting a particular period, set of policies or even personalities. See Reishtia, Sayed Qasim (1997), Khaterate Siasi Saye Qasim: 1923– 1992, [Political Memoirs of Sayed Qasim Reishtia: 1923– 1992], Virginia: American Speedy Press, pp. 316– 20. Reishtia goes to the extent of calling Ghubar’s history book as the Bible of the new communist revolutionaries in Afghanistan. Mohammad Jahanyar, Mohammad Naeem Mahmood and Enayatullah (1989), Tarikhe Afghanistan az 1504 ta Emroz, Barae Sinfe Hashtom, [History of Afghanistan: from 1504 till today, for Year Eight], Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Authorship and Translation, pp. 44 – 45. That is probably because of the ideological reservations of the new revolutionaries to negate the role of a spiritual man from shaping a significant political decision or in a move to undermine the role of religion and the religious establishment. Mohammad Jahanyar, Mohammad Naeem Mahmood and Enayatullah (1989), Tarikhe Afghanistan az 1504 ta Emroz, Barae Sunfe Hashtom, [History of Afghanistan from 1504 till today for Year Eight], Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Authorship and Translation, p. 58. Ibid., pp. 56 – 60. This is just an estimate frequently repeated by people in Afghanistan. The term is borrowed from Nazif Shahrani. Tarikhe Sinfe Haftom (2007), [History for Year Seven], Kabul: Ministry of Education, pp. 39 – 42. Ibid., pp. 44–52, see also Jughrafiae Sinfe Dowazdahum (2007), [Geography for Year Twelve], Kabul: Ministry of Education Kabul, pp. 1–2. Recently the

NOTES

110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

117.

118.

119. 120.

TO PAGES

87 –88

289

government decided to exclude the last thirty years’ history of Afghanistan and begin it from 1973 under the pretext of de-politicization and deethnicizaiton of history. See the article in Washington Post: ‘In Afghanistan, a new approach to teaching history: Leave out the wars’ available online at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-afghanistan-anew-approach-to-teaching-history-leave-out-the-wars/2012/02/03/gIQA 57KNqQ_story.html Ibid., p. 59. Tarikhe Sunfe Haftom: 2007 [History for Year Seven], Kabul: Ministry of Education, p. 29. Ibid., p. 34. The term is used to denote the other side of the Oxus River, in Persian still they use the Arabic term Mawara Al-Nahar or the Persian term Fara Road. Ibid., p. 35; see also Tarikhe Sunfe Hashtom: 2007 [History for Year Eight], Kabul: Ministry of Education, pp. 53– 54. Ibid., pp. 43 – 45. Because of the recent rivalry between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the common belief among the subjects of the official discourse that Pakistan has no history as it only came into existence in 1947, any linkage to Pakistan, especially of the founder of the nation, is very damaging to the national ego of the Afghans. The fact of the matter is that he was born in Multan, one of the famous cities of today’s Pakistan and that has nothing to do with the postcolonial political divisions of the regions. Tarikhe Sinfe Yazdahom (2007), [History for Year Eleven], Kabul: Ministry of Education, p. 2. This is how the book describes the moments of the decision making: ‘In 1747, close to the present city of Kandahar, in Mazare Shire Surkh, a Jirga was called. The Jirga continued for nine days. No decision was made, because the subject was very important as each chief wanted to become the king. On the 9th day it was decided to elect someone as an arbiter; and whomever he choses as the king, the rest shall declare their allegiance to him. The arbiter was a spiritual man, who had no relation to any families or chiefs. This person was Saber Shah Kabuli, son of Sofi Ustad Liekhar from Kabul. The people of Kandahar trusted him. This Sufi stood and introduced Ahmad Shah as the king and put a “wreath of wheat” as a symbol of the crown of the kingdom on his turban.’ See ibid., p. 5. The concept of ‘natural borders’ established by Ahmad Khan is a dominant theme in the official Pashtun-centric discourse. It begins with the Musahiban dynasty (1930 – 78) and continues to be part of the current curriculum, which clearly indicates that Afghanistan does not recognize the international borders of some of its neighbours. Tarikhe Sinfe Yazdahom (2007), [History for Year Eleven], Kabul: Ministry of Education, p. 6. During my research in the post – 2001 national curriculum, I observed changes in the historical texts produced even in different stages of the

290

NOTES

TO PAGES

88 – 96

transitional period, for instance, in the history books of 2002 it is asserted that ‘Ahmad Shah inherited his organization from Mir Wais Khan Hotaki, and realized the latter’s unfinished project.’ However, this claim has been removed from the subsequent editions in the later stages of the current regime. 121. A similar account has been provided by Amir in his biography in English, which was later translated to Farsi under the title of ‘Tajud Tawarikh’. 122. See Ghughrafiae Sinfe Dowazdahum (2007), [Geography for Year Twelve], Kabul: Ministry of Education, pp. 4 – 12.

Chapter 3 Reconstructing the Discourse of State Formation in English Literature on Afghanistan: 1809 –2010 1. See for instance the collection of the India Office in the British Library on Afghanistan at: http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/afghanistan/ afghanistancollection/introduction.html 2. Gregorian, V. (1969) The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880 –1946, California: Stanford University Press, pp. 67 – 69. 3. For list of some of these colonial books provided by the Afghan government see Ahmad J. and Aziz M. (1934), Afghanistan a Brief Survey, Kabul: Dar-utTalif, p. 129. 4. For more information see Hopkins, B. D. (2008), The Making of Modern Afghanistan, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 13– 18, Gregorian V. (1969) The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880– 1946, California: Stanford University Press, pp. 67 – 69, Lee J.L. (1996), The Ancient Supremacy; Bukhara, Afghanistan, and Battle for Balkh, 1731– 1901, New York: Leiden, pp. Xxxiv –xliv, and also a short list of books published from 1815– 1934 in Ahmad J. and Aziz M. (1934), Afghanistan a Brief Survey, Kabul: Dar-ut-Talif, p. 129, and the India Office Records on Afghanistan in the British Library, at: http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/ asia/afghanistan/afghanistancollection/introduction.html. 5. Once the Afghan Government consolidated after 1930, especially during the reign of the Musahiban dynasty (1930 – 78), it undertook a major project to select a group of mainly Pashtun students from among the elite, with only few Tajiks and send them abroad for further education. They were mainly sent to the West, Russia and the American University of Beirut. A large number of these state beneficiaries have been actively promoting the official narrative and also play an active role in post-9/11 Afghanistan politics. Here I can mention some of them by name: Zalmay Khalilzad, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, Hasan Kawun Kakar, Anwarul Haq Ahadi and Ali Ahmad Jalali. 6. See Lee J.L. (1996), The Ancient Supremacy; Bukhara, Afghanistan, and Battle for Balkh, 1731– 1901, New York: Leiden, p. Xvii. He writes: ‘Afghanistan was

NOTES

7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

TO PAGES

96 –102

291

almost certainly a term coined by the English (Forster 1789) and was not in vogue even among officials in Calcutta until around the third decade of the nineteenth century.’ Forster G. (1798), A journey from Bengal to England: through the northern part of India, Kashmire, Afghanistan, and Persia, and into Russia, by the Caspian-Sea, Vol. 2, London: Printed for R. Faulder, New Bond Street, p. 64. Ibid., p. 74. Ibid., p. 77. I have to re-emphasise here that by Afghans he refers only to Pashtuns. Ibid., p. 82. Ibid., p. 89. Hopkins, B. D. (2008), The Making of Modern Afghanistan, London: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 13. He refers to the work of Elphinstone on Afghanistan as ‘the Elphinstonian Episteme’. Elphinstone M. (1815), An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 1, London: Longman, p. xix. Dupree L. (1973), Afghanistan, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, p. 55. Elphinstone M. (1815), An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 1, London: Longman, p. xxxv. Ibid., pp. 1 – 4. The Khootba is a part of the Mahommedan service, in which the king of the country is prayed for. Inserting a prince’s name in the Friday prayers, the Khootba, and inserting it on the current coin of a given realm, are reckoned in the East the most certain acknowledgement of sovereignty. Elphinstone M. (1815), An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 1, London: Longman, p. 113. Elphinstone M. (1815), An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 1, London: Longman, pp. 1 – 4. Ibid., p. 113. Ibid., p. 124, (my italics). Ibid., p. 124. Ibid., p. 125. Ibid., pp. 198– 9. Ibid., p. 201, (my italics). The myth of the origin of Pashtuns (Afghans) is controversial, but Elphinstone favours the Jewish origin of the Pashtuns and considers them to be one of the twelve lost tribes; a narrative widely accepted by the Pashtuns, he claims. He also narrates that there are claims by European writers that Afghans are Caucasian tribes. Based on the writings of Professor Dorn, he also mentions the following as possible origins of the Afghans: 1. Copts, 2. Jews, 3. Georgians, 4. Turks, 5. Moguls, 6. Armenians, 7. Indo-Scythians, 8. Medians, 9. Sogdians, 10. Persians, and 11. Indians. Dorn, according to Elphinstone, rationally concludes that Afghans are not traced to any tribe or country beyond their present seats, and the adjoining mountains. However, the concept of Aryan is

292

27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

NOTES

TO PAGES

102 –107

missing from all accounts of the origin of the Afghans he provides. For more details see: Elphinstone M. (1815), An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 1, London: Longman, pp. 205–9. Ibid., p. 203. See ibid., p. 253. Elphinstone M. (1815) An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 2, London: Longman, pp. 242– 77. Elphinstone M. (1815), An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 1, London: Longman, pp. 204 – 5. He comes with the idea of Afghanistan being divided between two empires i.e. India and Persia. A similar narrative has developed in the official historiography of Afghanistan at a later stage, as I explained in the previous chapter, which argues that the independent state of Afghanistan was divided between three invaders i.e. Indian Mughals, Persian Safavids and Uzbek Shaybanids in the north. There is a possibility that the idea has been copied from Elphinstone. However, the official discourse employs a distorted version of the narrative to anchor the nodal point of invasion and resistance, while Elphinstone provides a descriptive account of what had happened to the regions where Afghans (Pashtuns) were living, rather than talking about Afghanistan as a political entity or as we understand it today. Elphinstone M. (1815) An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 1, London: Longman, p. 205, (my italics). Ibid., p. 279. Ibid., p. 281. Ibid., p. 281. Ibid., p. 281. See ibid., pp. 282– 85. A crude system of customary law based on principles such as one would suppose to have prevailed before the institution of civil government. Ibid., p. 220. Elphinstone M. (1815) An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 1, London: Longman, p. 222. Ibid., p. 280. If today’s Afghanistan is struggling to understand and accommodate the meaning of democracy, attributing or even calling a primitive tribal local rule, or the Jirga a democratic institution, either demonstrates one’s ignorance or misunderstanding of the case at hand. Ibid., pp. 330– 1. Wilson, H. H. (1841), Ariana Antiqua: A Descriptive Account of the Antiquities and Coins of Afghanistan, London: East India Company, and Bellew, H. W. (1879) Afghanistan and the Afghans: being a brief review of the history of the country, and account of its people, with a special reference to the present crisis and war with the Amir Sher Ali Khan, London: Gilbert and Rivington Printer, Bellew, H. W. (1880), The Races of Afghanistan, being a brief account of the principle nations inhabiting that country, India: Culcatta, and Bellew, H. W. (1891), An Enquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan, London: The Oriental University Institute.

NOTES

TO PAGES

109 –115

293

42. Gregorian V. (1969) The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880– 1946, California: Stanford University Press, p. 4. 43. Ibid., p. 4. 44. To show the power of the colonial knowledge, and the importance of Elphinstone’s work Hopkins uses the term ‘hegemonic text’, see: Hopkins, B. D. (2008), The Making of Modern Afghanistan, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 14–15. 45. Gregorian V. (1969) The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880 –1946, California: Stanford University Press, p. 4. In counting the recent historical publications he refers to historical works done by historians such as Ghubar, Benawa, and Fofalzai under the auspices of the Afghan government. See ibid., pp. 410– 13. 46. Ibid., pp. 345– 6. Ghubar, under the influence of state-sponsored nationalism, constructs a false image and history, which does not exist. The Afghans have entered the history in the eighteenth century as a tribal force, and Afghanistan was created as a post-colonial nation state in the 1880s. To attribute the contributions of other ethnicities or the wider civilizational region to a single nation state is in itself a recipe for radical antagonism and conflict. 47. Ibid., pp. 347– 8. 48. Ibid., p. 346. 49. He narrates that some argue that Ghurids were the first Afghan dynasty to rule over Afghanistan, but in the footnote he adds that there are studies indicating that they were not Afghans. See p. 15. 50. Gregorian V. (1969) The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880 – 1946, California: Stanford University Press, pp. 10 – 21. 51. Ibid., p. 21. 52. Ibid., p. 29. 53. Ibid., p. 43. 54. Ibid., pp. 45 – 46. 55. See ibid., p. 30 and 46. 56. Afghan writers and historians, in order to Afghanize or Pashtunize the process of modernization, and claim that it was a purely internal invention, attribute it to Sayed Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and the steps taken by Sher Ali. For details see ibid., pp. 86 – 87. 57. See ibid., pp. 129– 61. 58. See ibid., pp. 40 – 42. 59. See ibid., p. 259. 60. Ibid., pp. 275– 92. A good sign of him being influenced by the official narrative is his approach to the reign of Habibullah Kalakani (1928 – 1929); as he discusses his reign under the pejorative title of: Bacha-i-Saqao, (son of water carrier) the Bandit Amir. This is a very sensitive issue in Afghanistan, and a good case at hand to demonstrate at its best the power-knowledge relations, and how the dominant power can initiate a discourse using the entire

294

61. 62. 63. 64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80.

81.

82.

NOTES

TO PAGES

115 –122

ideological tools at its disposal to discredit someone or an historical era. Kalakani as a Tajik, has been portrayed a Bandit Amir and his region as one of the worst in the entire bloodiest history of Afghanistan. One can observe from reading the English literature covering his period, the influence of what has been constructed by the Afghan state and then copied by Western writers or researchers. Dupree L. (1973), Afghanistan, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, p. xxi. Ibid., p. xvii. Ibid. It is true that the Ghaznavid dynasty ruled over the region, and their centre was in Ghazni, which is located in today’s Afghanistan, but for sure they were not Afghans (Pashtuns). Hence it is not accurate, but entirely misleading to claim that it was an indigenous Afghan kingdom; in the sense we perceive the term and its connotations under the new nation state system. Dupree L. (1973), Afghanistan, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, p. xviii. Ibid., p. Xix. Ibid., pp. 55 – 67. Ibid., pp. 255– 316. Singh G. (1959), Ahmad Shah Durrani Father of Modern Afghanistan, Bombay: Asia Publication House, to which I will refer in some detail. Dupree L. (1973), Afghanistan, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, p. xix. Ibid., p. xix. Ibid., p. xx. See ibid., pp. 421, 469, 460, 492, and 539. Ibid., p. 333. See footnote no. 13, p. 333. Ibid., p. 319. See Rubin B. (2002), The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, Yale University Press, pp. 1 – 21. It is worth mentioning here that Rubin spent time in Peshawar-Pakistan, and wrote most of his books and articles at the time of the Russian invasion and the national resistance against the Russian and the Kabul regime. Hence, one can see the trace of resistance and resilience in his account of Afghanistan. Rubin B. (2002), The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, Yale University Press, p. 45. Ibid., p. 42. The term emergency Loya Jirga is now widely used by both Afghan and non-Afghan writers. However, I did not notice the term in the Pashto or Persian literature prior to the 1980s. Ibid., p. 51. He has remained a strong supporter of Loya Jirga under the auspices of the former king to resolve the Afghan conflict. He also played an important role in the transitional process, and the convention of an Emergency Loya Jirga (2002) and Constitutional Loya Jirga (2003) in postBonn Afghanistan. Dorronsoro G. (2000), Revolution Understanding; Afghanistan: 1979 to the Present, London: Hurst and Company, pp. 23 – 26.

NOTES

TO PAGES

123 –124

295

83. Ewans M. (2002), Afghanistan: A Short History of Its People and Politics, London: HarperCollins, pp. 30–37. 84. See ibid., pp. 15–28, and the section dealing with the early history of Afghanistan and also sections dealing with the British and Russian invasions. There are some major works on Afghanistan at this phase, but because of time and space I could not refer to them: e.g. Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan (1990) by Oliver Roy, and War, Politics and Society in Afghanistan, 1978– 92 (2000) by Antonio Giustozzi. 85. For instance see the Encyclopaedia Britannica on Afghanistan’s history and its founder Ahmad Shah Durrani: Ahmad Shah Durra¯nı¯ (born 1722?, Multa¯n, ˙ Punjab [now in Pakistan], or Hera¯t [now in Afghanistan; see Researcher’s Note]) – died Oct. 16/17, 1772, Toba Maʿru¯f, Afg.), founder of the state of Afghanistan and ruler of an empire that extended from the Amu Darya to the Indian Ocean and from Khora¯sa¯n into Kashmir, the Punjab, and Sindh. http:// www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/10162/Ahmad-Shah-Durrani. Also see the British Library under the title of: Afghanistan 1600– 1747: Sources in the India Office Records. http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/ afghanistan/afghanistancollection/1600to1747/sources1600to1747.html. Also see the CIA World Factbook, where it states: Ahmad Shah DURRANI unified the Pashtun tribes and founded Afghanistan in 1747. The country served as a buffer between the British and Russian Empires until it won independence from British control in 1919. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.htmltop. 86. See for instance the articles in Foreign Affairs at: http://www.foreignaffairs. com/articles/57411/milton-bearden/afghanistan-graveyard-of-empires (accessed on 25/08/2012). 87. Here is the full list of the books the authors had access to in Kabul-Afghanistan or British India at the time of writing the book: Bellew, H.W (1879), Afghanistan and the Afghans, London, Bellew, H.W (1880), The Races of Afghanistan, Lahore. Curzon, Hon. G. N. (1889), Russia in Central Asia, London, Durand, Sir H.M. (1879), First Afghan War, Daly, Mrs. Kate. (1905), Eight years among the Afghans, London, Elphinstone, Hons. M. (1815), An Account of the Kingdom of Cabool and its Dependencies, London, Ferrier (1858), History of the Afghans, Forbes, A. (1892), The Afghan War 1839– 42 & 1878– 80, London, Furon, R. (1926) L’Afghanistan, Paris, G. T., (1901), At the court of the Ameer, London, Hamilton, Agnus (1906), Afghanistan, London, Hanna, Col, H.B. (1899), The Second Afghan War, London, Heusman, (1881), The Afghan War, London, Holditch, Col, T. H. (1901), Indian Borderland, London, Katrak, Sorab K. H. (1929), Through Amanullah’s Afghanistan, Karachi, Kaye (1878), History of the War in Afghanistan 2 volumes, LaCoste, B. de. (1909), Around Afghanistan, London, MacMahon, A. H. (1897), The Southern Boderlands of Afghanistan, London, Macmunn, Sir G.M. (1929), Afghanistan from Darius to Amanullah, London, Malleson, G. B. (1879), History of Afghanistan 2nd Edition, Martin, F.A. (1907) Under the Absolute Emir, London, Megregor (1871),

296

88. 89. 90. 91.

92.

93.

NOTES

TO PAGES

124 –127

Gazetteer of Afghanistan, Morrish, C. (1930), Afghanistan in the Melting Pot, Lahore, Niedermeyer, O. Von. (1924), Afghanistan, Leipzig, Niedermeyer, O. Von. (1920) L’Afghanistan Nonveav, Paris, Noyce. F. (1902), England, India & Afghanistan, London, Pennel, P.L (1911), Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier, London, Robertson (1890), The Kaffirs of the Hindukush, Shah, S.I.A. (1928), Afghanistan of the Afghans, London, Shah, S.I.A (1933), The Tragedy of Amanullah, London, Scott, G.B. (1929), Afghan and Pathan, London, Starr, L.A. (1921), Frontier Folk of the Afghan Border, London, Sultan Mahomed Khan. (1900), The Life of Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, 2 vols, London, Sultan Mahomed Khan (1910), Constitution and Laws of Afghanistan, London, Tate, G.P., (1911), The Kingdom of Afghanistan, Bombay, Thornton, Mr.& Mrs. (1910), Leaves from an Afghan Scrap and Laws, Trinkler, E. (1925), Quer durch Afghanistan nach Indien (English Translation by B.K. Featherstone), Trinkler, E. (1928), Through the Heart of Afghanistan, London, Vavilov, N.l. (1929), Agricultural Afghanistan, Bukinich, D.D. (English Summary), Leningrad, Yate, Major C.E. (1888), Northern Afghanistan, Wilde.,(1932), Amanullah Khan, London. Imperial Gazetter of India, Afghanistan and Nepal (1908), Parliamentary Papers, Afghanistan (1873 – 1899), The Second Afghan War, 1878 – 80, prepared in the Intelligence Branch of the Indian Army Headquarters, and The War with Afghanistan, 1919, prepared in the Intelligence Branch of the Indian Army Headquarters. See Appendix I. Ahmad J. and Aziz M. (1934), Afghanistan; a Brief Survey, Kabul: Dar-ut-Talif. Singh G. (1959), Ahmad Shah Durrani Father of Modern Afghanistan, Bombay: Asia Publication House, p. 19. The book is full of similar stores. Ibid., p. 26. For details see Singh, G. (1959), Ahmad Shah Durrani Father of Modern Afghanistan, Bombay: Asia Publication House, pp. 1924–35. On the relations between Ahmad Khan and Sabir Shah he narrates an interesting story, which, on one hand, shows the sort of sources on which he relies in narrating historical events, and on the other, indicates how PhD research was conducted at the time. ‘One day I went to the Darbar of Ahmad Shah. I saw that Ahmad Shah was sitting on his throne and a darvesh, naked from head to foot, with his body covered with dust, was lying in his lap. Very often he raised his hand to his ear and nose and, pulling them towards himself, said, “You see, O Afghan, I have made you a king.” And Ahmad Shah with his head bent down was talking to him in a most respectful manner. When I enquired of the people in the house the name of the darvesh they told me that he was called Sabir Shah.’ Ibid., p. 28. In my endeavour to locate non-Pashtun writers, I came across few notable names: Shahrani an Uzbek who has a critical approach to Afghanistan’s identity; Mousavi, a Hazara, who adopts a similar approach; from Tajiks I found Saikal who lacks a critical approach; and very recently Dr Shayeq’s book, who looks critically at some of the constructed myths in Afghanistan. Kakar, H.K. (1979), Government and Society in Afghanistan; The Reign of Amir Abd al-Rahman Khan, Texas: University of Texas Press, p. xvi.

NOTES

TO PAGES

127 –130

297

94. Ibid., p. 251, notice no.1. 95. Ibid., p. xvi. As I explain in chapter four, his description of Afghanistan in Herawi is not accurate. 96. Ibid., p. xvii. 97. Ibid., p. xix. 98. Ghani A. (1982) Production and Domination Afghanistan, 1747– 1901, PhD Thesis submitted to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Columbia University. 99. He criticizes Elphinstone for not mentioning the Ghilzai struggle prior to the Durrani revolt, and not discussing the details of two Loya Jirgas; one by Mir Wais and the second, which elected Ahmad Shah Durrani. See Misdaq N. (2006), Afghanistan Political Frailty and External Interference, London: Routledge, p. 12. 100. Misdaq N. (2006), Afghanistan Political Frailty and External Interference, London: Routledge, pp. 1 – 32. 101. Ibid., p. 42. 102. Ibid. 103. He argues that the Loya Jirga of 1747 was held at the request of Nur Mohammad Khan Alizai, Ahmad Khan’s fellow commander in the service of Nader Shah, to elect a new king. He writes: ‘The troops, Abdali, Ghilzai and a small Uzbek contingent, seeing the danger facing them all, accepted Nur Alizai’s proposals and under his leadership left for Kandahar. On the way to Kandahar they invited the elders of tribes and ethnic groups to a jirga that was to elect an Afghan king. That jirga, a landmark in modern Afghan history, was held “inside the military garrison of Nader Shah’s troops, in Shair-e-Surkh, in October 1747” (Wajdi 1986: 83). In addition to most Pashtun sub-tribes belonging to the Abdali and Ghilzai tribal confederacies, the jirga was also attended by other minorities such as Uzbek, Tajik, Baluch, Shi’ah Hazarah and Qizelbash. However, those who spoke with authority and wanted to be considered for the post of the king of Afghanistan were Pashtuns. Every participant tribal elder wanted to become king. They would get up and speak for hours on the importance of their tribe and their personal suitability for the post. ‘For a time it appeared that Pushtoon nationalism would be wrecked by tribal jealousies, since each of the chiefs was willing to advance his own candidacy but unwilling to support another’ (Fletcher 1965: 42). Ahmad Khan was the only delegate in the meeting who did not speak, but attended every day’s jirga. It is because of such rivalries and differences that the meeting lasted nine days. The clear favourite appeared to be a Haji Jamal Khan of Mohammadzai, a sub-tribe of the Abdali. Then on the ninth day, a holy man brought the jirga to an end. Pashtuns believe in holy men and saints. So it was not surprising when a holy man, Sabir Shahe-Kabuli (from Kabul), who had many followers in Kandahar, rose and said, ‘Why all this verbose talk? God has created Ahmad Khan, a much greater man than any of you; his is the noblest of all the Afghan families. Maintain, therefore, God’s works, for his wrath will

298

104. 105. 106. 107.

108.

NOTES

TO PAGES

130 –139

sway heavily upon you if you destroy it’ no one objected. Ibid., p. 43. For more details of an official narrative of Jirga and Loya Jirga also see: Jirga – A Traditional Mechanism of Conflict Resolution in Afghanistan, by Ali Wardak, University of Glamorgan, UK at: http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/ public/documents/apcity/unpan017434.pdf (accessed on 08/11/2012). Ibid., pp. 51 – 72. Saikal A. (2006), Modern Afghanistan; A History of Struggle and Survival, London: Tauris and Co Ltd, p. 4. Ibid., pp. 17 – 39. Here, I would like to briefly mention some of the works which I think fall under this category. The ‘Ancient Supremacy’; Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731– 1901, by J. L. Lee, The Making of Modern Afghanistan (2008) by B. D. Hopkins, State and Tribe in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan (1997), by Christine Noelle-Karimi, Afghanistan: A country without a State? (2002), edited by C. Noelle-Karrimi, Conrad Schetter, and Reinhard Schlagintweit, and Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (2010), by Thomas Barfield. In the Persian language, I can refer here to Dr Mehdi’s article on theories of stability and the issue of ethnicity in Afghanistan, to several articles and papers of Professor Abdul Khaliq Lalzad on the creation of Afghanistan, and the historical names of the country, and finally to new work by Aziz Arianfer on re-writing the history of Afghanistan. On works undertaken by Afghanistani writers in English, I can mention here; the extensive work of Professor M. Nazif Shahrani, The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical, Cultural, Economic and Political Study (1998), by Sayed Askar Mousavi, Editing the past: colonial production of hegemony through the “Loya Jirga” in Afghanistan (2009), by M. Jamil Hanifi, Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier (2008), and other articles by Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, and finally Afghanistan: Prospects for Stability in Relation to Geostrategic Dynamics in Central and South Asia (2007) PhD Thesis by Ahmad Shayeq Qassem. It is worth noting that the government at that time, besides colonial knowledge, also used the pre-colonial Persian and Arabic literature, but attempted to amend it in accordance with the newly constructed schema of historical and contemporary Afghanistan. Hence, any reference in the literature to Ariana, Iran, and Khurasan was changed to Afghanistan and Afghans to represent the newly constructed post-colonial identity as opposed to the ‘others’ in the region.

Chapter 4 Historiographies, Treaties, Cartographies and Atlases: Problematizing the Official Discourse of State Formation in Afghanistan 1. For details on Al-e Kort see Encyclopaedia Iranica at: http://www.iranicaonline. org/articles/al-e-kart-or-perhaps-al-e-kort-an-east-iranian-dynas ty-643-791-1245-1389 (accessed on 23/07/2012).

NOTES

TO PAGES

139 –143

299

2. Herawi, Saif ibn Mohammad ibn Yaqub (1321), Tarikh Namae Herat [History of Herat] Tehran: Asatir Publications, second edition (1385), pp. 202 –3. 3. Ibid., pp. 253 – 4. 4. Timur (1404), Tuzuk-i Timuri, Bombay: Matba-e Nami-e Fathul Karim, p. 61. See the manuscript of the book at: http://dl.ical.ir/UI/ 165669d6-1150-46a3-86cf-5cb046b19052/Catalogue.aspx (accessed on 05/03/2012). 5. Ibid., pp. 72 – 74. 6. Babur, Zahuruddin Mohammad, translated by Annette Susannah Beveridge in 2 volumes (1530), The Babur-Nama in English [Memories of Babur], London: Luzac and Co. Vol. 1, pp. 199– 200. 7. Ibid., p. 218. 8. Ibid., p. 223. 9. Ferishta, M. K. (1609), Tarikh-i Ferishta, Tehran: Anjoman-e Asar wa Mafakhire Farhangi (1387), Vol. 1, pp. 55– 58. 10. Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi is one of the most important historical texts that narrates the official account of Ahmad Shah Durrani’s kingdom. It begins with how he claimed the throne and ends with his death and the story of his succession. In a systematic order it covers 26 years of Ahmad Shah’s reign in detail. The original manuscript of the book was kept in Russia and it was only in 1974 that it was published in Afghanistan. Hence there is a strong argument, as mentioned in the first chapter of the book, that the narrative or the picture this book presents contradicts the official discourse and the semiofficial historiography on the events that took shape during the reign of Ahmad Shah Durrani, especially on the account of the formation and establishment of the first Afghan state. The only historian who has taken full account of the book is Mir Mohammad Sediq Fahang, in his famous history book: Afghanistan Dar Panj Qarn Akheer [Afghanistan in the Past Five Centuries] (1988), and few others, which means the rest of historians had no access to this credible source. A reasonably well-edited version of the book with a full index came out only in 2007. The previous editions lack clarity and some of the researchers have even visited Russia to see the original manuscript i.e. S.M. Hanifi. 11. Mahmod ul Hossaini ibn Ibrahim Jami (1773), Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi, [History of Ahmad Shah], Teheran: Erfan Publications (2007), pp. 50– 61. 12. Ahmad Shah Durani was inspired by Tarikh-i Jehangushai Naderi [History of Nadir’s Conquests] by Mirza Mehdi Khan Esterabadi, and asked one of his students Mahmod ul Hossaini ibn Ibrahim Jami to write the book similar to that of his master Esterabadi. 13. Jalali, Ghulam Jailani (2004), Nama-yi Ahmad Shah Baba ba Nam-i Sultan Mustafa Salas Usmani [Letter of Ahmad Shah, the Father, to Sultan Mustafa III of Ottoman], Peshawar: Danish Library. The Persian letter is published and edited from a manuscript preserved in the national archives in

300

NOTES

TO PAGES

143 –144

Istanbul-Turkey by Jalali under the auspices of the Association of History in 1967 Kabul-Afghanistan. 14. See Unknown writer, (982), Hudud al-’Alam, Tehran: Chapkhana-e Daneshgahi al Zahra, second edition (1385), and Abu¯ al-Rayha¯n Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Bı¯ru¯nı¯ (1029), Al-Tafhim, Tehran: Chapkhana-e Sazman wa Chape Wezarate Farhang was Ershade Islami Iran, fifth edition (1386). 15. For more detail please see the following primary sources: Herawi, Saif ibn Mohammad ibn Yaqub (1321), Tarikh Namae Herat [History of Herat] Tehran: Asatir Publications, second edition (1385), Timur (1404), Tuzuk-i Timuri, Bombay: Matba-e Nami-e Fathul Karim, Hafiz Abru (1427), Zubdat alTawarikh, Tehran: Chapkhana-e Sazman wa Chape Wezarate Farhang was Ershade Islami Iran (1380), Kamaluddin Abdul-Razzaq Samarqandi (1470), Matla us-Sadain wa Majma ul-Bahrain, Tehran: Mosasae Mutaliat wa Tahqiqat-e Farhangi (Pozhohesgah) wabasta ba Wezarate Amozish-e Ali (1383), Moinuddin Mohammad Zamchi Asafzari (1494), Rozatul ul-Janat fe Aosafe Madenatul Herat, Tehran: Entesharate Daneshgahi Tehran (1338), Mohammad ibn Khawan Shah ibn Mahmood ‘Mir Khawand’ (1497), Rozat ulSafa fe Siratul Anbia wa al-Moluk wa al-Khulafa, Tehran: Asatir Publications, Babur, Zahuruddin Mohammad, translated by Annette Susannah Beveridge in 2 volumes (1530), The Babur-Nama in English [Memories of Babur], London: Luzac and Co. Vol. 1, pp. 199– 200, Ferishta, M. K. (1609), Tarikh-i Ferishta, Tehran: Anjoman-e Asar wa Mafakhire Farhangi (1387), Vol. 1, Niʻmat Alla¯h Herawi (1613), Tarı¯kh-i Kha¯n Jaha¯nı¯ wa Makhzan-i Afgha¯nı¯ (ed.) S. M. Imamuddin, Pakistan: Ashiya¯tic Su¯saytı¯ a¯f Pa¯kista¯n, 1960, and Mahmod ul Hossaini ibn Ibrahim Jami (1773), Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi, [History of Ahmad Shah], Teheran: Erfan Publications. 16. Other important primary sources available in the Persian language from the post-colonial period covering the reign of Ahmad Shah Durrani and the subsequent events are: Tarikh-i Ahmad [History of Ahmad] (1850) by Munshi Mohammad Abdul Karim, describing the life and achievements of Ahmad Shah Durrani. This book was written and printed in India at the time of the British engagement in Khurasan. Tarikh-i Sultani [History of the King] (1864) by Sultan Mohammad Khan Ibn Musa Khan Durrani, which covers the history of the Pashtuns from their genealogical beginning to the first AngloAfghan war. Gulshan-i Imarat [Rosary of the Government] (1870) by Nur Mohammad Nuri from Kandahar mainly covers the reign of Shir Ali Khan. Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi Durrani or Tarikh-i Durranian [The History of Ahmad Shah Durrani or The Durrani History] (1885) compiled and translated by Seyed Hossein Shirazi, covers the events in Afghanistan from 1747 to 1826. Tarikh-i Padshahan-i Mutaakhir [History of the Late Kings of Afghanistan] (1907) by Mirza Yaqub Ali Khafi discussing the events from 1800 to 1880; and Ain al-Waqayi [The Real Events] (1905) by Mohammad Yusuf Riyazi Harawai mainly discusses the events from 1792 – 1906. For details of resources available in Farsi/Persian about the region from 1800 to 1880

NOTES

17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26.

27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

TO PAGES

144 –150

301

also see Noelle C. (1997), State and Tribe in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan; the Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826 – 1863), London: Curzon Press, pp. Xviii – xxiv. By post-colonial sources here I mean that they were written or produced after the arrival of colonialism in the region, and the content of these sources are influenced by the colonial knowledge. Munshi Mohammad Abdul Karim (1850), Tarikh-i Ahmad [History of Ahmad], Bombay: Karkhana-yi Mohammadi, pp. 1– 7. Ibid., pp. 26 and 36. Merza, Ali Quli (1857), Tarikh-i waqayea wa sawaneh-i Afghanistan [History of Events and Biography of Afghanistan] Tehran: Entesharate Amir Kabir (1997), pp. 24 – 36. Durrani, Sultan Mohammad Khan Ibn Musa Khan (1864), Tarikh-i sultani [History of the King] (1864), Bombay: Karkhana-yi Mohammadi, p. 8. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., pp. 122– 3. There is a similarity between this narrative and Ghubar’s, which indicates that Ghubar may have copied his narrative from him, but with inventing and adding the concept of Loya Jirga (grand assembly), nine days of democratic deliberations, and finally choosing an arbiter to select/elect the king. It is argued that Ghubar has contributed greatly to the promotion of these newly constructed images by writing the book Ahmad Shah Baba, which was later translated into Russian. Then the book opened its way to the Western literature. I will come to this point when problematizing the nodal point of Loya Jirga in the next chapter. The translator of the book claims that an Indian had written a book on the History of Ahmad Shah Durrani, but he had mixed the Persian with Hindi, hence he decided to translate the book to pure Persian. The editor claims that the book is different from that of Tarikh-i Ahmad [History of Ahmad] (1850), by Munshi Mohammad Abdul Karim. But when I compared the two texts, they appear to be both the same, the only difference one can notice is the purification of the language which makes the latter more fluent. Shirazi, Seyed Hossein (1885), Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi Durrani or Tarikh-i Durranian [The History of Ahmad Shah Durrani or The Durrani History], Tehran: Foreign Ministry Publications (2000), pp. 45 –50. Aitchison C. U, B.C.S, A Collection Of Treaties, Engagements and Sanads: VolXIII Relating To Persia And Afghanistan, Calcutta: Government of India Central Publication Branch (1933), pp. 203– 32. Ibid., p. 233. Ibid., p. 234. Ibid., pp. 235– 6. Ibid., p. 237. Ibid., p. 239. Ibid., p. 240.

302

NOTES

TO PAGES

150 –155

34. Ibid., pp. 245– 282. This part of the collection details the commissions, negotiations and procedures of how the demarcation began and ended to create a buffer state. 35. Ibid., pp. 257–8. See details of the two treaties signed on 11 November 1893 and 12 November 1893, one on finalizing the eastern border of Afghanistan and the second on retaining the control over Afghanistan’s foreign relations. 36. Ibid., p. 283. 37. Ibid., p. 287. 38. In English, especially on the occasion of celebrating Afghanistan’s independent day in Afghanistan diplomatic missions, officially they write ‘Independent Day’, but in Farsi or Pashto they write ‘reclaiming the independence of Afghanistan’. 39. http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Geography/persian.gulf/persian_gulf_ historical_maps.htm (accessed on 20/02/2013). 40. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/afghanistan.html (accessed on 20/02/2013). 41. http://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/schwartzberg/toc.html?issue¼ (accessed on 20/02/2013). 42. South and Southeast Asian Studies at: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/ indiv/southasia/cuvl/maps.html and http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/ pritchett/00maplinks/ (accessed on 20/02/2013). 43. Schwartzberg, Joseph E. (ed.) (1992), A Historical Atlas of South Asia, Oxford University Press. 44. To obtain the maps I visited the following sources, including Elphinstone’s maps in his book: An Account of the Kingdom of Cabual, and the map by Laurence Lockhart in his famous book: The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia (1958), London: Cambridge, where he illustrates Persia in the eighteenth century. 45. http://www.bergbook.com/htdocs/Cache319.htm (accessed on 20/02/2013). 46. For details see: http://www.worldhistorymaps.info/Maps.html#Primeval_ maps and http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00maplinks/colonial/ wilkinsonmaps/asia1808/northmax.jpg and http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ historical/shepherd/asia_mediaeval_commerce.jpg and http://www.lib.utexas. edu/maps/historical/asia_1808.jpg (accessed on 20/02/2013). 47. Schwartzberg, Joseph E. (ed.) (1992), A Historical Atlas of South Asia, Oxford University Press, p. 52. 48. Ibid., p. 63. In this map events related to the fixing of modern South Asian frontiers between 1857– 1935 are discussed. 49. http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/india/rigveda.html (accessed on 20/02/2013). 50. http://www.avesta.org/gathas.htm (accessed on 20/02/2013). 51. Strabo (1854), The Geography of Strabo, Literally Translated, with Notes by H.C. Hamilton, ESQ & W. Falconer. London: Henry G. Bohn, Vol. (1), p. 121.

NOTES

TO PAGES

156 –170

303

52. Wilson, H. H. (1841), Ariana Antiqua: A Descriptive Account of the Antiquities and Coins of Afghanistan with a Memoir on the Buildings called Topes by C. Masson, Esq, London: East India Company, p. 120. 53. Wilson, H. H. (1841), Ariana Antiqua: A Descriptive Account of the Antiquities and Coins of Afghanistan with a Memoir on the Buildings called Topes by C. Masson, Esq, London: East India Company, pp. 120– 121. 54. Ibid., p. 122. 55. Ibid., p. 121. 56. Ibid., p. 122. 57. Bellew, H. W. (1891), An Enquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan, London: The Oriental University Institute, p. 3. 58. See Kohzad, Ali Ahmad ([1941] 2007) Ariana, [Ariana], second Edition, Kabul: Entesharate Amiri. 59. Encyclopaedia Britannica, at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/ 316850/Khorasan (accessed on 20/02/2013). 60. Malcolm, John (1815), The History of Persia: from the most early period to the present time: containing an account of the religion, government, usages, and character of the inhabitants of that kingdom, Vol. (1), London: John Murray, pp. 1– 2. 61. Khurasan became very important and prominent after the arrival of Islam in the region. Hence majority of the dynasties are recorded as the rulers of Khurasan taking into account their close relations with the centre of the Islamic Caliphate.

Chapter 5 Dislocation, Diversification and Decolonization of the Official Discourse of State Formation in Afghanistan 1. Lee, J. L. (1996), The ‘Ancient Supremacy’; Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731– 1901, New York, Koln: E.J Brill and Leiden, p. xxxiv. 2. Ibid., p. xviii. 3. See ibid., pp. 1 – 92. 4. Ibid., p. xiii. 5. Ibid., p. xiv. 6. Ibid. 7. See also Sebastian, T. W. (1988), The Buffer State and the Buffer System: With Reference to Afghanistan 1881 – 1947, MPhil Thesis presented at the Department of Political Science, University of Hong Kong. This thesis provides a good insight into how the rivalry of the two empires and their security concerns paved the way for the creation of Afghanistan as a buffer state. 8. Lee, J. L. (1996), The ‘Ancient Supremacy’; Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731– 1901, New York, Koln: E.J Brill and Leiden, p. xv. See also the chapter on ‘The Myth of the Great Game’ in Hopkins, B. D. (2008), The Making of Modern Afghanistan, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 34 – 60.

304 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

NOTES

TO PAGES

171 –180

Ibid., p. xv. Ibid. Ibid., p. xix. For details of this mythology and how they perceived the Oxus river as the border of Iran and Turan, one as civilized and the other as barbarian in ancient times, see also the introduction of Davis in Ferdowsi Abolqasem (2006), Shahnameh: the Persian Book of Kings, translated by Dick Davis, USA: Penguin Group. For details see Lee, J. L. (1996), The ‘Ancient Supremacy’; Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731– 1901, New York, Koln: E.J Brill and Leiden, pp. xix – xx. See ibid., p. xxi. Ibid., p. xxiii. Ibid., pp. xxv –xxix. Ibid., pp. xxxi – xxxii, also see pp. 335– 7. Ibid., p. xxxvii. Ibid., pp. xxxviii – x. For details of contextualization of Balkh, Bukhara and the north of today’s Afghanistan in the course of history and how the region developed see: McChesney, R.D. (1973), Waqf at Balkh: A Study of the Endowments at the Shrine of ?Alı¯ Ibn Abı¯ Ta¯lib, PhD Thesis, University of Princeton, Department of Near Eastern Studies, and also McChesney, R.D; (1991), Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine, 1480 –1889, Princeton University Press. For more information about Hopkins and his background as Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs in George Washington University please visit: http://elliott.gwu.edu/faculty/hopkins.cfm. Hopkins, B. D. (2008), The Making of Modern Afghanistan, London: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 1. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., pp. 2 – 3. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 11, (my italics). Elphinstone later produced his much celebrated multi-volume work on India; the History of India (1866) while he was governor of Bombay. In this case, An Account of the Kingdom of Caboul has served as a rehearsal for him to write the history of India. Among others, he pays attention in his book to names such as William Moorcroft, Charles Masson, and Alexander Burnes. Hopkins, B. D. (2008), The Making of Modern Afghanistan, p. 23. For details see ibid., pp. 11– 33. In another part of his book Hopkins states: ‘Afghanistan is a state whose boundaries were delimited by neighbouring colonial powers in their totality. Like many other societies faced with the

NOTES

32. 33.

34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

TO PAGES

180 –185

305

juggernaut of imperialism, the Afghans were given little choice but to adopt the forms dictated by European political theory and practice. But, unlike societies with direct experience of colonial governance, the Afghans were expected to construct an European-like state without such familiarity’ (p. 84). He further elaborates: ‘Afghanistan’s borders were defined by the British and Russians in a space of roughly twenty years at the end of the nineteenth century. Afghans, or rather representatives of the Afghan state, were often intentionally excluded from this process of boundary demarcation, and thus the genesis of the Afghan state as a territorial entity. Afghan rulers, dependent on the British subsidy from the mid-nineteenth through to the early twentieth century, were expected to act within the limits deemed acceptable by the colonial state. When they exceeded these, the British demonstrated themselves willing to intervene, even if their interventions proved both costly and ineffectual in terms of the accomplishment of British aims and protection of their interests. More broadly though, as the Afghans were subsumed into an international system shaped by European empires, they were expected to act in accordance with the forms of that system. The international system which took root in the nineteenth century left little space for non-state actors in the interstate realm’ (Ibid., p. 169). See ibid., pp. 88 – 96, and for his references see notes 15 and 16 on Chapter 4, pp. 200 –1. Noelle, C. (1997), State and Tribe in Nineteenth Century Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826 – 1863), London: Curzon, pp. 15 – 16 and 302 to see her references. In regard to Jirga and its political role, a close look at Noelle’s article on Jirga, to which I come at the end of this chapter, shows the opposite. For more information about Christine Noelle-Karimi as Researcher at the Institute of Iranian Studies please visit: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/iran/german/ noelle-karimi_christine.html. Noelle, C. (1997), State and Tribe in Nineteenth Century Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826 – 1863), London: Curzon, pp. xiii –xvi. Ibid., p. xxiv. See ibid., p. 230. Ibid., p. xvii. See Barfield, T. (2010), Afghanistan: A cultural and Political History, Princeton University Press, p. 1. See ibid., pp. 98 – 99. See ibid., pp. 146– 55. Ibid., pp. 155 – 6. Ibid., pp. 159 – 62. For more information about Professor Shahrani in Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University please visit: http://www.indiana.edu/, ceus/faculty/shahrani.shtml (accessed on 15/03/2013).

306

NOTES

TO PAGES

185 –195

45. Shahrani, M. Nazif (1986), “State Building and Social Fragmentation in Afghanistan: A Historical Perspective”, in Ali Babuazizi and Myron Weiner (eds), The State, Religion, and Ethnic Politics: Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, p. 25. 46. Ibid., p. 39. 47. Shahrani, M. Nazif (2009), “Afghanistan to 1919: From Durrani Empire to a Buffer State, in Chase F. Robinson”, in the New Cambridge History of Islam, Vol. 5, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 207. He also explicitly asserts: ‘Afghanistan as a territorially defined buffer state between British India and Tsarist Russia, with its current boundaries, however, took shape during the last two decades of the nineteenth century’ (Ibid., p. 203). 48. Shahrani, M. Nazif (1998), “The Future of the State and the Structure of Community Governance in Afghanistan”, in William Maley (ed.), Fundamentalism Reborn? London: C. Hurst & Co., p. 224. 49. Shahrani, M. Nazif (1998), “Resisting the Taliban and Talibanism in Afghanistan: Legacies of A Century of Internal Colonialism and Cold War Politics in A Buffer State”, Perceptions, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. (4): 121– 140. By the right of self-expression, he means cultural, economic and military ability of non-Pashtun ethnic groups in post-dislocation Afghanistan, which enabled them to challenge the established authority and rise to demand full political participation. 50. Mousavi, S. A. (1998), The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical, Cultural, Economic and Political Study, London: Curzon, pp. xiv – xv. 51. Ibid., p. 2. 52. Ibid., p. 4. 53. Historically this is not correct, as indicated in the previous chapter, Kandahar was a separate province or entity from that of Afghanistan mainly inhibited by Tajiks and other ethnic groups until it was taken forcefully at a later stage. 54. See ibid., pp. 1 – 5. 55. Ibid., p. 6. 56. Ibid., p. 8. 57. Ibid., p. 9. 58. Mousavi, S. A. (1998), The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical, Cultural, Economic and Political Study, London: Curzon, p. 14. 59. In that exception he mentions Schuyler Jones (1967, 1974), on Nuristan, Robert Canfield (1973) on the socio-religious structure and relation of people in Bamiyan, Klaus Ferdinand (1962, 1963, 1965, 1969) on nomadism in Afghanistan, Nazif Shahrani (1979), Haqshinas (1984) and Farhang (1992). 60. Ibid., pp. 15 – 16. 61. Pervanta, A. (2002), “Afghanistan-Land of the Afghans? On the Genesis of a Problematic State Denomination”, in (eds) C. Noelle-Karimi, Conrad Schetter, Reinhard Schlagintweit, Afghanistan: A country without a State?, Frankfurt, London: IKO. 62. Ibid., p. 22.

NOTES

TO PAGES

195 –199

307

63. See ibid., pp. 17 – 25. 64. For more information about Hanifi as Associate Professor of History at James Madison University please visit: http://web.jmu.edu/history/faculty/hanifi. html 65. Hanifi, S. M. (2008), Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier, Colombia University Press, p. 8. 66. Ibid., 25. 67. See Hanifi, S. M. (2004), “Impoverishing a Colonial Frontier: Cash, Credit, and Debt in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan”, Iranian Studies, volume 37, number 2, June. 68. See Hanifi, S. M. (2005), “Material and Social Remittances to Afghanistan”, Asian Development Bank, available online at: http://www.adb.org/Documents/ Books/Converting-Migration-Drains-Gains/ChapterIV.pdf, p. 99 (accessed on 23/03/2013). 69. See Shah Mahmoud Hanifi (2009), “Epistemological Quandaries of the Afghan Nation: Mobility, Territoriality and The Other”, Paper presented in a Seminar held in Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University. For detail see at: http://www.jmu.edu/bethechange/stories/hanifi.shtml (accessed on 23/02/2012). 70. Ibid., p. 3. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid., p. 4. 73. Ibid., p. 5. 74. Ibid., p. 6. 75. He refers to Sir William Jones, who according to Encyclopaedia Britannica (born 28 September 1746, London – died 27 April 1794, Calcutta), a ‘British Orientalist and jurist who did much to encourage interest in Oriental studies in the West. Of Welsh parentage, he studied at Harrow and University College, Oxford (1764 –68), and learned Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian. By the end of his life, he had learned 28 languages, including Chinese, often by teaching himself. After several years in translating and scholarship, he turned, for financial reasons, to the study of law and was called to the bar in 1774. Meanwhile, he did not give up Orientalism. His Grammar of the Persian Language (1771) was authoritative in the field for a long time. His Moallakaˆt (1782), a translation of seven famous pre-Islamic Arabic odes, introduced these poems to the British public. In 1783 he was knighted and sailed for Calcutta as judge of the Supreme Court. In 1784 he founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal to encourage Oriental studies. He himself took up Sanskrit, to equip himself for the preparation of a vast digest of Hindu and Muslim law. Of this uncompleted venture, his Institutes of Hindu Law was published in 1794 and his Muhammedan Law of Inheritance in 1792. In his 1786 presidential discourse to the Asiatic Society, he postulated the common ancestry of Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek, his findings providing the impetus for the development of comparative linguistics in

308

76. 77. 78.

79. 80.

81.

82.

83.

NOTES TO PAGES 199 –205 the early 19th century.’ Available online at: http://www.britannica.com/ EBchecked/topic/305993/Sir-William-Jones (accessed on 23/03/2013). He is well known for his proposition of the relationship between Indo-European languages, which subsequently lead to the categorization of all languages into some large families. Ibid., p. 7. I will discuss the possibility and characteristics of such a discourse in the last chapter of the thesis. Qassem, A. S. (2007), Afghanistan: Prospects for Stability in Relation to Geostrategic Dynamics in Central and South Asia, PhD Thesis submitted to the Australian National University. Michel Foucault (1981), ‘The Order of Discourse’, in R. Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A Poststructuralist Reader, Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 48 – 78. Here in particular he refers to the article by Ahady, A. (1995), ‘The Decline of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan,’ Asian Survey, Vol. 35, No. 7 (July), pp. 621– 634. Afghan Mellat is the Afghan Social Democratic Party, more commonly known as Afghan Mellat (Afghan Nation). It is a Pashtun nationalist political party. Controversially, the party’s leadership describes it as social democratic, but it is not recognized as such by the Socialist International. The Afghan Social Democratic Party was founded on 8 March 1966 by a group of influential bureaucrats associated with the ruling elites. Afghan Mellat looks after the interests of the Pashtun ethnic group and has its support only from them. The party favours the ideas of Pashtunization of Afghanistan and a Greater Afghanistan (i.e. it claims the Pashtun-speaking parts of Pakistan for Afghanistan. See also Jawad, N. (1992), Afghanistan: A Nation of Minorities, Minority Rights Group International, London, UK. Also available at: http://edoc.bibliothek. uni-halle.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/HALCoRe_derivate_00004267/ MRG_Afghan_1992.pdf (accessed on 23/02/2012). See Mehdi, M. (2007), Nazariyahai-e Tamin-e Sobat wa Hal-e Monasibat-e Tabari [Theories of Achieving Stability and the Solution of Ethnic Relations in Afghanistan], Kabul: Muslim Party of the People of Afghanistan, and also Mehdi, M. (2010), Goftoman-e Meli Afghanistan [The National Discourse of Afghanistan], Kabul: Amiri Publications. See Lalzad, A. K. (2006), Afghanistan Emorzi dar Naqshahai Deroz, [Today’s Afghanistan on Yesterday’s Maps], at: http://www.khorasanzameen.net/php/ pdf/alalzad04.pdf, Lalzad, A. K. (2007), Chgonagi Eijade Kishwari ba Name Afghanistan, [On the Creation of Afghanistan], at: http://www.khorasanzameen. net/history/alalzad01.pdf, Lalzad, A. K. (2008), Ba edama-e Chgonagi Eijade Kishwari ba Name Afghanistan, [Again on the creation of Afghanistan], at: http:// www.khorasanzameen.net/history/alalzad03.pdf, Lalzad, A. K. (2007), Bahsi peramone nam hayee tarikhi wa geoghrafeyaee derozi Ariayana, Iran, Pars was Khorasan, [On historical and geographical names of yesterday’s Ariana, Iran, Persia and Khurasan], at: http://www.khorasanzameen.net/history/alalzad02. pdf, Lalzad, A. K. (2010), on historical and geographical land and names of

NOTES TO PAGES 205 –210

84.

85.

86. 87.

88.

89.

90.

91.

309

Ariayans, Persia, Ariana, Iran and Khurasan in pre-Islamic sources, at: http:// www.khorasanzameen.net/history/alalzad06.pdf, and also Lalzad, A. K. (2011), on the same topics in post-Islamic sources at: http://www.khorasanzameen.net/ php/pdf/alalzad02.pdf. (all accessed on 23/03/2013). He is a well-known translator and political analyst, among other institutions he has worked since 2001 as the director of the Center for Strategic Studies (CSS) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and as the Ambassador to Kazakhstan. Arianfar, A. (2011), Lahzayaee az yad raftae tarikhe siyasi wa diplomacy Afghanistan: negahe degar ba tarikhe keshwar, [The Forgotten Moments of Political and Diplomatic History of Afghanistan; a different look at the history of the country], p. 21. At http://www.arianfar.com/books/ 2011062402.pdf (accessed on 23/03/2013). See ibid. Tarzi, S. R. (2011), Afghanistan: The Beautiful Ethnic Mosaic, available at: http://www.dawatfreemedia.org/english/index.php?mod¼ article&cat ¼ Articles&article ¼ 398, also Tarzi, S. R. (2009) Ma Wa Ostora wa Waqaiyat [We, Myths and Realities], available at: http://www.dawatfreemedia.org/ index.php?mod¼ article&cat ¼ %D9%85%D8%B7%D8%A7%D9% 84%D8%A8%D8%AF%D8%B1%DB%8C&article ¼ 1346, also Tarzi, S. R. (2010) Ostora dar Khitmate Howiyat wa Eqtedar Sazi [Utilizing Myths to Construct Identity and Authority], available at: http://www.payamewatan. com/Articles-10/r.tarzi240710.htm, and Tarzi, S. R (2007) Ma wa Frasoi-e Zamana wa Tarikh [We beyond History and Time], available at: http://www. kabulnath.de/Salae_Soum/Shoumare_59/s.tarzi-rahpoo.1.html. (All accessed on 20/04/2012). Pahlavan, C. (1998), Afghanistan: Asre Mujahidin wa baramadane Taliban, [Afghanistan: The age of Mujahidin and the Emergence of the Taliban], Tehran: Nashre Qatra, pp. 10– 12. In the last chapter of the thesis I provide more information about Pahlavan. It is surprising to see how they narrate the history under the same titles and sub-titles till it comes to the death of Nadir Afshar, then the Iranian official historiography constructs a new beginning and the establishment of the Durrani Empire marks the foundation of Afghanistan. In order to create social and political borders, I think it was necessary for both countries to accept this unofficial separation. Contrary to this claim, I think the real separation begins after the forceful integration of the region into the Euro-centric nation state system dictated and imposed by colonial powers. See for instance Razi, A. (1999), Tarikh-e Kamele Iran, [Complete History of Iran], Tehran: Chap wa Entesharate Iqbal, also see Peernia, H. (2001), Tarikh-e Iran az Aghaz ta enqeraze Sasaniyan, az sadre Islam ta enqeraze Qajaria [History of Iran from the disintegration of Sassanid, and from the beginning of Islam to the disintegration of Qajar] Tehran: Entesharate Behzad. Malcolm J. (1815), The History of Persia: from the most early period to the present time (2 volumes), London: John Murray.

310

NOTES

TO PAGES

211 – 224

92. I could not find or perhaps there is no critical literature on Loya Jirga, and this is why I had to reply on the work of these two scholars. 93. He spells ‘Jirga’, Jerga and ‘Pashtun’, ‘Paxtu’. 94. Hanifi, M. J. (2004), ‘Editing the past: colonial production of hegemony through the “Loya Jerga” in Afghanistan’, Iranian Studies, Vol. 37 No. 2, June 2004, p. 296. 95. By ideology he means the Gramscian view of the term as: ‘a conception of the world that is implicitly manifested in art, in law, in economic activity and in all manifestations of individual and collective life’ (Ibid., pp. 296 – 7). 96. Ibid., p. 297, as I mentioned, his choice of transcribing the Pashto language or Pashtun is “Paxtu”, which could be seen throughout his article. 97. Ibid., pp. 297– 298. 98. Contrary to Hanifi’s claim, it is evident that the word Jirga is not a Pashto word, rather it is a Farsi/Persian word, see very well reputed Dehkhoda, Moin, Amid, H. (1371), Farhang-e Amid, Tehran: Moasesaye Entisharat-e Amir Kabir, and Burhan, M. (1361) Burhan-e Qate, Tehran: Moasesaye Entisharat-e Amir Kabir, Persian Dictionaries. 99. Hanifi, M. J. (2004), “Editing the past: colonial production of hegemony through the “Loya Jerga” in Afghanistan, Iranian Studies, Vol. 37 No. 2, June 2004, pp. 299– 300. 100. Mortimer Durand in his report from his mission to Kabul in 1893– 4 in reference to the gathering at the court of Amir uses the Persian term Darbar, not Jirga or Loya Jirga. See the file page 23, India Office, British Library at: IOR/L/PS/7/73 f.57 and IOR/R/2/1075/214. I have a copy of the file in my personal collection. 101. Hanifi, M. J. (2004), ‘Editing the past: colonial production of hegemony through the “Loya Jerga” in Afghanistan’, Iranian Studies, Vol. 37 No. 2, June 2004, p. 301. 102. Ibid., 301– 2. 103. Ibid., pp. 303– 5. 104. Ibid., pp. 305– 6. 105. Ibid., p. 308. 106. Ibid., p. 314. 107. Ibid., pp. 314– 15. 108. Ibid., p. 319. 109. Ibid., pp. 321– 2. 110. Noelle-Karimi, C. (2002), “The Loya Jirga: An Effective Political Instrument? A Historical Overview”, in (eds), C. Noelle-Karrimi, C. Schetter and R. Schlagintweit Afghanistan: A country without a State? Frankfurt: London: IOK, p. 37. 111. All Persian dictionaries, i.e. Dehkhoda, Moin, Amid and Burhane Qate indicate that the term Jirga is purely a Persian term rather than Mongolian or Pashto, which contradicts the English literature, and that of Noelle-Karimi’s

NOTES

112.

113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121.

122.

123.

TO PAGES

224 –234

311

claim that the term is of Mongolian origin. For further details see my article: Loya Jirga Paradox-e Sunat wa moderneta [Persian: Loya Jirga Paradox of Tradition and Modernity] at BBC Persian Website available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/afghanistan/2011/11/ 111116_l09_loye_jerga_legend_real.shtml (accessed on 28/03/2013). Noelle-Karimi, C. (2002), “The Loya Jirga: An Effective Political Instrument? A Historical Overview”, in (eds), C. Noelle-Karrimi, C. Schetter and R. Schlagintweit Afghanistan: A country without a State? Frankfurt: London: IOK, p. 38. See ibid. Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., p. 42. See ibid., pp. 42 – 43. Ibid., p. 47. Mousavi, S. A. (1998), The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical, Cultural, Economic and Political Study, London: Curzon, p. 9. Hanifi, M. J. (2004), ‘Editing the past: colonial production of hegemony through the “Loya Jerga” in Afghanistan’, Iranian Studies, Vol. 37 No. 2, June 2004. Noelle, C. (1997), State and Tribe in Nineteenth Century Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826 – 1863), London: Curzon, pp. xiii –xvi. He says ‘Small puffer fish inflate their highly elastic stomachs with huge quantities of water and air when confronted by a predator, which turns them into a virtually inedible ball many times their normal size. Should their display fail to deter, the puffer fish liver contains a foul-tasting paralytic poison that makes eating one a rarely repeated choice.’ Barfield, T. (2010), Afghanistan: A cultural and Political History, Princeton University Press, p. 348. Barfield, T. (2010), Afghanistan: A cultural and Political History, Princeton University Press, pp. 348–9, and also Barfield, T.J., Problems in Establishing Legitimacy in Afghanistan, in Iranian Studies, volume 37, number 2, June 2004. See Caryl C. (2010), “Bury the Graveyard”, Foreign Policy magazine at: http:// www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/26/bury_the_graveyard (accessed on 15/09/2012).

Chapter 6 Transforming Radical Antagonism to Plural Agonism 1. By the region here, as explained before, I mean the wider geographical region of the Iranian Plateau, including today’s Central Asian Republics, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and parts of India. 2. For details of the political map of the region prior to the arrival of colonialism see Lee, J. L. (1996), The ‘Ancient Supremacy’; Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731– 1901, New York, Koln: E.J Brill and Leiden, and for the details of the political system or the political language of Islam in that

312

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

NOTES TO PAGES 234 –239 period see Lewis, B. (1991), The Political Language of Islam, The University of Chicago Press, and Alam, M. (2004), The Language of Political Islam: India 1200– 1800, University of Chicago Press. See Rahimi, M. (2009 [1387]), Naqdi bar Saakhtari Nezaam dar Afghanistan (A Critical Assessment of the Political System in Afghanistan), Kabul: Kanuni Mutali’at wa Pezhuheshahyi Khurasan. The power share in Afghanistan in post-2001 is based on the percentage of population among ethnic groups in all branches of the government. In the absence of a credible national census the Pashtuns are in a privileged position. See Lewis, B. (1991), The Political Language of Islam, The University of Chicago Press, and Alam, M. (2004), The Language of Political Islam: India 1200– 1800, University of Chicago Press. Pahlavan uses the term ‘Pashtunist’ instead of Pashtun elite or Pashtun government. He states that Pashtunism is an ideology, which argues that Pashtuns are the only rightful rulers of the country. By using the term he also differentiates between the masses of Pashtuns and a minority who believe in Pashtunism as an ideology. For instance in the revolt of non-Pashtun members of the constitutional grand assembly in 2004, despite their united stand against Pashtunists, the Hazaras were calling for official recognition of Shia in Afghanistan, the Uzbeks were pressing for the official recognition of the Uzbeki language as the language of education in Uzbek majority regions, and some of the Tajiks were pressing for a decentralized parliamentary form of government. I assume, identifying the nodal points of the ethnic discourses, their convergences and differences require a separate study. See Rahimi, M. (2009 [1387]), Naqdi bar Saakhtari Nezaam dar Afghanistan (A Critical Assessment of the Political System in Afghanistan), Kabul: Kanuni Mutali’at wa Pezhuheshahyi Khurasan. pp. 152 – 65. By official discourse here I mean the constructed master signifier of the official discourse and its three related nodal points. On Afghan nationalism, its roots, components and how it developed see Anthony, H. (2002), Nationalism in Afghanistan, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 34, pp. 299– 315. Arguably ‘Afghan nationalism’ and ‘modern western concepts of nationalism’, systematically were the new dimensions added to the patterns of political legitimacy in Afghanistan during the reign of King Amanullah. The foundation of Afghan Nationalism, which was laid by the ‘Young Afghans’ under the leadership of Mahmud Tarzi, and his relentless efforts in Siraj al-Akhbar Afghaniyah (The Lamp of the News of Afghanistan) which had focused on the Pashtu language, history of Afghanistan and panIslamism of Jamaluddin, became part of government’s official policy. The Musahiban dynasty not only supported the Afghan nationalism based on a Pashtun-centric approach that took root in the reign of Habibullah,

NOTES

11.

12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

TO PAGES

239 –249

313

developed in the reign of Amanullah, but reinforced it vigorously and incorporated it into the official state policy, as discussed in previous chapters. Supporters of the ultra-Pashtun nationalist discourse usually refer to other communities of the country as ‘minorities’, on one hand, to remind them of the Pashtun majority, and on the other, to remind them of their secondary position in the country. See Ahady, A. (1991), Conflict in Post – Soviet – Occupation Afghanistan, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 21: 4, pp. 513 – 28, and Ahady, A. (1995), The Decline of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan, Asian Survey, Vol. 35, No. 7, July, pp. 621 – 634. Afghanistan Constitution of 2004, article 16. The story of the journalist in Balkh Province who used the Persian name Danishgah for university instead of the Pashto name Pohanton, and the controversy over the use of terminologies in Afghanistan is an example of such an attitude. The Afghan government on 26 February 2013 banned the use of what it calls ‘foreign languages and dialects’ in Afghanistan’s media. The government called on Afghanistan’s Ministry of Information and Culture, Ministry of Education, as well as the Ministry of Higher Education to make an effort to implement the decision. A majority of experts and observers argue that the main target of the decision is Persian. See Rahimi, M. (2009 [1387]), Naqdi bar Saakhtari Nezaam dar Afghanistan [A Critical Assessment of the Political System in Afghanistan], Kabul: Kanuni Mutali’at wa Pezhuheshahyi Khurasan. See the article in Washington Post: ‘In Afghanistan, a new approach to teaching history: Leave out the wars’ online available at: http://www.washingtonpost. com/world/asia_pacific/in-afghanistan-a-new-approach-to-teaching-his tory-leave-out-the-wars/2012/02/03/gIQA57KNqQ_story.html (accessed on 10/03/2013). See Encyclopaedia Britannica at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/ topic/440700/Pan-Turkism, and Landau, J. M. (1995), Pan-Turkism: Form Irredentism to Cooperation, London: C. Hurst and Co. See http://www.paniranism.net/, also the official website of the Pan-Iranist Party at: http://english.paniranist.org/ (accessed on 12/04/2012). Dr Changiz Pahlavan is a well-known Iranian academic and researcher. Amongst other institutions, he has worked as a cultural researcher and as Secretary General of Asian Cultural Documentation Centre for UNESCO during the 1970s. He has taught as a professor in several Iranian universities, including Tehran University, Farabi University, Islamic Azad University of Tehran, Imam Sadegh University and Aria University of Mazar Sharif of Afghanistan. He has taught at Oxford’s St. Anthony College as a visiting professor. He has been a researcher and professor in Berlin and Osnabru¨ck Universities (Germany). He has also taught and published his research in Germany. As a political and cultural scientist he has worked and written

314

20.

21. 22. 23.

24.

25.

26.

NOTES

TO PAGES

249 –252

extensively on Iranian civilization and culture. He has published over 10 books, and a large number of articles. Pahlavan has spent more than 30 years studying Afghanistan and has developed close friendly relations with leaders and intellectuals of the country. He is a well-known intellectual in Afghanistan and a recognized authority on the region’s affairs. Pahlavan, C. (1998), Afghanistan: Asre Mujahidin wa baramadane Taliban, [Afghanistan: The Age of Mujahidin and Emergence of the Taliban], Tehran: Nashre Qatra, pp. 10– 12. Ibid., pp. 7 – 8. Ibid., p. 10. One can refer to Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan and other Central Asian countries as good examples of this explanation. While one of these countries was at war the others preserved the features of this common civilization and provided sanctuary for refugees of the country at war. ‘Avicenna, Arabic Ibn Sı¯na¯, in full Abu¯ ʿAlı¯ al-Husayn ibn ʿAbd Alla¯h ibn Sı¯na¯ ˙ (born 980, near Bukhara, Iran [now in Uzbekistan] – died 1037, Hamadan, Iran), Muslim physician, the most famous and influential of the philosopherscientists of the Islamic world. He was particularly noted for his contributions to the fields of Aristotelian philosophy and medicine. He composed the Kita¯b al-shifa¯ʾ (Book of the Cure), a vast philosophical and scientific encyclopaedia, and Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine), which is among the most famous books in the history of medicine.’ Available at http://www.britannica.com/ EBchecked/topic/45755/Avicenna ‘Ru¯dakı¯, by the name of Abu¯ ʿAbdolla¯h Jaʿfar ibn Mohammad (born c.859, ˙ Rudak [now in Tajikistan], Khora¯sa¯n – died 940/941, Rudak), the first poet of note to compose poems in the ‘New Persian’, written in Arabic alphabet, widely regarded as the father of Persian poetry. A talented singer and instrumentalist, Ru¯dakı¯ served as a court poet to the Sa¯ma¯nid ruler Nasr II (914 – 943) in Bukhara until he fell out of favour in 937. ˙ He ended his life in wretched poverty. Approximately 100,000 couplets are attributed to Ru¯dakı¯, but of that enormous output, fewer than 1,000 have survived, and these are scattered among many anthologies and biographical works. His poems are written in a simple style, characterized by optimism and charm and, toward the end of his life, by a touching melancholy. In addition to parts of his divan (collection of poems), one of his most important contributions to literature is his translation from Arabic to New Persian of Kalı¯lah wa Dimnah, a collection of fables of Indian origin. Later retellings of these fables owe much to this lost translation of Ru¯dakı¯, which further ensured his fame in Perso-Islamic literature.’ Available at http://www.britannica.com/ EBchecked/topic/512104/Rudaki ‘Ru¯mı¯, in full Jala¯l al-Dı¯n Ru¯mı¯, also called by the honorific Mawla¯na¯ (born c. Sept. 30, 1207, Balkh [now in Afghanistan] – died Dec. 17, 1273), the greatest Sufi mystic and poet in the Persian language, famous for his lyrics and for his didactic epic Mas̄navı¯-yi Maʿnavı¯ (“Spiritual Couplets”), which widely

NOTES

27.

28.

29.

30.

TO PAGE

252

315

influenced mystical thought and literature throughout the Muslim world.’ ‘Ru¯mı¯’s use of Persian and Arabic in his poetry, in addition to some Turkish and less Greek, has resulted in his being claimed variously for Turkish literature and Persian literature, a reflection of the strength of his influence in Iran and Turkey. The influence of his writings in the Indian subcontinent is also substantial. By the end of the twentieth century, his popularity had become a global phenomenon, with his poetry achieving a wide circulation in western Europe and the United States.’ Avalable at: http://www.britannica. com/EBchecked/topic/299621/Rumi ‘Sana¯ʾı¯, pseudonym of Abu¯ al-Majd Majdu¯d ibn A¯dam, also spelled Abu¯ʾlMajd Majdu¯d ibn A¯dam (died 1131?, Ghazna [now Ghaznı¯], Afg.), Persian poet, author of the first great mystical poem in the Persian language, whose verse had great influence on Persian and Muslim literature. Little is known of Sana¯ʾı¯’s early life. He was a resident of Ghazna and served for a time as poet at the court of the Ghaznavid sultans, composing lyrics in praise of his patrons. At some point he underwent a spiritual conversion and, abandoning the court, went to Merv (Turkmenistan), where he pursued a life of spiritual perfection. He returned to Ghazna years later but lived in retirement, resisting the blandishments of his Ghaznavid patron Bahra¯m Sha¯h. Sana¯ʾı¯’s best-known work is the Hadı¯qat al-haqı¯qah wa sharı¯ʿat at-tariqah ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ (The Garden of Truth and the Law of the Path). Dedicated to Bahra¯m Sha¯h, this great work, expressing the poet’s ideas on God, love, philosophy, and reason, is composed of 10,000 couplets in 10 separate sections. The first section was translated into English as The Enclosed Garden of Truth (1910). Sana¯ʾı¯’s work is of major importance in Persian-Isla¯mic literature, for he was the first to use such verse forms as the qası¯dah (ode), the ghazal (lyric), and ˙ the mas̄navı¯ (rhyming couplet) to express the philosophical, mystical, and ethical ideas of Su¯fism (Isla¯mic mysticism). His divan, or collected poetry, ˙ contains some 30,000 verses. Sana¯ʾı¯’ is considered to be the first great mystical poet in the Persian language.’ Available at http://www.britannica. com/EBchecked/topic/521711/Sanai ‘Ferdowsı¯, also spelled Firdawsı¯, Firdusi, or Firdousi, pseudonym of Abu¯ alQasem Mansu¯r (born c. 935, near Tu¯s, Iran – died c. 1020– 26, Tu¯s), Persian ˙ ˙ ˙ poet, author of the Sha¯h-na¯meh (“Book of Kings”), the Persian national epic, to which he gave a final and enduring form, although he based his poem mainly on an earlier prose version. Available at http://www.britannica.com/ EBchecked/topic/204578/Ferdowsi Ha¯fez, also spelled Ha¯fiz, in full Mohammad Shams al-Dı¯n Ha¯fez (born ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ 1325/26, Shı¯ra¯z, Iran – died 1389/90, Shı¯ra¯z), one of the finest lyric poets of Persia.’ Available at http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/251392/Hafez ‘Saʿdı¯, also spelled Saadi, by name of Musharrif al-Dı¯n ibn Muslih al-Dı¯n (born ˙ c. 1213, Shı¯ra¯z, Iran – died Dec. 9, 1291, Shı¯ra¯z), Persian poet, one of the greatest figures in classical Persian literature.’ ‘For western students the Bu¯sta¯n

316

NOTES

TO PAGES

252 –254

and Gulista¯n have a special attraction; but Saʿdı¯ is also remembered as a great panegyrist and lyricist and as the author of a number of masterly general odes portraying human experience and also of particular odes such as the lament on the fall of Baghdad after the Mongol invasion in 1258. His lyrics are to be found in Ghazalı¯ya¯t (“Lyrics”) and his odes in Qasa¯ʿı¯d (“Odes”). Six prose ˙ treatises on various subjects are attributed to him; he is also known for a number of works in Arabic. The peculiar blend of human kindness and cynicism, humour, and resignation displayed in Saʿdı¯’s works, together with a tendency to avoid the hard dilemma, make him, to many, the most widely admired writer in the world of Iranian culture.’ Available at http://www.bri tannica.com/EBchecked/topic/515906/Sadi. 31. Neza¯mı¯, in full Elya¯s Yu¯sof Neza¯mı¯ Ganjavı¯, Neza¯mı¯ also spelled Niza¯mı¯ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ (born c. 1141, Ganja, Seljuq empire [now Ganca, Azerbaijan] – died 1209, Ganja), greatest romantic epic poet in Persian literature, who brought a colloquial and realistic style to the Persian epic. Little is known of Neza¯mı¯’s ˙ life. Orphaned at a young age, he spent his entire life in Ganja, leaving only once to meet the ruling prince. Although he enjoyed the patronage of a number of rulers and princes, he was distinguished by his simple life and straightforward character. Only a handful of his qası¯dahs (“odes”) and ghazals (“lyrics”) have survived. ˙ His reputation rests on his great Khamseh (“The Quintuplet”), a pentalogy of poems written in mas̄navı¯ verse form (rhyming couplets) and totalling 30,000 couplets. Drawing inspiration from the Persian epic poets Ferdowsı¯ and Sana¯ʾı¯, he proved himself the first great dramatic poet of Persian literature. The first poem in the pentalogy is the didactic poem Makhzan al-asra¯r (The Treasury of Mysteries), the second the romantic epic Khosrow o-Shı¯rı¯n (“Khosrow and Shı¯rı¯n”). The third is his rendition of a well-known story in Islamic folklore, Leyli o-Mejnu¯n (The Story of Leyla and Majnun). The fourth poem, Haft paykar (The Seven Beauties), is considered his masterwork. The final poem in the pentalogy is the Sikandar or Eskandar-na¯meh (“Book of Alexander the Great”; Eng. trans. of part I, The Sikander Nama), a philosophical portrait of Alexander. Neza¯mı¯ is admired in Persian-speaking lands for his originality and clarity of ˙ style, though his love of language for its own sake and of philosophical and scientific learning makes his work difficult for the average reader. Available at http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/413374/Nezami (all accessed on 13/03/2013). 32. Pahlavan, C. (1998), Afghanistan: Asre Mujahidin wa baramadane Taliban, [Afghanistan: The Age of Mujahidin and Emergence of the Taliban], Tehran: Nashre Qatra, pp. 7 – 16, 104–120 and 470– 9, and also see Qajar, M. A. B. (1386 [2007]),Nazariya-e Howza-e Tamadoni Irani wa Baztabha-e Manteqawa-e An (Iranian Civilizational Theory and its Regional Reflections), Faselnama-e Goftogo, No. 50, Iran. I have to acknowledge that despite having access to books, articles and interviews of Pahlavan and direct telephone and email contacts with him, I have used the work of Qajar extensively. I am also

NOTES TO PAGE 254

317

thankful to him for his prompt replies and insights when I asked questions. See also Pahlavan, C. (2011), Tajadod wa Roshanfekri, [Modernity and Intellectuals], Tehran: Nashre Qatra, Pahlavan, C. (2003), Farhang Shenasi, [Cultural Studies], Tehran: Nashre Qatra, and Pahlavan, C. (2009), Farhang wa Tamadon, [Culture and Civilization], Tehran: Nashre Nay. 33. Huntington, Samuel P. (1996), The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon and Schuster. 34. See Rogh, S. H., Dar bara-e Tamadon wa Howza-e Tamadoni (On civilization and civilizational sphere), available at: http://www.zendagi.com/new_page_563.htm (accessed on 14/03/2013).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abu¯ al-Rayha¯n Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Bı¯ru¯nı¯, (1029), Al-Tafhim, Tehran: Chapkhana-e Sazman wa Chape Wezarate Farhang was Ershade Islami Iran, fifth edition (1386). Ahady, A., (1991), ‘Conflict in Post –Soviet – Occupation Afghanistan’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 21, Issue 4, pp. 513– 528. ———, (1995), ‘The Decline of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan’, Asian Survey, Vol. 35, No. 7, (July), pp. 621– 634. Ahmad, J. and Aziz M., (1934), Afghanistan a Brief Survey, Kabul: Dar-ut-Talif. Aitchison C.U, B.C.S, (1933), A Collection of Treaties, Engagements and Sanads: Vol-XIII Relating to Persia and Afghanistan, Calcutta: Government of India Central Publication Branch. Alam, M., (2004), The Language of Political Islam: India 1200– 1800, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Alavi, H., (1979), ‘The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh’, in Harry Goulbourne, (ed.). Politics and the Third World, London: Macmillan. Anderson, B., (2006), Imagined Communities, London: Verso. Ansari, F., (2007), Feshardae Tarikhe Afghanistan, [A brief history of Afghanistan], Kabul: Afghanistan Strategic Studies and Research Centre. Anthony, H., (2002), ‘Nationalism in Afghanistan’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, Special Issue, pp. 299– 315. Arianfar, A. (2011), Lahzayaee az yad raftae tarikhe siyasi wa diplomacy Afghanistan: negahe degar ba tarikhe keshwar, [The Forgotten Moments of Political and Diplomatic History of Afghanistan; a different look at the history of the country], available online at: http://www.arianfar.com/books/2011062402.pdf. (Accessed 23/10/2012). Arzoo, A.G., (2003), Chegonagi Howaite Meli Afghanistan, [The National Identity of Afghanistan], Tehran: Mohammad Ebrahim Shariti Afghanistani. Ayubi, N.N., (1991), Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World, London and New York: Routledge. ———, (1992), Al-Arab wa mushkilat al-dawla [The Arabs and the Problem of the State], London: Al-Saqi.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

319

———, (1995), Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East, New York: I.B.Tauris and Co Ltd. Babur, Z.M., translated by Annette Susannah Beveridge in 2 volumes, (1530), The Babur-Nama in English [Memories of Babur], London: Luzac and Co. Vol. 1. Badie, B. and Birnbaum, P., (1983), The Sociology of the State, trans., Chicago: Chicago University Press. Bahkteyari, Mohammad Qasim Danish, (2002), Barasi Moqaesai Siyasate Kharijie Iran wa Pakistan dar Qebale Afghanistan, [A Critical Comparison of Iran and Pakistan’s Foreign Policy toward Afghanistan], Teheran: Negaresh Ieada. Barfield, T.J., (2004), ‘Problems in Establishing Legitimacy in Afghanistan’, in Iranian Studies, Vol. 37, Issue 2, (June), pp. 263– 293. ———, (2010), Afghanistan: A cultural and Political History, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Baycroft, T., (2007), Nationalism in Europe, 1789– 1945, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bellew, H.W., (1879), Afghanistan and the Afghans: being a brief review of the history of the country, and account of its people, with a special reference to the present crisis and war with the Amir Sher Ali Khan, London: Gilbert and Rivington Printer. ———, (1880), The Races of Afghanistan, being a brief account of the principle nations inhabiting that country, India: Culcatta, and Bellew. ———, (1891), An Enquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan, London: The Oriental University Institute. Bhabha, H.K., (1990), Nation and Narration, London: Routledge. Birch, A.H., (1989), Nationalism and National Integration, London: Unwin Hyman. ———, (2007), The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy, 3rd edition, UK: Routledge. Calhoun, C., (1997), Nationalism, UK: Open University Press. Caryl, C., (2010), ‘Bury the Graveyard’, Foreign Policy Magazine at: http://www.foreign policy.com/articles/2010/07/26/bury_the_graveyard. (Accessed 04/05/2012). Chakrabarty, D., (2000), Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, US: Princeton University Press. Chambers, S.A., and Carver, T., (ed.), (2008), William E. Connolly: Democracy, Pluralism and Political Theory, UK: Routledge. Chatterjee, P., (2010), The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus: Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, The Nations and Its Fragments, and A Possible India, UK: Oxford University Press. Daeratul Maarief Ariana, [Encyclopedia of Ariana], (2007), Kabul: Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Afghanistan’s Academy of Science, Directorate of Encyclopaedia. Darez, A., (2001), Afghanistan dar Qarne Bestom [Afghanistan in twentieth century], Peshawar: Danish Ketab Khana. David McLean, D., (1979), Britain and Her Buffer-state: Collapse of the Persian Empire, 1890– 1914, UK: Royal Historical Society Studies. Deutscher, P., (2005), How to Read Derrida, London: Granta Publications. Dorronsoro, G., (2000), Revolution Understanding; Afghanistan: 1979 to the Present, London: Hurst and Company. Dumont, L., (1986), Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective, Chicago and London: Chicago University Press. Dupree, L., (1973), Afghanistan, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

320

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Durand. M., (1893 – 4), Secret report of his mission to Kabul, British Library: India Office Collection, IOR/L/PS/7/73 f.57 and IOR/R/2/1075/214. Durrani, Sultan Mohammad Khan Ibn Musa Khan, (1864), Tarikh-i sultani [History of the King], (1864), Bombay: Karkhana-yi Mohammadi. Elphinstone, M., (1815), An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 1, London: Messrs Longman. ———, (1815), An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 2, London: Messrs Longman. Ewans. M., (2002), Afghanistan: A Short History of Its People and Politics, London: HarperCollins. Katib, F.M., (1952), Sarajul Tawarikh [Lamp of Histories], Volume 1, Kabul: Dar Matbai Horofi Darul Saltana. Faiz, A.A., (2002), Tarike Afghanistan az Aghaze Zohore Islam [History of Afghanistan from the Emergence of Islam, Vol. 1], Iran: Nashre Sunbela. Fanon, F., (1967), The Wretched of the Earth, UK: Penguin. ———, (1968), Black Skin, White Masks, London: Paladin. ———, (1980), A Dying Colonialism, London: Writers and Readers Cooperative. Farahi, A.G., (2003), Afghanistan da democracy aw jamhoriat pa kalonoki [Afghanistan during Democracy and Republic Years], Peshawar: Danish Ketabtoon. Farhang, M., (1992), Afghanistan dar Panj Qarne Akhir [Afghanistan in the Last Five Centuries], Vol. 2, Qum: Ismaileyan Publications. Ferdowsi A.Q., (2006), Shahnameh: the Persian Book of Kings, translated by Dick Davis, USA: Penguin Groups. Ferishta, M.K., (1609), Tarikh-i Ferishta, Tehran: Anjoman-e Asar wa Mafakhire Farhangi, (1387), Vol. 1. Forster G., (1798), A journey from Bengal to England: through the northern part of India, Kashmire, Afghanistan, and Persia, and into Russia, by the Caspian-Sea, Vol. 1, London: Printed for R. Faulder, New Bond Street. Foucault, M., (1981), ‘The Order of Discourse’, in R. Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A Poststructuralist Reader, Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 48 –78. ———, (2004), The Archaeology of Knowledge, London: Routledge. ———, (2004), The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction, New York: Pantheon Books. Gabardi, W., (2001), ‘Contemporary Models of Democracy’, Polity, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 547 – 568. Geertz, C., (1973), The Interpretation of Cultures: selected essays, New York: Basic Books Inc. Gellner, E., (1964), Thought and Change, London: Weidenfield and Nicolson. Gerth, H.M. and Mills, C.W., (eds), (1970), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Ghani, A. (1982), Production and Domination Afghanistan, 1747 –1901, PhD Thesis submitted to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Columbia University. Ghubar, G.M., (1939), Ahmad Sha¯h Ba¯ba¯-yi Afgha¯n [Ahamad Shah Father of Afghanistan], available˙ online in Digital Library of India at: http://www.new1. dli.ernet.in/scripts/FullindexDefault.htm?path1¼/data8/upload/0205/137&first ¼1&last¼391&barcode¼2030020039610. I have also accessed a copy of the book at British Library System number 013151076: Ghubar, G.M., (1944), Ahmad Sha¯h Ba¯ba¯-yi Afgha¯n, [Ahamad Shah Father of Afghanistan], Kabul: ˙ baah-i Umumi. (Accessed 06/02/2013). Mat Ghubar,˙ G.M., (1967), Afghanistan Dar Masser-e Tareekh [Afghanistan in the course of History, Volume 1], Kabul: Matba-e Daolate.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

321

———, ([1976] 1999), Jughrafiae Tarikhie Afghanistan [Geographical History of Afghanistan], Peshawar: Markaze Nasharati Maiwand, Saba Ketab Khana. Ghubar, G.M., Naeemi, Farhang, A. and Mohibi, (2008), Da Afghanistan Tarikh [History of Afghanistan], Kabul: Entesharate Amiri. Ghughrafiae Sinfe Dowazdahum [Geography for year twelve], (2007), Kabul: Ministry of Education. Gilbert, M.M., (1997), Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics, London: Verso. Glynos, J. and Howarth, D. (2007), Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory, London: Routledge. Gramsci, A., (1971), Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans., London: Lawrence and Wishart. Gregorian, V., (1967), ‘Mahmud Tarzi and Saraj-Ol-Akhbar: Ideology of Nationalism and Modernism in Afghanistan’, in The Middle East Journal, Vol. 21, Issue 3, Washington DC, pp. 345– 368. ———, (1969), The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880– 1946, California: Stanford University Press. Guha, R., (1997), Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India, US: Harvard University Press. Gutting, G., (2001), French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Habibi, A.H., ([1967] 1998), Tarikhe Mukhtasare Afghanistan [A brief History of Afghanistan], Peshawar: Danish library. ———, (1993), Jonbesh-e Mashrotiyat dar Afghanistan [The Constitutional Movement in Afghanistan], 3rd edition, Qom: Ismailian. ———, Tarikhe Afghanistan bad az Islam, (2001), Tarikhe Tajziae Shahanshaie Afghan [History of the disintegration of the Afghan Kingdom], Peshawar: Markaze Tahqeqati Alama Habibi. ———, ([1961] 2002), Sahme Afghanistan dar Enteqale Farhange Asiae Meyana [Role of Afghanistan in spreading the culture of Central Asia], Afghanistan: Markaze Tahqeqate Alama Habibi. ———, (2007), Jughrafiae Tarikhie Afghanistan [Geographical History of Afghanistan], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand. ———, ([1965] 2009), Tarikhe Afghanistan bad az Islam [History of Afghanistan after Islam], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand. Hafiz Abru, (1427), Zubdat al-Tawarikh [Cream of Histories], Tehran: Chapkhana-e Sazman wa Chape Wezarate Farhang wa Ershade Islami Iran (1380). Hall, S., (1992), ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’, in Hall, S., Held, D. and McGrew, A. (eds), Modernity and Its Futures, Cambridge: Polity Press. Hamayoon, M.S., (1966), Tarikh Barie Sinfe Nohum [History for Year Nine], Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of authorship and translation. Hanifi, M.J., (2004), ‘Editing the past: colonial production of hegemony through the “Loya Jerga” in Afghanistan’, Iranian Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2, (Jun), pp. 295 – 322. Hanifi, S.M., (2004), ‘Impoverishing a Colonial Frontier: Cash, Credit, and Debt in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan’, Iranian Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2, (Jun.), pp. 199 – 218. ———, (2005), ‘Material and Social Remittances to Afghanistan’, Asian Development Bank, available online at: http://www.adb.org/Documents/Books/Converti ng-Migration-Drains-Gains/ChapterIV.pdf. (Accessed 23/02/2012).

322

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

———, (2008), Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier, US: Colombia University Press. ———, (2009), ‘Epistemological Quandaries of the Afghan Nation: Mobility, Territoriality and the Other’, Paper presented in a Seminar held in Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University. Hashimi, S.S., (2006), Nukhostin Ketab dar Bara-e Mashrotiyata Khahi dar Afghanistan [The First Book on Constitutional Movement in Afghanistan], Iran: Sunbola Publications. Hearn, J., (2006), Rethinking Nationalism: A Critical Introduction, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Herawi, Saif ibn Mohammad ibn Yaqub, (1321), Tarikh Namae Herat [History of Herat] Tehran: Asatir Publications, Second edition (1385). Hiddleston, J., (2009), Understanding Postcolonialism, UK: Acumen. Hill, L., (2007), The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Derrida, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hopkins, B.D. (2008), The Making of Modern Afghanistan, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Howarth, D., (2000), Discourse, UK: Open University Press. ———, (2006), ‘Hegemony, Political Subjectivity, and Radical Democracy’, in Critchley, S. and Marchart, O., (eds), Laclau: A Critical Reader. London: Routledge. Howarth, D. and Stavrakakis, Y., (2000), ‘Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis’, in Howarth, D., Norval, A.J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Huntington, S.P., (1996), The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon and Schuster. Jackson R.H., (1993), Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jackson, R.H. and Rosenberg, C.G., (1985), ‘Juridical Statehood in the Crisis of Tropical African States’, Paper presented at the International Political Science Association’s 13th World Congress, Paris, 1985. Jalali, G.J., (2004), Nama-yi Ahmad Shah Baba ba Nam-i Sultan Mustafa Salas Usmani [Letter of Ahmad Shah, the Father, to Sultan Mustafa III of Ottoman], Peshawar: Danish Library. Jawad, N., (1992), Afghanistan: A Nation of Minorities, Minority Rights Group International, London-UK. Also available at: http://edoc.bibliothek. uni-halle.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/HALCoRe_derivate_00004267/ MRG_Afghan_1992.pdf. (Accessed 05/01/2013). Kabuli, M., (2007), Daramadi bar Tarikhe Afghanistan [An Introduction to History of Afghanistan], Kabul: Chap Khanae Nahzat. Kakar, H.K., (1979), Government and Society in Afghanistan; The Reign of Amir Abd al-Rahman Khan, Texas: University of Texas Press. Kamaluddin Abdul-Razzaq Samarqandi, (1470), Matla us-Sadain wa Majma ul-Bahrain [The Rise of the Two Auspicious Constellations and the Confluence of the Two Oceans], Tehran: Mosasae Mutaliat wa Tahqiqat-e Farhangi (Pozhohesgah) wabasta ba Wezarate Amozish-e Ali (1383). Kavirag, S., (2009), The Post-colonial State: The Special Case of India, available at: http://criticalencounters.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/the-post-colonial-s tate-sudipta-kaviraj/. (Accessed 23/01/2013).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

323

———, (2010), Imaginary Institution of India: Politics and Idea, US: Columbia University Press. Kazancigil, Ali, (ed.), (1981), ‘Paradigms of Modern State Formation in the Periphery’, in Ali Kazancigil, (ed.), The State in Global Perspective, London: Gower/UNESCO. Kedourie, E., (1961), Nationalism, 2nd edition, London: Hutchinson. Khan, M.H., (1865), Hayate Afghani [Life of Afghans], Kabul: Directorate of cultural affairs and publications, Ministry of Borders. Kohzad, A.A., (1941), Ariana, 2nd edition, Kabul: Entesharate Amiri. ———, (1946), Tarikhe Afghanistan [History of Afghanistan in three volumes], Kabul: Bongahe Entesharate Maiwand. ———, (1968), Tarikhe Sinfe Haftom (History textbook for year seven), Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of authorship and translation. Laclau, E., (1990), New Reflections on the Revolution of Our time, London: Verso. ———, (2007), Emancipation(s), London: Verso. Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C., (1985), Hegemony and Social Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso. Lalzad, A.K., (2006), Afghanistan Emorzi dar Naqshahai Deroz, [Today’s Afghanistan in Yesterday’s Maps], available online at: http://www.khorasanzameen.net/php/ pdf/alalzad04.pdf. (Accessed 06/07/2012). ———, (2007), Bahsi peramone nam hayee tarikhi wa geoghrafeyaee derozi Ariayana, Iran, Pars was Khorasan, [On the historical and geographical names of yesterday’s Ariana, Iran, Persia and Khurasan], available online at: http://www.khorasan zameen.net/history/alalzad02.pdf. (Accessed 06/07/2012). ———, (2007), Chgonagi Eijade Kishwari ba Name Afghanistan, [On the Creation of Afghanistan], available at: http://www.khorasanzameen.net/history/alalzad01. pdf. (Accessed 06/07/2012). ———, (2008), Ba edama-e Chgonagi Eijade Kishwari ba Name Afghanistan, [Again on the Creation of Afghanistan], at: http://www.khorasanzameen.net/history/ alalzad03.pdf. (Accessed 06/07/2012). ———, (2010), On Historical and Geographical Land and Names of Ariayans, Persia, Ariana, Iran and Khurasan in pre-Islamic sources, available online at: http://www.khorasanzameen.net/history/alalzad06.pdf. (Accessed 06/07/2012). ———, (2011), on the same topics in post-Islamic sources available online at: http://www.khorasanzameen.net/php/pdf/alalzad02.pdf. (Accessed 06/07/2012). Landau, J.M., (1995), Pan-Turkism: Form Irredentism to Cooperation, London: C. Hurst and Co. Lee, J.L., (1996), The ‘Ancient Supremacy’ Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731– 1901, New York, Koln: E.J Brill and Leiden. Leftwich, A., (2005), ‘Theorizing the State’, in Burnell P. and Randall V. (ed.), Politics in the Developing World, UK: Oxford University Press. Lewis, B., (1991), The Political Language of Islam, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lockhart, L., (1958), The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia, London: Cambridge. Loomba, A., (2005), Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London: Routledge. Mahmod ul Hossaini ibn Ibrahim Jami, (1773), Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi, [History of Ahmad Shah], Teheran: Erfan Publications (2007).

324

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Malcolm, J., (1815), The History of Persia: from the earliest period to the present, (2 volumes), London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. McChesney, R.D., (1973), ‘Waqf at Balkh: A Study of the Endowments at the Shrine of ʻAlı¯ Ibn Abı¯ Ta¯lib,’ PhD Thesis, University of Princeton, Department of Near Eastern Studies. ———, (1991), Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine, 1480– 1889, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Mehdi, M., (2007), Nazariyahai-e Tamin-e Sobat wa Hal-e Monasibat-e Tabari [Theories of Achieving Stability and the Solution of Ethnic Relations in Afghanistan], Kabul: Muslim Party of the People of Afghanistan. ———, (2010), Goftoman-e Meli Afghanistan [The National Discourse of Afghanistan], Kabul: Amiri Publications. Merza Atta Mohammad, (1952), Nawai Mairek, [Sound of Battles], Peshawar: Markez Nasharati Maiwand. Merza, Ali Quli, (1857), Tarikh-i waqayea wa sawaneh-i Afghanistan [History of events and Biography of Afghanistan] Tehran: Entesharate Amir Kabir (1997). Migdal, J.S., (2004), State in Society: Studying how states and societies transform and constitute one another, UK: Cambridge University Press. Mir Munshi Sultan Mahomed Khan, (1900), The Life of Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, (ed.) John Murray, London: Albemarle Street, Vol. 1 – 2. Misdaq, N., (2006), Afghanistan Political Frailty and External Interference, London: Routledge. Mitchell, T., (1991), ‘The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and their Critics’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 85, No.1, (March), pp. 78 – 98. Mohammad Ali Khan, (1927), Afgahnistan: mutabiq – i proghram– i chaharum – i rushdiyah wa dara al – maullimin [Geography of Afghanistan, a text book for high school and teacher training], Kabul: Ministry of Education. Mohammad Ḥusayn, (1923), Jughrafiya-yi Afghanistan [Geography of Afghanistan, school text book], Kabul: Ministry of Education. Mohammad ibn Khawan Shah ibn Mahmood ‘Mir Khawand’, (1497), Rozat ul-Safa fe Siratul Anbia wa al-Moluk wa al-Khulafa [Gardens of Purity Concerning the Biography of the Prophets and Kings and Caliphs], Tehran: Asatir Publications. Mohammad Jahanyar, Mohammad Naeem Mahmood and Enayatullah, (1989), Tarikhe Afghanistan az 1504 ta Emroz, Barae Sinfe Hashtom, [History of Afghanistan: from 1504 till today, for Year Eight], Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Authorship and Translation. Mohammad Usman Sidqi, (1971), Tarikhe Sinfe Dahom, [History for Year Ten], Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Authorship and Translation. Moinuddin Mohammad Zamchi Asafzari, (1494), Rozatul ul-Janat fe Aosafe Madenatul Herat [Gardens of Heavens in Description of Herat], Tehran: Entesharate Daneshgahi Tehran (1338). Mouffe, C., (1993), The Return of the Political, London: Verso. ———, (2000), The Democratic Paradox, London: Verso. ———, (2005), On the Political, London: Routledge. Mousavi, S.A., (1998), The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical, Cultural, Economic and Political Study, London: Curzon.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

325

Munshi Mohammad Abdul Karim, (1850), Tarikh-i Ahmad [History of Ahmad], Bombay: Karkhana-yi Mohammadi. Nawid, S., (2009), Tarzi and the Emergence of Afghan Nationalism: Formation of a Nationalist Ideology, available at: http://www.bu.edu/aias/nawid_article.pdf. (Accessed 25/03/2013). Niʻmat Alla¯h Herawi, (1613), Tarı¯kh-i Kha¯n Jaha¯nı¯ wa Makhzan-i Afgha¯nı¯, (ed.) S.M. Imamuddin, Pakistan: Ashiya¯tic Su¯saytı¯ a¯f Pa¯kista¯n, 1960. Noelle-Karimi, C., (1997), State and Tribe in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan; the Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826 – 1863), London: Curzon Press. ———, (2002), ‘The Loya Jirga: An Effective Political Instrument? A Historical Overview’, in C. Noelle-Karimi, C. Schetter and R. Schlagintweit Afghanistan: A country without a State? (eds), Frankfurt: London: IOK. Norris, C., (1982), Deconstruction: Theory and Practice, London: Methuen & Co. Norval, A.J., (2000), ‘Trajectories of Future Research in Discourse Theory’, in Howarth, D. Norval, A.J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ———, (2007), Aversive Democracy: Inheritance and Originality in the Democratic Tradition, UK: Cambridge University Press. Owen, D., (2002), ‘Criticism and Captivity: On Genealogy and Critical Theory’, European Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 10, Issue 2, pp. 216 – 230. ———, (2003), ‘Genealogy as Perspicuous Representation’ in C.J. Heyes (ed.), The Grammar of Politics: Wittgenstein and Political Philosophy, New York: Cornell University Press. Ozkirimli, U., (2010), Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edition, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Pahlavan, C., (1998), Afghanistan: Asre Mujahidin wa baramadane Taliban [Afghanistan: The age of Mujahidin and the Emergence of the Taliban], Tehran: Nashre Qatra. ———, (2003), Farhang Shenasi, [Cultural Studies], Tehran: Nashre Qatra. ———, (2009), Farhang wa Tamadon, [Culture and Civilization], Tehran: Nashre Nay. ———, (2011), Tajadod wa Roshanfekri, [Modernity and Intellectuals], Tehran: Nashre Qatra. Panjshiri, A.A., (2008), Afghanistan wa Rahe Abreshim [Afghanistan and the Silk Route], Kabul: Entesharate Said. Peernia, H. (2001), Tarikh-e Iran az Aghaz ta enqeraze Sasaniyan, az sadre Islam ta enqeraze Qajaria [History of Iran from the disintegration of Sassanid, and from the beginning of Islam to the disintegration of Qajar] Tehran: Entesharate Behzad. Pervanta, A., (2002), ‘Afghanistan-Land of the Afghans? On the Genesis of a Problematic State Denomination’, in Noelle-Karimi, C., Conrad Schetter, Reinhard Schlagintweit, (eds), Afghanistan: A country without a State?, Frankfurt, London: IKO. Popalzai, A.W., (1976), Ahmad Shah: Vares wa Mojadede Amparatori Afghanistan [Ahmad Shah: The Inheritor and the Re-establisher the of the Afghan Empire], Vol. 1, Kabul: Ministry of Information and Culture. Qajar, M.A.B., ([1386] 2007), Nazariya-e Howza-e Tamadoni Irani wa Baztabha-e Manteqawa-e An, [Iranian Civilizational Theory and its Regional Reflections], Faselnama-e Goftogo, No. 50, Iran.

326

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Qassem, A.S., (2007), Afghanistan: Prospects for Stability in Relation to Geostrategic Dynamics in Central and South Asia, PhD Thesis submitted to the Australian National University. Rabinow, P., (1991), The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault’s Thought, UK: Penguin Books. Rahimi, M.R., ([1387] 2009), Naqdi bar Saakhtari Nezaam dar Afghanistan [A Critical Assessment of Political System in Afghanistan], Kabul: Kanuni Mutali’at wa Pezhuheshahyi Khurasan. ———, (2011), Loya Jirga Paradox-e Sunat wa Moderneta [Loya Jirga Paradox of Tradition and Modernity], at BBC Persian Website available at: http://www. bbc.co.uk/persian/afghanistan/2011/11/ 111116_l09_loye_jerga_legend_real.shtml. (Accessed 26/04/2012). Razi, A., (1999), Tarikh-e Kamele Iran [Complete History of Iran], Tehran: Chap wa Entesharate Iqbal. Reishtiya, S.Q., (1997), Khaterate Siasi Saye Qasim: 1923 –1992 [Political Memoirs of Sayed Qasim Reishtia: 1923– 1992], Virginia: American Speedy Press. ———, ([1967] 1998), Afghanistan dar Qarne Nozdah [Afghanistan in nineteenth century], Peshawar: Markez Nasharati Maiwand. Rogh, S.H., Dar bara-e Tamadon wa Howza-e Tamadoni [On civilization and civilizational sphere], available at: http://www.zendagi.com/new_page_563. htm. (Accessed 02/04/2011). Roque, R. and Wagner, K.A., (2012), ‘Introduction: Engaging Colonial Knowledge’, in Roque, R., and Wagner K.A. (eds), Engaging Colonial Knowledge: Reading European Archives in World History (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series) UK: Palgrave and Macmillan. Ross, T., Maila, J., Ingalls, G., Jenkins, D. and Chay, J. (eds), (1986), Buffer States In World Politics, Westview Press. Rubin, B.R., (1995), The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State to Failed State, US: Yale University Press. ———, (2002), The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, US: Yale University Press. Said, E.W., (2003), Orientalism, UK: Penguin Books. Saikal, A., (2006), Modern Afghanistan; A History of Struggle and Survival, London: Tauris and Co Ltd. Sartre, J., (1948), Black Orphans, Paris: Pre´sence Africaine. ———, (2001), Colonialism and Neocolonialism, London: Routledge. Sayyid Mohammad Hashim, (1921), Khulasah-i tarikh-i vatan [A Brief History of the Homeland, a textbook], Kabul: Matbae Wezarate Moarif, [Ministry of Education Press]. Schwartzberg, J.E., (ed.) (1992), A Historical Atlas of South Asia, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sebastian, T.W., (1988), The Buffer State and the Buffer System: With Reference to Afghanistan 1881– 1947, MPhil Thesis presented at the Department of Political Science, University of Hong Kong. Shahrani, M.N., (1986), ‘State-Building and Social Fragmentation in Afghanistan’, in Ali Banuazizi and Weiner M. (eds), The State, Religion, and Ethnic Politics in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, USA: New York, Syracuse University Press. ———, (1998), ‘Resisting the Taliban and Talibanism in Afghanistan: Legacies of a Century of Internal Colonialism and Cold War Politics in A Buffer State’,

BIBLIOGRAPHY

327

Perceptions, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. (4), pp. 121 – 140, published by the Center for Strategic Research, Ankara, Turkey. ———, (1998), ‘The Future of the State and the Structure of Community Governance in Afghanistan’, in William Maley, (ed.), Fundamentalism Reborn? London: C. Hurst & Co. ———, (2009), ‘Afghanistan to 1919: From Durrani Empire to a Buffer State, in Chase F. Robinson’, in The New Cambridge History of Islam, Vol. 5, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shir Ali Khan, (1885), Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi Durrani or Tarikh-i Durranian [The History of Ahmad Shah Durrani or The Durrani History], compiled and translated by Seyed Hossein Shirazi. Shirazi, S.H., (1885), Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi Durrani or Tarikh-i Durranian [The History of Ahmad Shah Durrani or The Durrani History], Tehran: Foreign Ministry Publications (2000). Sidqi, M.U., (1965), Tarikhe Barie Sinfe Duwazdahum [History for Year Twelve], Kabul: Ministry of Education, Directorate of authorship and translation. Singh, G., (1959), Ahmad Shah Durrani Father of Modern Afghanistan, Bombay: Asia Publication House. Sistani, M.A., (2000), Khezushai Mardom Kandahar, Herat and Sistan bar zedi sultae Safaviane Iran wa Baburiane Hend dar Qarne 18 [Revolt of people of Kandahar, Herat and Sistan against the domination of Safavids of Iran and Baburis of India in 18th century], Sweden: Zagros Media. ———, (2006), Aya Afghanistan yak name Jaliest? [Is Afghanistan a false name?], Peshawar: Danish Ketab Khana. Smith, A.D., (1998) Nationalism and Modernism: A critical survey of recent theories of nations and nationalism, UK: Routledge. ———, (2000), ‘Theories of Nationalism: Alternative Models of Nation Formation’ in Leifer, M. (eds) Asian Nationalism, UK: Routledge. Spencer, P. and Wollman, H., (2002), Nationalism: A critical Introduction, UK: Sage Publication. Strabo, (1854), The Geography of Strabo, Literally Translated, with Notes by H.C. Hamilton, ESQ & W. Falconer. London: Henry G. Bohn, Vol. 1. Tarikhe Sunfe Haftom [History for year seven], (2007), Kabul: Ministry of Education. Tarikhe Sunfe Hashtom [History for year eight], (2007), Kabul: Ministry of Education. Tarikhe Sinfe Yazdahom [History for year eleven], (2007), Kabul: Ministry of Education. Tarzi, M., (1912), Aaya chih bayad kard [What is to be done], Kabul: Dar al– Salṭanah. Tarzi, S.R., (2007), Ma wa Frasoi-e Zamana wa Tarikh [We Beyond History and Time], available at: http://www.kabulnath.de/Salae_Soum/Shoumare_59/s.tarzi-rahpoo.1. html. (Accessed 15/07/2012). ———, (2009), Ma Wa Ostora wa Waqaiyat [We, Myths and Realities], available at: http://www.dawatfreemedia.org/index.php?mod¼article&cat¼%D9%85 %D8%B7%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D8%AF%D8%B1%DB%8C& article¼1346. (Accessed 15/07/2012). ———, (2010), Ostora dar Khitmate Howiyat wa Eqtedar Sazi [Utilizing Myths to Construct Identity and Authority], available at: http://www.payamewatan.com/ Articles-10/r.tarzi240710.htm. (Accessed 15/07/2012).

328

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

———, (2011), Afghanistan: The Beautiful Ethnic Mosaic, available at: http://www. dawatfreemedia.org/english/index.php?mod¼article&cat¼Articles&arti cle¼398. (Accessed 15/07/2012). Tilly, C. and Blockmans, W.P., (ed.) (1994), Cities and the Rise of States in Europe, A.D. 1000 to 1800, Westview Press. Timur, (1404), Tuzuk-i Timuri, Bombay: Matba-e Nami-e Fathul Karim, see the manuscript of the book at: http://dl.ical.ir/UI/ 165669d6-1150-46a3-86cf-5cb046b19052/Catalogue.aspx. (Accessed 10/05/2011). Tully, J., (2006), Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an age of diversity, Camridge: Cambridge University Press. Turmanidze, T., (2009), Buffer States: Power Policies, Foreign Policies and Concepts, New York: Nova Science Publishers Inc. Unknown writer, (982), Hudud al-’Alam [The Limits of The World], Tehran: Chapkhana-e Daneshgahi al Zahra, 2nd edition (1385). Wilson, H.H., (1841), Ariana Antiqua: A Descriptive Account of the Antiquities and Coins of Afghanistan with a Memoir on the Buildings of called Topes by C. Masson, Esq, London: East India Company. Yamen, M.H., (1999), Afghanistan-e Tarikhi [Historical Afghanistan], Kabul: Entesharate Said. Young, J.C., (2001), Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell. Zizek, S., (2010), ‘Beyond Discourse-Analysis’, in Interrogating the Real, London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Zizek, S., Laclau, E. and Butler, J., (2000), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, London: Verso.

Online Sources Afghanistan Digital Library, at: http://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/. Afghanistan old Photos: http://www.afghanistan-photos.com/crbst_28.html. Afghanistan: Sources in the India Office Records in British Library, at: http:// www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/afghanistan/afghanistancollecti on/introduction.html. A¯l-e Kart in Encyclopaedia Iranica, at: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/al-ekart-or-perhaps-al-e-kort-an-east-iranian-dynasty-643-791-1245-1389. Antique Maps of Persia, at: http://www.bergbook.com/htdocs/Cache319.htm. Avicenna in Encyclopaedia Britannica, at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/ topic/45755/Avicenna. Bearden, M. ‘Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires’, the Foreign Affairs, at: http:// www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/57411/milton-bearden/afghanis tan-graveyard-of-empires. Benjamin David Hopkins, The George Washington University, at: http://elliott. gwu.edu/faculty/hopkins.cfm. Christine Noelle-Karimi, Institute of Iranian Studies, at: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/i ran/german/noelle-karimi_christine.html. CIA World Factbook on Afghanistan, at: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html#top.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

329

Colonialism in Encyclopaedia Britannica, at: http://www.britannica.com/ EBchecked/topic/126237/colonialism-Western. Colonialism in Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, at: http://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/colonialism/. Columbia University Libraries, South and Southeast Asian Studies, at: http://www. columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/southasia/cuvl/maps.html. Digital South Asia Library, at: http://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/schwartzberg/toc. html?issue¼. Early, Medieval, Mughal, Colonial and Modern Maps Collection in University of Columbia, at: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritachett/00maplinks/. Khora¯sa¯n, at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/316850/Khorasan. Nazif M. Shahrani, Indiana University, Department of Central Eurasian Studies, at: http://www.indiana.edu/,ceus/faculty/shahrani.shtml. Paniranism, at: http://www.paniranism.net. Pan-Iranist Party, at: http://english.paniranist.org. Pan-Turkism, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, at: http://www.britannica.com/ EBchecked/topic/440700/Pan-Turkism. Perry-Castan˜eda Library Map Collection, Afghanistan Maps, University of Texas Libraries, at: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/afghanistan.html. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, History James Madison University, at: http://web.jmu.edu/ history/faculty/hanifi.html. Sieff K. ‘In Afghanistan, a new approach to teaching history: Leave out the wars’, The Washington Post, at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacifi c/in-afghanistan-a-new-approach-to-teaching-history-leave-out-the-wars/2012/ 02/03/gIQA57KNqQ_story.html. Talessman’s Atlas World History Maps, at: http://www.worldhistorymaps.info/ Maps.html#Primeval_maps. The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies, the Persian Gulf the Largest Collection of Historical Maps of The Persian Gulf, at: http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/ Geography/persian.gulf/persian_gulf_historical_maps.htm. The Gathas (Hymns) of Zarathushtra, at: http://www.avesta.org/gathas.htm. The Rig Veda 1200-900 BC, at: http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/india/ rigveda.html. Wardak, A. ‘Jirga – A Traditional Mechanism of Conflict Resolution in Afghanistan’, at: http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan 017434.pdf.

INDEX

a priori logic, 20 Abdali/Durani, Ahmad Shah, 2, 59, 61 – 5, 67, 69, 70, 75 – 8, 84 – 6, 88, 96, 97, 104, 106, 113, 114, 117– 19, 121, 122, 124, 131, 134, 142, 148, 152, 169, 176, 203, 208, 211, 214– 17, 222 Abdur Rahman Khan, Amir, 2 Abu Muslim Khurasani, 72, 111 adversary, 35, 36, 56, 233 Afghan ethno-centric exclusionary discourse, 231 Afghan National Discourse (1901 – 78), 108– 9 Afghan state emergence of, 132 historical claim of, 141 post-colonial, 58 Afghan/Pashtun ethno-centric nationalist exclusionary discourse, 5 Afghan/Pashtun nationalist exclusionary discourse, 239 Afghanistan and Afghans, 99 – 103 geographical description of, 150 historical geography, 153– 4 official discourse, 167 post-colonial state in, 55 – 6

post-Islamic identity of, 2 pre-Islamic identity of, 2 Afghanistan Digital Library, 11 Afghans official discourse, 167 political entity and, 237– 8 Afshar, Nadir, 64, 75, 76, 78, 79, 85, 86, 97, 168, 210 agonism, 3, 4, 7, 18, 19, 25, 28 – 30, 35– 6, 51, 56, 59, 81, 165, 228 agonistic pluralism, 4, 10, 19, 35, 36, 56, 233, 234, 246, 257 agonistic relations, 246 Ahadi, Anwar ul-Haq, 130 Aitchison, C.U, 15 Al-e Kort, 139 Amanullah Khan, King, 12, 89, 93, 115, 135, 204, 214, 239 Anderson, Benedict, 46 Anglo – Afghan wars, 61, 81, 92, 108, 121, 146, 149, 163, 182 Anjoman Adabi, 68 antagonism, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 19, 25, 27, 28 –30, 34, 35 –6, 47, 51, 56, 59, 81, 84, 165, 166, 228, 231–56 anti-enlightenment orientation, 54 archaeology, 13, 18, 22, 23, 56 Arianfar, Aziz, 205– 7

INDEX Ariana, 70 in ancient times, 9 historical geography, 155– 8 historical phases, 70 pre-Islamic period, 82 articulation, 21, 25 – 8, 33, 34, 84 Aryan race, 124 aspectival captivity, 4 Babur, Zahuruddin Mohammad, 14, 140 Baburi Mughal Indian state (1483 –1718), 73 Barfield, Thomas, 183– 4 Baycroft, Timothy, 46, 49 Bellew, Henry Walter, 107, 134, 153, 157, 212 Bhabha, Homi K., 41, 50 blockage of identity, 29 British Empire, 91, 148– 51 British, colonial construction of, 3 Burnes, Alexander, 92, 174 Calhoun, Craig, 47 Canfield, Robert, 217 civilizational discourse, 10, 247–50, 256 critique of, 254– 5 nodal points of, 251 civilizational foreign policy, 254 colonial and post-colonial discourse, 5–6 colonial knowledge, 40 – 1 colonial knowledge formation (1808 –1901), 95 – 7 colonialism, 37 Connolly, William, 35 contingency, 19, 20, 25 – 9, 32, 33, 84, 137, 232, 245 credibility, question of, 40 – 1 critical post-dislocation literature, 166 decolonization (1978– 2010), 131– 2 deconstruction, 39– 40

331

democratic pluralist inclusive discourse, 241–4 Derrida, Jacques, 18 Derrida’s and Foucault’s perception of discourse, 20 – 3 discourse, 39 – 40 discourse analysis, 24, 25 discourse theory, 3, 19 – 20 of Laclau and Mouffe, 23 – 8 discursive, 7, 14, 20, 21, 23 – 5, 28, 30, 31, 33, 39, 47, 50, 60, 68, 81, 84, 95, 131, 165, 166, 171, 179, 190, 225, 228, 232, 245, 247 discursive exterior, 28, 30, 34, 232, 245 dislocation, 131 –2 distinctive stages, 8 diversification, 131– 2 double reading, 18, 21, 60, 95, 258 Dupree, Louis, 116– 17 Durand, Mortimer, 128, 192 East India Company, 91, 148– 51 elements, 1, 22, 23, 25, 26, 33, 34, 43, 50, 139, 166, 170, 212, 218, 231, 245, 256, 258, 259 Elphinstone discourse, 115 Elphinstone, Mountstuart, 98 – 9 Elphinstonian, 120 Elphinstonian discourse, 122, 129 emergence, nodal point of, 103– 5, 114, 117–18 emergency Loya Jirga, 122 empty signifier, 27 Encyclopaedia of Ariana, 69 episteme, 37, 40, 178, 235, 242 ethnic diversity within civilizational unity, 253 ethnic minorities, 235 ethno-nationalistic exclusionary discourses, 253 ethnosymbolist, 47, 48 Euro-centric political system, 237

332

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Fanon, Frantz, 38 fantasmatic logic, 32 Farsi, 157, 251–2 Ferishta, Mohammad Kasim Shah, 14, 96, 141 floating signifiers, 231 Forster, George, 12, 91, 95 – 7, 99, 107, 113, 132, 133, 171 Foucault, Michel, 18 Fraser, James, 92, 215 genealogy, 18, 22, 23, 56, 60, 95, 102, 145, 181, 197, 223, 256 Ghani, Ashraf, 13, 94, 128, 217 Ghilzai, 63, 66, 74 – 7, 79, 84, 85, 88, 97, 103, 104, 113, 114, 117, 128, 129, 134, 184, 195, 225 Ghubar, Ghulam Mohammad, 69 –72, 76 – 8, 81, 82, 87, 111, 126, 127, 130, 144 Gramsci, Antonio, 33, 38, 44, 212, 221 Greek geographical knowledge, 157 Gregorian, Vartan, 12, 92, 109–14, 117, 118, 125, 205 Habibi, Abdul Hai, 69 – 72, 76 – 8, 81, 82, 87, 144 Habibullah Khan, Amir, 12, 62, 93, 135, 150, 164, 225, 264 Hanifi, M. Jamil, 17, 41, 195– 200, 211– 15, 218, 219, 221– 3 Hanifi, Shah Mahmoud, 195– 201 Hasan Kawun, Kakar, 213 Hazara, 6, 9, 17, 30, 74, 76, 85, 86, 105, 124, 134, 140, 154, 167, 177, 179, 187, 190, 193, 194, 215, 216, 225, 230 hegemonic crisis, 3, 4, 6 hegemonic practices, 33, 166 hegemonic projects, 24, 26, 33, 34, 166, 232 hegemony, 17, 19, 26, 28, 33, 34, 44, 168, 211, 221, 233, 238, 246, 248

Herawi, Saif ibn Mohammad ibn Yaqub, 14, 127, 139– 41, 161 historical Afghanistan, 2, 59, 69, 70, 161 Hopkins, Benjamin David, 175– 81 horizon, 24, 34, 40, 179, 229, 233, 238, 262 Hotaki, Mirwais, 66, 67, 74, 80, 88, 122, 154, 224 Howarth, David, 10, 20, 23 – 5, 28, 30, 32, 33 Huntington, Samuel P., 254 ideology, 1, 32, 37 – 9, 47, 48, 188, 191, 202, 209, 210, 212, 232, 254 imaginaries, 34 impossibility of closure, 26, 228, 232, 245, 260 indigenous post-dislocation discourses, 184–5, 201 invasion and resistance, nodal point of, 106–8, 115, 119–20, 225–6 Iran, 158– 61 Iranian civilization, 250, 251, 254 Iranian federation, 251 Islam, 252 Islamic inclination, 54 Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 2001–10, 87 –9 Jalali, Ali Ahmad, 130 Jirga. See Loya Jirga (grand assembly), nodal point of Kalakani, Habibullah, 293 Katib, Faiz Mohammad, 62 Khalilzad, Zalmay, 130 Khurasan, 70, 158– 61 historical geography, 155– 8 Kohzad, Ahmad Ali, 69 Laclau, Ernesto, 7, 18, 23 – 8 Lalzad, Abdul K., 203– 5

INDEX Lee, Jonathan L., 168– 75 logic of difference, 30 logic of equivalence, 30 Loya Jirga (grand assembly), nodal point of, 105– 6, 115, 118– 19, 211– 5 Mahmodul Hossaini ibn Ibrahim Jami, 14, 141, 142, 181 Malcolm, John, 16, 146, 148, 152, 179, 210 Masson, Charles, 92 Massoud, Ahmad Shah, 201 master signifier, 3, 5, 7 – 9, 15, 27, 57, 59, 60, 69, 90, 94, 95, 109– 13, 129, 131, 138, 144, 148, 153, 167, 175, 177, 203, 211, 228 Mehdi, Muhaiddin, 201– 3 modernism, 47, 48 Mohammad Zahir Shah, king, 240 Mohammed Daoud Khan, president, 75 Mouffe, Chantal, 18 Mousavi, Sayed Askar, 187– 94 Mughal Kingdom, 66 Munshi Mohammad Abdul Karim, 14, 144, 147 Musahiban dynasty, 135 myth of emergence, 211– 25 myth of formation, 132 myths, 34, 48, 49, 65, 71, 190, 207, 227, 233, 241 Nadir Khan, king, 217 national Afghan state, 124 new post-colonial nation states, 247 nodal point, 4 nodal point of emergence, 69, 103– 6 nodal point of invasion and resistance, 80, 81, 106– 8, 115, 119– 20, 124, 182, 225, 228 nodal point of Jirga and Loya Jirga, 105– 6, 115, 118– 19 Noelle-Karimi, Christine, 181– 3

333

non-Pashtun inclusive discourse, 6 non-Pashtunist discourses, 235 official discourse, 138– 44, 238– 9 codification and establishment (1880 – 1901/1901– 19), 61 – 5 dislocation and diversification (1978 – 2001), 84 – 7 establishment and enrichment (1919 – 28), 65 – 8 nodal points of, 210–11 sophistication and advancement (1930 – 78), 68 – 84 emergence of contemporary Afghanistan in 1747, 75 – 82 emergence of state in national curriculum (1930– 78), 82 – 4 historical Afghanistan, 70 – 5 orientalism, 39 – 40 Owen, David, 265 Pahlavan, Changiz, 209– 10 Pan-Iranism, 247 Pan-Iranists, 250 Pan-Turkism, 247 Pashto Academy, 191 Pashto Tolana, 68 Pashtun-centric representation, 241 Pashtun-ethnocentric discourse, 138–44 Pashtuns political entity and, 237– 38 Perennialism, 47, 48 Persia, 158– 61 Persian, 157, 251, 252 Persian language, 241 Pervanta, Angela, 194– 5 plural agonism, 231– 56 political entity, 237 political plurality within civilizational unity, 251 political subjectivity, 30 – 4 Popalzai, Azizuddin Wakili, 69, 77– 80

334

STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

post-colonial sources (1850 – 85), 14 – 15 post-colonial states, 1 post-dislocation, 3 – 5, 7, 9, 10, 16, 17, 27, 31, 87, 166, 167, 176, 181, 184, 185, 201, 205, 207, 210, 211, 223, 225, 229, 233, 287 post-dislocation critical discourse, 6 – 7 post-dislocation discourses, 238 post-dislocation literature, 210– 11 post-Elphinstonian discourse, 93 post-radical Afghan ethnonationalism, 5 post-colonialism, 38 – 9 pre-colonial sources (1321– 60), 14 pre-colonial vs. post-colonial political maps, 237 pre-radical Pashtun ethno-nationalism, 5 primordialism, 47, 48 problematization, 22, 23 Qassem, Shayeq, 201 radical antagonism, 4, 6, 7, 10, 19, 27, 36, 56, 59, 81, 231– 56 radical dislocation, era of, 166 Raverty, Henry George, 212, 216 rejecting exclusionary discourses, 252– 3 Rubin, Burnet, 120 Russian Empires, colonial construction of, 3 Safavid Persian-Iranian state (1502 –1722), 73 Said, Edward, 37 – 41, 57, 257 Saikal, Amin, 131 School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), 11 Shahrani, M. Nazif, 185– 7 Sharani, Nazif, 185– 7 Shaybanid Uzbek state (1500– 99), 73 Shir Ali Khan, Amir, 147

signifier, 3, 5, 7 – 9, 15, 27, 57, 59, 60, 69, 90, 94, 95, 109– 13, 129, 131, 138, 144, 148, 153, 167, 175, 177, 203, 211, 228 signifiers, 231 Singh, Ganda, 124, 180 SOAS. See School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) social antagonism, 3, 25, 28, 29, 34, 35, 59, 84, 166, 232 state debate Afghanistan, post-colonial state in, 55 – 6 nation state, 43 – 4 nation(s) and nationalism, 45 nationalism, 45 – 51 post-colonial nation state, 51 – 5 pre-modern and modern states, 42 –3 state formation Afghan (Pashtun) writers and discourse of, 126– 31 Afghan perspective of, 123– 6 nodal points of, 4 official discourse of, 5 post-1980 perspective of, 120– 3 post-colonial sources (1850 –85), 144– 8 pre-colonial sources (1321 – 60), 138– 44 story of, 138– 48 subalterns studies group, 39, 41 subject positions, 30 – 4 Sufism, 252 Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi, 88 symbolic orders, 32, 165 Tajik, 6, 9, 30, 74, 76, 85, 100, 113, 131, 154, 167, 174, 177, 179, 187, 190, 193, 201, 203, 205, 206, 225, 233, 235, 238–42, 244, 245, 248, 252–4, 263, 264 Tarzi, Mahmud, 64, 65, 195 Tarzi, Seddiq Rahpoe, 207– 9

INDEX territorial nation state system, 120 transforming antagonism, 35– 6 turanism, 248 ultra-Afghan (Pashtun) nationalist exclusionary discourse, 239– 41, 244

335

Uzbek, 6, 9, 30, 73, 74, 76, 88, 104, 113, 115, 124, 129, 134, 154, 159, 167, 177, 179, 184, 185, 187, 190, 193, 206, 225, 233, 235 Wilson, Horace Hayman, 107, 134, 153, 155– 7, 204