Modern Afghanistan

Description

What impact does 40 years of war, violence, and military intervention have on a country and its people? As the "global war on terror" now stretches into the 21st century with no clear end in sight, Identity and Politics in Modern Afghanistan collects the work of interdisciplinary scholars, aid workers, and citizens to assess the impact of this prolonged conflict on Afghanistan. Nearly all of the people in Afghan society have been affected by persistent violent conflict. Identity and Politics in Modern Afghanistan focuses on social and political dynamics, issues of gender, and the shifting relationships between tribal, sectarian, and regional communities. Contributors consider topics ranging from masculinity among the Afghan Pashtun to services offered for the disabled, and from Taliban extremism to the role of TV in the Afghan culture wars. Prioritizing the perspective and experiences of the people of Afghanistan, new insights are shared into the lives of those who are hoping to build a secure future on the rubble of a violent past.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Impact of Four Decades of War and Violence on Afghan Society and Political Culture / M. Nazif Shahrani

Part I: Technologies of Power—Competing Discourses on National Identity, Statehood and State Stability
1. Afghanistan: A Turbulent State in Transition / Amin Saikal
2. Afghanistan's "Traditional" Islam in Transition: Deep Roots of the Taliban Extremism / Bashir Ahmad Ansari
3. Language, Poetry and Identity in Afghanistan: Poetic Texts, Changing Contexts / Mohammad Omar Sharifi
4. Lineages of the Urban State: Locating Continuity and Change in Post-2001 Kabul / Khalid Homayun Nadiri and M. Farshid Alemi Hakimyar
5. Webs and Spiders: Four Decades of Violence, Intervention and Statehood in Afghanistan (1978-2016) / Timor Sharan
6. Merchant-Warlords: Changing Forms of Leadership in Afghanistan's Unstable Political Economy / Noah Coburn
7. Borders, Access to Strategic Resources, and Challenges to State Stability / Ahmad Shayeq Qassem
8. Brought to you by Foreigners, Warlords, and Local Activists: TV and the Afghan Culture Wars / Wazhmah Osman

Part II: Personal and Collective Identities, Gender Relations, and Trust Deficit
9. "The War Destroyed Our Society": Masculinity, Violence and Shifting Cultural Idioms among Afghan Pashtun / Andrea Chiovenda
10. Engendering the Taliban / Sonia Ahsan
11. Anticipating Discontinuous Change: Afghanistan in Retrospect and Prospect / Robert L. Canfield and Fahim Masoud

Part III: Adapting to New Political Ecology of Uncertainties at the Margins
12. Badakhshanis since the Saur Revolution: Struggle, Triumph, Hope, and Uncertainty / M. Nazif Shahrani
13. Hazara Civil Society Activists and Local, National, and International Political Institutions / Melissa Kerr Chiovenda
14. Adapting to Three Decades of Uncertainty: The Flexibility of Social Institutions among Baloch groups in Afghanistan / Just Boedeker
15. Party Institutionalization Meets Women's Empowerment? Acquiring Power and Influence in Afghanistan / Ann Larson

Part IV: Violence, Social Services Delivery, and Rising Trust Deficit
16. Childbirth and Social Change in Afghanistan / Kylea Laina Liese
17. Signatures of Distrust in Contemporary Afghanistan: More than a Decade of Development Effort for Vulnerable Groups; the Case of Disability / Parul Bakhshi and Jean-Francois Trani
Index

Sujets

• Regional Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Afghan War
• Middle Eastern
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• List of terrorist incidents
• International studies
• Military
• Region
• Terrorism
• Middle East
• Anthropology
• Regional
• World

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 10 février 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9780253033260
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

MODERN
AFGHANISTAN
MODERN
AFGHANISTAN
THE IMPACT OF 40 YEARS OF WAR
EDITED BY
M. NAZIF SHAHRANI
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
© 2018 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Shahrani, M. Nazif Mohib, 1945- editor.
Title: Modern Afghanistan : the impact of 40 years of war / edited by M. Nazif Shahrani.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018004320 (print) | LCCN 2017056689 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253030269 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253029775 | ISBN 9780253029775q(hardback :qalk. paper) | ISBN 9780253030054q(pbk. :qalk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Afghanistan—Social conditions—20th century. | Afghanistan—Social conditions—21st century. | Violence—Afghanistan. | Political stability—Afghanistan. | Afghanistan—Politics and government—20th century. | Afghanistan—Politics and government—21st century.
Classification: LCC HN670.6.A8 (print) | LCC HN670.6.A8 M63 2018 (ebook) | DDC 306.09581—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004320
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
DEDICATION
For Maha Noureldin and our sons (Samad, Abdurahim, and Noorhadi), who desire peace and opportunities for the peoples of Afghanistan as much as I and the vast majority of the peoples of Afghanistan do. May all of us soon witness the end of wars and violence in Afghanistan and beyond.
CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
Maps
Introduction: The Impact of Four Decades of War and Violence on Afghan Society and Political Culture / M. Nazif Shahrani
Part I: Technologies of Power—Competing Discourses on National Identity, Statehood, and State Stability
1. Afghanistan: A Turbulent State in Transition / Amin Saikal
2. Afghanistan’s “Traditional” Islam in Transition: The Deep Roots of Taliban Extremism / Bashir Ahmad Ansari
3. Language, Poetry, and Identity in Afghanistan: Poetic Texts, Changing Contexts / Mohammad Omar Sharifi
4. Lineages of the Urban State: Locating Continuity and Change in Post-2001 Kabul / Khalid Homayun Nadiri and M. Farshid Alemi Hakimyar
5. Webs and Spiders: Four Decades of Violence, Intervention, and Statehood in Afghanistan (1978–2016) / Timor Sharan
6. Merchant-Warlords: Changing Forms of Leadership in Afghanistan’s Unstable Political Economy / Noah Coburn
7. Borders, Access to Strategic Resources, and Challenges to State Stability / Ahmad Shayeq Qassem

8. Brought to You by Foreigners, Warlords, and Local Activists: TV and the Afghan Culture Wars / Wazhmah Osman
Part II: Personal and Collective Identities, Gender Relations, and the Trust Deficit
9. “The War Destroyed Our Society”: Masculinity, Violence, and Shifting Cultural Idioms among Afghan Pashtuns / Andrea Chiovenda
10. Engendering the Taliban / Sonia Ahsan
11. Anticipating Discontinuous Change: Afghanistan in Retrospect and Prospect / Robert L. Canfield and Fahim Masoud
Part III: Adapting to a New Political Ecology of Uncertainties at the Margins
12. Badakhshanis since the Saur Revolution: Struggle, Triumph, Hope, and Uncertainty / M. Nazif Shahrani
13. Hazara Civil Society Activists and Local, National, and International Political Institutions / Melissa Kerr Chiovenda
14. Adapting to Three Decades of Uncertainty: The Flexibility of Social Institutions among Baloch Groups in Afghanistan / Just Boedeker
15. Party Institutionalization Meets Women’s Empowerment? Acquiring Power and Influence in Afghanistan / Anna Larson
Part IV: Violence, Social Services Delivery, and the Rising Trust Deficit
16. Childbirth and Social Change in Afghanistan / Kylea Laina Liese
17. Signatures of Distrust in Contemporary Afghanistan: More Than a Decade of Development Effort for Vulnerable Groups: The Case of Disability / Parul Bakhshi and Jean-Francois Trani
Index
PREFACE
I N THIS VOLUME , a new generation of Afghanistan studies scholars present systematic interdisciplinary assessments of the impact of almost four decades of war—from outside military invasions and interventions, resistance and rebellions against the center, pervasive internecine factional violence, and proxy wars. They also assess the impact of international political and economic reconstruction programs (since 2002) on the social institutions, personal and collective identities, and political culture of Afghanistan. 1 Unlike the security-centered studies that have predominated recent research and writing on Afghanistan, the aims of contributors to this volume are twofold: first, to offer detailed analyses and assessments of the impact of state failures and violence on the internal sociopolitical dynamics, gender, and intergroup relations (ethno-linguistic, tribal, sectarian, ideological, and regional group and community relations) from the various perspectives of the peoples of Afghanistan themselves; second, to explicate how experiences of war and violence have shaped and reshaped the social fabric, institutional norms, and governance practices in Afghanistan as well as the consequences of ongoing security challenges and poor governance within the country’s troubled neighborhoods and beyond.
Early drafts of ten of the chapters in this volume were presented in two panels held at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in San Francisco. 2 Complemented by eight additional invited contributions from eleven scholars, the papers were then extensively discussed in the workshop held (April 18–21, 2014) at the Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington. In all, twenty-five scholars from Afghanistan, Europe, Australia, and the United States (half of them with deep personal roots in Afghanistan) participated in these fora. 3 These highly policy-relevant and timely essays make significant contributions to our knowledge and understanding, not only of consequences of the wars on Afghanistan society and political culture but they also point toward ways to best address pending challenges of governance, security, and instability in Afghanistan as well as in the wider region.
This book was conceived as a follow-up to two other panels organized over three decades ago by my colleague Robert L. Canfield (Washington University, St. Louis) and me at the 1980 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in Washington, DC, involving eighteen scholars with extensive research on Afghanistan. That meeting was held at a dramatic moment in Central Asian history: Afghan communist “revolutionaries” had seized the reins of government with the intent to radically transform Afghan society and culture. A popular Islamic resistance movement or jihad was gathering strength, forcing the Soviets to militarily intervene in defense of their clients in Kabul.
The 1980 panelists, who had carried out extensive ethnographic field research covering different parts of the country during the 1960s and 1970s, presented authoritative reports and analyses of why and how various peoples of Afghanistan were reacting to the Soviet invasion and occupation of their Muslim homeland during the 1980s. They also discussed how the popular jihad resistance was likely to influence the course of events in Afghanistan and the region. No one, however, expected the conflict to continue for as long as it has, or to instigate the so called global war on terror at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Thirteen of the papers were coedited by Shahrani and Canfield as Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives and published (1984) by the Institute of International Studies (IIS) at the University of California, Berkeley. 4 This earlier volume stands as a testament to the collective anthropological knowledge and analysis of Afghanistan’s social systems, institutional structures, and political culture at that critical moment in its tumultuous history.
The almost four decades of war and persistent violent conflicts have affected virtually all the peoples and social institutions of every tribal, ethnic, and sectarian group and region across the country and left the fabric of traditional Afghan society substantially altered. Since 2002, Afghanistan has been the object of considerable international collective attention for reconstruction and development, albeit with dubious results. The contributors to this volume were asked to consult the essays in the Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan volume as the available ethnographic baseline data and analyses at the onset of the wars. They were urged to assess the impact of nearly four decades of chronic warfare and violence