Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan

Description

When originally published in 1984, Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan provided the first focused consideration of the 1978 Saur Revolution and the subsequent Soviet invasion and occupation of the country. Nearly four decades later, its conclusions remain crucial to understanding Afghanistan today.

In this much-anticipated re-release, Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan offers an opportunity for fresh insight into the antecedents of the nation's enduring conflicts. A new foreword by editors M. Nazif Shahrani and Robert L. Canfield contextualizes this collection, which relies on extensive fieldwork in the years leading up to the Soviet invasion. Specific tribal, ethnic, and gender groups are considered within the context of their region, and contributors discuss local responses to government decrees, Islamic-inspired grassroots activism, and interpretations of jihad outside of Kabul.

Long recognized as a vital ethnographic text in Afghan studies, Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan provides an extraordinary chance to experience the diversity of the Afghan people on the cusp of irrevocable change and to understand what they expected of the years ahead.

Foreword to Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives, 2022 Edition, by M. Nazif Shahrani and Robert Canfield
Preface, by Robert Canfield
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
Notes on Contributors
Part I: Introduction
1. Introduction: Marxist "Revolution" and Islamic Resistance in Afghanistan, by M. Nazif Shahrani
2. The Marxist Regimes and the Soviet Presence in Afghanistan: An Ages-Old Culture Responds to Late Twentieth-Century Aggression, by Louis Dupree
Part II: Nuristan and Eastern Afghanistan
4. Responses to Central Authority in Nuristan: The Case of the Väygal Valley Kalasha, by David J. Katz
5. The Rebellion in Darra-i Nur, by R. Lincoln Keiser
Part III: Qataghan and Badakhshan
6. Causes and Context of Responses to the Saur Revolution in Badakhshan, by M. Nazif Shahrani
7. Weak Links on a Rusty Chain: Structural Weaknesses in Afghanistan's Provincial Government Administration, by Thomas J. Barfield
8. Effects of the Saur Revolution in the Nahrin Area of Northern Afghanistan, by Hugh Beattie
Part IV: Bamyan and Turkistan
9. Islamic Coalitions in Bamyan: A Problem in Translating Afghan Political Culture, by Robert Canfield
10. Ethnicity and Class: Dimensions of Intergroup Conflict in North-Central Afghanistan, by Richard Tapper
Part V: Western and Southern Afghanistan
11. Sheikhanzai Nomads and the Afghan State: A Study of Indigenous Authority and Foreign Rule, by Bahram Tavakolian
12. How Afghans Define Themselves in Relation to Islam, by Jon W. Anderson
Part VI: The Saur Revolution and the Afghan Woman
13. Causes and Consequences of the Abolition of Brideprice in Afghanistan, by Nancy Lindisfarne-Tapper
14. Revolutionary Rhetoric and Afghan Women, by Nancy Dupree
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Islamic
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Afganistán
• Anti-communism
• Saur Revolution
• History of the Middle East
• General officer
• Soviet Union
• Russia
• Middle East
• Kabul
• History of Asia
• Central Asia
• Anthropology
• Afghan
• General
• Asia
• Soviet
• Kaboul
• Russie
• Afghanistan

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253066794
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

REVOLUTIONS
AND REBELLIONS IN
AFGHANISTAN
REVOLUTIONS
AND REBELLIONS IN
AFGHANISTAN
ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
M. NAZIF SHAHRANI
ROBERT L. CANFIELD
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.org
2022 by Nazif Mohib Shahrani and Robert L. Canfield
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
Second printing 2022
Chapter 3 , The Evolution of Anti-Communist Resistance in Eastern Nuristan by Richard F. Strand, from the original publication has been redacted in this edition.
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-06677-0 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-06678-7 (ebook)
For Samad, Abdurahim, Noorhadi, and the children of Afghanistan, with the hope that they may grow to live in a free, Islamic Afghanistan. And for all those who are fighting to make this dream a reality. Unfortunately, hopes which seem less and less likely after four decades now, in 2022. However, with those hopes the peoples of Afghanistan have kept their struggles for survival with dignity.
M.N.S.
For Kim, Howard, and Stephen, Afghanistan-born expatriates, beneficiaries of a rich childhood among a fabulous people.
R.L.C.
CONTENTS
Foreword to Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives , 2022 Edition / M. Nazif Shahrani and Robert L. Canfield
Preface / Robert L. Canfield
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Notes on Contributors
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Introduction: Marxist Revolution and Islamic Resistance in Afghanistan / M. Nazif Shahrani
2. The Marxist Regimes and the Soviet Presence in Afghanistan: An Ages-Old Culture Responds to Late Twentieth-Century Aggression / Louis Dupree
PART II: NURISTAN AND EASTERN AFGHANISTAN
4. Responses to Central Authority in Nuristan: The Case of the V ygal Valley Kalasha / David J. Katz
5. The Rebellion in Darra-i Nur / R. Lincoln Keiser
PART III: QATAGHAN AND BADAKHSHAN
6. Causes and Context of Responses to the Saur Revolution in Badakhshan / M. Nazif Shahrani
7. Weak Links on a Rusty Chain: Structural Weaknesses in Afghanistan s Provincial Government Administration / Thomas J. Barfield
8. Effects of the Saur Revolution in the Nahrin Area of Northern Afghanistan / Hugh Beattie
PART IV: BAMYAN AND TURKISTAN
9. Islamic Coalitions in Bamyan: A Problem in Translating Afghan Political Culture / Robert L. Canfield
10. Ethnicity and Class: Dimensions of Intergroup Conflict in North-Central Afghanistan / Richard Tapper
PART V: WESTERN AND SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN
11. Sheikhanzai Nomads and the Afghan State: A Study of Indigenous Authority and Foreign Rule / Bahram Tavakolian
12. How Afghans Define Themselves in Relation to Islam / Jon W. Anderson
PART VI: THE SAUR REVOLUTION AND THE AFGHAN WOMAN
13. Causes and Consequences of the Abolition of Brideprice in Afghanistan / Nancy Lindisfarne-Tapper
14. Revolutionary Rhetoric and Afghan Women / Nancy Hatch Dupree
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
FOREWORD
to Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives , 2022 Edition
Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives , published initially more than three decades ago, has been out of print for many years. The reprinting of this work-finally satisfying the requests of those who felt a need to have the volume in print-makes it possible for the current scholarly community to easily access data and analyses about how this prolonged conflict commenced. The descriptions and assessments of the ways in which the peoples of Afghanistan were responding to the shocks of the Afghan communist coup d tat of 1978 and the Soviet invasion of 1979-the threats they perceived and the ways they organized to respond then-provide reference points on how the country has changed through nearly four decades of war. The book also provides evidence of how many social conventions have remained the same. Familiar notions of obligation and authority have persisted throughout this period, even if various social alignments among groups may have shifted over time. That is, as the structures and expressions of social life in Afghanistan seem to have changed, the inner necessities that animate it have not. 1 The struggles of the peoples of Afghanistan for political survival, vividly articulated by the contributors to this work of more than three decades ago, are still animated and galvanized by their determined pursuit of, as yet unrealized, peace, justice, freedom, and dignity in this rapidly globalizing world.
The fact that much has changed in Afghanistan s social and political structures is amply documented in the new follow-up volume, Modern Afghanistan: The Impact of 40 Years of War . 2 In that work, a later generation of scholars offers further detailed, systematic accounts and analyses of the structures and alignments that have been operative in more recent times. They demonstrate that the inner necessities and moral idioms of earlier times are still vital-such as notions of authority and kingship, manifest in a Kabul-centered, person-centered, extractive political economy; in their reliance on traditional kinship, tribal and ethnic loyalties, transformed by the identity politics of decades of war, rebellion, and post-Taliban failed attempts at reconstruction; in their uses and abuses of Islam, especially the concepts of jihad (armed and violent opposition) and shura (consultation), being deployed as grounds for mobilization and largely unrealized cooperation; and in the consequences of a political economy that is increasingly dependent on foreign subsidies. 3 These core elements of Afghanistan s contemporary political culture have been reinforced by the practices of the old, emergent, and aspiring power elites-the monarchists, Communists, secular nationalists, Pashtun/Afghan nationalists, Islamists of various stripes (global jihadists, Taliban, the Khorasan branch of Daesh [ISKP], etc.)-who continue to animate and at times seriously aggravate the chances for regaining national stability, peace, and security, increasingly desired by ordinary peoples of Afghanistan, both urban and rural, who are sick of war.
Contributors to Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan , all of them anthropologists who had conducted field research in Afghanistan during the 1960s and 1970s, describe the responses and reactions of different segments of the peoples of Afghanistan to the Khalq/Parcham Communist party s revolutionary programs and the military intervention of their then patron, the former Soviet Union (Russia), from the perspectives of the local communities they had studied firsthand. These ethnographic accounts highlighted two important dimensions of the conflicts as they took shape: the moral and political struggle of the Afghanistanis (all the peoples of Afghanistan) to oppose an atheistic regime backed by the USSR, and the quest for a legitimate alternative state structure that could better realize social justice and a more inclusive politics that would accord with universal Muslim ideals as conceived by the then leaders of Afghanistan s Mujahidin.
The Mujahidin armed resistance of the 1980s resulted in the globalization of the Afghanistan jihad through the unprecedented support from Muslim majority nations of the world as well as the United States of America and several countries of Western Europe. The effort culminated in the defeat of the Soviet Red Army and its withdrawal in 1989, the unexpected collapse of the USSR itself and the end of the Cold War. In Afghanistan, it entailed the military triumph of the Mujahidin over the Afghan Communist regime (in 1992). However, the cherished goal of establishing a legitimate, inclusive Islamic government was never realized.
The military success of the 1980s was achieved through the efforts of the largely disenfranchised educated Muslim youth, both rural and urban. These elements steadily gained the support of the pious Muslim masses against the bankrupt traditional power elites and the atheistic Marxists who had sought to capture the extractive capabilities of the state to further their own interests with help from external patrons. The possibilities of a Mujahidin military success were anticipated by the contributors to Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan . However, the likelihood of political failure after military victory was not expected. No one then could envisage the long, tortuous, and bloody ordeals the people of Afghanistan would suffer after the Mujahidin triumph of the early 1990s.
Afghanistan s four-decades-long war began as jihad-a grand Islamic ritual that symbolically colored not only the collective life of the nation but also the various agendas of the outsiders, Muslim and non-Muslim, who joined in the conflict. From the outset, the history of resistance against the Afghan Communists and their Soviet patrons, as rendered in this volume, was a collective struggle motivated by an alternative moral/political imagination. As Geertz has suggested: The social history of the moral imagination is a single subject. . . . Single, but of course vast. 4 Sadly, for the Afghan participants and performers of jihad, the efforts of the many competing jihadi forces operative in this mul