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مطالب بيشتر از admin در صفحه اختصاصي نويسنده پيوسته‌ها Identity and Conflict in Afghanistan نويسنده: Hugh Reeves تاريخ نشر: 4.01.2007 The most unified these tribes ever become is when fighting a common enemy. The difficulty in finding such a resolution is, in part, due to the lengthy history of conflict. Conflict has become part of the Afghan identity. The best potential solutions for the chronic violence that plagues Afghanistan involve the creation of a unified nation state, a step which Afghans uniformly resist. Perhaps given the course of recent events, Afghanistan can begin rebuilding its tattered country using the blueprints of more unified and central nation states. If this is accomplished, one can only hope that a sense of national community will quell many of the tribal disputes that would otherwise result in violence. Hugh Reeves April 12, 2004   .................... Contents .................................... 1. Introduction 2. Relevant Background 3. Foreign Dominance and the Afghan Identity 3.1 The National Hero 3.2 The Geographical Solidification of Borders 3.3 Russian Influence 4. Islam and the Role of Religion 5. Internal Division 5.1 Social Division 5.2 Gender Division 5.3 Geographical Division 5.4 Tribal Division 5.4.1 The Pashtun Tribal Group 5.4.2 Non-Pashtun Tribal Groups 6. Foreign Dominance vs. Internal Division 7. The Role of Identity 8. The Future of the Conflict in Afghanistan 9. A Transformationalist’s Perspective 10. Conclusion           1 Introduction Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the world has paid a great deal of attention to Afghanistan. However, long before these events brought the country to the front pages, Afghanistan was an area plagued with chronic unrest and violent conflict. A long history of warfare has bred a country of fierce warriors, each willing to fight and die for the defense of their homeland. Sadly, due to the lack of a strong nation state, much of this country’s violence has been self-inflicted as conflicts have arisen between various tribal groups. These tribal groups form the highly segregated social units of Afghanistan, each separated along ethnic, geographical, and historical boundaries. The conflict between the largest of these groups, the Pashtuns (or Pushtuns), and the remaining tribal groups has been one of great ferocity and violence.   2 Relevant Background The history of Afghanistan has been shaped by two prominent forces, the first of which is the impact of centuries of foreign domination dating as far back as third century B.C. with the invasion of Alexander the Great. Throughout the country’s history, it has been “the land between empires”. As a result, Afghanistan has been repeatedly occupied by outside forces, each exerting their influence upon the country’s development. The second major force to shape the territory is the impact of the Afghan identity, torn between his faith and his society. Within Afghan life there exist fundamental divisions within its people, its tribes, and its ways of life. At the individual level, an Afghan is inhibited by moral contradictions that exist between his society and his religion, Islam. Many have argued that these internal divisions have had an even greater influence on the country’s development than that of foreign dominance. An understanding of these two themes is critical to any analysis of Afghanistan’s history and the conflicts that plague its territory.   3 Foreign Dominance and the Afghan Identity One can easily recognize that the constant presence of foreign domination would have a tremendous influence on a nation’s history. As a result of centuries of conflict, Afghanistan has become a nation of fierce warriors. While many factors have facilitated these numerous conflicts throughout Afghanistan’s history, the country’s geography is by far the greatest contributor. Throughout the course of civilization, Afghanistan has existed as a “crossroads”, dating as far back as 3000 B.C. when it was a junction be- tween Mesopotamia and other civilizations. As a consequence of its location, neighboring empires have repeatedly encroached upon Afghanistan. Wedged between the Mughals and the Safavids, Afghanistan experienced its first taste of foreign domination with the invasion of Babur, founder of the Moghul dynasty[Roy49]. However, as history will prove, the Afghan people do not idly toler- ate such outside interference. An Afghan intellectual, Bayazid Roshan started a revolt against the power of the Moghul government. Though Roshan life can to an end in 1579 when he was killed in battle, his struggle for independence continued on. Roshan’s revolt is only the first of many examples of the struggle for Afghan independence throughout the territory’s history. Following in his footsteps, Khushhal Khan Khattak, a 17th century Afghan warrior-poet, initiated a national uprising against the foreign Moghul government[And83]. The Moghuls, however, were not the only ones exerting external pressure on Afghanistan. In 1622, Kandahar comes under the rule of the Safavids from Persia who maintain power for nearly eighty years until finally freed in 1708 under Mir Wais, hailed to be the “forerunner of Afghan independence”. Persian dominance of Afghanistan peaked in 1738 with Nadir Shah’s capture of Kandahar. In 1747 Nadir Shah was assassinated, and the Afghans rose once again under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Abdali, the first king of Afghanistan, to retake Kandahar, and establish modern Afghanistan[Ewa02]. It is within this context that the national identity of modern Afghanistan is born. This was one of the many times that Afghans would have to rise to oppose foreign powers. We will see later that tribal unity is greatest when faced with an outside threat.   Perhaps the greatest example of foreign influence in Afghanistan was felt during the expansion of British imperial power. The first Anglo-Afghan War began in 1839 re- sulting in the installation of Shah Shuja as a “puppet king” for the British. Shuja’s reign only lasted three short years, before his assassination in 1842[Ras00]. Only through such opposition, have Afghans developed any sense of a national identity. While such foreign pressures yielded some of the most desolate economic conditions, they also produced the few brief periods in the country’s history in which the Afghan people were unified.   3.1 The National Hero British involvement did not end, however, with Shuja’s assassination. Afghans passion- ately continued their struggle against the British. It is within this struggle that some of Afghanistan’s greatest national heroes emerged. These national heros play a crucial role in understanding the Afghan identity. Apart from Islam, the ideals shared amongst Afghans constitute one of the most powerful unifying forces. These ideals are passed from one generation to the next through stories of heroic individuals from Afghanistan’s past. Akbar Khan, is perhaps the greatest example of such an individual. After a battle in January 1842, only one British survivor from an army of 16,500 soldiers reached the fort in Jalalabad, on a stumbling pony. Stories of British annihilation and heroes like Akbar Khan have reinforced Afghanistan’s development into a warrior culture. Unfor- tunately, reverence for the “proud warrior” ideal results in conflicts escalating quickly to violence.   3.2 The Geographical Solidification of Borders By the late 19th century, Afghanistan was completely landlocked and succumbing to more and more external pressure. In the 1870’s, as Russia’s border steadily advanced towards the war-hardened Afghan nation, the British imperial expansion spawned the second Anglo-Afghan War. Amir Muhammad Yaqub Khan gave up the Kurram, Khyber, Michni, Pishin, and Sibi Afghan territories to the British, losing them permanently for Afghanistan. Then in 1880, Abdur Rahman Kahn takes throne of Afghanistan as Amir [Roy49]. The British, shortly after the accession of the new Amir, withdrew from Afghanistan, although they kept the right to manage Afghanistan’s foreign relations. Once in power, Abdur Rahman established fixed borders losing a lot of Afghan land. Despite Afghanistan’s solidifying of a geographical self-image, it still was under the foreign dominance of British power. Afghanistan does not regain control of its foreign affairs until the defeat of the British in the Third Anglo-Afghan War. Finally, after more than a century, British influence came to an end in 1947 with Britain withdrawing from India, resulting in the creation of Pakistan from Indian and Afghan lands.   3.3 Russian Influence Britain was not the only national superpower to exert its influence on Afghan history. The expansion of Russian imperial power into Asia served as the catalyst for yet another source of foreign domination for Afghanistan. Beginning in 1873 Russia established a fixed boundary between Afghanistan and its new territories promising to respect the country’s territorial integrity. Of course only twelve years later, Russian forces seize the Panjdeh Oasis, a piece of Afghan territory north of the Oxus River. Afghans tried to retake it, but were finally forced to allow the Russians to keep Panjdeh, concluding in more empty promises from the Russians to honor Afghan territorial integrity in the future [Ric01]. In 1907, Russia and Great Britain sign the convention of St. Petersburg, in which Afghanistan is declared outside Russia’s sphere of influence. Of course, this became meaningless when in the 1950’s Prime Minister Mohammad Daoud turned to Soviet military aid after being rejected by the US, which had only formally recognized Afghanistan twenty years prior. In the mid-20th century, as ties between Afghanistan and the USSR strengthened, communism begins to rise within Afghanistan. In January 1965 the Afghan Communist Party was secretly formed having a tremendous impact on western attitudes towards Afghanistan. For nearly five hundred years, Afghanistan was recurrently under foreign domi- nation. This long history of struggle and warfare has influenced not only the Afghan culture, but also its economy, and self-image. Constant warfare has repeatedly exhausted the country’s economic resources. Destruction of irrigation systems reduced much of what was once farmable land to desert, resulting in poverty and famine. In consequence, competition for scarce resources has resulted in constant conflict between the various tribes of Afghanistan.   4 Islam and the Role of Religion When discussing any conflict, one must study the identities of its participants. In the case of Afghanistan, any analysis of identity must include the role of Islam, as Islam is inseparable from the Afghan identity. As the greatest unifying force within the country, Islam in Afghanistan dates back to the foundation of Ghaznavid in 999 A.D., the first Islamic state in Afghanistan. Eighty-five percent of Afghans are Sunni Muslims, with the remaining fifteen percent Shia Muslims [Ewa02]. This common ground extends beyond tribe, sex, and geography. However, Islam simultaneously presents the Afghan individual with one of his greatest moral contradictions. The Afghan identity is inseparable from Islam as one cannot be a non-Muslim Afghan. Nevertheless culture often clashes with faith for the people of Afghanistan. A clear example can be extracted from the Pashtun tribe, the largest of the tribal groups. Pashtunwali, which is the ideology of what it means to be Pashtun, excludes women. This is a direct contradiction with the teachings of Islam. In the interest of maintaining the patrilineage, tribal tradition generally denies all landed inheritance rights to women. Yet the sharia dictates that a share of inheritance must go to daughters. Gilmartin writes: “The tension between universal ideals and the actual exercise of power, whether it be tribal or state-based, is one that is deeply embedded in the history of Islam, and has strongly influenced Afghan history”[Gil02, p. 4].   5 Internal Division Many have argued that the dominant force on the history of Afghanistan has been not the foreign influences, but instead the divisions that split the country from within. The previous section’s example of Islam contradicting social code is only one of the many ways in which Afghan society is internally divided. These internal divisions exist at all levels of the culture, from the partition that exists between tribes, to the internal struggles of individuals as they attempt to reconcile between the competing claims of their faith and their society. Afghanistan’s citizens are bounded by ethnicity, social status, language, sex, and geography. This is a country in which nationalism is a sentiment expressed only in the face of great external pressures. On the individual level, an Afghan is torn between the one direction enforced by his society and the other by his faith. Islam, though the most prominent example of a common identity, has served as a weak foundation for national unity and has presented certain moral contradictions to the individual. One might argue that these circumstances have had the greatest impact on the history of Afghanistan.   5.1 Social Division Though Afghanistan’s population is only a moderate 25.8 million people, the country still faces many obstacles to unity within the population. The foremost of these is the clear social and cultural fragmentation. Within a country roughly the size of Texas, there exists an extremely diverse selection of ethnic groups. Often running along the same lines as ethnicity, a strong sense of a tribal identity has further divided the Afghan national culture. Throughout the nation’s history, tribal warfare and competition have plagued the country. Language further enhances these divisions, differing from region to region. Roughly fifty percent of Afghans speak Dari, a form of Persian, and another thirty percent speak Pashtu[Ewa02]. This language barrier serves to further divide Afghan culture, resulting in highly localized senses of identity and loyalty. Most Afghans see themselves a member of their tribe first, and a member of their nation second (if at all).   5.2 Gender Division Afghan society is even further split by sex. In this society only males have power and property. This is perceived by many societies as one of the most backwards aspects of Afghan culture. This split recently reached a peak, with the rise of the Taliban who enforced that women must be fully veiled in public and would no longer be allowed to work or go out alone. As a result, the relationship between men and women is often tense or hostile. Studies have shown that Afghans find little peace at home, often in horrible fights with their spouses[Ras00]. There seem to be few aspects of Afghan society which remain free of internal division.   5.3 Geographical Division One of the greatest opponents to the formation of a sense of national community is the land itself. The land of Afghanistan is mountainous, with extremely difficult terrain. Steep valleys and expansive desert lands have significantly staggered the mobility of the Afghan people. Centuries of warfare have reduced almost all transportation infrastruc- ture to rubble, thus reinforcing the tendency to identify with a smaller community, i.e. village, tribe, etc.   5.4 Tribal Division Recently, one such example of tribal conflict, between the Pashtun and non-Pashtun tribes, has grown to tremendous proportions. The Pashtuns compose roughly half of Afghanistan’s population, occupying the southern half of the country (see figure 5.4). The chronic conflict between these groups is the result of tremendously limited resources combined with a heavy emphasis on the warrior ideals. Potential conflicts can escalate to violence with incredible ease. While such tribal conflict looks like civil war to the foreign spectator, those involved in the conflict feel no connection with the opposing tribesmen. For the Afghan tribal warrior, this makes warfare against another tribe nearly the same as fighting any other foe.   5.4.1 The Pashtun Tribal Group The weak bonds found between Afghans at the state level contrasts the clearer sense of community we see at the tribal level. An obvious social boundary separates the Pashtuns from the other tribes of Afghanistan. Pashtuns are organized by shared descent traced through the male line (patrilineage). All Pashtuns believe they share ancestry back to a common male progenitor: Qais ’Abd al-Rashid, who was personally converted to Islam by the Prophet and married the daughter of Khalid bin Walid, a famous general from Islamic history[And83]. This imagined shared ancestry, however, is only one of many distinguishing features of a Pashtun. Further differentiating themselves from other tribesmen, the Pashtuns share a common language, known as Pashtu. Strangers can instantly determine whether or not someone belongs to the Pashtun tribe by simply hearing them speak. In addition to a distinct language, there is a formalized code of honor and behavior governing over all members of the Pashtun tribe. This code, known as Pashtunwali, sums up the values of tribe in a single term.   5.4.2 Non-Pashtun Tribal Groups The remaining half of Afghanistan’s population is divided between a number of other tribal groups. None of these groups singlehandedly can match the Pashtun tribe. How- ever, one thing history has certainly taught Afghan warriors is how to unite against a common enemy. Consequentially the recent past has witnessed fierce conflict between the tribal groups as they compete for territory and resources.   6 Foreign Dominance vs. Internal Division Two very valid propositions have been presented, explaining Afghan history as either the product of constant foreign-domination, or extensive internal division. Neither proposi- tion can be ignored as each provides insight into the other. Yet it could be argued that the internal divisions and the toll they have taken on the Afghan identity must be given more weight. As David Edwards puts it in Heroes of the Age, the “deep structure” of Afghan culture lies at the heart of Afghanistan’s modern fate. More so than outside pressures, he writes, “Afghanistan’s central problem was Afghanistan itself, specifically certain profound moral contradictions that have inhibited the country from forging a coherent civil society” [Gil02, p. 216]. Afghanistan’s crippled ability to form a coherent society has had a greater influence over their history than any other factor. If Afghanistan had been able to fix itself within, history might have proved quite different. When foreign forces came into play, resistance was highly inhibited by the weak state of the nation. The lack of a national identity prevented Afghans from presenting a unified front against their assailants. Though foreign domination cannot be ignored as an important force in Afghanistan’s development, the outcomes of these invasions were determined from within. It was the nation’s internal divisions which facilitated the devastating outcomes for Afghanistan and its people.   7 The Role of Identity Before studying any system, one must first have a clear understanding of the forces which influence it. As such, it is crucial to have a clear grasp on the Afghani identity. Perhaps the greatest contributing factor to the seemingly endless conflict between the various tribal groups is the lack of a sense of collective identity. This, as Richards asserts, can be contributed to the lack of a national identity. “Unfortunately, the Afghan is a warrior and not a citizen of a viable nation state. As such, he symbolizes weakness and failure”[Ric01]. As a result of defining liberty as freedom from taxation and other burdens imposed by the state, the Afghani people have resisted each state-building attempt. The Afghani identity is a very loose construct. While a large portion of an Afghan’s self-image may be specific to his tribe, there remain a number of shared ideals that apply to all Afghans. “[The Afghani fighter] is the tribal warrior living in a society organized by patrilineal kinship and patriarchal authority, who is imbued with a code of honor that impels him to defend and support his family especially his women, his lineage and tribe, and his land”[Ric01]. There are a number of shared national heros extracted from Afghanistan’s long history of warfare. Each of these heros, in some way, embody this warrior ideal for which Afghans have a great reverence. However, since there are no such examples of heros at the state level, no nation-wide sense of community has been able to form. “One reflection of the fundamental artificiality of the Afghan nation-state is the absence of a moral discourse of statehood shared by a majority of its citizens. Afghanistan has great heros that are recognized by all and a common set of events that are generally glorified. Together these heroes and events do constitute what might be called a myth of nationhood, but there is no corresponding myth of the state to go with it. The result is that although most Afghans hold to some notion of shared identity with one another, that identity is articulated horizontally between individuals, tribes, and regions