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Abstract
This article provides a critical appraisal of ethnicity as the primary route to knowing Afghanistan. The critique is founded on the fundamental voiceless-ness of Pashtuns in academic and international discussions about them. It utilizes longue durée history to amplify the salience of migration as an alternate framework for understanding Afghanistan, and it analyzes the place of the Pashto language in the modern Afghan state structure. The article also discusses the impact of the nineteenth-century British Indian colonial authority Mountstuart Elphinstone and the twentieth-century American specialist Louis Dupree to illustrate the persistence of Orientalism in Anglo-American imperial knowledge about Afghanistan.
Notes
1 See, for example, L. Poullada (1970) The Pashtun Role in the Afghan Political System (New York: The Afghanistan Council of the Asia Society); and A. Hyman (2002) Nationalism in Afghanistan, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 34, pp. 299–315.
2 See, for example, L. Dupree (1989) The Inward Looking Society, in: L. Dupree (ed.) Afghanistan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), pp. 248–251.
3 Treatment of Pashtuns and Pashto in Pakistan is beyond the scope of this article.
4 On the role of Dupree see United States Congress (1989) A Tribute to the Late Dr. Louis Dupree. Available at http://www.jezail.org/02_essays/01fr_dupree.html, accessed October 28, 2015; on Gouttierre see Sourcewatch.org (nd) Tom Gouttierre. Available at http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tom_Gouttierre, accessed October 28, 2015.
5 For more on the cooptation of American anthropology during World War II and the role of anthropology and anthropologists in contemporary US military operations, especially in the Human Terrain System, see D. H. Price (2008) Anthropological Intelligence: The Deployment and Neglect of American Anthropology in the Second World War (Durham: Duke University Press); idem (2009) Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Militarized State (Oakland and Petrolia, CA: CounterPunch and AK Press); R. J. Gonzalez (2009) American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain (Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press); and Network of Concerned Anthropologists (2009) The Counter-Counter Insurgency Field Manual: Or Notes on Demilitarizing American Society (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press). These authors are responding to numerous writings by D. Kilcullen, M. McFate and D. Petreaus including most importantly the revised Counterinsurgency Field Manual (The United States Army/Marine Corps (2007) Counterinsurgency Field Manual: U.S. Army Field Manual No. 3–24; Marine Corps Warfighting Publication No. 3–33.5 [Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press]). Author’s Note: This article was under review when the HTS officially was terminated in June 2015. See R. J. Gonzalez (2015) The Rise and Fall the Human Terrain System, CounterPunch. Available at: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/29/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-human-terrain-system/ accessed November 27, 2015.
6 See F. Barth (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference (Boston, MA: Little Brown), particularly the Introduction, pp. 9–38 and Pathan Identity and its Maintenance, pp. 117–134.
7 Barth’s work on political leadership in Afghanistan (not Pashtun ethnicity) is treated in D. B. Edwards (1998) Learning from the Swat Pathans: Political Leadership in Afghanistan, 1978–97, American Ethnologist, 25, 4, pp. 712–728.
8 One exception to the generalized silence of Afghan voices in the discourse of Afghanistan is found in A. Daulatzai (2006) Acknowledging Afghanistan: Notes and Queries on an Occupation, Cultural Dynamics, 18(3), pp. 293–311.
9 It is important to note that the Afghan ruler Habibullah (r. 1901–1919) appointed a Hazara historian to write the official state history of his father Abd al-Rahman’s reign. See R. D. McChesney & M. Khorammi (2016) The History of Afghanistan: Fayz Muhammad Katib Hazarah’s Siraj al-tawarikh, 4 vols. (Leiden & Boston: Brill).
10 A seventh form, circular migration, is addressed below. An excellent example of migration-centered analysis is A. Mondsutti (2005) War and Migration: Social Networks and Economic Strategies of the Hazaras of Afghanistan (London: Routledge).
11 The following narrative of the pre-1500 CE period generally follows W. Ball (2008) The Monuments of Afghanistan: History, Archaeology and Architecture (London: I. B. Tauris), pp. 40–99.
12 See N. Steensgard (1999) The Route Through Qandahar: The Significance of Overland Trade between India and the West in the Seventeenth Century, in S. Chaudhury & M. Morineau (eds) Merchants, Companies, and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 55–73.
13 See V. Kushev (1997) Areal Lexical Contacts of the Afghan (Pashto) Language (Based on the Texts of the XVI-XVIII Centuries), Iran & the Caucasus, 1, pp. 159–166; V. Kushev (2001) The Dawn of Pashtun Linguistics: Early Grammatical and Lexicographical Works and Their Manuscripts, Mansuscripta Orientalia, 7 (2), pp. 3–9; and S. Mahmoud Hanifi (2013) A History of Linguistic Boundary Crossing Within and Around Pashto, in: M. Marsden & B. Hopkins (eds), Beyond Swat: History, Society and Economy along the Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier (London: Hurst & Co. and New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 63–76.
14 See W. Haig (1928) The Cambridge History of India, vol. 3, Turks and Afghans (New York: Macmillan and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); and A. Wink (2002 [1991 and 1997]) Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo Islamic World, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill).
15 It should be noted that Babur so enjoyed Kabul and its geographic and social setting that he requested to be buried there. For Babur’s description of Kabul see Z. Muhammad Babur (1993) Baburnama, Part Two: Kabul (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
16 For more on these migrations and settlements, see J. J. L. Gommans (1995) The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, c. 1710–1780 (Leiden: E. J. Brill). For consideration of some of the texts produced by these Afghans in India about their own histories, see N. Green (2008) Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Afghan History, The Journal of Asian Studies, 67(1), pp. 171–211.
17 Which in some ways runs counter to Anderson’s argument about the colonial state creating exclusive identities for is subjects, for which see B. Anderson (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections and the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso).
18 Charles Lindholm & Fredrik Barth are two important examples of careful, distinguished scholars whose very useful work is diminished by uncritically lumping the three terms together. See C. Lindholm (1980) Images of the Pathan: The Usefulness of Colonial Ethnography, Archives Europeennes de Sociologie, 21(2), pp. 350–361; and F. Barth Pathan Identity and its Maintenance, in: Ethnic Groups and Boundaries.
19 For qasbahs see C. A. Bayly (1988) Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
20 For the Abdalis see C. Noelle (2010) The Abdali Pashtuns Between Multan, Qandahar and Herat, in: M. Marsden & B. Hopkins (eds) Beyond Swat: History, Society, and Economy along the Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier (London: Hurst & Co. and New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 31–38. On Nadir Shah Afshar, see L. Lockhart (1993 [1938]) Nadir Shah: A Critical Study Based Mainly upon Contemporary Sources (Jalandhar, India: Asian Publishers). For the Ghalzays, see L. Lockhart (1958) The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). For Ahmad Shah Durrani, see G. Singh (1981 [1959]) Ahmad Shah Durrani: Father of Modern Afghanistan (Lahore: Tariq Publications).
21 For Ahmad’s Shah’s commissioning of Mulla Pir Muhammad Kakar to prepare the Marifat al-Afghani (written in approximately 1773) for his son, Sulayman, see V. Kushev (2001) The Dawn of Pashtun Linguistics.
22 For more on the importance of re-reading Ahmad Shah’s biography, see S. M. Hanifi (2012) Quandaries of the Afghan Nation, in: S. Bashir & R. D. Crews (eds) Under the Drones: Modern Lives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Borderlands (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 83–101.
23 S. M. Hanifi (2008 [2011]) Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), pp. 97–164.
24 For more on Pashto orality and publics, see J. Caron (2011) Reading the Power of Printed Orality in Afghanistan: Popular Pashto Literature as Historical Evidence and Public Intervention, The Journal of Social History, 45(1), pp. 172–194; and J. Caron (Forthcoming) Social Inequality and Ideological Circulation in Eastern Afghanistan, 1930–1960: Oral Publics for and against the Patriarchal State, in: S. Mahmoud Hanifi (ed.) Power Hierarchies and Hegemony in Afghanistan: State Building, Ethnic Minorities, and Identity in Central Asia (Forthcoming, London: I. B. Tauris).
25 M. Jamil Hanifi (2004) Editing the Past: Colonial Production of Hegemony Through the ‘Loya Jerga’ in Afghanistan, Iranian Studies, 37(2), pp. 295–322.
26 See S. M. Hanifi, Connecting Histories in Afghanistan, pp. 97–164.
27 See M. Elphinstone (1992 [1815]) An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, and Its Dependencies in Persia, Tartary, and India, 2 vols. (Karachi: Indus Publications); and B. D. Hopkins (2008) The Making of Modern Afghanistan (London: Palgrave Macmillan), especially ‘The Power of Colonial Knowledge, pp. 11–33.
28 S. M. Hanifi (2015) A Sampling of the Silences and Emphases in Mountstuart Elphinstone’s Journey to Peshawar and An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul. Paper presented at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies conference, Mountstuart Elphinstone and the Historical Foundations of Afghanistan Studies: Reframing Colonial Knowledge of the Indo-Persian World in the Post-Colonial Era, November.
29 S. M. Hanifi (2011) Henry George Raverty and the Colonial Marketing of Pashto, in C. Talbot (ed.) Knowing India: Colonial and Modern Constructions of the Past (New Delhi: Yoda Press), pp. 84–107.
30 For more on Shuja’s experiences in Ludiana, see S. M. Hanifi (2012) Shah Shuja’s ‘Hidden History’ and its Implications for the Historiography of Afghanistan, South Asian Multidisciplinary Academic Journal. Available at http://samaj.revues.org/3384#entries; accessed October 28, 2015.
31 For attention to diaspora mercantile groups in global history, see P. D. Curtin (1996 [1984]) Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); for attention to South Asian commercial diasporas in Central Asia and beyond, see S. C. Levi (2002) The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and Its Trade, 1550–1900 (Leiden: Brill); and C. Markovits (2000) The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750–1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
32 S. M. Hanifi (2009) Comparing Regimes of Colonial Knowledge in Afghanistan, 1809–2009, lecture delivered at Stanford University’s Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, April 2009.
33 From the late 1950s until the early 1980s Dupree published scores of AUFS Reports on various subjects, with Afghan state policies, particularly in relation to international aid, domestic development and regional politics in South Asia during the Cold War, receiving primary consideration.
34 Orientalism, as described by E. Said (1994 [1979]) in Orientalism (New York: Vintage), is one manifestation of this condition. For repeated resorts to orientalist tendencies to exoticize, homogenize and romanticize Afghans by an established authority of the country, see, for example, N. Dupree (2002) Cultural Heritage and National Identity in Afghanistan, Third World Quarterly, 23(5), pp. 977–989.