Modern Afghanistan: The Impact of 40 Years of War by M. Nazif Shahrani

Author:M. Nazif Shahrani [Shahrani, M. Nazif]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Military, Afghan War (2001-), political science, Terrorism, World, Asian, Middle Eastern, Social Science, anthropology, Cultural & Social, sociology, General, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9780253030269
Google: wRlZDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2018-02-10T00:26:33.627550+00:00

Such opinions about the state of facts in Pashtun areas of the Southeast have been reported to me by many other informants, in roughly the same terms. Eamal, an old former communist party (PDPA) member in Jalalabad, to this day professing to me (in private) his faith in socialism, aired the same grievances when he complained about the backwardness of the Pashtun cultural environment, still clinging to practices such as the jirga which, in his opinion, only serves the interests of the powerful against the weak. Commenting on the reach of the PDPA members within the pre–Saur Revolution state apparatuses, and recalling the first years of the Soviet-backed governments, he said to me once: “The war destroyed our society. Before the war there was a strong state, a strong police and army. There were strong people in the government, with good values [arzakhtuna] . . . you could not do just whatever you wanted to do . . . they would put you in jail forever . . . we were civilized [mutamaddan] . . . Today it’s only chaos [gad wad]. There is violence [tashadod] and abuse everywhere.”

Similarly, a former KhAD member (intelligence services) under presidents Babrak Karmal and Mohammed Najibullah, now working for a (different) civil society organization in Jalalabad, once used his blackboard to draw a dense chart, and explain to me, with an hour-long monologue full of disdain, how it had happened that in all executive positions of authority in Afghanistan, from the local to the national ones, now sat only former mujahideen commanders of the war against the Soviets, and their younger cronies.

All these informants, and many others alongside them, perceive that there has been a steep increase in the use (and abuse) of violence in the Pashtun sociocultural context since the beginning of the long period of conflict in 1979. Some, like the former KhAD member, stress structural problems, like the number of political positions that the US-backed Afghan government has given to ex-mujahideen commanders. Others, like Rahmatullah and Eamal, feel that something has changed deeply within the moral fabric of today’s Pashtun men. They talk of moral values (akhlaqi arzakhtuna) that have supposedly lost the meaning they used to have and acquired new registers of significance, which they not only now do not recognize and feel comfortable with but altogether reject as aberrant. Rahmatullah is adamant in saying that he thinks many of those who are now powerful kumandanaan, in his eyes are little more than dishonorable bandits and thugs. Worse still, they do not represent a nar for him, but rather a beghairata—possibly the worst insult one might proffer against a Pashtun man. He was also somehow forced to admit that, in the end, many young men today join the commanders’ private armies not only, or exclusively, because of the good and sure salary the commanders provide. The “easy” money they get is certainly part of the equation, yet there are several other factors involved. One of these factors is that a

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