We Went to the Hills": Four Afghan Life Stories

City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2010 “We Went to the Hills": Four Afghan Life Stories James M. Weir The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3679 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] “WE WENT TO THE HILLS”: FOUR AFGHAN LIFE STORIES By JAMES M. WEIR A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2010 ii © 2010 JAMES M. WEIR All Rights Reserved iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Anthropology in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Dr. Vincent Crapanzano Date Chair of Examining Committee Dr. Gerald Creed Date Executive Officer Professor Michael Blim Professor Murphy Halliburton Professor Margaret Mills (external reader) Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv Abstract “We Went to the Hills”: Four Afghan Life Stories by By James M. Weir Advisor: Professor Vincent Crapanzano This dissertation examines four Afghan life stories for prevalent micro-historical perspectives on shared Afghan macro-historical experiences. The introduction explains my background, motivations and objectives for conducting life history research in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005. The first chapter outlines an approach applied to examining life stories that addresses three interrelated questions: first, how the narrator’s presentation is related to the memory of the actual events narrated (biographical chronology), second, how a narrative image/s of a person’s past is established in relationships to individually significant audience/s (narrative self / audience), and third, how interrelationships between the individual life and the socio-historical context are expressed by troubling or valued dimensions of the past (existential orientation). My examination focuses upon significant historical and interpersonal concerns as they manifest across individual life narratives. Each chapter begins with background on the circumstances of the interview, followed by the interview transcription, and concludes with an extended analysis of the life story. I conclude with ethnographic interpretation of each life story in light of recent Afghan history and speculating about the meanings of violence and the limits of trauma for contemporary understanding of Afghan culture and history. v Dedicated to Trinh Nguyen, love of my life, whose presence inspires and makes each trial worthwhile. vi Acknowledgments I wish to first thank my mother and recognize the memory of my father for support and encouragement since before I could walk and talk. I would like to express appreciation to my sisters, Karen and Gina, and their beautiful families, Larry, Luke, Savanna, Dave, Sam, Silas and Jason. I am honored and blessed by inclusion in the Nguyen Family, Kim (Ma), Thanh (Ba), Trang and Khanh. I have the good fortune of a host of friends who are integral to the journey including Peter Herbert, Gerard McHugh, Danny Pope, Esin Egit, Chiara Bazulli, Lev Feigin, and Jarrett Zigon. I wish to express appreciation for the generosity of spirit of many Afghans friends including Ramin, Ayub, Omar, Shoaib, Omar Ahmadzai, Amir Jan, Khadim Hussein and all the students of the Afghan Oral History Project. I would like to thank Vincent Crapanzano, my dissertation advisor, for guidance, support and inspiration, to appreciate Margaret Mills, who generously gave her time and expertise to improve my work, and to convey great respect to Murphy Halliburton and Michael Blim for their dedicated support as committee members. I am grateful to the many Afghans, those four included here and the many excluded, who generously gave their time and memories in hope that acknowledgement of the past might contribute to a better future. Finally, this research and dissertation would not be possible without the generous funding provided by the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the Mellon Dissertation Writing Fellowship. vii Table of Contents Introduction: An Individual Life, A Historical Period and the Life Narration A) Conducting Life Story Interviews 1 B) My Motivations and Background 10 Chapter 1 – Reading Life Stories for Intersubjectivity A) Life Narrative in Contexts 19 B) The Contours of a Method: Biographical Chronology, Narrative Self/Audience, and an Existential Orientation 31 Chapter 2 - Ustad Mohammad Alim – Allegiances Divided 48 Chapter 3 - Nor Mohammad – Father, Driver, Gunrunner 96 Chapter 4 - Haji Bomani – A Local Leader, a Lost Generation, and a Marginalized Majority 146 Chapter 5 - Jamila Afghani - Rebel from Within 208 Conclusion: Culture and Violence 261 References 275 1 Introduction: An Individual Life, A Historical Period and Life Narration A) Conducting Life Story Interviews An early motivation for conducting research based on individual Afghan life stories was to counteract and complicate sensationalistic and simplistic accounts common in the US, especially after 9/11, that depict Afghans in terms of troubling caricatures. The media often presents Afghans as variations on four themes: religious zealots, brainwashed terrorists, misogynist polygamists, or desperate victims. Popular focus on disparaging generalizations or melodramatic exceptions fosters the perception of a primitive and anachronistic ‘other’ kept at a cultural and ethical distance. David Edwards observes in Before Taliban that since the Soviet Afghan war “Western attempts to understand Afghans and Afghanistan since the outset of war in 1978 have centered largely on stereotypes and personifications.”(2002:16)1. On top of these cultural caricatures, public attention is dominated by hot bottom political topics presented as discrete problems that necessitate solution or management, and reveal little about the everyday realities of the ‘ordinary’ Afghans international interventions aim to promote, convince or defeat: 1 David Edwards writes two pages later “Because the impression of Afghanistan in the West has centered on around a series of sensationalized stereotypes, my objective is to provide an alternative set of biographical representations.” This is very close to my own objectives in this work but a significant difference is that I do not focus on important political figures or large political processes but on relatively weak ‘ordinary’ people who takes stands, acting and reacting, to political and cultural, hoping to add ethnographic context to popular caricatures in the West. 2 examples include the rise of political Islam, the history of factious, regionally based leaders (warlords) the role of NATO and the US on national affairs, and the prevention of poppy production. Having lived and worked in the region for five years, first as an English teacher and then as an international development worker, before I began this research or decided to become a cultural anthropologist, I sought cultural and historical analysis that focused on individual experiences and perceptions. In this work four life narrative interviews are translated from Dari to English and presented in close to their original form, with minor edits for ease of readability. An object from the beginning has been to have Afghan voices accompany my own, while also attending to my influence on the research process. My examination interprets the micro-political meanings of shared macro-historical experiences by examining four autobiographical accounts for indication of cultural processes and evidence of interpersonal concerns. Attention is given to the interview dynamics as an Afghan informant addresses me, a white, male American ethnographer, during an enormous, American-led military intervention (2005), but the focus is on the obligations and expectations of narrators addressing interpersonally significant communities in life reflection. Following Butalia’s work on India’s partition I ask, “If there is a way in which people’s stories, notwithstanding all their problems (as a historical source), can somehow expand, stretch the definitions and boundaries of history and find a place in it.” (2000:10). As four ‘ordinary’ Afghans narrate struggles to secure life, well-being, integrity, and autonomy, amidst great insecurity, their stories present actions and reactions, nostalgias and anxieties, hopes and frustrations, as articulations of political 3 discourse and cultural processe. It is hoped this study contributes useful ethnographic background to an enormous intervention that increasingly speaks of ‘winning the hearts and minds’ of the Afghan people. While there are no policy recommendations, I trust the discussions that follow contain indirect and direct implications for policy thinking and cultural exchange in the region. I often refer to the past three decades of war in Afghanistan in the singular because at practical levels the continuous instability generated by political violence is more relevant for most Afghans than the frequently changing political justifications of conflict. Greater attention is given to the Soviet Afghan War (1979 – 1989) for a variety of reasons. Macro-politically, the configuration

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