1 RESISTANCE BY OTHER MEANS: THE TALIBAN, FOREIGN OCCUPATION, AND AFGHAN NATIONAL IDENTITY A dissertation presented by Mariam Atifa Raqib to The Law, Policy and Society Program In partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of Law, Policy and Society Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts April, 2011 2 RESISTANCE BY OTHER MEANS: THE TALIBAN, FOREIGN OCCUPATION, AND AFGHAN NATIONAL IDENTITY by Mariam Atifa Raqib Policy analysts frequently portray the Taliban resistance as an exclusively Islamic movement. Culturally deterministic notions regarding Islamic societies have negatively influenced western governments’ policies towards Muslim states. The research here advances the hypothesis that the current conflict in Afghanistan is not about “Islam.” At its core the Taliban resistance is a nationalist challenge to foreign forces and their Afghan allies. Furthermore, the roots of this movement are foreign occupation, continued years of war and violence, and a lack of genuine effort on the part of the incumbent regime to implement necessary socio-economic and political reforms. This work claims that the success of the Taliban movement is firmly rooted in their appropriation of religious symbols, discourse and terminology — particularly Shariat, or Islamic law — to channel the frustrations of a grieving population. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of Law, Policy and Society in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Northeastern University, April 2011 3 Acknowledgements This dissertation has culminated from many years of research. I am privileged to have a group of people who have been supportive to me. My father’s generous support and kindness laid the foundation for my personal, academic and professional life. He is my greatest teacher and my guiding light, and I honor him. I thank my mother who has taken care of me with grace and dignity. I thank my sisters for their love and considerations and for inspiring me. I am humbled by the care and attention of my extended family and friends inhabiting various parts of the world. I have had the benefit of excellent professors. I thank Professor Tukumbi Lumumba- Kasongo. I arrived in his classroom as a young 18 year old and graduated 4 years later prepared to meet the world. In addition to introducing me to the study of politics, he challenged me to think as a humanitarian and “a citizen of the world”. The Northeastern University community has provided me with the space in which to pursue my intellectual curiosities. Members of my dissertation community, Professor Daniel Faber, and Professor David Monje owe my many thanks for their commitment to my research. There is one individual who has played the pivotal role in my academic career; Professor Amílcar Antonio Barreto has officially served as the chair of my dissertation committee. However, this title does not due him justice simply because this dissertation would not have been possible without his guidance. Professor Barreto’s efficient manner, professionalism, and sophisticated intelligence sustained me through the arduous journey. I remain his humble student. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 2 Acknowledgments 3 Table of Contents 4 Introduction 5 Chapter 1: Islam and the Transformation of the Afghan State 7 Chapter 2: Islam, Resistance, and the Centralization of Power in the Nineteenth Century 26 Chapter 3: The Politics of Reform and Resistance 70 Chapter 4: Cultural Politics? 132 Chapter 5: For the Afghan Nation 161 Chapter 6: Conclusion 215 Bibliography 231 5 Introduction and Overview Public policy analysts in the West, along with some Western scholars, attempt to portray the Taliban resistance to the Kabul government as an exclusively Islamic movement. Islam provides a system of norms, a code regulating human relations, or social morality (Roy). However, excessive attention directed to this detail disregards the spiritual dimensions of the religion. The spiritual dimension of the religion is important as it is projected in human behavior and observable in society. In this context, the individual is persuaded to join the umma (community of the believers). Membership in the umma extends the known boundaries of the political, legal, and social parameter of the universe. Hence, the adherence of certain Western scholars, Islamist intellectuals, and the way in which some of the ulama (experts on Islamic Law, or Shariat) insist upon a purely legalistic interpretation of the religion, reduce Islam to a system of strict rules. Keeping the above considerations in mind, it is inappropriate to conclude that the Taliban’s main objective is to bring about a “new world order” based on the application of Shariat (Islamic Law). Such conceptualizations of complex world politics, explicitly or implicitly, accept Bernard Lewis’s distorted perspectives on Islam or Samuel Huntington’s ethno-centric thinking in Clash of Civilization. The argument presented here is that the Taliban resistance is at its core a nationalist resistance to external (foreign) forces and their Afghan (domestic) allies, or perceived allies. In fact Political Islam is a complex phenomenon specific to diverse regions and peoples of the world. This is part of a recurring pattern of ethnic and nationalist mythmaking in Afghan history whereby key elites attempt to galvanize popular support to displace one regime by chastising it as an agent of colonial or neo-colonial rule. 6 Culturally deterministic notions regarding Islamic societies have a negative impact on western governments’ foreign policies towards Muslim states. Therefore, scholarship that informs foreign policy on Islam and Islamic societies becomes very important. These discourses are exceptionally important as they will inform American foreign policy, and contribute to our understanding, or lack thereof, of that which is referred to as “the Islamic world” and Islamist movements. Islamist movements are products of contemporary politics and are not narrow and specific programmatic units. 7 Chapter 1: Islam and the Transformation of the Afghan State The late Louis B. Dupree identified the essential theme of Afghanistan’s history as “fusion and fission” — a repeated process in which the Afghan tribes unite, especially against a foreign invader, only to disperse again into local contentions. In this context Islam, the common denominator, has held a central role among all resistance movements whether Shiite or Sunni, both inside and outside Afghanistan. Indeed within contemporary Muslim societies, the continuing debate is not completely about being Muslim; rather it is a more profound search for coherence within a number of recent political and age-old socio-cultural identities (Amin 1984: 380-81; Malik 1992: 889; Nawid 1997; Roy 1990). Islam was used as an effective ideological weapon to mobilize the Afghan people against British imperial intrusions into Afghanistan during the 19th and early 20th centuries (Nawid 1997: 581-82). Again Islam was effectively utilized during the latter part of the 20th century against the Soviet occupation and the un-Islamic character of the Kabul regime by providing legitimacy to the universality of the struggle in the form of (holy war, or jihad). Once more Islam has become the ideology of protest and resistance against the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Islam did play, and is currently playing, a crucial role in uniting a country that that is diverse along ethnic, tribal, linguistic, and regional differences. With the exception of a few thousand Hindus and Sikhs, and a few Jews, all Afghans are Muslims. Eighty percent are Sunni adhering to the Hanafite rite; and the remainder is Shiah adhering to the Jaffarite rite. There is a small Ismaeli minority of one to two hundred thousand people (Roy 1990: 30). In Afghanistan, the concept of the nation state is a late nineteenth century 8 development and the state is perceived to exist on the periphery of the society. Popular allegiance, therefore, is closely associated with the local community. The unifying factor in this paradigm is Islam. Afghanistan is an ethnically heterogeneous society comprised of Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Aimaqs, and a large number of other much smaller communities.1 Under the leadership of Ahmad Khan Sadozai (later called Ahmad Shah Durrani) the Pashtuns inspired the birth of the Afghan State in 1747, and the members of the Sadozai dynasty were its sovereigns until 1842. Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group crafted the political and economic landscape of Afghanistan until 1992. The Durrani Empire consolidated all the Pashtuns under the jurisdiction of one political center. During the aforementioned empire’s reign, this ethnic group benefited from the institutionalized military, political, and economic dominance in Afghanistan (Ahady 1995: 621). Traditional anthropology and scholarship has perceived tribe, and hence tribal identity, preceding the state or as subordinate form of political and social development. More recent research, however, also supported by Barnett Rubin (1995: 10), explains that tribe, at least in its Middle East and Central Asian models, exists in conjunction with state. Furthermore, Rubin asserts that the tribe is one of several types of social organization acceptable to “tribespeople” (Ibid.). The particular model that people adhere to depends upon how tribe interacts with other existing models of social and political organizations of the state. For example,