Questions of Home, Belonging and Return in an Afghan Diaspora
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Marije Braakman ROOTS AND ROUTES Questions of Home, Belonging and Return in an Afghan Diaspora M.A. Thesis August 2005 [email protected] Leiden University Department of Cultural Anthropology & Sociology of Non-Western Societies The Netherlands Picture on front cover: www.epyphites.net (omitted in PDF version) Pronunciation of Dari sounds ā - as in father, an a with a touch of o in it u - as the double oo in room gh - like a thick r in the French garςon kh - a throaty, coughing sound as the ch in the Scottish loch, or the Dutch g q - an explosive, breathy sound not existing in English, like a k pronounced deep in the throat ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis marks the end of a long journey, although in my case, this has not been so much a geographical one but rather a personal journey of discovery. This project would have been impossible without the support and help of the people around me. First and foremost I would like to express my gratitude to the many Afghans as well as a few German people inside and outside Hamburg, without whom this research would not have been possible. They have openly shared their experiences, feelings and knowledge with me and shown me some of the typical Afghan mehmānnawāzi or hospitality. Some of them have become very dear to me. To guarantee their anonymity and privacy I have used pseudonyms, which sadly prevents me from being able to thank them by name. My privileged position as a researcher and the writer of this thesis allowed me the unmistakable authority to interpret my informants’ words and adopt their insights to support my own. I have endeavoured to do this in an honest manner that does them justice. The anthropologist Tina Gehrig has been a huge support in facilitating my entrée to the field, and a great field ‘colleague’ with whom I was able to share my experiences and thoughts. In Holland, I would like to thank my supervisor José van Santen for reading and commenting on my research proposal and thesis. I am very grateful for the encouraging words and useful comments of my friends, especially Marieke and Maryam, in times of need. Further more, I wish to express my gratitude to Margaret Burton and Thomas Grimley for correcting the final version of this thesis, which is written in a foreign tongue to me. Last but not least I wish to thank my mother and father, whose continuous support made it possible for me to complete my studies. Marije Braakman Leiden, the Netherlands August 2005 iii CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 Context of Study 1 Research Questions 2 Significance 3 Outline of Chapters 4 Part I: CONTEXT Chapter 1: THE AFGHAN EXODUS 7 1.1 Introduction 7 Afghan Refugees in the Region 7 Afghan Refugees in the West 9 1.2 Afghanistan’s Social Structure 9 1.3 A History of the War and the Waves of Refugees 12 Until 1973: The Kingdom of Afghanistan 12 1973-1992: Revolutions and Soviet Occupation – The First Wave of Refugees 13 1992-1996: The Mujaheddin in Power – A Second Wave of Refugees 15 1994-2001: The Rise of the Taliban – A Third Wave of Refugees 16 2001 Until Now: The Karzai Era 17 1.4 Destination Germany 18 The Relationship between Afghanistan and Germany 18 The Journey to Germany 19 Chapter 2: AFGHANS IN GERMANY 22 2.1 Introduction 22 2.2 The Influx of Afghans 22 2.3 Asylum 24 Recognition or Rejection 24 Other Residence Titles 25 The Threat of Deportation 27 2.4 Regional Distribution 27 2.5 Hamburg, the ‘Kabul of Europe’ 29 A Socio-Cultural Profile 29 Statistical Information 31 Chapter 3: REFLECTIONS ON THE FIELDWORK 34 3.1 Introduction 34 3.2 Problems Expected and Encountered 35 Overcoming Distrust 35 Explaining Research Purposes 36 3.3 Finding Entrance to the Research Group 37 Snowball Sampling 37 Representativeness 37 Network Building 38 3.4 Approaches for Data Collection 39 Participant Observation 41 Unstructured Interviews 41 Casual Conversations 42 Informal Discussion Groups 42 iv Internethnography 43 3.5 The Anthropologist as Research Instrument 44 Part II: SPACES OF BELONGING Chapter 4: HOME AND HOMELAND IN A WORLD OF MOVEMENT 49 4.1 Introduction 49 4.2 People and Place in Earlier Studies 50 4.3 Khāna: The House as Home 52 The House in Afghanistan and in Exile 53 4.4 Returning to the Old House 54 The Old House as Home? 55 4.5 The Post-Modern Home 56 4.6 Homeland: Implicit Assumptions 58 4.7 Emic and Etic Concepts 60 Chapter 5: THE NOSTALGIA FOR ROOTS 63 5.1 The Homophobe Roots / Routes 63 5.2 Asl wa Nasab: Origins and Roots 64 5.3 Asli Watan Afghanistan Dai: The Original Homeland is Afghanistan 66 Traditional Notions of Watan 66 Ambiguousness of Scale 67 Ambiguousness of Location 70 5.4 The Remote Homeland 71 Har Cha Ta Khpel Watan Kashmir Dai: One’s Own Homeland is Like Kashmir 72 5.5 “Afghanistan is our Mother”: The Female Homeland Metaphor 74 5.6 An Anchor of Roots 76 Chapter 6: THE COMPLEXITIES OF BELONGING 79 6.1 Introduction 79 6.2 Tensions Between Change and Loyalty to Roots 81 Culture and Identity 81 The Afghan Limit and the Young Generation 85 6.3 Complicated Belonging to the German Nation-State 86 Living in Limbo 87 Germanhood 87 National Belonging and Citizenship 88 6.4 Negotiating Identity 90 6.5 Defining Home 92 6.6 Individual Understandings of Heimat and Zuhause 94 Home at the National Level 94 Smaller Levels of Home 95 Jamal: “Sometimes I Think That Here Is Zuhause” 98 Part III: RETURN Chapter 7: BETWEEN DREAMS AND REALITY 101 7.1 Voluntary Returns 101 Beltun: “I Can’t Find a Solution For My Family” 102 7.2 The ‘Myth Of Return’ 103 v 7.3 Longing and Belonging 104 7.4 Dreams Versus Reality 106 “To Really Go and Live There Is Something Else” 106 Sohrab: “Life Over Here Is Not That Special” 108 7.5 The Real Afghanistan 109 7.6 A Dream To Stay 112 7.7 Old Age And Death 113 Becoming Old in Afghanistan 113 The Ultimate Resting-Place 115 7.8 Temporary Returns 116 Chapter 8: TAKING A ROUTE TO THE ROOTS 118 8.1 Back To Afghanistan 118 Shahram: “Tears Ran Down My Cheeks As We Entered Our Village” 118 Return Visits 119 8.2 Theorising A Return ‘Home’ 120 8.3 ‘Reality Checks’ 122 “One Goes There Only For The Memories” 122 “Happy on the One Side, Sad on the Other” 124 “Ooh, When I Saw Those Mountains!” 124 8.4 Encountering The Local Population 125 8.5 Experiences of Belonging and Non-Belonging 127 ‘Walking Wallets’ 128 Shame and Fear 128 8.6 Renegotiations of Identity 129 8.7 Back in Germany 131 Nadra and Naima: “We Can’t Live There Any More” 133 CONCLUDING REMARKS 137 The Complex Roots and Routes of Home, Identity and Belonging 137 Terminology 139 Watan 139 Return 140 Multiple Senses of Home 141 Return Programs 141 REFERENCES 143 APPENDICES 152 Appendix I Types of Residence Permits 152 Appendix II Map of Hamburg 153 Appendix III Overview of Return Programs 154 vi INTRODUCTION A fieldwork practise and the reflection thereof in a thesis marks the final stage of the studies of Cultural Anthropology / Sociology of Non-Western Societies at Leiden University. It still is an unwritten decree that students of anthropology perform their fieldwork in a remote, exotic place, where a period of hardships, deprivation and seclusion functions as a rite de passage, a liminal phase in which they are transformed from students to mature anthropologists, equipped for the professional life. I believe however that in this age of large- scale movements of people, goods and ideas, this tradition is in serious need of revision. Anthropologists no longer have to undertake long journeys to remote locations to find their customary subjects of study. The classical conception of anthropology as the study of bounded and distant traditional communities is not adequate any more to the reality of shifting boundaries and migrating cultures. The forces of globalisation now deliver ‘the exotic’ into the anthropologist’s own back yard, and this certainly holds true for the population of the country of my interest, Afghanistan. More than two decades of war in Afghanistan have displaced a third of its population. Afghan natives now reside in at least 78 countries around the world. Money, goods, information and people circulate between Afghans in different continents. Around a hundred thousand Afghans found their way to Germany, and a few thousand were even born there. Nearly a quarter of them reside in the northern city of Hamburg, thereby forming the largest Afghan community in Europe. Whereas before the war Afghanistan’s capital Kabul was called ‘the Paris of the East’, nowadays Hamburg is sometimes referred to as ‘the Kabul of Europe’. Hamburg became the location of my research, which took place between March and October 2003. I was interested in discovering how Afghans in Hamburg negotiated their senses of home and belonging, and how these influenced their attitudes towards return. The end result is an account of two kinds of journeys; two searches for home and spaces of belonging that take place simultaneously. The first is a physical one, across national borders, from Afghanistan to Germany and perhaps back to Afghanistan again. The other kind is a journey through questions of identity, history, cultures, ancestry and belonging. Context of Study On the 11th of September 2001, two hijacked airplanes flew into New York’s World Trade Towers.