KHIL{A 1 (2005), pp. 123-138 DRESSING FOR THE FUTURE IN ANCIENT GARB The use of clothing in Afghan politics Willem Vogelsang Universiteit Leiden / National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden Hamid Karzai as a fashion idol Karzai has become a favourite of the world press. Foreign politicians like to be photographed in his In January 2002, Tom Ford, creative director of the presence. His silvery or golden brown qarakoli Gucci fashion house, told the media that the (astrakhan) headdress and the wide flowing, green recently appointed chairman of the interim govern- and purple chapan thrown loosely across his shoul- ment of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, Hamid ders present a very attractive picture indeed. Perhaps Karzai, was the “most chic” politician on this planet journalists and foreign diplomats are unconsciously (Fig. 1).1 In March 2004, on the eve of an interna- surprised to see a well-educated and attractive man tional donor conference in Berlin, the German fash- in beautiful clothing emerging from a ‘backward’ ion designer Wolfgang Joop correspondingly praised country such as Afghanistan.3 According to Karzai for his impeccable dress style and added that Wolfgang Joop in Berlin’s Der Tagesspiegel (1 April other world leaders could learn a lesson or two from 2004), “President Karzai is a shining example of the Afghan president.2 how a man can maintain the role of a gentleman even while wearing the dress of his ancestors.”4 1 BBC Worldservice, 17 January 2002. Hamid Karzai was born on 24 December 1957 from a wealthy and high-rank- ing and fiercely royalist Pashtun family. He studied at the Himachal University in Simla between 1979 and 1983. After the fall of the Marxist regime of President Najibullah in 1992 he was appointed deputy minister for foreign affairs of Afghanistan under President Burhanuddin Rabbani, He left his post out of discontent with the growing political disorder. At first he was supporting the emerging Taliban movement and had several meetings with Mullah Omar. In the end however, he refused the offer of becoming Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United Nations. He joined his father and other family members in the Pakistani town of Quetta and started to work against the Taliban. In 1999 his father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, was murdered, reportedly by Taliban followers. In early December 2001, after the fall of the Taliban, he was appointed chairman of the interim administration of Afghanistan and in December 2004 he was inaugurated as the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan. 2 Deutsche Welle, 2 April 2004. 3 People’s appreciation of the qarakoli cap was (understand- ably) somewhat marred however, when it became known that the top-quality headdresses are made of the skins of Fig. 1 President Hamid Karzai on NATO’s assumption of unborn lambs and that the sheep are beaten in order to command of the ISAF Forces in Afghanistan, 11 August abort their foetuses. 2003 (photograph courtesy NATO) 4 Reuters, 1 April 2004. 123 Attractive and politically highly useful port for his war-torn country. More importantly, Karzai’s qarakoli cap and chapan coat told his own While international couturiers and the media focus people that as a tribal Pashtun leader from the on the attractiveness of Karzai’s clothing, the real southeast of the country, by adopting a type of dress objective of the Afghan president’s sartorial presence that is more ‘northern’ and ‘non-Pashtun’ than of course goes beyond the mere production of a anything else, he strove to be the president for all pretty picture. The well-dressed Karzai follows in the Afghans. He did not want to come across as a the footsteps of other popular politicians who typical Pashtun chief. According to an Afghan understood the importance of dress. Nelson refugee in America, “[Karzai] wears them [the dif- Mandela, the great hero of casual clothing, won the ferent garments] all together because he wants peace hearts of the foreign media and world opinion with between Pashtun, Kabuli, Uzbek. He’s showing peo- his colourful Madiba shirts.5 He knows very well ple we are the same, no more tribal divisions, one that his attire expresses his policy of optimism, nation, no difference between us anymore.”7 happiness and equality. Another statesman who Whether the amalgam of ethnic, regional and reli- used his (rather minimal) dress for political purposes gious groups of Afghanistan accepts this was Mahatma Gandhi, who regularly wore just sartorial ‘trick’ or not (and some people ridicule him a loin-cloth, even when visiting Buckingham for it), the fact remains that Karzai used, as he still Palace.6 In this way Gandhi showed his simplicity does, his clothing to position himself in, and above and his disapproval of British rule and dislike of Afghan society and thus to present his pan-Afghan British culture. There is also the late Palestinian policies. leader Yasser Arafat, whom hardly anyone would have recognised without his scrubby beard and the kafiyah that was sewn onto his military-style jacket The language of dress in the shape of Palestina. The red tie of President Clothing being used for political ends is merely George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair one aspect of dress.8 Clothing constitutes an essen- adds to their (wished for) image of assertiveness and tial part of people’s life and is clearly more than manliness. All these politicians consciously use or merely a means to protect and cover the body. used their dress as a trademark and a means to pres- Without saying a word it tells the outside world ent their policies. Image, after all, is everything, and who we are and what we want. Dress provides that dictum applies especially to politicians. information about our gender, social standing, The positive impression Karzai’s appearance age, religion, ethic origin, relatives, political opin- made on the Western world helped him to gain sup- ions, and many more aspects that define our posi- tion in society. The study of clothing and all that goes with it therefore concentrates on the language of dress. And as in the case of ‘real’ languages, 5 The garments (cotton or silk, and always with long sleeves) there are three basic elements that should be dis- are named after Mandela’s tribe, and they are produced tinguished, namely a) the medium, which is the by the firm of Yusuf Surtie. Mandela adopted this type of dress after a visit to President Suharto of Indonesia, clothing itself; b) the wearer, and c) the spectator. who always used to wear similar types of shirt. See also All three elements are closely related and one does http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/archive/zaf/html/southafrica15069 not exist without the others. It is therefore essen- 9.html tial to bear in mind the three basic questions when 6 Incidentally, Gandhi is one of Hamid Karzai’s idols. 7 New York Times, January 2002. See also Seierstadt’s The studying the language of a particular piece of Bookseller of Kabul (2002/2004:148): “He dresses so as to clothing: what kind of clothing are we talking represent all of Afghanistan: lambskin cap from Kandahar about? What does the wearer want to say with it? in the south, cloak from the north and shirt from the west- And how do the onlookers interpret or misinter- ern provinces bordering Iran.” 8 I use the term dress to indicate all forms of body covering, pret this message? body ornament and body modification, including clothing, The language of dress has always played an hair style, tattooing, jewellery, etc. important role in Afghanistan and Hamid Karzai is 9 Amanullah, born in 1892, was the son of Amir Habibullah not the first Afghan to understand its significance. and grandson of Amir Abdal Rahman Khan, the virtual founder of the state of Afghanistan in the late nineteenth Highly interesting and perhaps amusing is the century. Unlike his predecessors, Amanullah advocated clothing sometimes worn by the Afghan ruler a policy of greater liberalisation and westernisation. He Amanullah (emir and king between 1919-1929).9 124 He advocated a policy of drastic reforms, in imita- tion of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey (1881- 1938) and Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran (1878-1944). Amanullah liked to have himself portrayed in a fanciful Western-style uniform, in order thus to show that he wanted to break with the traditional past (Fig. 2). More recently, the strict dress codes imposed on men, and in particular upon women, under the Taliban regime were promulgated in order to show the Taliban’s adherence to their distorted version of Islam.10 The fragmented state of Afghanistan Modern Afghanistan is a highly fragmented society in which political and social organisation concen- trates in the main on the immediate circle of acquaintances of the individual (the so-called qaum). The qaum may be determined by family links, but could also be based on wider ethnic, religious or local characteristics. There is in the same context a wide gap between the ruling elite in the capital and the main cities on the one hand, and the people living in the countryside on the other. For the local people, the capital and its rulers were always the enemy, or at best an external force to Fig. 2 King Amanullah of Afghanistan (1919-1929). hide from. The rulers and their followers only came Print private collection author. to the villages to collect taxes; to pick up boys for the army and girls for the harem. started to close in the decades before the start of the During the late-nineteenth and early twentieth civil war.