100 Treatises

How Many Afghans Does it Take to Build a State? Part 2

Continuing from yesterday’s post…

Afghanistan: A Tough Nut to Crack

However, there are deeper structural impediments standing in the way of a modern Afghan state. From the rulers of the 18th century to the Taliban in the 1990s, certain characteristics of Afghanistan have continually thwarted the efforts of centralizing forces. Like Europe, whose rivers, mountain ranges and peninsulas ensured that small regional political entities came to dominate in their respective areas, Afghanistan’s physical terrain has proven a massive impediment to the rise of a single, centralized state capable of projecting its power across the entire land. In geographical terms, Afghanistan is divided up by mountain ranges and rivers rendering it difficult to traverse (and therefore difficult to bring under a central authority structure), and facilitating the development of regional identities and local particularities.

Afghanistan today has between 25 and 40 ethnic groups (depending on what is counted), each with their own language and cultural niceties. By contrast, the typical modern state in the developed world (that is, those that have become most successful in terms of security and prosperity) contains at most two or three major languages and one dominant ethnic group and one culture. It is this high degree of homogeneity—even greater in earlier periods in those countries—that facilitates the development of a strong single national identity, which in turn becomes vital to the long term legitimacy and sustainability of the state. Thus, the geography of Afghanistan, like that of Europe itself, deters the development of a single national identity as well as the development of a single central state authority.

While most in the international community would think it unwise to try to build a single state to rule all of Western Europe, for example, it deems it acceptable to do so in Afghanistan with an identity of equivalent salience to “Western European.” The relatively large number of ethnic and cultural groups in Afghanistan, rather than being thought of as “subnational” identities, must be seen as the true “nations” of that place. Given that these identities—Pashtun, Tajik, Hazar, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, and others—are more salient, and enjoy primacy over the “Afghan” identity for so many people, whatever the traditional western perspective is, they must be seen as the actual national identities for the inhabitants. Understanding the true nature of identity in Afghanistan elucidates a major reason why state-builders have consistently failed to construct a single long-lasting Afghanistan state over the last 200 years.

Afghanistan’s History of Attempts at State Building

Since the 18th century, when the idea emerged of an independent and centralized Afghanistan united under a single leader, the country has seesawed between centralization and decentralization, between statist and chiefdom and tribal forms of political organization, and between depersonalized bureaucracy and personalistic power.

The first major attempt at state building that had any measure of success was that of Abdul Rahman, the “Iron Emir,” in the late 19th century, under whom the first Afghani military and system of taxation were created. His plan to unite the tribes through personal ties and subsequently create a formal bureaucracy and institutional structure died with him, because it was largely his personal presence that underlay the entire system. The elites in the new proto-state structure did develop a sense of a common Afghan identity, but this failed to trickle down to the average people.

Afghanistan’s next major leader, Muhammad Zahir Shah (reigned 1933-1973), also made attempts at modernization, including in social areas such as education, healthcare and women’s rights. Ultimately, though, like Abdul Rahman, Muhammad Zahir successfully ruled only with the approval of the regional and tribal authorities on the one side, and with a foreign power supplying money and arms on the other (Abdul had the British Empire, Muhammad, the Soviet Union). The state therefore had a quick death upon Muhammad’s overthrow, with regional powers seizing infrastructure and other resources, and withdrawing support from the central government, prompting the Soviet invasion in 1979.

To be continued…

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

MORE ARTICLES:

How Many Afghans Does it Take to Build a State? Part 3

How Many Afghans Does it Take to Build a State? Part 1

How Many Afghans Does it Take to Build a State? Part 4