{"id":49547,"date":"2026-09-18T16:42:58","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T14:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/?p=49547"},"modified":"2026-09-18T16:43:01","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T14:43:01","slug":"afghanistan-state-formation-graveyard-of-empires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/politics\/afghanistan-state-formation-graveyard-of-empires\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the \u2018Graveyard of Empires\u2019: Rethinking the Afghan State"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"flex flex-col md:flex-row justify-evenly items-center bg-yellow-100 my-20 p-10 space-y-10 subscribe\">\n\t<div class=\"container flex flex-col lg:flex-row justify-between\">\n\t\t<div class=\"flex flex-col w-full lg:w-3\/5 pb-4\">\n\t\t\t<h2 class=\"text-3xl text-secondary font-bold mb-4 text-[#749D02]\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSupport Novastan, the European Central Asia magazine \n\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\tBy supporting Novastan, you are supporting the only English, French and German-language media specialising in Central Asia. We&#8217;re independent and we need your help to stay that way! \n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"flex flex-col w-full lg:w-2\/5 justify-items-center justify-center pb-4\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"rounded-md bg-accent-500 px-10 py-5 text-center w-72 mx-auto\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a class=\"block rounded bg-white p-2 mt-4 font-bold\" href=\"https:\/\/donorbox.org\/soutenir-novastan?language=fr\">Support Novastan<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><em>Afghanistan is often explained through clich\u00e9s of tribalism, ethnic rivalry, foreign invasion and inevitable state failure. Political scientist Ahmad Fahim Abdullatif argues that these frames obscure the country\u2019s more complex history of state formation. In this interview with Novastan Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine, he discusses the collapse of the Afghan army in 2021, the Taliban\u2019s emerging state, the legacy of Amir Abdul Rahman\u2019s campaigns, British influence and why Afghanistan was never simply an isolated \u201cgraveyard of empires\u201d.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Afghanistan has repeatedly been explained through shorthand: tribal society, ethnic fragmentation, religious conservatism, foreign interference or the supposed impossibility of building a modern state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For Ahmad Fahim Abdullatif, these explanations are not only incomplete. They often prevent us from understanding how the Afghan state actually developed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His research examines state formation through Afghanistan\u2019s armed forces, coercive institutions and political organisations. Part of that interest emerged from the astonishing collapse of the Afghan security forces in 2021, which he watched unfold while his family remained in besieged Herat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That collapse raised a larger historical question. Why did the Najibullah government survive for three years after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, while the Western-backed Afghan state unravelled so rapidly after the US withdrawal more than three decades later?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From there, Abdullatif\u2019s analysis moves both backwards and forwards: from the Taliban\u2019s current state apparatus to nineteenth-century campaigns of consolidation under Amir Abdul Rahman, and from contemporary ethnic interpretations of Afghan politics to the colonial construction of Afghanistan as a buffer state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Novastan: You have spent several years researching and teaching Afghanistan while seeking to move beyond exoticised or essentialist representations of the country. Was there a particular experience, encounter or intellectual frustration that led you to study the Afghan state through the history of its armed forces?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Ahmad Fahim Abdullatif:<\/strong> I think there is an answer on two levels, and both are rather clich\u00e9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In terms of the armed forces, it was really the collapse of the army and security forces in 2021 that intrigued me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I remember having discussions with my mother while she was in Herat during the summer of 2021, when the city was besieged by the Taliban. I was trying to explain to her how difficult, almost impossible, it is to take a city or fortified target without heavy artillery and air power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After all, the Afghan government survived for three years after the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, following a similar logic: the government retained control of major cities and towns, while the mujahideen controlled much of the countryside. It was only with the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself and the total cut-off of external support that the regime collapsed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That was not what happened in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I remember my own shock and disbelief until the very last moments. How could such a thing be possible? How could such a highly equipped and numerous force unravel like that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That curiosity pushed me to explore this puzzle in a deeper way, and also the broader questions of violence, coercion and armed force in a historical and sociological perspective. That is what led me to choose the armed forces as an angle for analysing state formation in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On a broader level, my interest in state formation also comes from my own experience of growing up in Afghanistan during the early 2000s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"686\" src=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/09\/IMG_6066-1024x686.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-49618\" srcset=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/09\/IMG_6066-1024x686.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/09\/IMG_6066-768x514.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/09\/IMG_6066-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/09\/IMG_6066.jpeg 1099w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Fahim pictured during a family outing on the outskirts of Herat, Afghanistan, circa 2005. Photo: courtesy of Fahim.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was this roller-coaster of collective emotion and hope, and a desire for change and reform, but also social tensions, inequalities, vulnerabilities and uncertainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The country and society had already been torn apart by proxy conflict and civil war for two decades before I was born, and that legacy was inevitably still being felt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think I was experiencing a kind of collective post-traumatic stress disorder that manifests itself in many ways in a society after so much violent conflict and collective trauma. That made me curious to understand and untangle the complexity of what was going on, at the very least to make it more intelligible and navigable for myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As I discovered my passion for the humanities and social sciences, I tried to explore this curiosity through those disciplines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">State formation was an evident fit for all these interests and impasses. So in that sense, it is a very clich\u00e9 case of an Afghan student of social sciences trying to understand what went \u201cwrong\u201d in his own country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">You contrast the Afghan government\u2019s rapid collapse in 2021 with the Najibullah government\u2019s survival for three years after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. What explains that difference?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I would point to two key differences: domestic regime coherence and international support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The army in 1989 had a more coherent bureaucracy that revolved around a corps of professionals trained along Soviet lines since the 1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The army of 2021 had a much more heterogeneous composition. Former Soviet-trained professionals had been amalgamated with newer arrivals, and the criteria of patronage and proximity to ruling parties and factions were often more important than professional credentials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like the broader elite coalition that formed the ruling class of the country, the armed forces were heterogeneous, riddled with private interests and corruption, and lacked corporate coherence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The second major difference was international support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The army in 1989 was able to survive because the Soviet withdrawal did not entail an immediate and significant withdrawal of military support in terms of equipment and funding. This is why the government fell apart only after the Soviet Union itself collapsed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By contrast, the US withdrawal entailed a much more severe disruption to the supply and maintenance of crucial equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Afghan army lost what was effectively one of its keystone elements, and soldiers and officers were well aware that military support was being drastically reduced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I remember that in August 2021, repairs of sophisticated aircraft components were being conducted by Afghan engineers while an American contractor supervised them via Zoom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One does not need to be a specialist to understand what an impossible task the Afghans were suddenly left with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More broadly, after the 2020 agreement between the United States and the Taliban, the writing was on the wall for the ruling elites and state institutions as the drastic reduction in US support became increasingly evident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Your course at Sciences Po was entitled <em>Afghanistan: a nation-state not meant to be?<\/em> After years of teaching and research, how would you answer that deliberately provocative question?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The question is really a way of hinting at certain assumptions about state formation in Afghanistan that need to be challenged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first is a Eurocentric, evolutionist and teleological view of state formation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An evolutionist perspective treats the Western bureaucratic national state as the end point of a supposedly natural evolution for all societies, moving from the most \u201cprimitive\u201d to the most sophisticated, rationalised and modernised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That vision was evident in modernisation theory and still persists in contemporary discourses about state \u201cfragility\u201d and failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In reality, contemporary political science shows that the bureaucratic Weberian national state emerged in a very specific historical context in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Different dynamics shaped later colonial and post-colonial state formation elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even in Europe, the process was far from linear or intentional. It resulted from a complex interaction between geopolitical competition, territorial consolidation, internal mobilisation and reform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When Afghanistan is treated simply as a deviation from that norm, another assumption often follows: because the process of Afghan state formation ended in civil war, it must always have been destined to fail because of some inherent characteristic of Afghan society or culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That is what the course title is meant to challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the same time, saying that Afghanistan differs from the typical Western trajectory does not mean it should be treated as a singular and exceptional case outside history, comparison or scientific explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In my own research, I describe processes and dynamics that also occur elsewhere in the world and can be subjected to sociological and political analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Exceptionalism often produces another problem: Afghanistan is reduced to an image of a peripheral, static, backward, tribal, fanatical and archaic society whose current condition is supposedly the inevitable result of its \u201cnatural\u201d characteristics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That view implicitly suggests that Afghanistan was never capable of developing institutional practices associated with contemporary states: citizenship, rights, political representation, bureaucracy, professionalisation, fiscal extraction and redistribution, democracy or accountable governance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It denies the agency and dynamism of human collectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So the \u201cnot meant to be\u201d part of the title is precisely what needs to be challenged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The problem with many representations of Afghan state formation is that they reduce a complex interaction between social hierarchies, diverse social actors, domestic, transnational and international dynamics, bureaucratic processes and historical conjunctures to one-dimensional explanations based on Islam, tribalism, ethnicity or great-power politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban have inherited and transformed institutions built under previous governments while also introducing their own political and ideological structures. What kind of state is emerging?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think it is a hybrid form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Taliban have chosen not to dismantle the relatively intricate bureaucracy of the fallen republic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead, they have hybridised it with their own political structures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This can be seen, for example, in the parallel structure of rule between ministries in Kabul and the leadership council in Kandahar, in their reorganisation of the judiciary, and in their appointment of their own personnel to pre-existing bureaucratic positions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is therefore continuity with the bureaucratic structures of the republic, and the Taliban\u2019s current power is built, in part, upon those structures, procedures and administrative patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But this should not distract us from the ideological continuity between the first and second Taliban regimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The existence of a more modern bureaucracy does not mean this is not a profoundly reactionary regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nor does the Taliban\u2019s use of modern military bureaucracy and intelligence apparatuses for repression make the regime less ideologically radical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So what we are seeing is a hybrid of more bureaucratised elements inherited from the republic combined with the Taliban\u2019s own ideological goals and organisational practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Northern Afghanistan is often described through ethnic categories such as Uzbek, Tajik, Turkmen, Hazara and Pashtun. To what extent do these labels explain political and social realities?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Your question contains much of the answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An intersectional variety of factors such as class, locality, relations with the state, professional affiliations and social trajectories are often much more analytically useful than a reductive focus on macro-ethnic categories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Macro-ethnic reasoning is often analytically weak and can have quasi-racial undertones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For example, reducing the Taliban to a representative of the Pashtuns ignores both the movement\u2019s social and historical origins and its ideological and organisational practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Could you give a concrete example where looking at Afghanistan primarily through an ethnic lens leads us to misunderstand what is actually happening?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A good example is the way Gilles Dorronsoro analyses the Afghan conflict in <em>Revolution Unending<\/em>, especially his criticism of what he calls the essentialist bias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This bias became particularly evident in studies of the civil war after the Soviet withdrawal, where culturalist explanations emerged that described the conflict in non-political, exotic and reductive terms such as tribalism, ethnicity and Islam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Explanations of the war in terms of tribalism and tribal revolts ignored the fundamental novelty of emerging political parties, as well as the participation of urban and rural populations as a whole in the conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One major example of the ethnic fallacy is the interpretation of the war as a competition between macro-ethnic groups &#8211; Pashtun versus Tajik versus Hazara, and so on &#8211; and their supposed representatives, such as the Taliban representing the Pashtuns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This ignores the fact that macro-ethnic affiliation is only one level of collective affiliation and identity among others, alongside family, religious, professional and micro-ethnic or <em>qawm<\/em> identities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ultimately, it was not ethnicities that made war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As Dorronsoro puts it, it was political organisations with ideological objectives and particular institutional practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reducing the conflict to ethnicity therefore fails to capture social and ideological dynamics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The same problem applies to explanations centred entirely on Islam or religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Such interpretations assume that Islam inevitably produces a particular relationship between religion and politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But what appears mystical or culturally predetermined can often be explained more convincingly through the sociology of contending groups, such as students and the ulama, in a decidedly contemporary historical context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That argument echoes my own goal in both my teaching and my research: to develop a more critical, complex and scientific approach to understanding Afghanistan beyond reductionist, essentialist and Eurocentric representations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">During your research, was there one historical episode that significantly changed how you understood the Afghan state?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The campaigns of Amir Abdul Rahman in Hazarajat in the 1890s were particularly horrific and revealing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They showed how the state manipulated and instrumentalised collective identities, micro- and macro-ethnic rivalries, religious mobilisation, disorder, plunder and extreme violence in order to consolidate its authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They also left a profound legacy of discrimination and marginalisation for Hazara communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"576\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/09\/db110663-20da-4e24-b986-43f8f370f395-576x1024.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-49616\" srcset=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/09\/db110663-20da-4e24-b986-43f8f370f395-576x1024.jpeg 576w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/09\/db110663-20da-4e24-b986-43f8f370f395-169x300.jpeg 169w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/09\/db110663-20da-4e24-b986-43f8f370f395.jpeg 750w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A page from Muhammad Yusuf Riyazi Haravi&#8217;s <em>Kit\u0101b-i ba\u1e25r al-fav\u0101\u02beid<\/em>, containing an account of violence against Hazaras in the late 19th century. The text describes killings and mutilations and recounts an episode in which Hazara women reportedly took their own lives rather than be captured. Source: Muhammad Yusuf Riyazi Haravi, <em>Kit\u0101b-i ba\u1e25r al-fav\u0101\u02beid: kulliy\u0101t-i Riy\u0101z\u012b<\/em>, Mashhad, 1906, p. 260.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What surprised me was that these were strategies I had previously associated more with empires than with the consolidation of a nation-state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It demonstrated that state formation in Afghanistan did not only include elements that we associate with nation-states &#8211; territorial, direct, unitary, bureaucratic and rational-legal rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It also contained elements of a more imperial register: indirect rule, governing through discontinuities and even the instrumentalisation of destruction and disorder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What began in a way comparable to Abdul Rahman\u2019s campaigns elsewhere in the north and east became especially bloody in Hazarajat because of the religious mobilisation and declaration of jihad against the Hazara, who were excommunicated because of their Shi\u2019a faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This religious mobilisation was complemented by the manipulation of local rivalries between Hazaras and neighbouring communities, including in many cases Pashtuns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The result was that Hazara communities permanently lost a substantial portion of their cultivable land and exclusive pasture rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The permission not only to plunder but also to enslave thousands of Hazaras attracted auxiliary militias that were not paid by the state but sustained themselves through plunder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The state itself taxed the plunder of its military troops and took a share for itself, as it did with systematic plunder elsewhere in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This was also a period in which Afghanistan was emerging as a British protectorate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abdul Rahman was able to focus on such violent internal campaigns partly because Britain protected Afghanistan from potential foreign aggression by Russia or Persia, while also providing the ruler with yearly subsidies, arms and access to further military purchases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The state therefore unleashed a violent, destructive and complex process that was not entirely under its control, and consolidated its authority by instrumentalising that disorder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The result was an immense legacy of collective trauma for the Hazara and a continuing history of marginalisation and discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are important scholarly debates about whether these episodes constituted genocide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the very least, they involved mass killings, massacres, enslavement and crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This episode demonstrated not only the sometimes atypical mechanisms of state consolidation in Afghanistan, but also the importance of understanding the legacy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in explaining the country\u2019s contemporary social and political realities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">In discussing Amir Abdul Rahman\u2019s campaigns in Hazarajat, you distinguish between \u201cnation-state\u201d and \u201cimperial\u201d forms of state-building. Were these imperial methods exceptional to Hazarajat?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is a very good question because it goes back to my criticism of reducing everything to macro-ethnic arguments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was something distinctly particular about the case of the Hazaras.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was a religious dimension to the jihad against them because they were excommunicated on account of their Shi\u2019a faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was also widespread enslavement, as well as the transfer of arable land and pasture rights to non-Hazara groups, especially Pashtuns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here, we do see a genuinely macro-ethnic and ethno-religious dynamic emerging from the formation of the state and its strategies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the same time, many imperial features were common to all the communities subjected to central rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These included widespread massacres and violence, systematic plunder during army deployments and the extensive use of militias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So although communities elsewhere were not subjected to enslavement or large-scale transfers of land and pasture in the same way, they too were subjugated through a highly coercive and autocratic process and became subordinate to a distant but coercively powerful government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An eastern Pashtun farmer in a mountain village was not subjected to the same ethno-religious discrimination as the Hazaras, but he nevertheless shared a fundamentally similar socio-political relationship of subordination to the state and incorporation into a peripheral economy through that same process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">You point out that Abdul Rahman\u2019s campaigns took place while Britain protected Afghanistan from external aggression and provided the ruler with money and arms. How important was British support to the consolidation of the Afghan state itself?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was very important, and it complicates the conventional image of Afghanistan as a country historically resistant to all outside control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The image of Afghanistan as an isolated realm, a \u201cgraveyard of empires\u201d whose mythical population has forever resisted foreign rule, is itself a colonial trope that emerged in the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Before that, rule by dynasties that would later be described as \u201cforeign\u201d was the norm rather than the exception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Greeks, Arabs, Indians, Turkic dynasties from Central Asia and Mongols all conquered and ruled parts of what we now call Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even when we look at the Anglo-Afghan wars and their outcomes in the nineteenth century, the picture is more complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Afghanistan retained internal autonomy because of undeniable societal resistance to British invasions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But at the same time, it became a quasi-colonial construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Britain largely defined and safeguarded its territory, controlled its foreign relations and incorporated it into the emerging global economic order as a landlocked buffer state on the periphery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Territorial defence is particularly revealing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Britain imposed substantial territorial losses on the Amir through the treaties of Gandamak in 1879 and Durand in 1893.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But it was also Britain that went to war with Iran over its claims to Herat and forced Tehran to renounce those claims by treaty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Similarly, what protected northern Afghanistan from annexation by the Russian Empire was not simply the military strength of the Amir, but the deterrent effect of the possibility of conflict with Britain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That meant the ruler could focus his strategies on internal repression rather than interstate warfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So Afghanistan was peripheralised, but never isolated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Its political constructions drew on elements from both inside and outside the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was neither entirely determined by the outside world nor independent of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was neither an entirely colonial construction nor untouched by colonialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even in the twentieth century, we see not only state elites drawing on resources from outside the country &#8211; military patronage and international aid &#8211; but also non-state political parties and militias whose prominence during the 1980s and 1990s depended heavily on foreign patronage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That longer history makes the \u201cgraveyard of empires\u201d image particularly misleading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Afghanistan has always been shaped by interaction between domestic and external forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right wp-block-paragraph\">By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Afghanistan is often explained through clich\u00e9s of tribalism, ethnic rivalry, foreign invasion and inevitable state failure. Political scientist Ahmad Fahim Abdullatif argues that these frames obscure the country\u2019s more complex history of state formation. In this interview with Novastan Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine, he discusses the collapse of the Afghan army in 2021, the Taliban\u2019s emerging [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":358,"featured_media":49614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4939,4665,4668,5],"tags":[406,4087,5063],"coauthors":[358],"class_list":["post-49547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-politics","category-society","category-uzbekistan","tag-afghanistan","tag-central-asia","tag-hazara"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/358"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49547"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49619,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49547\/revisions\/49619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49547"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=49547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}