Afghanistan: a Cultural and Political History.

• Author: Innocent, Malou
• Position: Book review

Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History

Thomas Barfield

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010, 400 pp.

In the Western mind, Afghanistan conjures up a rugged land of fractious, tribal people. From Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, to Tamerlane and Mughal emperor Babur, virtually no conqueror has escaped "the graveyard of empires" unscathed. Even modern, industrial empires--the British and the Russian-suffered heavy losses. Why have foreign attempts to conquer Afghanistan proved so ineffective? Why did the U.S. invasion fail to bring stability?

In his extraordinary book, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History, Boston University anthropology professor Thomas Barfield approaches these questions by examining changing notions of power and political legitimacy. One of the foremost authorities on Afghanistan, Barfield has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork since his first visit over 40 years ago. His deep knowledge brings clarity to a frightfully complicated region that has been and will continue to be of extraordinary importance to policy debates.

Scholarly experts in search of an exhaustive reference to the region and those seeking an introduction to the ins and outs of Afghan history will find this book of interest. There are plenty of useful references, indices, and detailed maps of key architectural regions, nomadic migration routes, and distribution patterns of various ethnic groups. Readers will also gain valuable insight on qawm, a fluid and expandable genealogical concept of identity. Loyalty to one's tribe or ethnic group is often contextual, making political boundaries and societal structures ambiguous. Because notions of identity are more descriptive than operational, an ethnographic study of the country, which this book provides, is perhaps the most fruitful way to explore what systems of governance were most popularly accepted.

Barfield begins by applying analytical tools developed by 14th century Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun. In his work, Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun considered how people from the deserts, steppes, mountains, and other geographically marginal areas became ruling dynasties in the Middle East and North Africa. He attributed their success to a strong sense of group solidarity that was lacking in urban areas where people were bound together largely by economic ties and formal government institutions.

Barfield applies Ibn Khaldun's model of political organization to Afghanistan's marginal groups, the most important being the Ghilzai tribes to the east and south of Kabul, and the Tajik Kohistanis of the plains and mountains north of Kabul. Barfield finds that despite the military strength of these rural peasants and tribal mountaineers, gaining power and legitimacy was never easy. These groups had strong cultural predispositions toward equality that made it difficult for a leader to consolidate political power. Furthermore, leaders found their positions precarious amid intense competitions for power among rival tribes. As a result, power once gained would devolve back to regional leaders.

Beginning in the 10th century, the premodern Turko-Persian rulers who founded nearly all of the dynasties from modern Turkey to northern India legitimated their authority by imposing direct rule in urban areas and indirect rule in poor subsistence areas. During this time, modern-day Afghan territories were merely peripheral parts of powerful regional empires centered in Persia, India, and Central Asia. These were either independent kingdoms ungoverned by a central power, or locally autonomous principalities that paid tribute to a political center.

For example, Herat and the west of present-day Afghanistan were tied culturally and politically to Persia; Kandahar and the south shifted between Persia and India; Central Asia dominated Balkh and the north; and in the east, the Afghan capital rotated between Kabul, Afghanistan's modern capital, and Peshawar, situated in present-day Pakistan. The Afghans eventually lost Peshawar to the Sikhs in 1834. To this day, no Afghan...