Ethnicity, Authority, and Power in Central Asia: New Games Great and Small

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Ethnicity, Authority, and Power in Central Asia

The people of Greater Central Asia—not only inner Asian states of the Soviet Union but also those who share similar heritages in adjacent countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iran, and the Chinese province of Xinjiang—have been drawn into more direct and immediate contact since the Soviet collapse. Infrastructural improvements, and the race by the great powers for access to the region’s vital natural resources, have allowed these people to develop closer ties with each other and the wider world, creating new interdependencies and fresh opportunities for interaction and the exercise of influence. They are being integrated into a new, wider economic and political region which is increasingly significant in world affairs, owing to its strategically central location, and its complex and uncertain politics. However, most of its inhabitants are pre-eminently concerned with familial and local affairs. This work examines the viewpoints and concerns of a selection of groups in terms of four issues: government repression, ethnic group perspectives, devices of mutual support, and informal grounds of authority and influence. Responding to a need for in-depth studies concerning the social structures and practices in the region, this book examines trends and issues from the point of view of scholars who have lived and worked “on the ground” and have sought to understand the conditions and concerns of people in rural as well as urban settings. It provides a distinctive and timely perspective on this vital part of the world. Robert L. Canfield is Professor of Anthropology at Washington University, St. Louis, USA. His many publications include (as co-editor) Revolutions and Rebellions in Afganistan, and (as editor) Turko-Persia in Historical Perspective. Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek is Associate Professor in the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna, Austria.


Central Asian Studies Series

1 Mongolia Today Science, culture, environment and development Edited by Dendevin Badarch and Raymond A. Zilinskas 2 Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire Daniel Brower 3 Church of the East A concise history Wilhelm Baum and Dietmar W. Winkler 4 Pre-tsarist and Tsarist Central Asia Communal commitment and political order in change Paul Georg Geiss 5 Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia Bukhara and Khiva, 1865–1924 Seymour Becker 6 Russian Culture in Uzbekistan One language in the middle of nowhere David MacFadyen 7 Everyday Islam in Post-Soviet Central Asia Maria Elisabeth Louw 8 Kazakhstan Ethnicity, language and power Bhavna Dave 9 Ethno-Nationalism, Islam and the State in the Caucasus Post-Soviet disorder Edited by Moshe Gammer 10 Humanitarian Aid in Post-Soviet Countries An anthropological perspective Laëtitia Atlani-Duault 11 Muslim–Christian Relations in Central Asia A. Christian van Gorder


12 The Northwest Caucasus Past, present, future Walter Richmond 13 Turkmenistan’s Foreign Policy Positive neutrality and the consolidation of the Turkmen regime Luca Anceschi 14 Conflict Transformation in Central Asia Irrigation disputes in the Ferghana Valley Christine Bichsel 15 Socialist Revolutions in Asia The social history of Mongolia in the 20th century Irina Y. Morozova 16 Post-Conflict Tajikistan The politics of peacebuilding and the emergence of a legitimate order John Heathershaw 17 The Politics of Transition in Central Asia and the Caucasus Enduring legacies and emerging challenges Edited by Amanda E. Wooden and Christoph H. Stefes 18 Islamic Education in the Soviet Union and its Successor States Edited by Michael Kemper, Raoul Motika and Stefan Reichmuth 19 The Military and the State in Central Asia From red army to independence Edited by Erica Marat 20 Politics and Oil in Kazakhstan Wojciech Ostrowski 21 Political Islam in Central Asia The challenge of Hizb ut-Tahrir Emmanuel Karagiannis 22 Caspian Energy Politics Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan Edited by Indra Øverland, Heidi Kjærnet and Andrea Kendall-Taylor 23 Securing the Indian Frontier in Central Asia Confrontation and negotiation, 1865–95 Martin Ewans 24 Ethnicity, Authority and Power in Central Asia New games great and small Edited by Robert L. Canfield and Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek



Ethnicity, Authority, and Power in Central Asia New games great and small

Edited by Robert L. Canfield and Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek


First published 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2011 Robert L. Canfield and Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek for selection and editorial matter; individual contributors their contribution The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ethnicity, authority and power in central Asia : new games great and small / Edited by Robert L. Canfield and Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek. p. cm. -- (Central Asian studies series) Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-415-78069-8 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-203-84548-6 (ebook) 1. Ethnicity--Asia, Central. 2. Authoritarianism--Asia, Central. 3. Political persection--Asia, Central. 4. Asia, Central--Ethnic relations. 5. Asia, Central--Politics and government. I. Canfield, Robert L. (Robert Leroy) II. Rasuly-Paleczek, Gabriele. GN635.S64E85 2010 305.800958--dc22 2010006935 ISBN 0-203-84548-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN: 978-0-415-78069-8 hbk ISBN: 978-0-203-84548-6 ebk


Dr Canfield dedicates this work to Rita Dr Rasuly-Paleczek dedicates this work to the memory of her mother Geralda and to her son Timur-Beg



Contents

List of contributors Acknowledgements Maps Introduction: a region of strategic importance ROBERT L. CANFIELD

xi xiii xv 1

PART I

Repressions and their consequences 1 Authoritarianism and its consequences in ex-Soviet Central Asia

17

19

ANATOLY KHAZANOV

2 The mobilization of tradition: localism and identity among the Uyghur of Xinjiang ILDIKÓ BELLÉR-HANN

39

PART II

Ethnic perceptions and reactions 3 Central Asian attitudes towards Afghanistan: perceptions of the Afghan war in Uzbekistan

59

61

PETER FINKE

4 Alignment politics and factionalism among the Uzbeks of northeastern Afghanistan GABRIELE RASULY-PALECZEK

77

x

Contents

5 Afghanistan is not the Balkans: Central Asian ethnicity and its political consequences

95

THOMAS BARFIELD


6 Pukhtun identity in Swat, northern Pakistan

110

CHARLES LINDHOLM

PART III

Devices of mutual support 7 The impact of war on social, political, and economic organization in southern Hazarajat

127

129

ALESSANDRO MONSUTTI

8 An inter-regional history of Pashtun migration, c. 1775–2000

144

ROBERT NICHOLS

PART IV

Mechanisms of authority and influence 9 Political games in post-Soviet Uzbekistan: factions, protection, and new resistances

163

165

BORIS PETRIĆ

10 Female mullahs, healers, and leaders of Central Asian Islam: gendering the old and new religious roles in post-Communist societies

174

HABIBA FATHI

11 Efficacy and hierarchy: practices in Afghanistan as an example ROBERT L. CANFIELD Index

196

248


Contributors

Thomas Barfield is Professor of Anthropology at Boston University. He is the author of The Central Asian Arabs of Afghanistan: Pastoral Nomadism in Transition (1981), The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China (1989), The Nomadic Alternative (1993), Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (2010), and (with Albert Szabo) Afghanistan: An Atlas of Indigenous Domestic Architecture (1991), and the editor of The Dictionary of Anthropology (1997). Ildikó Bellér-Hann is Researcher and Lecturer at the Center for Oriental Studies, Martin-Luther-University Halle/Wittenberg, Germany. She is the author of A History of Cathay, a Translation and Linguistic Analysis of a FifteenthCentury Turkic Manuscript (1995), The Spoken and the Written: Literacy and Oral Transmission among the Uighur (2000), State, Markets and Social Identities on the East Black Sea Coast (with Chris Han, 2000), and Community Matters in Xinjiang 1880–1949: Towards a Historical Anthropology of the Uyghur (2008), and co-editor of Situating the Uyghurs Between China and Central Asia (2007). Robert L. Canfield is Professor of Anthropology, Washington University in St Louis. He is the author of Faction and Conversion in a Plural Society: Religious Alignments in the Hindu Kush (1973), co-editor (with Nazif Shahrani) of Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan, 1978–1981 (1984), and (with Milan Hauner) Afghanistan and the Soviet Union: Collision and Transformation (1989), and editor of Turko-Persia in Historical Perspective (1991). Habiba Fathi, Research Fellow, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan University, is the author of Femmes d’autorité dans l’Asie centrale contemporaine, Quête des ancêtres et recompositions identitaires dans l’islam postsoviétique (2004), and editor of Femmes d’Asie centrale, Genre et Mutations dans les sociétés musulmanes soviétisées (2007), and Les islamistes d’Asie centrale: un défi aux Etats indépendants? (2007). Peter Finke is Head of the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Zurich. He is the author of Changing Property Rights Systems in Western Mongolia: Private Herd Ownership and Communal Land Tenure in

xii

Contributors


Bargaining Perspective (2000) and the articles “Kazak Pastoralists in Western Mongolia. Economic and Social Change in the Course of Privatization” (1997) and “The Kazaks of Western Mongolia” (1999). Anatoly Khazanov, Professor of Anthropology, University of WisconsinMadison, is the author of more than ten books and two hundred articles on Central Asia, including Animal Husbandry and Pastoralism in Post-Soviet Central Asia (2001), Nomads and the Outside World (1984, 1994), Soviet Nationality Policy During Perestroika (1991), and After the U.S.S.R.: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Politics in the Commonwealth of Independent States (1995). Charles Lindholm, University Professor of Anthropology, Boston University, is the author of Generosity and Jealousy: the Swat Pukhtun of Northern Pakistan (1982), Charisma (1990, 1993), Frontier Perspectives: Essays in Comparative Anthropology (1996), The Islamic Middle East: An Historical Anthropology (1996, 2002), Is America Breaking Apart? (with John A. Hall, 1999), Culture and Identity: The History, Theory and Practice of Psychological Anthropology (2001) and The Struggle for the World: Liberation Movements for the 21st Century (with Jose Pedro Zuquete, 2010). Alessandro Monsutti, Researcher, Graduate Institute of Development Studies, Geneva, and Visiting Assistant Professor at Yale University, is the author of Guerres et Migrations: Réseaux sociaux et stratégies économiques des Hazaras d’Afghanistan [Reprinted as War and Migration: Social Networks and Economic Strategies of the Hazaras of Afghanistan] (2005), and The Other Shiites: From the Mediterranean to Central Asia (with Farian Sabahi and Silvia Naef, 2007), and co-editor (with Muhammad-Reza Djalili and Anna Neubauer) of Le Monde Turco-Iranien en Question: Définition, Confins, Spécificités (2008). Robert Nichols, Professor of History, Richard Stockton College, is the author of Settling the Frontier: Land, Law and Society in the Peshawar Valley, 1500–1900 (2001), A History of Pushtun Migration, 1775–2006 (2008), and editor of Colonial Reports on Pakistan’s Frontier Tribal Areas (2006). Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek is Associate Professor, the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Vienna. She is author of Die türkische Landwirtschaft: Modernisierungsstrategien und Problemfelder [Turkish Agriculture: Modernization Strategies and Problems] (1997), editor of Turkish Families in Transition (1996), and co-editor (with Julia Katschnig and David Bryan) of Central Asia: Past, Present and Future: Proceedings of the VI Conference of the European Society for Central Asian Studies held at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology (Ethnology), University of Vienna, 27th to 30th September 2000 (forthcoming). Boris Petrić, Researcher at the Laboratoire d’anthropologie et des institutions des organisations sociales at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, is the author of Pouvoir, don et réseaux en Ouzbékistan post-soviétique (2002).


Acknowledgements

Most of the articles in this work were originally written for a symposium of the American Anthropological Association meetings, November 20–4, 2002. The editors wish to express their appreciation to JoAnn Urban for assistance in preparing the text, Timothy Schilling for creating the map of Greater Central Asia, Nicholas Efremov-Kendall for creating the maps of Northern Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Farghana Valley, and Jennifer Quincey for producing the index.



Maps

Map 0.1 Greater Central Asia Data available from US Geological Survey, EROS Data Center, Sioux Falls, SD

Map 0.2 Northern Afghanistan and Pakistan Data available from US Geological Survey, EROS Data Center, Sioux Falls, SD

Efremov-Kendall 2010


Map 0.3 Farghana Valley Data available from US Geological Survey, EROS Data Center, Sioux Falls, SD

Efremov-Kendall 2010



Introduction


A region of strategic importance Robert L. Canfield

This work examines ways that social relations and influence are established and enforced in several local settings within the broader region of Greater Central Asia.1 Our title suggests the new centrality this region enjoys in the affairs of the contemporary world, an importance that Beissinger (2002: 1)2 describes as “one of the pivotal transformations of the twentieth century.”3 The term “Great Game”—first coined by Lieutenant (later Captain) Arthur Connoly of the Sixth Bengal Native Light Cavalry and immortalized in Kipling’s masterpiece Kim— invokes the nineteenth-century struggles for hegemony in Central Asia between (mainly) the Russians, who were pressing eastward into the region, and the British in India, who were trying to secure their northwestern frontier, which they deemed vulnerable to invasion from Central Asia. Their “game” conjoined the grand schemes of empire with the personal intrigues of local actors who sought to divert them for their own parochial ends, sometimes producing outcomes no one could foresee.

A new regional configuration The use of the term “Great Game” by contemporary observers4 may seem appealing because they evoke images of intrigue, mystery, and subterfuge which Russian and British adventurers encountered when they ventured into what was then “forbidden land.” But use of the term can mask critical realities in the twentyfirst century. It is risky to impose the clichés of a storied past upon situations in the contemporary world (Stroehlein 2009), for the Central Asia of the present differs radically from that of even a very recent past. The several countries of Greater Central Asia—that is, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and China’s westernmost province, Xinjiang, along with the adjacent countries to the south, viz. Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—have been drawn into more direct and immediate contact as infrastructural improvements have been introduced in the past half-century, but especially since the disappearance of the Soviet Union. Recently, highways have been resurfaced and extended (e.g. from Kyrgyzstan to China);5 air traffic facilities have been improved and air service expanded (e.g. direct services between Ashgabat and Beijing on Turkmen Airlines);6 rail lines have been extended (e.g. between China and Kazakhstan;


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Robert L. Canfield

Alaomulki 2001: 8–10); satellite telephony has been introduced (most transformative in Afghanistan);7 and deep sea ports have been built at Gwadar, Pakistan, and Chah Bahar, Iran.8 Increasingly, new possibilities are opening up for economic, social, and political interaction among the people of Greater Central Asia. Lands that were once forbidding and mysterious, separating the great population centers of Eurasia, are now corridors of economic and social interconnection among these populations (Garret et al. 2000; Kleveman 2003; Canfield 2008; Kellner 2008a). The integrative effect of these improvements has brought together the Soviet successor states and neighboring countries in South Asia and the Middle East into a broader region of strategic importance. It is now useful to speak of “Greater Central Asia”9 as a zone where interdependencies are sufficiently intense and strategic issues sufficiently vital to prompt political and economic planners to track affairs in the region more generally. Rajan Menon has explicitly made the case for seeing this constellation of countries as a single region: The convention of defining Central Asia as a grouping of five states [the practice during the Soviet period] is of diminishing value for effective policy making and sound strategic analysis. A seamless web connects Central Asia proper, the South Caucasus, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and China’s Xinjiang province. Thinking in terms of a “greater Central Asia” captures the bigger picture and reflects how forces from one part of this extended region radiate across borders to other parts. Thus, an axiom of both policymaking and analysis should be that the consequences of a major change in one part of greater Central Asia will affect its other parts, often quickly and dramatically and through multiple networks. (Menon 2003: 200–1)10

The race to develop infrastructure Owing to its rich natural resources, this region has become the focus of intense development activities.11 The richest concentrations of hydrocarbons in Central Asia lie in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan (the latter is now believed to have the world’s second largest gas reserves). Those in the Caucasus are well known and already being developed. And the gas and oil reserves of Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, which are as yet undetermined, may turn out to be substantial as well. Moreover, exploitable deposits of many other vital minerals exist in the region (Table 0.1).12 Many countries have been racing to establish links to Central Asia, currently to participate in the construction of pipelines into the newly accessible gas and oil fields, activities that entail political and military posturing as well as diplomatic maneuvering, for pipelines “signify and embody alliances and cooperation” and establish “axes for the international projection of influence” (Cutler 2007: 110).13 In the current context, many routes from production sites to consumers are possible. Russia was not the preferred route of export for the Central Asian republics when they became independent in the 1990s—nor for the Americans and other

Agricultural products

Industries (non-agricultural)

Source: Index Mundi: http://www.indexmundi.com/

Northern states Kazakhstan Major deposits of petroleum, natural gas, coal, iron Grain (mostly spring wheat), Tractors and other agricultural machinery, ore, manganese, chrome ore, nickel, cobalt, copper, cotton, livestock electric motors, construction materials molybdenum, lead, zinc, bauxite, gold, uranium Turkmenistan Petroleum, natural gas, coal, sulfur, salt Cotton, grain, livestock Natural gas, oil, petroleum products, textiles, food processing Uzbekistan Natural gas, petroleum, coal, gold, uranium, silver, Cotton, vegetables, fruits, Textiles, food processing, machine building, copper, lead and zinc, tungsten, molybdenum grain, livestock metallurgy, natural gas, chemicals Tajikistan Hydropower, some petroleum, uranium, mercury, Cotton, grain, fruits, grapes, Aluminum, zinc, lead, chemicals and fertilizers, brown coal, lead, zinc, antimony, tungsten, silver, vegetables, cattle, sheep, cement, vegetable oil, metal-cutting machine gold goats tools, refrigerators and freezers Kyrgyzstan Abundant hydropower; significant deposits of gold Tobacco, cotton, potatoes, Small machinery, textiles, food processing, and rare earth metals; locally exploitable coal, vegetables, grapes, fruits and cement, shoes, sawn logs, refrigerators, oil, and natural gas, other deposits of nepheline, berries, sheep, goats, cattle, furniture, electric motors, gold, rare earth metals mercury, bismuth, lead, and zinc wool Southern states Iran Petroleum, natural gas, coal, chromium, copper, Wheat, rice, other grains, Petrochemicals, textiles, cement and other iron ore, lead, manganese, zinc, sulfur sugar beets, fruits, nuts, construction materials, food processing cotton, dairy products, wool, (particularly sugar refining and vegetable oil caviar production), metal fabricating, armaments Afghanistan Natural gas, petroleum, coal, copper, chromite, talc, Opium, wheat, fruits, nuts, Small-scale production of textiles, soap, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, iron ore, salt, precious wool, mutton, sheepskins, furniture, shoes, fertilizer, cement, handwoven and semi-precious stones lambskins carpets, natural gas, coal, copper Pakistan Natural gas, limited petroleum, poor-quality coal, Cotton, wheat, rice, Textiles and apparel, food processing, iron ore, copper, salt, limestone sugarcane, fruits, vegetables, pharmaceuticals, construction materials, paper milk, beef, mutton, eggs products, fertilizer, shrimp

Natural resources

Table 0.1 Resources and products of Greater Central Asia



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Robert L. Canfield

Western powers, who tried to ensure that pipelines from Central Asia were diverted away from Russia, to minimize possibilities of interdiction. The Americans also opposed the construction of pipelines through Iran, seeing Iran as an adversary ever since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 (Klare 2002: 90). Owing to American involvement, the 1,700 km pipeline from Baku servicing Europe, which was completed in 2005, successfully avoided both Russia and Iran, passing through Tbilisi to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea. The Americans have also favored the establishment of a Transcaspian link of Kazakhstan’s giant offshore Kashagan field into the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.14 But these routes are more expensive than the shorter ones through Russia and Iran (which would connect to the Persian Gulf; Naughten 2008: 431). In May 2007, pointedly rejecting American and European proposals, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Russia jointly announced that they will cooperate in building a gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea into Kazakhstan and Russia.15 Nabucco, a six-company consortium sponsored by the EU, has plans to begin construction of a 3,300 km pipeline from the Caspian Basin via Turkey to Bulgaria, Serbia and Croatia, and western Hungary. Russian-owned Gazprom has responded to Nabucco’s project with a proposal to build a pipeline from Russia under the Black Sea to Bulgaria and thence to central Europe. It is possible that both lines could be built, given the large expected demand in Europe.16 In this race Russia has a certain advantage because the infrastructure inherited (but aging) from the Soviet period converges on the Russian metropole. Blessed with the world’s largest gas supplies, the second largest coal reserves, and eighth largest oil supplies, Russia is already the world’s largest exporter of natural gas and the second largest exporter of oil.17 Moreover, it is strategically located as a natural route of export from the Central Asian republics. And its intermediate position between two broad energy consuming populations, European and Chinese, could eventually endow Russia with even more effective leverage. But China is also a major player in the competition for access to Central Asia’s fossil fuels. Already the second largest consumer of oil in the world, and, with a growth rate of over eight percent before the world economic decline introduced new uncertainties, China was expected to surpass US consumption within a few years, a pace that is likely to resume as soon as a general recovery develops. The Chinese have won permission to develop several oil fields in Uzbekistan (Atal 2005), and they have already completed a 1,000 km oil pipeline from Atasu, Kazakhstan, into Xinjiang that will deliver up to 200,000 barrels of oil per day (Kazakhstan–China oil 2006). They are building a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan that became operational in 2009 (Naughten 2008: 433). Their largest state-owned oil company has acquired PetroKazakhstan, one of Kazakhstan’s major energy producers (Blank 2006), and they have initiated talks about constructing a natural gas pipeline all the way from Kazakhstan to Shanghai (Appelbaum 2005). At the same time they have established close ties with Iran, now their second largest oil supplier, for which they provide military assistance and nuclear expertise (Djalili and Kellner 2003). In March 2009 the two countries announced a $3.2 billion deal in which China will help develop the South Pars


Introduction

5

field, a huge cavity beneath the Persian Gulf that geologists believe is the world’s largest gas reservoir. Moreover, China is Afghanistan’s largest investor, building highways to Iran and developing the giant copper mine at Aynak. Their aggressive advance into the region reflects an ambitious vision to establish a “new Silk Road of modern railways and highways as a vehicle to project Chinese wealth and influence far westward, not only through Central Asia, but to Iran and the Middle East,” a project that could very well reshape power relations in all of Eurasia (Munro 1994: 235).18 India has no less a requirement for energy, its demand being expected to rise more than three-fold by 2020. Having lost out to the Chinese in the bidding for PetroKazakhstan, the Indian government has turned to Iran and Turkmenistan. In 2005 the Indians signed a 25-year agreement with Iran to obtain five million tons of liquefied natural gas annually, and they plan to develop two Iranian oil fields. In another deal they have acquired rights to develop a portion of Iran’s North Pars gas field. As of 2010 they will be importing about 60 million standard cubic meters of Iranian gas per day. And they have an interest in a plan to run a 1,750-mile natural gas pipeline from Iran through Pakistan (which the Americans oppose; Kripalani 2004).19 They have also arranged to buy five to six million tons of oil from Azerbaijan annually.20 Like so many other countries, the Indian government has an interest in the projected natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan and Pakistan whenever it can be built. Pakistan is in the race too. As soon as the former Soviet republics became independent, Pakistan offered them economic assistance and credits—for instance, a loan of $55 million to Tajikistan in 1992 to build a hydro-electric power station (Lounev and Shirokov 1998). And like the other countries already mentioned Pakistan has a desperate interest in the projected Turkmenistan–Afghanistan– Pakistan pipeline, as Pakistan would garner transit fees as well as gas for its own uses (Cutler 2007: 122). As mentioned above, the port for this pipeline has already been built at Gwadar. The conditions that compel Pakistan and India to cooperate in the transport of fuel are intensifying, but their long-running quarrel over Kashmir has so far defied every effort at resolution (Atal 2005). Also joining in the race for Central Asian energy is Japan, the world’s second largest economy. As the Japanese import almost all their crude oil from the Middle East, their need for diverse energy sources is dire. They have invested in the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline, and in 2004 they inked a $2 billion deal to develop Iran’s massive Azadegan oilfield. Like so many other nations, Japan looks forward to the time when oil and gas can be exported through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the port of Gwadar, a plan that cannot advance as long as these countries are insecure.21 Japan may be at a disadvantage in Central Asia, as it has an insignificant military force, but its large cash reserves give it leverage in the long run.22 Likewise, the South Koreans have an interest in Central Asia as they have to import 97 percent of their energy, and they have been active: already 320,000 Koreans are ensconced in the region. Korea and Uzbekistan have established a 50–50 joint oil exploration venture in Uzbekistan and a joint project to mine


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Robert L. Canfield

molybdenum and tungsten.23 Indeed, the Koreans are pursuing other mineral resources in the region. They have bought copper mines and a smelting plant in Kazakhstan (Alaolmulki 2001: 8–10), and the governments of Korea and Uzbekistan have agreed on several other cooperative projects. In 2008 they signed a $400 million deal for Korea to purchase 2,600 tonnes of uranium between 2010 and 2016, an amount that will supply about nine percent of South Korea’s annual demand for uranium. Already Korea has 20 nuclear reactors, which provide 40 percent of their electricity, and three more are in construction.

The other issue: insurgency Any list of the reasons for the intense interest of the world in Greater Central Asia must include the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which worry many countries but especially their neighbors. Most of these insurgencies claim to be fighting an Islamic holy war against the corrupting influences of non-Muslim societies. But some of these groups were for many years actively recruited, trained, and equipped by the Pakistani intelligence service in order to produce a supply of willing troops for the struggle against India over Kashmir. While the government of Afghanistan has been weak for generations—ever since the Communist coup d’état of April 1978—the weaknesses of the Pakistani state were less evident until 2008 and 2009. Until that time the Pakistani military had been solely concerned with the threat of India. But by summer 2009 a specifically home-grown insurgency, the Pakistani Taliban, was challenging the army; the threat to the nation was now too blatant to ignore. The Taliban and Al Qaeda, ensconced in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, have united and been reinforced by experienced fighters from Iraq, fresh volunteers from the Arab Middle East, Uzbek dissidents fleeing the repressions of President Islam Karimov, and Uyghur nationalists avoiding Chinese repressions in Xinjiang. Together these fighters have created a loosely interlinked set of forces that threaten the stability of both Afghanistan and Pakistan. While some of them are attacking Afghan, American, and NATO troops in Afghanistan, others are fighting their Pakistani sponsors.24 As long as insurgent groups can threaten infrastructural construction in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the other nations interested in this region will delay producing the pipelines, highways, and railroads that are crucial for long-term stability and economic prosperity. In the mean time, however, China and India have been establishing positions on the Indian Ocean that will eventually connect with transport facilities from Central Asia—the Chinese at the Pakistani port of Gwadar (to become, among other things, the port for the projected hydrocarbon pipelines from Turkmenistan), the Indians at the Iranian port of Chah Bahar (to be a port for overland shipping into landlocked Afghanistan).25

The unruliness of events As any region has “special unities embedded in numerous larger and wider units,” each of which may be “long-lasting but ultimately changing,” and at


Introduction

7

different rates (Fragner 2001), it is imperative that affairs in Greater Central Asia be tracked on many levels, national and local; and in many contexts, official and informal. In this work, we focus on specific situations in a few localities in the broader region. We describe the perspectives and concerns of various sorts of people, many of whom have narrower horizons and more immediate concerns than those of the world’s strategic planners. Such folks, acting from particular positions, with parochial interests and agendas, make sense of situations and events in their own terms, deploying familiar strategies in ways they see fit. They become aware of broad trends as the profiles of opportunity for them open or foreclose according to their fields of vision. When circumstances shift abruptly and the certainties of the past lose their salience—as has been taking place in Greater Central Asia—folks make new agreements tentatively, to be terminated when necessary. So, from the point of view of individuals and local groups caught up in the flow of history, relationships can be provisional, alliances fragile and transitory, and economic and political opportunities availed or ignored in respect to local understandings and the resources at hand (Monsutti 2005; Closson 2005). This fluidity in relations and alliances introduces many uncertainties that defy the human ability to foresee. Local, national, and regional affairs have a life of their own and confound the predictions of experts. Especially, it would seem, in this region. Consider the following: •

• •

• •

Even though, for example, in the 1960s and 1970s, Iran was being studied by many social scientists, scarcely anyone anticipated the cataclysmic explosion of 1978–9 that installed an entirely new Islamic order. The quiet implosion of the Soviet Union was “indisputably one of the most astonishing geopolitical events of the century” (Fuller 1994: 19).26 The general collapse of order in Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew was pretty much unforeseen, and especially the ferocious battle for Kabul (1992–6). Scarcely anyone expected the Tajiks and Uzbeks to seize and hold Kabul, as they did in 1992, instead of the Pashtuns who had always done so before. Virtually no one dreamed that an unknown loosely assembled Islamist group, the Taliban, would rise out of the refugee camps to dominate most of Afghanistan by 1998.

In such an unruly social world the course of events cannot be predicted, but it seems indisputable that whatever transpires in this region, local groups of individuals, with their particular perspectives and interests, will bring distinctive influences to bear on the course of public affairs. As Olcott (1994: 45) puts it, the “masses” exert “a kind of mute but implacable pressure” on the course of events. Because abrupt shifts in the course of affairs can be driven by unforeseen events, some observers have called for more studies of local and national as well as regional processes so as to identify more precisely “the root causes of particular conflicts” among these people (Garret et al. 2000: 2, 77). Still others, pleading for


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area studies generally but with the Middle East and Central Asia in mind, have complained that at a time when “globalization demands greater knowledge of the world than ever before, scholars today have less in-depth, committed knowledge than they did in the past” (2003: 3 ff.). There is now an even greater need, they say, for “deep study” of “the empirical and conceptual problems” of specific communities (Mirsepassi et al. 2003).27

Contents of this work Responding to such needs, this work examines the perspectives and issues of variously situated folks in this society with respect to four issues of general importance: government repression, ethnic group perspectives, devices of mutual support, and informal grounds of authority and influence. Part I addresses Repressions and their consequences in two social contexts. Anatoly Khazanov (Chapter 1) describes the authoritarian patterns of control in the ex-Soviet Central Asian states, and explains that, owing to entrenched political, economic, and social institutions inherited from the Soviet Union, the successor regimes have remained as repressive as ever, combining “whimsical” totalitarian, and authoritarian practices with, in some cases, “formal democratic institutions” that are weak and “nowadays in retreat.” Throughout Central Asia “the state still reigns supreme not only in politics, but also in social and economic life.” In fact, the emerging economic elites of the former Soviet republics have no “independent existence.” Khazanov foresees little chance that these regimes will abandon their repressive ways. Ildikó Bellér-Hann (Chapter 2) looks at the underside of the state-citizenry relationship, in her case the way official Chinese policy has affected folks in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. As the Uyghurs have now been officially recognized as an “ethnic” group, the reforms instituted by the government appear to have allowed more flexibility for the Uyghur people of Xinjiang. In reality, the land rights that most severely affect the Uyghur peasant sense of locality and identity are as firmly controlled by the government as ever. Some Uyghurs have tried to escape such controls through practices they affirm to be traditional and customary. Part II, Ethnic perceptions and reactions, discusses some of the issues of significance for groups considered “ethnic types”—only among those people “ethnicity” has a rather different meaning than in some other places. Owing to a history of invasions and migrations, viable social identities among these populations were circumstantially created by powerful leaders and so were often composed of disparate elements. The boundaries of viable political entities rarely coincided with cultural or linguistic climes. Into this setting the European invaders, Russian and British, brought their own reified notions of “ethnicity,” each in distinctive ways skewing the meanings of the ethno-national categories they touched. The Russians, advancing from the west, identified the people whom they encountered as ethnic “nationalities”: Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Kirghiz, Karakalpaks, and so on. When the Soviets succeeded the Russian empire in Central Asia, they added confusion to an already complex “nationalities” situation


Introduction

9

by imposing ethno-national categories on their newly established Central Asian republics.28 When the Soviet Union dissolved, the newly independent states of Central Asia assumed they should have cultural grounds for their existence as ethno-nationalities, a circumstance that in some cases prompted maladroit contortions. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan invented their own contrived ethno-histories (Carlisle 1994; Atkin 1994) and in Turkmenistan President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov fabricated a fantastic religious cult around himself. In these independent states citizens now claim particular “national” identities, even if their actual cultural and linguistic practices are otherwise misaligned. That is, some citizens in Uzbekistan whose first language is Tajiki, or otherwise are indistinguishable from “Tajiks” elsewhere, now call themselves “Uzbek” because of the country in which they live; and, similarly, citizens of Tajikistan who speak Uzbek and follow uzbek29 customs nevertheless call themselves “Tajiks.” The influence of the British on the ethnic groups they encountered in Asia was different. Advancing from the south they dealt with people in the subcontinent known as Panjabis, Sindhis, Pashtuns, Baluch, and so on, whom they identified as ethnic “castes” (Fox 1985). They reified “caste” identities by ascribing to them characteristic ways of life: Sindhis were “naturally indolent”; the tribesmen of Baluchistan and Afghanistan were “hardy laborers” and the like (Goswami 2004). Four authors examine ethnic issues in four contexts. Peter Finke (Chapter 3) notes that folks in Uzbekistan have twice passed up the chance to identify with their ethnic and religious compatriots in neighboring Afghanistan. In fact, they demonstrate little sense of ethnic or religious commonality with Uzbeks elsewhere and little interest in other Muslim citizenries of the Middle East and South Asia, seeing themselves as culturally superior, more “civilized.” Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek (Chapter 4) describes the dilemmas of the Uzbek minority in north-eastern Afghanistan, who are now trying to cope with problems created by the country’s attempts to reconstitute itself after more than two decades of fratricidal war. These Uzbeks were once dominant in what is now northern Afghanistan but, after being humiliated by the Amir of Kabul in late-nineteenth century, they chose to minimize their identity as Uzbeks so as to evade stateinduced social stigmas. But the wars of the 1980s and 1990s provoked them to reassert their identity, and since the war they have demanded a stronger voice in public affairs. Like many other minority groups they will want to participate more fully as the country develops. On the other hand, as Thomas Barfield (Chapter 5) points out, the Pashtuns of Afghanistan have lost much of their dominance in the country. They will never restore the status quo ante because the various minorities now control their respective territories by force of arms; moreover, the new government needs their cooperation to succeed. Despite fears that the strength of the minorities could divide the country, Barfield doubts that the new Afghanistan will dissolve along ethnic lines. In fact, he says, the “ethnic” groups, for all their self-assertion, don’t really seek independence: they strive for dominance, not exclusivity. They recognize that the resources of the international community can only be effectively tapped if a unified government exists to deal with the outside world. Charles Lindholm (Chapter 6) discusses the way the native Pashtuns


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(“Pukhtun”) of Swat, Northern Pakistan, view themselves, noting the similarities of the way Americans (and, to an extent, modern Europeans) see themselves.30 Pashtuns assume they are independent actors, each separately responsible for his own fate and endowed with a God-given potential for free choice and agency, so they are motivated by self-aggrandizement and the accumulation of desired goods. Thus, despite mundane differences in wealth and status, every Pashtun, like every free citizen of the United States, supposes himself to be worthy of respect by other members. Lindholm considers, therefore, how those who have little leverage and yet are unstigmatized by “natural” attributions of inferiority make sense of their actual subordinate status in terms of a value system that assumes everyone to be equal and independent. Part III, Devices of mutual support, addresses the ways that some ordinary folks in two social settings support each other to cope with the continual flux of the modern world. In these cases the informal means of establishing social ties are prominently shaped by the demands of local conditions. And in this conflicted context a group’s strategies for survival can be deliberately concealed. Alessandro Monsutti (Chapter 7) describes the social alliances of the Hazaras of Central Afghanistan. Their social affairs have so often been disrupted by internecine disputes that the “fault lines” among them are multiple and cross-cutting. Cooperation and trust “do not automatically emerge from a given social tie, and it is always necessary to have long-term relationships with people outside of one’s solidarity group.” Political alliances form “for a specific action and then dismantle.” Various sources of solidarity can be claimed as grounds for working together. The one constancy in the system is that alliances are subject to the vagaries of circumstance. Robert Nichols (Chapter 8) describes the way that the Pashtuns (“Pukhtun”) of north-western Pakistan support each other, even when some must be work of the community. For generations Pashtuns have left home to find work, mainly in South Asia. After the formation of Pakistan in 1947 many of them were employed in the cities. And when the Middle East began to flourish in the 1970s, owing to the oil boom, Pashtun workers were quick to take advantage. But Pashtun migrant workers typically maintained contact with their home communities and consistently sent remittances back to their families. They were therefore vital for the support of Pakistan’s flagging economy. Despite dramatic changes in the economy, in societal connections, and even in cultural practices, migrant Pashtuns have maintained social and economic ties with their families back home. Part IV, Mechanisms of authority and influence, considers patterns of eminence and power in three settings. Boris Pétrić (Chapter 9) describes relations in post-Soviet Uzbekistan that converge on local leaders. Individuals seeking eminence and leverage give gifts to others in order to develop clients into “solidarity networks.” They expend great amounts of wealth in order to secure a body of supporters through whom they may exert influence in local affairs, and even possibly in national proceedings. But the leverage of these leaders entails a contradiction, for it can be maintained only through a display of generosity so excessive that resources are drained dry. A political leader can pay out more than he gains from


Introduction

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his position and so be brought to financial ruin. Given the pragmatic nature of loyalty, his client-base dissipates as he loses the ability to continue paying out large gifts. As his fortunes decline, other individuals assert their eminence by gift-giving, and a cycle of bankruptcies develop in which power circulates: the fortunes of one person rise as those of others fall. Habiba Fathi (Chapter 10) shows how “unofficial” religious practices, in contrast to the practices of official Islam, have become a source of personal influence among women in the post-Soviet period. Female worship leaders have created new religious customs in place of the traditional rituals approved by the clergy. With the weakening of Soviet-period influences in the society these leaders of worship among the women have established new statuses and new grounds of influence. Through them new organizational functions have appeared among the women. Robert Canfield (Chapter 11) argues that folks all over Central Asia, seeking efficacy in distress through religious practices, have imputed spiritual power to sacred persons and holy places, which endows religious specialists with social capital. Such practices as pilgrimages to shrines for curing, recitations of sacred incantations, veneration of living saints who putatively can cure or divine the future, or create charms that emasculate an opponent and control jinns—these are practical means of dealing with problems of life for ordinary folks in Central Asia. Such devices of coping with the exigencies of life contribute to the influence and authority of the experts who serve public needs, so long as their services are reputed to be effective.

Conclusion Many other “games,” local and regional, must be being played among the diverse people in this critical sector of the world. Those we describe here are but a sample. But we believe they collectively display how the many games being played there— however great or small they may be—will profoundly affect the outcome of the “greater” games being played by the nation-states of the world.

Notes 1 I acknowledge with gratitude the assistance of Sarah Kendzior and Sami Siddiq in producing this text, and the advice and comments of Gabriele Rasuly-Palaczek on an earlier draft. 2 Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Beissinger sees the event as essentially driven by internal dynamics; he discounts the impact of the Afghanistan war on public opinion within the Soviet Union and of other movements on the periphery of the empire, such as the Solidarity movement in Poland. We believe, to the contrary, that these events, once in motion, accelerated the collapse by inspiring nationalist impulses extant within the empire. 3 See also Garret, Rahr et al. (2000). Das (2004) believes that Central Asia will eventually overtake Europe in importance. 4 For example, Bhadrakumar (2006); Weitz (2006). 5 Plans were drafted for the construction of roads, connecting the Central Asian states to South Asia via Pakistan’s Karakorum highway, although the earthquake of 2005 will no doubt slow down the project (Kashghar-Gilgit Bus Service 2006).


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6 Turkmen State Airlines (2004). Turkmen government sources claimed that over half of the available seats for the inaugural flight on August 4, 2005, were purchased several months in advance (Turkmen State Airlines 2005). 7 The World (2003). An email notice from Muhammad Ghazi Jamakzai, Executive Assistant to the Minister, Ministry of Communications, entitled “Afghanistan and United States extend Bilateral Communications Cooperation,” indicates that “three and half years ago we had a limited access to telephone only in a few provinces, but now we have more than one million subscribers of digital and cellular phones in all provinces of Afghanistan…[and that] all 34 provinces [are connected] with the Capital through phone, internet, Fax, and video Conference…[W]e have already connected more than 50 districts through phone, net, Fax, and video Conference and in every month we activate 20 districts, and hope to connect all districts till the end of this year” ([email protected]) (accessed March 16, 2006). 8 Gwadar Deep Seaport (2007); Starr (2005); Chah-Bahar (n.d.). 9 Canfield 1992; Belokrenitsky (1994). For a list of publications that used this term before 2008 see “Vital Concerns for the World,” http://rcanfield.blogspot. com/2008/05/new-region-of-greater-central-asia-from.html. 10 For similar discussions of the broader region see Kellner 2008a; Djalili and Kellner 2003, Chapter 6. 11 The most extensive discussion of the competition over access to hydrocarbons in the region is Djalili and Kellner (2003, Chapter 4). 12 On Uzbekistan see Uzbekistan: Military (n.d.); On Turkmenistan, see Turkmenistan Gas (2008); on Afghanistan see Kliment (2006). 13 The 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia, during which flows were briefly interrupted, demonstrated how crucial the pipelines in the Caucasus are to the Russian government (Mouawad 2008). 14 The 1,760 km Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline was constructed to supply the needs of Europe. Eventually able to carry as much as 75 million tons of oil a year, it is projected to bring to Azerbaijan as much as $160 billion in revenue by 2030, a dramatic infusion of wealth that could transform the Caucasus (Abbasov and Ismailova 2005; Howden and Thornton 2005). 15 Russia Clinches Gas Pipeline Deal (2007). 16 Update 1-US (2008). 17 Russia (2008). 18 See also Kellner (2008b: 604–10) for more on China’s growing commitment to the region of Central Asia. 19 On May 24, 2009, Iran and Pakistan announced an agreement to build a 2,100 kmlong pipeline from Iran’s South Pars gas field into Pakistan—at an estimated $7.5 billion. India so far has no part in the deal (Pannier 2009). 20 Besides the deals made with the Central Asians, the Indians have sought crude oil from Israel’s Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline as well as natural gas from Qatar (Blank 2005). 21 Moreover, the Japanese are pursuing Central Asian uranium, another source of energy over which there is growing interest. Uranium prices are climbing as China and India are stepping up construction of nuclear power plants, and some nations in the west, including the United States, are revisiting the question of nuclear power as an energy source (Uranium 2009). 22 Masaki (2006). 23 Won-sup (2007); South Korea (2008); Prime Minister Han (2008). 24 This topic is so large and the course of events so fluid that adequate attention cannot be given to it here. For more on the Taliban and guidance to the literature see Crews and Tarzi (2008). On Pakistan’s cultivation of Islamist organizations see Zahab and Roy (2004); Abbas (2005); Rashid (2008); Ali (2008); Usher 2009).


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25 Chah-Bahar (n.d.). 26 As far as I know, the only person to hint at the Soviet collapse was the Afghan Professor Gholam Ali Ayeen (1367AH), who pointed out as early as 1986 that the great empires of the past had collapsed when a few military reverses tarnished their image of invincibility; he was suggesting that the Afghanistan resistance movement, which was at that time embarrassing the Red Army, might actually undermine the Soviet Union’s apparent invincibility, with potentially momentous implications. 27 David Kilcullen (2009) has argued that to deal with insurgencies an army needs to absorb the culture of the societies within which they subsist. 28 Two different histories of the debates among Russians over how to deal with the Central Asian and Muslim populations are Hauner 1990 and Crews 2006. 29 Manz (1994); Soucek (2000). Following usage in Manz, we refer to named local identity groups in the ex-Soviet Central Asian states in lower case (“tajiks,” “uzbeks,” etc.), but refer to citizens of the ex-Soviet ethno-national states in upper case (citizens of Tajikistan are “Tajiks,” those of Uzbekistan are “Uzbeks,” etc.). 30 The parallels are even clearer in the case of Australia, where egalitarianism and autonomy are also highly valued in the construction of the self-made individual.

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—— 2006. China makes policy shift, aiming to widen access to central Asian energy. EurasiaNet, March 13. http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/business/articles/eav0313 06.shtml (accessed March 31, 2009). Canfield, Robert L. 1992. Restructuring in Greater Central Asia: Changing political configurations, Asian Survey, 32(10): 875–87. —— 2008. Continuing issues in the new Central Asia: Addenda in appreciation for Géopolitique de la nouvelle Asie centrale. In: Muhammad-Reza Djalili, Alessandro Monsutti, and Anna Neubauer (Eds.), Le Monde Turco-iranien en Question. Geneva: L’Institut Universitaire d’études du Développement. Carlisle, Donald S. 1994. Soviet Uzbekistan: State and Nation in Historical Perspective. In: Beatrice F. Manz (Ed.), Central Asia in Historical Perspetive. Boulder: Westview. Chah-Bahar (Free Trade Zone). n.d. Irancommerce.net, http://www.iranecommerce.net/ Articles/Chah_bahar.htm (accessed April 15, 2009). Closson, Stacy. 2005. Political-Economic Stakeholder’s Networks in 1990s Georgia. Paper presented at the Sixth Annual Conference of the Central Eurasian Study Society, Boston. October 1. Crews, Robert. 2006. For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Crews, Robert and Amin Tarzi (Eds.). 2008. The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Cutler, Robert M. 2007. US–Russian strategic relations and the structuration of Central Asia. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 6(1–3): 109–25, http:// www.robertcutler.org/download/pdf/ar06pgdt.pdf (accessed May 2, 2008). Das, Rahul Peter. 2004. Europe in Eurasian Strategic Considerations: Introductory Remarks. In: Erich Reiter and Peter Hazdra (Eds.), The Impact of Asian Powers on Global Developments. Heidelberg and New York: Physica-Verlag. Djalili, M.-Reza and Thierry Kellner (Eds.). 2003. Géopolitique de la Nouvelle Asie Centrale, De la fin de l’URSS à l’après-11 septembre. Paris: PUF. Fox, Richard G. 1985. Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making. Berkeley: University of California. Fragner, Bert G. 2001. The concept of regionalism in historical research on Central Asia and Iran (A Macro-Historical Interpretation). In: Devin Deweese (Ed.), Studies on Central Asian History in Honor of Yuri Bregel. Bloomington: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. Fuller, Graham E. 1994. The new geopolitical order. In: Ali Banuazizi and Myron Weiner (Eds.), The New Geopolitics of Central Asia and Its Borderlands. Bloomington: Indiana University. Garret, Sherman W., Alexander Rahr, and Koji Watanabe. 2000. The New Central Asia: In Search of Stability. New York: Trilateral Commission. Goswami, Manu. 2004. Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space. Chicago: University of Chicago. Gwadar Deep Seaport to Generate Two Million Jobs. 2007. Daily Times, January 5, http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\01\05\story_5-1-2007_pg5_2 (accessed March 31, 2009). Hauner, Milan. 1990. What is Asia to Us? Russia’s Asian Heartland Yesterday and Today. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Howden, Daniel and Philip Thornton. 2005. The Pipeline That Will Change The World. The Independent, May 25.


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Kashghar–Gilgit Bus Service Planned. 2006. Dawn, March 23, http://www.dawn. com/2006/03/23/nat2.htm (accessed March 30, 2009). Kazakhstan–China Oil Pipeline Opens to Operation. 2006. Chinaview, July 12. http://news3. xinhuanet.com/english/2006–7/12/content_4819484.htm (accessed March 31, 2009). Kellner, Thierry. 2008a. L’“axe Turco-Iranian”: Vers un Nouveau Concept Géopolitique? In: Muhammad-Reza Djalili, Alessandro Monsutti, and Anna Neubauer (Eds.), Le Monde Turco-iranien en Question. Geneva: L’Institut Universitaire d’études du Développement. —— 2008b. L’Occident de la Chine: Pékin et la Nouvelle Asie Centrale (1991–2001). Genéve: Institut de Hautes Études Internationales et du Développement. Kilcullen, David. 2009. The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One. New York: Oxford University. Klare, Michael T. 2002. Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict. New York: Henry Holt. Kleveman, Lutz. 2003. The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia. New York: Atlantic Monthly. Kliment, Alexander. 2006. Afghan Oil Reserves “Bigger than Thought.” Financial Times (London) March 16. Kripalani, Manjeet. 2004. How a thirst for energy led to a thaw. BusinessWeek, November 15, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_46/b3908046.htm (accessed March 31, 2009). Lounev, Sergei and Gleryi Shirokov. 1998. Central Asia and the World: Foreign Policy and Strategic Issues. In: Yongjim Zhang and Rouben Azizian (Eds.), Ethnic Challenges Beyond Borders: Chinese and Russian Perspectives of the Central Asian Conundrum. London: Macmillan and Oxford: St. Anthony’s. Manz, Beatrice (Ed.). 1994. Central Asia in Historical Perspective. Boulder: Westview. Masaki, Hisane. 2006. Japan joins the energy race. Asia Times, July 28, http://www.atimes. com/atimes/Japan/HG28Dh01.html (accessed March 31, 2009). Menon, Rajan. 2003. The new Great Game in Central Asia. Survival 45(2): 187–204. Mirsepassi, Ali, Amrita Basu, and Frederick Weaver. 2003. Localizing Knowledge in a Globalizing World: Recasting the Area Studies Debate. Syracuse: Syracuse University. Monsutti, Alessandro. 2005. War and Migration: Social Networks and Economic Strategies of the Hazaras of Afghanistan. New York and London: Routledge. Mouawad, Jad. 2008. Conflict narrows oil options for West. New York Times, August 13, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/world/europe/14oil.html (accessed March 31, 2009). Munro, Ross H. 1994. Central Asia and China. In: Michael Mandelbaum (Ed.), Central Asia and the World: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. New York: Council on Foreign Relations. Naughten, Barry. 2008. Asia’s rising complex energy interdependence. International Journal of Global Energy Issues 29(4): 400–33. Olcott, Martha Brill. 1994. Emerging Political Elites. In: Ali Banuazizi and Myron Weiner (Eds.), The New Geopolitics of Central Asia and Its Borderlands. Bloomington: Indiana University. Pannier, Bruce. 2009. What are the Prospects for Iran-Pakistan “Pipeline of Peace”? May 25, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Prime Minister Han Forges Important Deals with Uzbekistan. EcplazaGlobal, May 12. http://www.ecplaza.net/news/03/13408/prime_minister-han-forges.html (accessed June 23, 2010).


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Rashid, Ahmed. 2008. Descent into Chaos. New York: Viking. Russia: Background. 2008. Energy Information Administration. http://www.eia. doe.gov/ emeu/cabs/Russia/Background.html (accessed March 31, 2009). Russia Clinches Gas Pipeline Deal. 2007. The Agonist. May 12. http://agonist.org /20070512/russia_clinches_gas_pipeline_deal (accessed March 31, 2009). Soucek, Svat. 2000. A History of Inner Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. South Korea Scouts for Energy in Central Asia. 2008. World Nuclear News, May 12. http:// www.world-nuclear-news.org/ENF_South_Korea_scouts_for_energy_in_Central_ Asia_1205081.html (accessed March 31, 2009). Starr, S. Fredrick. 2005. A Partnership for Central Asia, Foreign Affairs, 84(4): 164–78. Stroehlein, Andrew. 2009. Real security in Central Asia is not a Great Game. Alertnet, http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/3159/2009/01/20-160504-1.htm (accessed March 24, 2009). Turkmenistan Gas Reserves Revealed. 2008. Kommersant. October 15, http://www. kommersant.com/p1041128/hydrocarbon_production_and_sales_Turkmenistan (accessed March 31, 2009). Turkmen State Airlines Launches New Direct Flights to China. 2004. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Turkmen Report, August 9, http://www.rferl.org/content/ article/1346979.html (accessed March 31, 2009). Update 1-US Throws Weight Behind EU’s Nabucco Pipeline. 2008. Reuters, February 22. http://uk.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=UKL2212241120080222 (accessed May 20, 2009). Uranium in Central Asia. 2009. World Nuclear Association, March, http://www.worldnuclear.org/info/inf118_centralasiauranium.html (accessed March 30, 2009). Uzbekistan: Military: Energy. n.d. Global Security. http://www.globalsecurity.org/ military/world/centralasia/uzbek-energy.htm (accessed March 31, 2009). Weitz, Richard. 2006. Averting a New Great Game in Central Asia. The Washington Quarterly 29(3): 155–67. Won-sup, Yoon. 2007. Korea, Kyrgyzstan Sign Investment Pact. The Korea Times November 19, http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2007/11/113_14005. html (accessed March 31, 2009). The World. 2003. National Public Radio: BBC, June 10 and June 16. Usher, Graham. 2009. Taliban v. Taliban. London Review of Books, April 9. Zahab, Mariam Abou and Olivier Roy. 2004. Islamic Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection. New York: Columbia University.


Part I

Repressions and their consequences



1

Authoritarianism and its consequences in ex-Soviet Central Asia1 Anatoly Khazanov

Transitions from communism to liberal democracy consist not only of success stories, but also of obituaries. Although some scholars still claim that “after communism’s collapse, there is no principled alternative to democracy left” (Fairbanks 2001: 55), during the past few years a growing number of politicians and observers in the West have begun to express their disappointment with the political and economic performance of Central Asian countries. The only surprising element of their disappointment is that they were surprised at all. It was based on wishful thinking and exaggerated expectations. With regard to such countries as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, it was also connected with the disjunction between appearance and reality that had existed in the beginning of the transitional period. Still, the failure of the democratic scenario in Central Asia could have easily been predicted and, in actuality, had been predicted by a number of scholars. The transition from communism consists of two main processes that are far from completely intertwined: the transition from totalitarianism to another political order (whatever this order may be), and the transition from state socialism to the market economy. Many ex-communist states, including the Central Asian ones, face the additional problem of nation-state building. Thus, in order to succeed on the path of development, everything in the excommunist countries should be rebuilt, and in Central Asia should even be built anew from the ground up: the economic system, the social organization, the political order, and ideology. However, the main contemporary, Western patterns of ideological, political, and economic orientation, such as authoritarianism, conservatism, liberalism, and social democracy, are not applicable to Central Asian countries without serious reservations. To analyze their current order one should develop different criteria and notions. At the moment, all Central Asian countries might be characterized as authoritarian; however, in some important respects they are different from the authoritarian capitalist countries that one has been acquainted with. Under authoritarian capitalism, the government and administration do not abide by the rules of the democratic game. However, the economic sphere remains sufficiently autonomous. Although authoritarian rulers in capitalist countries may sometimes intervene in the economic sphere through populist, protectionist, and/or other measures, the market system and private property remain basically intact. To a


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significant extent, the economy is not monopolized by the state, and political elites have to coexist with economic ones. In Central Asia, the state still reigns supreme not only in politics, but also in social and economic life, and the newly emerging economic elites do not have an independent existence. In fact, the Central Asian states are weak where they should be strong (the maintenance of law and order and management of coherent, orderly and fair market-oriented reforms), and strong where they should be weak (excessive control over the economy and society). It seems that the best way to characterize the contemporary Central Asian societies is to call them post-totalitarian. In the political sphere, their characteristic feature is a whimsical combination of totalitarian, authoritarian, and in rare cases even formal democratic institutions and characteristics, although the latter are always very weak and are nowadays in retreat. In the economic sphere, the socialist institutions and forms of property frequently underwent insufficient change. At present, they coexist with the state monopolistic ones, the latter not very different from the former, as well as with the still much undeveloped institutions and forms based on private property and free enterprise. To provide an explanation for this sad state of affairs, one should take into account many factors, including historical ones. With regard to Central Asia, one can recall the old saying that history is destiny, at any rate it has been so far. To start with, the independence of Central Asian states was not won in a struggle with the All-Union Moscow center. Because of the economic and political weakness of the region, the Central Asian leaderships to the very end were the most persistent champions of the preservation of the Soviet Union. They only wanted more power for themselves and more subsidies from Moscow. With the exception of Kyrgyzstan president Akaev, who faced an attempted mini-coup in his own republic, all other Central Asian leaders either gave conditional approval to the August 1991 coup in Moscow or took a wait-and-see position. One could say that their countries’ independence was, if not a sudden gift from heaven, then the almost imposed consequence of the Belovezhskaia Pushcha agreement (December 8, 1991, marking the disintegration of the Soviet Union) in which they had no part. Correspondingly, the institutional break with the Soviet past and the turnover of the ruling elites were insignificant in Central Asia (Khazanov 1995: 129 ff.). Contrary to some European republics of the USSR, Central Asia lacked sufficiently strong counter-elites, which at the proper moment would be ready and capable of coming to power. In the Brezhnev period and later, the dissident movement, especially the secular and democratic one with specific political demands, was almost non-existent. Only in the late perestroika years (1988–91), which, incidentally, were the most liberal years in the long history of the region, did the first rudiments of civil society appear in Central Asia. However, they were too weak and unstable to challenge the ruling elites. It is true that in 1988–91 various groups and organizations began to emerge in Central Asia, in which the intelligentsia and the educated urban middle strata in general played the most active and organizing role. However, the formation of the opposition movements took place in significantly more difficult conditions than in many other republics


Authoritarianism and its consequences 21 of the Soviet Union, because the political culture of the masses was extremely undeveloped. National intelligentsias in Central Asia are a rather new phenomenon; they are a creation of the Soviet regime and are still not numerous. They lacked the tradition of democratic political process and did not have a clear vision for the future of their countries, in the form of either Western-type liberal democracies or any other system. Instead, they are inclined towards ethnic nationalism, because to them the dominance of their own nationality seemed to be the best safeguard and an improvement of their own position in society. Thus, human rights and identity issues have become closely intertwined. A liberal democratic system, based on individual merit and competence and guaranteeing equal rights to all citizens regardless of ethnic membership, began to be considered as detrimental to the interests of politically strong and the most numerous but economically disadvantaged titular nationalities. In all, during the restructuring period the opposition in Central Asia proved to be not influential enough to lead broad and stable political movements with clearly formulated goals. It is notable that many of its leaders preferred to escape anti-communist slogans, were rather moderate in their political demands, and were ready for collaboration with political elites. Often their criticisms of these elites were leveled more at personalities than at institutions. No wonder that the old communist political elites, the nomenklatura in the Soviet parlance, remained in power, and even managed to strengthen their positions with little difficulty in the new conditions of independence. For this they spare no efforts, and for now they are doing this quite successfully. It is true that in some Central Asian countries one could witness the struggle for power and spoils of state property between different factions of the nomenklatura. However, this struggle did not endanger the dominant position of the whole stratum in their countries. In the beginning of the independence period, there were still more or less conspicuous differences between the hard-line dictatorships, represented by the regimes of Presidents Karimov in Uzbekistan and Niiazov in Turkmenistan, that acquired grotesque forms in the latter; and the less repressive autocratic rule of Presidents Akaev in Kyrgyzstan (written before the fall of Akaev) and Nazarbaev in Kazakhstan. But even in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, which in the early 1990s were often praised in the West as virtual beacons of democracy in Central Asia, the prevailing political tendency is also authoritarian (Kurtov 2001). All Central Asian countries share such common characteristics as hyperpresidentialism, the absence of a real separation of powers that at best exists only on paper, fragmented opposition, very weak and ephemeral political parties (where the multi-party system has any meaning at all), a lack of mechanisms of real public control and monitoring to hold officialdom and bureaucracy accountable, and constant violation of free speech, free press rights, and other basic freedoms. The most significant changes can be traced to ideology and the legitimation of power. Communist ideology was thrown overboard. It was replaced with the


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ideology of ethnic nationalism and (ethno)national statehood building. Ethnic nationalism, with all its usual attributes—from a rhetoric of post-colonialism and a victimization complex; to a search for the ‘glorious ancestors’ and obsession with alleged autochthonism; and to an elevation of statuses of indigenous languages— is propagated by the ruling elites and many in the cultural elites (Koroteeva and Makarova 1998; Adams 1999; Kuru 2002: 73 ff.; Roy 2000: 165 ff.; Manz 2002; Olcott 2002: 58 ff.; Kosmarskii 2003; Ilkhamov 2004a). It is considered instrumental to societal consolidation and, in fact, it helped the former to neutralize or convert to its cause some strata of the indigenous populations. In spite of the proclaimed course aimed at the transition to the market economy, so far the economic reforms in Central Asia have not been sufficiently deep and consistent to become potentially dangerous for the monopoly of power of the ruling elites. Private enterprise is still of limited importance to economic growth. All ex-communist states are facing the problem of redrawing the boundaries of their own activities, reducing their involvement in the economy and paving the way for private entrepreneurship and foreign investors (Balcerowicz 1994; Linz and Stepan 1996: 390–1, 435; Khazanov 2004: 37–42). However, in Central Asia, the states still maintain control even over privatized sectors of economy through anti-competitive practices, licensing, arbitrary regulations, and other administrative measures. Their policy choices determine not only the general direction of economic development but also the fate of individual enterprises. In addition, squandering scarce resources for economically unsound projects has become a common practice detrimental to the overall well-being of ordinary people. On the orders of President Niiazov, a luxurious international airport, many five-star hotels, and a soccer stadium have been built in Ashghabad, the capital of Turkmenistan, where the water supply and sewage systems remain hazardous to the health of its residents. This occurred at a time when the government had to introduce food rationing. Meanwhile, the airport is never used to its full capacity, and the hotels remain empty most of the time due to insufficient numbers of visitors to the country. Even rare international soccer games are attended by less than 1,000 people, since this game has never been popular in the country. Instead, the city-dwellers are invited to enjoy a huge, 14-meter-high gilt statue of Niiazov, rotating on a 70-meter-high pedestal, which was erected in the center of Ashghabad.2 Nowadays, a new grandiose project is on the agenda: the construction of a large lake in the middle of the Kara-Kum Desert. In Kazakhstan, President Nazarbaev’s project to transfer the capital from Almaty in the south to the small northern city of Akmola, later renamed Astana, has already swallowed billions of dollars. The project was driven not only by Nazarbaev’s personal ambitions but also by some political considerations, including the goal of strengthening the ethnic Kazakh presence in the Russiandominated northern part of the country (Bremmer 1994; Huttenbach 1998; Wolfel 2002). However, building the roads, power lines, gas pipelines, residential complexes, numerous office buildings, and presidential palaces required, and still requires, huge sums of money. Even in 2003, the opposition criticized


Authoritarianism and its consequences 23 the government for investing about 850 million dollars in the development of the new capital, and only 85 million dollars in agriculture. In all ex-communist countries, denationalization of state property was not a result of the further expansion of the private sector. To a greater or lesser degree, they all experienced a conversion of power into property. But in some Central Asian countries, privatization is still in its initial stages, and even in those countries where it advanced further, it has not resulted in the emergence of independent economic elites. On the contrary, power and property have become inseparable. The ruling stratum seizes or controls the property without giving up their power. Just like in some other developing countries, state autonomy from societal pressures more often leads to disastrous rather than beneficial developmental outcomes. The new economic order that has emerged in Central Asia as a result of the commercialization of governance can be characterized at best as political capitalism—the fusion of the ruling elites with a new stratum of proprietors, whose very existence depends on their ties with those in power. The transfer of former socialist enterprises to holding companies has not changed much. Key enterprises, monopolies, and even whole sectors of the economy are controlled by members of bureaucratic elites and/or relatives and close associates of the presidents. Good connections with the governments and administrators are a much better guarantee of economic success than the risky entrepreneurship in an open sea of free competition. The lack of effective political representation, the absence of mechanisms for holding the governments and presidents accountable for their decisions, and the monopolistic structure of the industrial sector allow the ruling elites to use the national resources and revenues for their own enrichment and for further consolidation of their power. The struggle within the ruling elites for shares in these revenues so far has not threatened the stability of the authoritarian rule. The main danger of the nomenklatura privatization and control over the economy consists not of the violation of social justice. Historical justice is like a train that comes to the station late, if it comes at all. It would be very naïve to expect that justice might immediately become rooted in the region after more than 70 years of ruthless communist experimentation and many centuries of previous despotic rule. The problem is of a different order. Often, economic policies in Central Asia are not connected either with economic rationality or with genuine national interest. Many nomenklatura members or people close to them acquired property, or control over it but have not learned how to run it in an efficient capitalist way. In fact, Central Asia has very limited, if any, history of private ownership in the modern Western sense. No wonder that at the moment there is a very limited understanding of liberal capitalism there. These circumstances aggravate the general inefficiency of the region’s economies in the transitional period. All authoritarian countries share some common characteristics, although in politics more so than in economics. At present, the economic policies in Central Asia have little resemblance to those conducted by such East Asian countries as South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. They resemble more closely the policy that was pursued in the 1950s and 1960s in some Latin American countries. Their regimes were consumed with rent seeking—manipulating import licenses, foreign


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exchange controls, subsidies, government jobs, and so on—by high officials and their cronies and clients. I should hardly remind that such policies in Latin America, as well as in other countries, resulted in complete economic failure. The first post-independence decade was a period of rapid economic decline in Central Asia (Kalyuzhnova 1998: 104–5, passim; Rumer 2000; Sievers 2003). The countries lost a significant part of their GNP: Tajikistan lost two-thirds of its GNP; Turkmenistan just under half; Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan two-fifths. Uzbekistan has managed with only a relatively small dip of around 10 percent, but this is according to official statistics, which can hardly be trusted. In practical terms, this means that the bulk of working people earned between 2.5 and 9 dollars per month, with 15 dollars considered a good salary and 25–30 dollars very good indeed. Taking into account the average number of dependents per family, not infrequently the per capita monthly income amounted to just under 3 dollars. This was a very significant drop in living standards in comparison to the late Soviet period. This situation and deteriorating health services also resulted in a decline in the life span. By 2001, the average life span in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan dropped to 54.3 years, in Kyrgyzstan to 52.6 years, in Turkmenistan to 52.0 years, and in Tajikistan to 50.8 years (Sovetskaia Rossiia October 6, 2001). Although in some countries the economy has begun to climb back in the past few years, it is still premature to consider this animation as a sign of stable economic recovery in the region. During the past few years, there is a certain improvement in living standards only in Kazakhstan. Large sectors of populations, however, are still living below the poverty line. In some Central Asian countries, especially in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, drug trafficking has become a major part of local informal economies, in which many unemployed people are involved. In addition, drug addiction has become common across the region (Lunev 2001: 61–2; Madi 2004). One may come to the conclusion that the statist model of modernization, which has been chosen by Central Asian regimes, has so far turned out to be inadequate. The region desperately needs large-scale foreign investment and know-how. The decay of the modern sectors of economy with their obsolete technology and equipment can not be overcome by Central Asians themselves. However, with the exception of the oil and mining sectors (by 2002, the Chevron Texaco corporation alone had invested four billion dollars in the oil sector of Kazakhstan—see Yermukhanov 2002b), the prospects of attracting them seem dubious at the moment, given its geographic location, its shortage of infrastructure and skilled labor, its political instability, weak legal protection, and completely corrupt and inefficient administrations. The positive impact of future oil and gas revenues should also not be overestimated. Although these are often seen in the region as the only hope for alleviating the current situation, there are many reasons to doubt that they will secure the sustained economic growth and sociopolitical modernization of Central Asia in general, or even of its individual states in particular. First, of the five countries which constitute former Soviet Central Asia, only Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan possess significant hydrocarbon resources. The reserves of Uzbekistan are sufficient only for satisfying domestic consumption. Second, for many reasons their


Authoritarianism and its consequences 25 windfalls-to-be are still rather problematic, considering the political and economic problems connected with oil transportation from this landlocked region. Third, capital-intensive projects generate a limited demand for labor, and a threat of “the Dutch disease” may become quite real. Successful development in the hydrocarbon sector may be accompanied by growing backwardness and unemployment in other sectors. Just as in the present, in the future the capitals and largest industrial centers, with their more or less Westernized populations, may remain islands in a sea of basically pre-modern society. One of the most alarming post-Soviet developments in the region is the plummeting quality of primary and secondary education, especially in rural areas, which even in the Soviet period was inferior to that in other parts of the Soviet Union. Still, one of the main Soviet achievements in the region was the almost universal literacy of the population. Nowadays, a growing number of children, especially girls, have no chance of attending secondary schools and have to work to supplement family income; some of them even drop out from primary schools. In Tajikistan, school enrolment shrunk to 61 percent in 2001 (ICG 2003a). In Turkmenistan, the government reduced primary and secondary education from 11 to nine years (actually, to six years if one takes into account the time the schoolchildren have to work in the cotton fields) and university education to two years (ICG 2004). If this trend continues, the region may well soon have a generation of illiterate and semi-literate people who will lag behind their parents in education. I have mentioned but some of the many negative trends that are nowadays so conspicuous in the political and economic development of the Central Asian region. However, were I asked whether the development could take quite different and more successful forms, I would have to reply: “In my opinion, no.” At present, Central Asia is overburdened by its past. Not only many institutions and traditions of the Soviet past, but also those which go back to the pre-revolutionary colonial one and even of the pre-colonial past of the region are still alive and often make a negative impact on the current situation there. Of all the numerous problems that Central Asian countries are facing now, the most acute one remains their underdevelopment. The Soviet leaders liked to refer to the Central Asian example as the model for successful development along socialist lines, which the developing countries were encouraged to emulate. The reality, however, was quite different from the Soviet propaganda. In the Soviet period, modernization was pursued in Central Asia with a minimal participation by the indigenous population, and none of its processes—be they industrialization, urbanization, demographic revolution, revolution in education, or occupational mobility—were fully implemented there (Poliakov 1992; Fierman 1991; Kul’chik 1995; Patnaik 1996; Panarin 2000: 90). The so-called interregional division of labor carried out by the Moscow center clearly contradicted the interests of the Central Asian republics, because it condemned the region to the role of supplier of raw materials, which left the region for other parts of the Soviet Union, mainly in unprocessed form. All Central Asian countries were dependent on direct budgetary support and other forms of subsidies from Moscow.


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By the end of the 1980s, the per capita GNP in Central Asia lagged behind not only Russia, but some neighboring Muslim countries as well. Thus, in Russia the per capita GNP was 3,780 dollars, in Iran 2,480 dollars, and in Turkey 1,640 dollars. In Kazakhstan it amounted to 2,160 dollars, in Turkmenistan 1,360 dollars, in Kyrgyzstan 1,220 dollars, and in Tajikistan 780 dollars. By 1990, the share of the urban population was 74 percent in Russia; 64 percent in Turkey; and 58 percent in Iran. In Kazakhstan it was 57 percent; in Turkmenistan, 45 percent; in Uzbekistan, 41 percent; in Kyrgyzstan, 38 percent; and in Tajikistan, 32 percent (Vishnevsky 1996: 139, 141). The picture would be even more grim if one were to take into account, first, that a significant number of the urban population consisted of members of non-indigenous ethnic groups, and, second, that in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, the share of urban settlements with less than 50,000 residents is still very high. No wonder that the social structure of Central Asian countries has many more similarities with that of the developing countries of the Third World than with that of developed Western countries, or even of Russia and Ukraine. It resembles a pyramid, in which people involved in the government and administration and, in the post-Soviet period, the political capitalists, are placed at its top, while the most numerous class, the peasantry, occupies the position at the bottom. By the end of the Soviet period, more than half of the indigenous population of the region still lived in the rural areas and was involved mainly in agriculture as sovkhozniks and kolkhozniks, i.e. laborers on the state-owned or collective farms, denied a voice in economic decision making and divorced from the property rights on arable land, pastures, and other key resources. They were treated as guinea pigs, raw material for several drastic political and socioeconomic reforms in the pursuit of a vain Utopia. Moreover, many new tendencies that are becoming conspicuous in Central Asian agriculture in the post-Soviet period can be best characterized as antimodern. It is true that agricultural policy is becoming increasingly different in individual countries, which display a continuum of change: from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, where Soviet forms of ownership and organization still predominate; to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, which have changed the most. Nonetheless, in all these countries the immediate producers face extreme uncertainty not only about the prices they will get, but more basically about their rights to control land and animals, and they are unable to even estimate the probabilities of different outcomes. Land use rights are transferable, at least on paper, in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. But in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan any transactions in land are still prohibited. Thus, the leadership of Uzbekistan is still unwilling to relinquish its monopolistic control over agriculture. At best, some of the former kolkhozniks acquired leasing contracts, but by no means full titles to the land. Instead, former collective farms have been converted into new cooperatives, known in the Uzbek language as shirkats. This conversion, however, appears to be little more than a matter of smoke and mirrors. The state still holds a monopoly on cotton export and controls, and even dictates, the purchasing price on it well before the market price (Ilkhamov 1998; 2000). Corruption and abuse have already become the order of


Authoritarianism and its consequences 27 things on these shirkats. Ordinary members do not have any greater freedom to determine their affairs than in the Soviet period, while the shirkat leaders have more independence from state control, and this is often exercised to the detriment of members. In 1999, the directors of several shirkats in the Navoi province boasted to me that, contrary to Soviet times, they could fire anybody they were not pleased with. Likewise, in Tajikistan, dehqan associations, or joint stock companies, differ little from the previous kolkhozes and sovkhozes, since the state retains large shares in many of them and controls cotton growing. At the same time, the heads of the Soviet era collective farms, officials in local administrations, and some civil war field commanders appropriated the best lands for themselves, thus creating a new stratum of landless peasants (ICG 2003a). The transition away from Soviet-era agriculture and farm organization is most advanced in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. However, so far the results of their reforms are also unsatisfactory. From the very beginning, the reforms were accompanied by widespread embezzlement of state property and collective property by those in power. Directors and managers of the former kolkhozes and sovkhozes were taking control of disproportionate shares of the farms’ wealth, and local officials were maintaining as much control and capturing as large a flow of benefits as they could. By 1999, thousands of small peasant farms and small cooperatives existed in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. But they are unable to maintain profitable and market-oriented production and operate as non-capitalist subsistence units (Rastiannikov and Deriugina 2000). No wonder that in the major cities of Kazakhstan foodstuffs from developed countries, including meat and milk products, have seized a significant share of the market; while local producers face many difficulties in selling their own produce. Although the government promised to invest 150 billion tenge (about one billion dollars) in agriculture in 2003–5, it seems that investments are intended only to stimulate marketable grain produce (Annual Address 2003). During the post-Soviet period, the agricultural production in Central Asia was decreasing, and there is still no light at the end of the tunnel. Economic and social differentiation is growing. The negative effects of privatization are not balanced, and the number of dispossessed and displaced people is disproportionately high, while mechanisms that should lessen the pain of dispossession are nonexistent or too weak. This sad state of affairs is fraught not only with economic but dangerous social consequences. First, there is the danger of the re-peasantization and even swift pauperization of the majority of former kolkhozniks and sovkhozniks, including even those involved in pastoralism (Kerven 2003; Khazanov and Shapiro 2005). In the worst scenario some of them may even become laborers in new, large agricultural enterprises captured by the former communist managers. In Kazakhstan, farmland has become progressively more concentrated in the hands of a few as a result of intimidation, blackmail, and fraud (World Bank 2000: 45–6). A similar development has taken place in Tajikistan. In principle, large agricultural enterprises that use wage labor are characteristic of the agricultural sector in some developed countries. In Central Asian conditions, however, such enterprises may well become latifundias.


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Second, a growing number of young people from rural areas who cannot find employment and do not see decent futures in agriculture are moving to the cities. In Kazakhstan in recent years, hundreds of small villages were abandoned by their dwellers and several hundred thousand people have moved to the cities (Yermukhanov 2002a; Alekseenko 2004). However, because of their low educational level and the depressed national economies, they cannot find employment in the modern urban sectors. Just like in some African and Latin American countries, at present such Central Asian cities as Almaty, Bishkek, and Dushanbe are surrounded by a ring of poor squatter districts without roads, electricity, or running water. Many of their population do not have permanent jobs. Some are marginalized and constitute an underclass prone to violence and crime. Last but not least, let us consider the working class and the middle strata. Numerically, they are still relatively small. The same can be said of the “new middle class” emerging as the result of the limited market-oriented reforms. In the Soviet period, many blue collars and members of the professional middle class came from non-indigenous ethnic groups—Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, Tatars, and several others. Their outmigration in the post-Soviet period (Vitkovskaia 1998; Panarin 1999: 149 ff.; Islamov 2000: 183 ff.; Savoskul 2001: 393 ff.) is detrimental to the immediate economic development of the region, since these people were the backbone of the modernization process in Central Asia. Another important characteristic of the Central Asian region which is detrimental to its development is the importance of power groupings based on local, regional, and/or kin- and descent-based clanal and tribal identities and loyalties. The latter are still very much alive and conspicuous in the public consciousness, attitudes, and behavior: from personal relations and marriage arrangements, to social and political advancement and career promotion, and to infighting within the ruling elites. In the Soviet period, competition between regional factions sometimes resulted in a very specific division of lucrative positions. Thus, in Tajikistan, where identities are very localized and even marriages between people of different regions are uncommon, the natives of the northern Sugd (former Leninabad) province, primarily from Khudjant and to a lesser degree from Kanibadam, had come to dominate the Communist Party apparatus and government; descendants of migrants from Samarkand and Bukhara made up a significant part of the intellectual elite; natives of Kuliab and Badakhshan regions presented a majority in the law enforcement bodies, while Garm natives were entrenched in trade and the shadow economy. Since the 1960s in Kazakhstan, members of the Elder Zhuz and their allies from the Junior Zhuz have been over-represented in the power structures, while the intellectual and cultural elites to a large extent consist of members of the Middle Zhuz. The Soviets failed to create a Homo sovieticus from ordinary Central Asians. In fact, many traditional institutions and social structures were by no means destroyed. They only underwent a certain transformation and adjusted quite well to the new social stratification. The undemocratic pyramidal structures of power that had been built with Moscow’s consent and support, and the complete absence of even the rudimentary elements of civil society in the region, inevitably led to


Authoritarianism and its consequences 29 a situation in which the actual dispensation of power and wealth was connected with a network of personal trust, patronage, and clientage. One of the important foci of any individual’s loyalty remained the groupings in which one has grown up and lived. As in the pre-Soviet past, one’s position in society was to a large extent connected with one’s personal standing in these groupings (all these groupings not infrequently but erroneously are called by the umbrella term “clan,” which obscures their real varieties and differences). These were the foundations of trust and, thus, the channels through which power was mediated and social advancement could be achieved. In these conditions, it was natural that leadership of any rank in Central Asia, even those at the top levels who were directly appointed by Moscow, relied on the support of their tribesmen or fellow countrymen. The ordinary population, which was denied any participation in political life and was poorly protected by the state, also tended to rely on traditional institutions, such as kin groups, neighborhoods, or others, and on their old traditions of mutual aid and reciprocity. This situation left even less room for individual initiative and decision making than existed in the European republics of the USSR. In this respect, nothing has changed in Central Asia during the independence years. On the contrary, traditional institutions and attitudes that were somewhat hidden in Soviet times, have nowadays become even more salient and important. The political elites are successfully manipulating them to secure their power further. No wonder that some of them, for example, shuro aksakal (the courts of elders based on customary law) in Kyrgyzstan, the avlod (lineage) based system in Tajikistan, or the mahalla (residential neighborhood or local community) organization in Uzbekistan, are legalized under the pretext of the revival of national traditions. Inasmuch as this policy is receiving a certain support from the ordinary people, it can be characterized as a kind of pseudo-populism. Moreover, they are playing a certain stabilizing function. However, these institutions, in the recent past informal, nowadays are put under state control. Thus, in Uzbekistan, the chairmen of mahalla committees are elected by their members from candidates nominated by local authorities, and the state pays salaries of the chairmen and secretaries of mahalla committees (Bohr 1998: 21–2; Sievers 2002; Kamp 2004). In fact, this policy only strengthens the traditions of patriarchy, paternalism, obedience, and respect for elders and authorities which hinder the modernization process and development of civil society. Sievers (2002: 152) aptly characterized this policy as “pioneering grass-roots absolutism.” Instead of open competition with clear rules of the game, the recruiting into the political elites in Central Asia is based more than ever before on clientage, clannishness, and personal loyalty. These relations permeate Central Asian societies from top to bottom. The excessive concentration of power on the highest level is repeated on the local level. Every high-ranking official selects his own entourage from among his kin or fellows from his place of origin and grants them employment, promotion, and protection. His subordinates, in turn, copy their patron’s practices in selecting their own sycophants down to the lower levels of society. To become a good client of a big patron one should have one’s own clients, in other words, to be a little patron one’s self.


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In internal politics, local solidarities and allegiances are still more important than ethno-national ones. This situation is sometimes explained as a usual centerperiphery competition (Ilkhamov 2004b; Luong 2004), however in Central Asian conditions it should better be perceived not only as a struggle of peripheral political elites for their share of scare resources and spoils, but also as a fighting for dominant positions in the center; hence, a salience of the regional groupings in the capitals. Besides, peripheral foci of power in Central Asia have originated not in arbitrary administrative-territorial arrangements; in many cases they reflect historical tribal and regional differences. Soviet policies reconfigured power relations in such a way that a new institutional regionalism and power relations superseded but at the same time coexisted with, and even reaffirmed old clan, tribal, and regional identities (Luong 2002: 63 ff.). In the post-Soviet period, these identities have become even more salient. Thus, in Uzbekistan, President Karimov rules with the support of the Samarkand faction and its allies from the Tashkent faction, while the members of the Fergana, Bukhara, Khwarazm, and Surkash (Surkhan-Daria and Kashkar-Daria regions) factions are pushed aside to less prominent positions (Carlisle 1995: 71 ff.; Petrov 1998: 97). In Kyrgyzstan, members of the northern tribes, especially from the Talas and Chu regions, constitute the main support base for President Akaev, while members of the southern tribes are dissatisfied with their shares of power and national wealth (Anderson 1999: 39–42). It is remarkable that, despite his declared negative attitude toward tribalism, Akaev himself belongs to the old and mighty Sary-Bagysh tribe, and many important positions in his entourage are occupied by his tribesmen. In Kazakhstan, according to a 1995 opinion poll, 39 percent of the respondents believed that belonging to a particular zhuz (in the past, something like a tribal federation) was important in getting a job or a promotion (Olcott 2002: 185). Just like in the late-Soviet period, the dominant positions in the country’s leadership are occupied by members of the Elder zhuz who have to share power with members of the Junior zhuz, since the main oil deposits are located on the territory of the latter. At the same time, most of the opposition consists of members of the Middle zhuz (Masanov 1996: 46 ff.; Khliupin 1998: 7 ff.; Bukkvoll 2004: 635–6; Schatz 2004: 95 ff.). During the entire independence period, Tajikistan has experienced a power struggle between Khudjant, Kuliab, Badakhshan, Gissar, and some other factions. At times the struggle was so fierce that it resulted in civil war. This war was sometimes perceived as the struggle between ex-communists and secularists on the one hand, and Islamists on the other. However, it can be better explained as the struggle of regional factions that for various reasons had chosen different political orientations and ideological garments (Bushkov and Mikul’sky 1996; Djalili et al. 1997; Niiazi 1997; Zviagelskaya 1997). Thus, the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan was comprised mainly of inhabitants of Gharm and Karategin. Eventually, the Kuliab-Khujant-Gissar alliance, with assistance from Russia and Uzbekistan, defeated the Gharm-Karategin-Pamir alliance. At the moment, the leading positions in the country belong to the Kuliab faction, despite the fact that


Authoritarianism and its consequences 31 Kuliab is one of the poorest and the most backward regions of the country. This situation is much resented by the other factions, especially the Khujant one, to the extent that one may wonder if the Kuliab faction would be able to remain in power without Moscow’s military support. In Turkmenistan, even the national flag contains five carpet designs which are characteristic of the main tribes in the country. The administrative boundaries of the provinces often correspond with tribal or subtribal territories. For the time being President Niiazov claimed that since he was an orphan, he did not have a close affiliation with any particular tribe. However, this is already a story of the past. Nowadays, it is acknowledged that Niiazov belongs to the most numerous Teke tribe, and from this tribe, especially from its Akhal subdivision, he recruits many of his subordinates (Dudarev 1998: 169; Akbarzadeh 1999: 282–3; Kadyrov 2001: 6 ff.). Remarkably, even some members of opposition to Niiazov perceive democratization of their country only in terms of substitution of a federation of tribes for the current hegemony of one tribe (Kadyrov 2001: 22). All these factors are very unfavorable for the emergence of civil society. The majority of indigenous populations perceive themselves not only as, and often not so much as, individual citizens, but as members of various subnational collectivities, and take for granted a social hierarchy passed off as traditional. These groupings became an organizational principle of informal networks built in the state structures, and while the state remains undemocratic and controls key economic resources, there is nothing that may seriously undermine this principle. Individuals who are not included in kin, clanal, tribal, and regional networks, which perpetuate the norms of pseudo-traditional social hierarchy and the authoritarian model of power, are doomed to a kind of social vacuum. No wonder that the Central Asian rulers are very suspicious of all kinds of NGOs, which, not infrequently, were founded with Western encouragement and support in the vain hope of fostering the democratization process (Ruffin and Waugh 1999). Those which still exist can hardly be characterized as grass-root organizations. I am personally acquainted with leaders and activists of some of them. Many are courageous people who somewhat remind me of the Moscow dissidents of the 1970s. However, they are very isolated from the rest of society; moreover, influenced by their Western sponsors they sometimes become somewhat detached from local realities and specifics. Such is the state of things at present in Central Asia, and however regretful it may be, I do not see any serious stimuli for democratization and a rapid economic growth in the near future. On the contrary, this future does not look particularly bright. Central Asia is a very unstable region, but public discontent there is more connected with the deteriorating economic situation than with the lack of political freedom. Social apathy is widespread among ordinary people who do not believe that they can change anything through legitimate political process (Uyama 1993). A lot has already been written about the endurance of Islam and the threat of radical Islam in the region (see, for example, Poliakov 1992; Malashenko 1993; Abduvakhitov 1993; Haghayeghi 1995; Sagdeev and Eisenhower 2000; Poujol 2001; Fletcher and Sergeyev 2002; Rashid 2002; Poujol 2004). Regional


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leaders like to present themselves as a bulwark against religious extremism, thus justifying their dictatorship—an argument that is also promoted by Russia and is often too easily bought into by the West. In the aftermath of September 11, Uzbekistan has become the key strategic partner of the USA in Central Asia and the American criticism of president Karimov’s hard-line approach on combating all kinds of opposition appears to be more muted (Akbarzadeh 2004: 277 ff.). It is true that nowadays the Islamic opposition in some Central Asian countries seems to be much stronger than the secular one. Even in such a repressive country as Turkmenistan, since the mid-1990s mosques have become the centers of the people’s concealed resentment. Among other factors, the rise of Islamic extremism is connected with a crisis of societies and groups that are confronted by many challenges of modernity, including external ones, without having been sufficiently modernized themselves and retaining many characteristics of pre-modern societies. It is often assumed, and not without good reason, that in conditions of large-scale social, economic, and cultural dislocation, it is precisely the Central Asian leaders who, through elimination or suppression of the secular opposition, are provoking dissatisfied and disoriented ordinary people to turn from traditional Islam to its radical and militant varieties (Khazanov 1995: 147–8; Schoeberlein 2001: 338–9). The violence that gripped Tashkent and Bukhara, in March 2004, may be quite indicative, even if one does not buy their official version provided by Karimov’s government. Still, socio-economic discontent in closed political systems alone is insufficient to explain the rise of Islamic extremism. The political potential of Islam should never be underestimated. Let it suffice to mention the role of Islam in anticolonial movements in Central Asia. In the Soviet Union, this was suppressed but remained dormant. As an anthropologist I would also suggest paying more attention to agency-based factors, to various kinds of political actors who are playing an important role in mobilizing religious militancy throughout the Islamic world, including Central Asia. In this context, the foreign influence should not be underestimated either. Thus, Saudi Arabia and some other countries and movements have financed many institutions and activities that promote a rather rigid and militant version of Islam. In addition, many missionaries from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, and some countries that had come to Central Asian countries, in the early 1990s, were propagating radical Islam. Later they were forced to leave, but the seeds were already planted. There is much evidence that some international Islamist groups and organizations channel aid to the militants in the region. In all, institutions matter, but so do human agents. After a short period of flirtation with Islam in the early 1990s, the Central Asian governments are striving now to put it again under their strict control, and have increasingly cracked down on any signs of independence by the religious leaderships. Thus, in Uzbekistan, trials of Islamists are carried out regularly, and several thousands of people accused of Islamist activities are already in jail. People are allowed to pray only in state-approved and controlled mosques.


Authoritarianism and its consequences 33 With the exception of Tajikistan, where the Islamic Renaissance Party is increasingly harassed by the government but still is legal, political Islam is forbidden in all Central Asian states. However, this has not eliminated the religious opposition. At present, there are two main organizations operating in Central Asia with the proclaimed goal of turning the region into an Islamic state. The first is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which advocates the establishment of an Islamic state in Uzbekistan through violent means. Although influenced by Salafism, it deliberately avoided being associated with a particular group of Sunnism to make it acceptable to adherents of different schools. It had, or still has, training camps and bases in the mountain areas of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Afghanistan, and enjoyed the support of the Taliban, and, apparently, of Al Qaeda. For several years, it was involved in armed struggle and terrorist activities against the government of President Karimov. After September 11 and the following events, including the American military campaign in Afghanistan, the US government put it on the list of the major terrorist organizations in the world. These developments have weakened the Movement, but its capacity for regrouping and remobilization should not be underestimated. It seems that members of the IMU remain active in Tajikistan. Another organization is Hizb-ut Tahrir (The Party of Liberation), which is of a distinctively transnational nature and has a clear-cut agenda (Babadjanov 2001; ICG 2003b). Its main goal is to re-establish the Caliphate based on Sharia (TajiFarouki 1996), and as the first step it wants to turn Central Asia into a single Muslim state, allegedly by peaceful means (see http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.org). Hizb-ut Tahrir is a strictly clandestine organization which has many connections with radical Islamists in the Middle East. Most of its members are ethnic Uzbeks, especially from the Fergana Valley (Igushev 2005), but it is trying to expand its ethnic base and to extend its activity to other regions. The Central Asian regimes are facing a difficult dilemma. Legitimating of political Islam may enhance its radical groups. Fighting it through repression may buy some time, but eventually turn out to be unsuccessful and lead to more violence. Both choices are shrewd with a risk and may result in a further destabilization of the region. One cannot exclude completely that in the future the current secular regimes may be replaced by Islamist ones, and despite some assurances to the contrary, there is no guarantee that the latter will be moderate and tolerant to political pluralism. Still, history is on the move in Central Asia, just as in any other part of the world. It is quite possible that if not all then most of the current autocratic leaders of the Central Asian countries, in one way or another, will remain in power for life. But they are mortal, and ruling their countries from the afterworld is beyond their capabilities. It is also unlikely that all of them will be able to follow examples of North Korea or Azerbaijan, and retain power within their immediate families. Thus, one cannot exclude that the future transition of leadership in the region will be accompanied by in-fighting between different factions of political elites for a new distribution of power, wealth, and other privileges. The signs of this struggle are already quite evident in such countries as Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.


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This in-fighting may sometimes look like a struggle between reformists and conservatives, and to some extent it may really be. However, one should be cautious in this regard, since the tribal and regional loyalties retain their importance for all factions involved. Be that as it may, the example of many former communist countries has proven that the transition from authoritarian rule has better chances for being successful when the political class is split. On the contrary, when it is consolidated, like in Putin’s Russia, the imposition of or return to authoritarianism is much easier. Thus, in the future, the transition of power in Central Asian countries may provide a window of opportunity for a more liberal order, however small this window seems to be at the moment. The collapse of totalitarian communism was a step forward, just like the transition to the market-oriented economy, whatever deformed and distorted shapes this transition has acquired. Just like elsewhere, the post-totalitarian state in Central Asia is not a monolithic entity but a complex constellation of structures, institutions, agencies, practices, and processes. Hopefully, the simple striving for survival in the contemporary world and the necessity of attracting foreign investments will sooner or later force the ruling elites to undertake a certain liberalization of the economies. If successful, such a measure may result in a kind of political liberalization in the more distant future. It is impossible to predict if and when this may happen. Moreover, this proposed scenario for future development is far from the only possibility. However, at the moment, it is difficult to be more optimistic and to hope for more.

Notes 1 This chapter was submitted in 2005 and no revisions have been made since then. 2 http://www.svoboda.org/programs/rtl/2000/RTL.092200.asp.

References Abduvakhitov, Abdujabar. 1993. Islamic Revivalism in Uzbekistan. In: Dale F. Eickelman (Ed.), Russia’s Muslim Frontiers. New Directions in Cross-Cultural Analysis. Bloomington: Indiana University. Adams, Laura L. 1999. Invention, Institutionalization, and Revival in Uzbekistan’s national culture. European Journal of Cultural Studies 2: 355–73. Akbarzadeh, Shahram. 1999. National Identity and Political Legitimacy in Turkmenistan. Nationalities Papers 27(2): 271–90. —— 2004. US–Uzbek Partnership and Democratic Reforms. Nationalities Papers 32(2): 271–86. Alekseenko, Aleksandr. 2004. Kazakhstanskii Put’ Modernizatsii: Etnodemograficheskii Aspekt. Vestnik Evrazii 1(24): 122–51. Anderson, John. 1999. Kyrgyzstan: Central Asia’s Island of Democracy? Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. Annual Address of President Nursultan Nazarbayer to the Nation, April 4, 2003. Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, April 5. Babadjanov, Bakhtiiar. 2001. O Deiatel’nosti ‘Hisb ut-Tahrir Al-islami’ v Uzbekistane. In: Aleksei Malashenko and Martha Brill Olcott (Eds.), Islam Na Postsovetskom Prostranstve: Vzgliad Iznutri. Moscow: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.


Authoritarianism and its consequences 35 Balcerowicz, Leszek. 1994. Understanding Post-Communist Transitions. Journal of Democracy 4: 75–89. Bohr, Annette. 1998. Uzbekistan: Politics and Foreign Policy. London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs. Bremmer, Ian. 1994. Nazarbaev and the North: State Building and Ethnic Relations in Kazakhstan. Ethnic and Racial Studies 17(4): 619–35. Bukkvoll, Tor. 2004. Astana’s Privatised Independence: Private and National Interests in the Foreign Policy of Nursultan Nazarbayev. Nationalities Papers 32(3): 631–50. Bushkov, V.I. and Mikul’sky, D.V. 1996. Istoriia Grazhdanskoi Voiny v Tadjikistane. Moscow: AN. Carlisle, Donald S. 1995. Geopolitics and Ethnic Problems of Uzbekistan and its Neighbours. In: Yaacov Ro’i (Ed.), Muslim Eurasia: Conflicting Legacies. London: Frank Cass. Djalili, Mohammad-Reza, Frederic Grare, and Shirin Akiner (Eds.). 1997. Tajikistan: The Trials of Independence. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Dudarev, K.P. 1998. Turkmeniia. Postkommunisticheskii avtoritarnyi rezhim. In: A.M. Vasil’ev (Ed.), Postsovetskaia Tsentral’naia Aziia. Moscow: Vostochnaia Literatura. Fairbanks, Charles H. Jr. 2001. Disillusionment in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Journal of Democracy 12(4): 49–56. Fierman, William (Ed.). 1991. Soviet Central Asia: The Failed Transformation. Boulder: Westview. Fletcher, Joseph F. and Sergeyev, Boris. 2002. Islam and Intolerance in Central Asia: the Case of Kyrgyzstan. Europe-Asia Studies 54(2): 251–75. Haghayeghi, Mehrdad. 1995. Islam and Politics in Central Asia. New York: St. Martin’s. Huttenbach, Henry R. 1998. Whither Kazakhstan? Changing Capitals: From Almaty to Aqmola/Astana. Nationalities Papers 26(3): 581–87. ICG (International Crisis Group). 2003a. Tajikistan: A Roadmap for Development. Asia Report No. 51. Osh/Brussels. —— 2003b. Radical Islam in Central Asia: Responding to Hizb ut-Tahrir. Asia Report No. 58. Osh/Brussels. —— 2004. Repression and Regression in Turkmenistan: A New International Strategy. Asia Report No. 85. Osh/Brussels. Igushev, Alexei. 2005. Hisb-ut-Tahrir remains active in Central Asia. Eurasianet, February 4. http://www.eurasianet.org (accessed March 30, 2009). Ilkhamov, Alisher. 1998. Shirkats, Dekhqon Farmers, and Others: Farm Restructuring in Uzbekistan. Central Asian Survey 17(4): 539–60. —— 2000. Divided Economy: Kolkhozes versus Peasant Subsistence Farms in Uzbekistan. Central Asian Monitor 4: 5–14. —— 2004a. Archaeology of Uzbek Identity. Central Asian Survey 23(3–4): 289–326. —— 2004b. The Limits of Centralization: Regional Challenges in Uzbekistan. In: Pauline Jones Luong (Ed.), The Transformation of Central Asia. States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence. Ithaca: Cornell University. Islamov, Bakhtior. 2000. Migration of Population in Independent States of Central Asia. In: Hisao Komatsu, Chika Obiya, and John S. Schoeberlein (Eds.), Migration in Central Asia: Its History and Current Problems. Osaka: The Japan Center for Area Studies. Kadyrov, Shokhrat. 2001. Turkmenistan: Institute Presidentstva v Klanovom Postkolonial’nom Obshchestve. Vestnik Evrazii 2(13): 5–32. Kalyuzhnova, Yelena. 1998. The Kazakhstani Economy: Independence and Transition. New York: St. Martin’s.


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Kamp, Marianne. 2004. Between Women and the State: Mahalla Committees and Social Welfare in Uzbekistan. In: Pauline Jones Luong (Ed.), The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence. Ithaca: Cornell University. Kerven, Carol (Ed.). 2003. Prospects for Pastoralism in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan: From State Farms to Private Flocks. London and New York: Routledge/Curzon. Khazanov, Anatoly M. 1995. After the USSR. Ethnicity, Nationalism and Politics in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin. —— 2004. What went wrong? Post-communist transformations in comperative perspective. In: Yitzhak Brudny, Jonathan Frankel, and Stefani Hoffman (Eds.), Restructuring Postcommunist Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Khazanov, Anatoly M. and Shapiro, Kenneth H. 2005. Contemporary Pastoralism in Central Asia. In: Reuven Amitai and Michal Biran (Eds.), Mongols, Turks, and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World. Leiden-Boston: Brill. Khliupin, V.N. 1998. “Bol’shaia sem’ia” Nursultana Nazarbaeva. Moscow: Institut Aktual’nykh Politicheskikh Issledovanii. Koroteyeva, V. and Makarova, E. 1998. The Assertion of Uzbek National Identity: Nativization of State-Building Process? In: T. Atabaki and J. O’Kane (Eds.). PostSoviet Central Asia. New York: I.B. Tauris. Kosmarskii, Artem. 2003. Smysly Latinizatsii v Uzbekistane (Konets XX—nachalo XXI veka). Vestnik Evrazii 3(22): 62–85. Kul’chik, Yu. G. 1995. Respublika Uzbekistan v seredine 90-kh godov. Issledovaniia po Prikladnoi i Neotlozhnoi Etnologii, No. 90. Moscow: Institut Etnologii i Antropologii. Kurtov, Adzar. 2001. Demokratiia Vyborov v Kazakhstane: Avtoritarnaia Transformatsiia. Moscow: Azhdar Kurtov. Kuru, Ahmet T. 2002. Between the State and Cultural Zones: National Building in Turkmenistan. Central Asian Survey 21(1): 71–90. Linz, Juan J. and Stepan, Alfred. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. Lunev, S. I. 2001. Chernye Parametry Tenevoi Ekonomiki (k Voprosu o Postavkakh Narkoticheskikh Sredstv v Rossiiu iz Tsentral’noi Azii). In: V. V. Naumkin (Ed.), Tenevaia Ekonomika i Politicheskaia Korruptsiia v Obshchestvakh Perekhodnogo Tipa. Moscow: Vostok. Luong, Pauline Jones. 2002. Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts. New York: Cambridge University. —— 2004. Economic “Decentralization” in Kazakhstan: Causes and Consequences. In: Pauline Jones Luong (Ed.), The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence. Ithaca and London: Cornell University. Madi, Maral. 2004. Drug trade in Kyrgyzstan: structure, implications and countermeasures. Central Asian Survey 23(3–4): 249–73. Making Transition Work for Everyone: Poverty and Inequality in Europe and Central Asia. 2000. Washington, DC: World Bank. Malashenko, Alexei V. 1993. Islam versus Communism. In: Dale F. Eickelman (Ed.), Russia’s Muslim Frontiers: New Directions in Cross-Cultural Analysis. Bloomington: Indiana University. Manz, Beatrice Forbes. 2002. Tamerlane’s Career and its Uses. Journal of World History 13(1): 1–25. Masanov, Nurbulat. 1996. Kazakhskaia Politicheskaia i Intelektual’naia Elita: Klanovaia Prinadlezhnost’ i Vnutrietnicheskoe Sopernichestvo. Vestnik Evrazii 1(2): 46–61.


Authoritarianism and its consequences 37 Niiazi, Aziz. 1997. Tajikistan: Regional’nye Aspekty Konflikta (1990-e gg.). In: A. Malashenko, B. Koppiters, and D. Trenin (Eds.), Etnicheskie i regional’nye konflikty v Evrazii. Kn.1. Tsentral’naia Aziia i Kavkaz. Moskow: Ves’ Mir. Olcott, Martha Brill. 2002. Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Panarin, Sergei. 1999. Russkoiazychnye u Vneshnikh Granits Rossii: Vyzovy i Otvety na Primere Kazakhstana. Diaspory 2–3: 136–68. —— 2000. Politicheskoe Razvitie Gosudarstv Tsentral’noi Azii v Svete Geografii i Istorii Regiona. Vestnik Evrazii 1(8): 90–132. Patnaik, Ajay. 1996. Central Asia Between Modernity and Tradition. New Delhi: Kanark. Petrov, N.I. 1998. Uzbekistan: Politicheskaia stabil’nost’ v Usloviiakh Komandnoadministrativnogo Rezhima. In: A.M. Vasil’ev (Ed.), Postsovetskaia Tsentral’naia Aziia. Poteri i Obreteniia. Moscow: Vostochnaia Literatura. Poliakov, Sergei. 1992. Everyday Islam: Religion and Tradition in Rural Central Asia. Armonk, NY : M.E. Sharpe. Poujol, Catherine. 2001. L’islam en Asie Centrale: Vers la Nouvelle Donne? Paris: Ellipses. —— 2004. L’islam en Heritage: Nouvelle Approche d’une Problematique Persistante, Entre Resistance Paticipative et Acculturation Passive. Cahiers d’Asie centrale 13–14: 199–214. Rashid, Ahmed. 2002. Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia. New Haven: Yale University. Rastiannikov, V.G. and Deriugina, I.V. 2000. Trudnosti Rosta v Perekhodnoi Ekonomike: Agrarnyi Sector Kazakhstana. Voprosy statistiki 9: 71–79. Roy, Oliver. 2000. The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations. New York: New York University. Ruffin, M. Holt and Daniel Waugh (Eds.). 1999. Civil Society in Central Asia. Seattle: University of Washington. Rumer, Boris (Ed.). 2000. Central Asia and the New Global Economy. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Sagdeev, Roald and Susan Eisenhower (Eds.). 2000. Islam and Central Asia: An Enduring Legacy or an Evolving Threat? Washington, DC: Center for Political and Strategic Studies. Savoskul, Sergej S. 2001. Russkie Novogo Zarubezh’ia: Vybor Sud’by. Moscow: Nauka. Schatz, Edward. 2004. Modern Clan Politics. The Power of “Blood” in Kazakhstan and Beyond. Seattle: University of Washington. Schoeberlein, John. 2001. Islam in the Ferghana Valley: Challenges for New States. In: Stephane A. Dudoignon and Hisao Komatsu (Eds.), Islam in Politics in Russia and Central Asia (Early Eighteenth to Late Twentieth Centuries). London: Kegan Paul. Sievers, Eric W. 2002. Uzbekistan’s Mahalla: From Soviet to Absolutist Residential Community Associations. Journal of International and Comparative Law at ChicagoKent 2: 91–158. —— 2003. The Post-Soviet Decline of Central Asia. Sustainable Development and Comprehensive Capital. London: Routledge/Curzon. Sovetskaia Rossiia. 2001. Средняя продолжительность жизни россиян 55,5 лет (The Average Russian Life Expectancy, 55.5 years). Series 116, page 2, October 6. Taji-Farouki, Suah. 1996. A Fundamental Quest: Hizb al-Tahrir and the Search of the Islamic Caliphate. London: Grey Seal.


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Uyama, Tomohiko. 1993. Why are Social Protests Movements Weak in Central Asia? In: Keiko Sakai (Ed.), Social Protests and Nation-Building in the Middle East and Central Asia. Chiba, Japan: Institute of Developing Economies. Vishnevsky, Anatoly. 1996. Sredniaia Aziia: Nezavershennaia Modernizatsiia. Vestnik Evrazii 2(3): 136–59. Vitkovskaia, Galina (Ed.). 1998. Sovremennye Etnopoliticheskie Protsessy i Migratsionnaia Situatsiia v Tsentral’noi Azii. Moscow: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Wolfel, Richard L. 2002. North to Astana: Nationalistic Motives for the Movement of the Kazakh(stani) Capital. Nationalities papers 30(3): 485–506. Yermukhanov, Marat. 2002a. Kazakhstan Launches a Program to Boost Rural Economy. Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, May 22, http://www.cacianalyst.org. —— 2002b. Political Twists of Kazakh Oil Boom. Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, October 23, http://www.cacianalyst.org. Zviagelskaia, Irina Donovna. 1997. The Tadjik Konflikt. Moscow: Russian Center for Strategic Research and Political Studies.

2

The mobilization of tradition


Localism and identity among the Uyghur of Xinjiang Ildikó Bellér-Hann

While there is a respectable body of literature concerning the history and anthropology of Xinjiang,1 little attention has been paid to the conceptualization of place by its inhabitants, in spite of the fact that, like time, place matters for the simple reason that human existence is constrained by it. Following Martin Heidegger’s concept of dwelling, Keith Basso suggests that “dwelling is said to consist in the multiple ‘lived relationships’ that people maintain with places, for it is solely by virtue of these relationships that space acquires meaning” (Basso 1996: 54). Many authors have studied aspects of the emergence and shaping of modern Uyghur ethnic identity tied to one particular place, the political entity today known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Cesaro 2000, 2002; Gladney 1990, 1994, 1998; Rudelson 1997; Smith 1999, 2000). This chapter is a preliminary attempt to consider more mundane expressions of localism, sentiments toward people’s more immediate environment, the oases, and specific places where they live and work, notably the land and the house. My enquiry is limited to social groups which define themselves primarily as peasants and I pay no attention to urban elites. My starting point is the premise that spaces become bounded, definable places through the symbolic meanings humans attach to them, be it geographical features, urban centres, villages, administrative units, or human dwellings. In this sense all places are constructed as they become invested with meanings and associations, which in turn are capable of evoking emotions of all sorts. Emotional reactions to places, such as attachment, a sense of belonging, can be summed up under the concept of “localism.” The central argument of the chapter is as follows. Following major interruptions of social life during the era of collectivisation by the state, the reform period which followed the end of the Cultural Revolution has resulted in the introduction of the free market economy. Due to the special position of Xinjiang within China, where the government fears Muslim separatism, here liberalization has, to a great extent, remained restricted. Thus, in spite of the undeniable changes and improvements of the repressive policies which characterized the Cultural Revolution, the state today continues to make its powerful presence felt in many areas of life, including agricultural production, family planning, political and religious freedoms. Since the second half of the 1990s religious repression


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Ildikó Bellér-Hann

and the fight against separatism have been stepped up, and in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, political tension has once again gained momentum. But all these developments have done little to erode the localism characteristic of traditional society; parallel to the search for ethnic and regional identification, claims to locality may take on more direct and tangible forms, which also perpetuate important links to pre-socialist social practices. Among peasants, one of the sideeffects of state policies has been the partial loss of the security provided by local networks and knowledge of how things work. Formerly unquestioned security has become challenged, and in an atmosphere of sustained political tension and religious repression, an ostensibly benign ethnic policy is incapable of filling the ensuing gap. As a result, old attachments are perpetuated and have merged with new levels of attachment to stress belonging to a particular place. Access to and symbolic appropriation of local space continues today to be a contested field in which asymmetrical power relations between alien power holders and indigenous populations are played out. Places are conceptualized here as “sites of power struggles” and “histories of annexation, absorption, and resistance” (Feld and Basso 1996: 5). In what follows I shall first look at the history of instances of interference by power-holders in the daily life and traditional practices of the inhabitants in the pre-socialist and socialist periods. This sets the historical scene which necessitated both the perpetuation of old and the emergence of new forms of localism. The following sections consider examples of symbolic identifications with locality, ranging from naming places to attachments to land and house.

Interference with local practices: a historical overview Largely concentrated in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), the Uyghur are a Turkic-speaking group who profess Islam. With an area of approximately 1.65 million square kilometers the XUAR today covers one-sixth of the total area of China and constitutes its largest province-level administrative unit. The total population of the region in 2000 was over 18 million. According to the 1990 population census, 47 percent of the total population was Uyghur, 38 percent Han, 7 percent Kazak, 4.5 percent Hui, and 1 percent Kyrgyz (Toops 2004: 247–8). Continuous immigration into the region from the interior of China, which since the mid-1990s has been encouraged as part of the government’s efforts to develop the region as fast as possible, may soon reverse the present demographic proportions, leaving the Uyghur a minority in their autonomous region. Although often a battleground of internal factionalism and wars, it was only with the Qing conquest in the middle of the eighteenth century that the region became part of a large empire on a more permanent basis. While the policies of the centre towards Xinjiang were modified in response to the Muslim revolts of the nineteenth century, in general Manchu rule resorted to indirect forms of administration and there was little state interference in the daily practices of villagers and townspeople as long as taxes and revenues were collected and relative political stability maintained (Fletcher 1978; Millward 1998; Millward and Perdue 2004: 57–62).



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The political entity of Xinjiang was created in 1884, in the wake of the Muslim rebellions. This formal incorporation of the region into imperial China was an important step towards the imposition of a larger, regional identity from above, which also contributed to the emergence of the modern Uyghur identity in an ethnic and political sense. Following the demise of the Qing dynasty, the Republican period (1912–49) was marked by the turbulent rule of local warlords before the region became part of the People’s Republic (Forbes 1986). In a recent overview of the political history of Xinjiang, James Millward and Nabijan Tursun point to important continuities between Qing policies and developments in the socialist period, which include the increasingly tighter control of the Chinese centre over the region, the permanent settlement of large numbers of loyal Chinese, and relative economic development. These authors also emphasize that ever since the Qing conquest in the mid-eighteenth century the region has been governed by the centre through contrasting policies which alternated between integrationist attitudes and more liberal tendencies which favored a greater measure of regional autonomy and tolerated local ways (Millward and Tursun 2004: 64). While the alternation of these contrasting policies has persisted up to the present day, to understand their impact it is insufficient to look at shifts in policy making alone. An event-based historical view “from above” should be supplemented by looking at local understandings of both continuities and change. In the pre-socialist era there were occasional attempts to interfere with local traditions. For example, following the Manchu conquest in the mid-eighteenth century restrictive measures were introduced, which included the forbidding of conversion to Islam, prohibiting Muslims to leave their villages for prayer services, barring preachers from preaching outside their localities, banning the construction of new mosques, and forbidding Muslims to adopt non-Muslim babies (Fletcher 1995: xi). In an attempt to control the pilgrimage to Mecca in the first half of the twentieth century, governor Yang Zengxin (1912–28) withheld passports, using World War I as an excuse. Those who received a passport were charged a high price for it, and were given the explanation that the money would be used to promote mosque construction and Islamic education (Wei-yin 2002: 149–50). The Jin Shuren administration antagonized its Muslim subjects by introducing two regulations. One was the levying of a tax on butchering animals, the other the prohibition for Muslims to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca (Forbes 1986: 42). Toward the end of the 1920s the Kashgar Tao-yin made efforts to curb Soviet influence in the region and implemented corresponding measures, one of which was the imposition of a heavy tax on Muslims from Southern Xinjiang who decided to travel through the Soviet Union on their way to Mecca (Forbes 1986: 66). In the early 1930s, to prevent a mass out-migration, the local authorities once again refused to issue passports to prospective pilgrims (Forbes 1986: 96). Although these restrictions were harsh, they were generally motivated by shortterm political considerations and their implementation was always short lived. Ironically, the most dramatic interference with daily practices came not from the non-Muslim overlords, but from the leader of the biggest Muslim rebellion of the nineteenth century, Ya’qūb Bek. He attempted to impose a much tighter


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observance of the tenets of Islam than was prescribed by local practice and his policies were not always welcome. His attempts to restore about 60 shrines and mosques which had been neglected under Chinese rule, and his support of pious foundations may have met the approval of at least some sections of the local population (Shaw 1984 [1871]: 465–6; Bellew 1875: 324) but his religious policy, which launched a strong attack on lax morality blamed on infidel rule, was controversial and often resented by the subject population. In his attempts to promote Islamic law, he enforced the veiling of women in public and the active participation of men in communal prayers. He attacked wine drinking and gambling, which he considered incompatible with an Islamic way of life, and drunkards, brawlers, disorderly behavior, and neglect of prayers were all severely punished. At the same time, he persecuted prominent Sufi leaders—even though they enforced his policies—since these represented regional loci of power, they also posed potential danger as rivals to his rule (Kim 2004: 129–31). Following the turbulent years of the Republican era, which was characterized by the nominal sovereignty of the center and Muslim insurgences, and the annexation of the region into the People’s Republic, the socialist period of Xinjiang closely follows the national events of the People’s Republic of China.2 The first years of socialism saw the reorientation of the region towards the center, as well as major restructuring. Attempts were made to abolish the traditional class system by changing property relations. The years 1958 through 1961 marked the notorious period of the Great Leap Forward. Some of the excessive measures introduced at this time were later abolished, but the communes continued to function as autocratic units of production and consumption. Although periods of political excess were followed by more moderate policies, campaigns aiming at the cultural and political education of the masses and the elimination of traditional class structures and ideologies were repeatedly launched. The leadership, consistently dominated by Han Chinese, was committed to destroying local nationalism and to modernizing the economy and society. This was to be achieved through eliminating the presocialist class structure and fighting illiteracy and the feudal legacy which also included Islam (McMillen 1979: 79–81, 85). In Xinjiang, as elsewhere in the People’s Republic of China, the period between 1966 and 1976 also represented ten lost years. Although officially the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution only lasted for three and a half years (1966–9), the terror it initiated continued until 1976. In Xinjiang, it meant disturbances, anarchy, and a power struggle between the regional leadership and the political faction in Beijing. In the name of ideological campaigns against the Four Olds (old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits), intellectuals were attacked (McMillan 1979: 185). Mao’s death in 1976 marked the end of the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of a new era, characterized by the reforms of Deng Xiaoping. The party was rebuilt, many victims of the Cultural Revolution were rehabilitated, and the household responsibility system was introduced into the economy. For agriculture this meant the breaking up of the collectives and the re-introduction of individual farming. Peasant households received the right of use over land



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allotted to them and committed themselves to sell a certain percentage of their annual produce to the state at a fixed price which was below the market price. They were granted the right to sell the rest of their produce freely on the market. Land ownership, however, has been retained by the collective.3 In a full reversal of previous policies, economic production for private gain became encouraged and agriculture was de-collectivized. These measures marked the beginning of the most recent era in China’s history, that of the “socialist market economy” (Fairbank 1989; Madsen 1991; Soucek 2000: 263–74). In spite of the continuities in alternating policies between tighter control and more room for regional autonomy between the pre-socialist and socialist eras, 1949 represents a watershed. In an almost unbroken continuity, periodic restrictions notwithstanding, imperial and republican policies generally allowed for the unimpeded persistence of local practices sanctioned by tradition and custom.4 After 1949 the socialist state subjected local people to unprecedented intrusions into their daily lives and practices, which had a much wider scope and made a much deeper impact than any of the restrictions before. The implementation of these intrusions oscillated with changes in the political climate, but were almost continually backed up by an ideology that declared a war on feudal customs.5 As far as collective identity is concerned, two important counter-trends could be observed as a result of these processes. Collectivization and other drastic measures under Maoism could entail persecution and confiscation of private property. Previously unquestioned identifications rooted in local practice and custom (which could be subsumed under the label “traditions”) became challenged. Although one’s locality continued to offer familiarity, the security provided by local knowledge, networks, practice, and “tradition,” was shattered. Custom and religion became condemned as feudal practices by representatives of the centralizing state and branded as expressions of backwardness. This partial loss of security prompted a search for new forms of identification. The recognition of the Uyghur and other groups as minority nationals by the state has certainly contributed to the emergence and strengthening of a modern Uyghur ethnic identity which had its roots in pre-socialist history and social practice. This has also increased people’s consciousness of a regional identity which went beyond local, oasis-based identifications. The Uyghurs’ homeland became the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region or, as many like to put it, Eastern Turkestan. At this level claims are made to the homeland as an imagined, symbolic space, circumscribed by foreign occupation. But parallel to these processes, forms of attachment have also been perpetuated or reworked, as we shall see in the following sections.

Naming places The act of naming always has an (often unintentional) political dimension and may play a critical part in ongoing struggles over ownership and the symbolic expressions of religious, ethnic, or national identity. In Xinjiang naming places has been a contested field for a long time: oasis names and larger settlements have both a local and a Sinicized name, so, for example, the Kashgar of the Uyghur


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population is called Kashi by Chinese residents. Referring to a place by its local name is a clear statement of a person’s ethnic affiliation or at least sympathies. This statement may hold true of proper names, but other considerations complicate this apparently clear-cut equivalence between ethnicity and naming places. In addition to investing places with proper names, settlements and administrative units also have generic names, which may undergo changes due to political circumstances. Uyghur terms for the units of pre-socialist social organization were mähällä, kent, and yeza respectively, which were replaced during the commune period with the distinctive terminology of Chinese socialism: the largest unit, the commune, became the gongşe; the production brigade the dadüi; and the production team the şaodüi. It seems that, in some places, when these new administrative units were introduced, these often closely followed pre-socialist boundaries. In the post-reform period, among a number of liberal moves the administrative units were re-named again, without essentially changing the unit boundaries, and the traditional, local terminology was re-introduced. But in the mid-1990s, 16 years after the introduction of the first reforms, Maoist terminology doggedly persisted among Uyghur peasants in the vicinity of Kashgar. The re-instated pre-socialist Uyghur terms started appearing in official documents, but the vernacular insisted on the Chinese socialist vocabulary. This apparent conservatism in language use may be explained by the congruence of a number of factors. Even though for many peasants memories of the Maoist period were far from positive, negative historical experiences may also reinforce the sense of belonging. Besides, even during periods of severe repression and economic hardship, individuals do experience personal happiness, which may also promote attachment. Finally, in spite of the dramatic changes which were introduced with the reforms, there remained enough continuities with the past that also encouraged this conservatism in language use. The contrast between local people’s insistence on the perpetuation of indigenous place names and their simultaneous readiness to adopt and keep Chinese socialist administrative terminology instead of reverting to the old indigenous names warns us against simplistic assumptions that linguistic strategies of the powerless always follow the straightforward logic of promoting native terminology: various forces may influence language use on different levels and with very different outcomes. Attachment to locality has for long been embedded in religious sentiment: in much of Xinjiang the landscape and places are inextricably linked to Islam. The generic names used for the region by its inhabitants and outsiders do not do justice to its cultural diversity. Rather, they tend to project it as a more or less unified, bounded political entity. As is well-known, the name “Xinjiang” was imposed by the Manchus, and reflected the imperial perspective. The designation of “Eastern/Chinese Turkestan,” on the other hand, represented European views, which emphasized continuities with the Turkic speaking regions of Central Asia. Oasis names must have dominated the territorial self-perception of the indigenous population before the middle of the twentieth century. Foreign observers used these names in both restricted and extended senses, referring either to an oasis or a wider region (e.g. Kashgar and Kashgaria). Prior to the Manchu occupation



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the oases had no unifying political structure. This state of affairs continued to be reflected for quite some time in locally used terminology, following the formal incorporation of the region as a fully fledged province into the Qing Empire in 1884. Indigenous sources dating from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries used the designation of “Six Cities” (Alti Shahr) to refer to the oasis settlements south of the Tien Shan. This reflected a loose sense of shared features as well as the fragmented nature of the region as a whole. In practice, Alti Shahr seems never to have meant a definite number of cities, although indigenous people and foreigners from time to time attempted to identify the six in question. The German archaeologist Le Coq gave two possible lists of the six cities: Aksu, Maralbashi, Kashgar, Yangi Hisar, Yarkand, and Khotan formed one list, while in his alternative list Aksu was replaced by Karghalik (Le Coq 1928: 107). Valikhanov (1961: 325) named the six cities as Ush Turfan, Kashgar, Yangi Hisar, Aksu, Yarkand, and Khotan. Other informants evidently gave other combinations, sometimes making references to the seven rather than six cities (Le Coq 1911: 55). This latter term apparently came into use after Ya’qūb Bek occupied Turfan, and it included Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, Aksu, Ush-Turfan, Kucha, and Turfan (Hamada 1978: 79; Millward 1998). The fluctuation and uncertainty concerning the identity of the six cities in local usage reflected the use of the term in a general territorial sense, and simultaneously the fluid nature of these connections, the relative autonomy of the cities, and their lack of fixed political ranking. A late-nineteenth-century indigenous source names the following locations and their epithets as constituting the six cities: Kashgar as Azizanä or the City of the Saints; Yarkand as Piranä, the City of Patron Saints; Khotan as Shähidanä, the City of the Martyrs (from the great number of martyrs buried there); Aksu as Ghaziyanä, the City of the Ghazis (the Triumphant ones, after the Muslim fighters who victoriously fought for Islam), Kuchar as Güli-ullanä, or the City of God’s Governors (after the Muslim governors buried there); and Turfan, the City of Strangers, after the many pilgrims to the numerous saintly shrines (Katanov and Menges 1976 [1936]: 1220–1).6 The toponyms themselves were designations of whole oasis complexes, which included both urban settlements and villages; but it was the epithets which symbolically turned them from a dot on the map into three-dimensional localities by evoking a ritual landscape. Evoking images of an essentially Islamic landscape, with shrines, mausoleums, tombs, and cemeteries, with Muslim pilgrims moving in between them simultaneously, imply the local and trans-regional character of the oases. The fact that the epithets were all of Arabic and Persian derivatives connected them to the Islamic umma and Islamic West. This naming made implicit claims to religious traditions, exclusively Islamic in nature, and disclaimed the pre-Islamic past and the non-Islamic presence as alien. This extended toponymy already encapsulates the symbolic appropriation of social space. Passed down as oral tradition and still remembered today by many in both urban and rural areas, the epithets emphasize the specific features shared by these various localities which are unified by a shared religion.7 This example illustrates that the perpetuation of old place names may also serve as a metaphorical re-assertion of religious identity. At the same time, the

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acceptance and transmission of recent innovations, such as the Chinese names of administrative units and the rejection of using traditional, pre-socialist indigenous terminology, suggests that more complex forces are at play than a simplistic asymmetry which always privileges native terms over Chinese equivalents.

The land Today some young educated Uyghur reject precisely these aspects of localism which constitute part of the “tradition” package: the Islamic heritage, also encapsulated in strategies of naming places, is associated with backwardness, their homeland is seen as peripheral to the Chinese centre, to the Islamic community, and to the modern world with its multiple centres in Japan, the United States and Western Europe. Nevertheless, among most social groups, especially the rural population, this potential self-perception as marginal is overridden on the more mundane levels of daily life by the central position of locality, which continues to be experienced as central, positive, something inherently “ours.” Claims to locality can be made in many different ways and may assume diverse forms: naming places is only one of the many possibilities. In traditional agricultural societies this could be naturally done through claims to land. However, in my experience in the 1990s, claims to specific pieces of ancestral land by peasant families were rarely part of the prevalent discourse. When the economic reforms were introduced in the early 1980s, as elsewhere in China, in Xinjiang, too, collectivized land was redistributed among Uyghur peasants, who were given long-term rights to land use, albeit not legal ownership. In villages near Kashgar the re-distribution of land rarely corresponded to pre-socialist ownership patterns, in other words, few families received plots which had belonged to their forefathers.8 Only the descendants of landowners with at least a sizeable land property stood some chance of receiving a plot which had been cultivated by their ancestors. In the beginning of the reform period land was distributed among peasant families in southern Xinjiang according to egalitarian principles. This was reflected by the fact that each household was given tiny parcels in different locations within the common property owned by the collective to ensure that everybody had land of equal quality. In the villages where I worked, the size of allocated land was determined partly according to household size and partly according to the number of workers in the household.9 The implementation of such principles left little or no room for claims made on the basis of emotional attachment. In fact we cannot even be certain to what extent such attachment was present in pre-modern society.10 In the 1990s I found no signs of close emotional attachment to specific plots. People’s attitudes to land were shaped by a number of factors, such as the ratio of producers and consumers determined by the number of adults and children in the household at the time of the interviews, patterns of non-agricultural employment of household members, and patterns of mutual help and exchange with members of other related or non-related households. If the overall constellation was favourable, then the allotted plots catered for the family’s basic subsistence to satisfy the household’s grain needs, and cash was earned through employment in



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the non-agricultural sector. Others lacking the necessary labor force or skills to market were entirely dependent on their land-holdings. The small plots were seen as a basic guarantor of minimal levels of security, but this cannot necessarily be interpreted as emotional attachment. Instead, many such producers regarded land as a mixed blessing, and some of the younger farmers expressed their preparedness to give up their land altogether and take a job in industry or in services in a city, if only they had the choice. Very few people were able to amass large holdings through renting from the collective or from individuals. For them land was a source of wealth. In contrast, I noted a strong attachment to land in a more general sense, i.e. a strong identification of Uyghur farmers with their peasant status and agriculture. People generally described themselves as dixan (peasant), even in cases when agriculture was no longer their only or primary source of livelihood. Insistence on a basically peasant identity among families in the vicinity of Kashgar whose households had multiple sources of income could be explained by a desire to meet the household’s subsistence needs. This was articulated through the frequent use of the adjective “local” (yärlik) in everyday discourse, which seemed to encapsulate attachment to a notion of land which was below the abstract idea of the regionally defined homeland, Xinjiang, but above the attachment to specific pieces of ancestral land. Among producers the adjective had clearly acquired a highly positive connotation. This “middle level” attachment was expressed through positive, often nostalgic evaluations of the means and end results of agricultural production. For example, the so-called “red wheat” was still talked about as a local variety in the 1990s, though it had been by and large replaced by modern hybrids, which produce higher yields. Farmers generally acknowledged that, from a practical point of view, the new wheat varieties introduced “from above” have indeed increased yield and they like the taste of the bread made out of it. The higher yields of the modern variety ensure that, in contrast to pre-modern times when wheat bread could only be consumed by a privileged minority and maize constituted the staple for most people, today wheat bread and wheat-based dishes make up about 80 percent of the local diet (Hoppe 1987). Old men and women also reminisced about the local variety of cotton which used to be grown before “Liberation.” It grew smaller and had a greyish colour. Those remembering the old type of cotton did not deny that the introduction of the new cotton variety was a success, but reminiscences of the old type also evoked memories of the home-spun cotton cloth (xam) made by women. This in turn conjured up romantic images of the traditional, pre-socialist division of labor between the sexes, which assigned women to housework and men to agricultural production and crafts. Although in the pre-socialist period such ideals were rarely fully upheld in reality, they conformed to normative notions of morality rooted in Islam, and contrasted sharply to the socialist ideology of the commune period, which violated the traditional division of labor and therefore the moral code (Bellér-Hann 1998).11 The adjective yärlik is pre-fixed to the traditional, so-called white maize (aq qonaq), which is being substituted (under external pressure) by a modern hybrid


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(serik qonaq). Although the new maize seed indeed produces higher yields, the old variety is preferred. It produces less maize but more green leaves and therefore is more suitable for feeding animals. In wealthy villages maize has been completely supplanted by wheat as a staple in human diet. Although in earlier historical periods (including the era of collectivization) maize bread was associated with poverty while wheat bread and noodles have for long been regarded as prestige food, nowadays maize bread is occasionally referred to as a token gesture to perpetuate tradition. It is in this context that people argue that only the local variety is suitable for making maize bread, because of its more distinctive, sweeter flavor. There is much talk about the harmful consequences of the widespread use of chemicals on the land for human health, against which emotionally loaded arguments in favour of the forefathers’ cultivating methods weigh heavily. Today, when a great deal of chemical fertilizer is employed, farmers who still try to use as much natural fertilizer as possible refer to the latter as yärlik oğut or “local fertilizer.” Local fertilizer mostly consisted of animal manure, but remnants of old adobe houses could be used on the floor and the heated platform of the living room (Häbibulla 1993: 96). In this way a natural recycling of the ancestral houses and re-incorporation of them into an established local cycle of production and consumption takes place, which in the mid-1990s under government pressure had to be abandoned for the sake of chemicals. Not directly related to agricultural production but fitting in well with the discourse on local produce representing the “traditional” way of life was the distinction made between local salt and factory-produced salt. The distinction was a very real one and referred to the origin of the salt and to the method of manufacturing. Factory-produced salt came from the regional capital while one could also buy packet salt made in Kashgar. Unadulterated local salt was sold on the weekly markets in its natural form: large slabs were carried to the market and then bought from the cart by housewives who at home had to distil it to prepare it for human consumption. Local, natural salt was considered to have healing qualities. New cultivating methods introduced by the township authorities may entail more expense and more labor than the old ones. In the 1990s planting the new maize seed in regular rows and covering them with plastic film was expensive and seemed like drastic innovations in the face of traditional methods. In spite of this, new methods were not automatically rejected by all as undesirable and old methods were not universally hailed as the best: local discourse often went beyond such simplistic “peasant conservatism.” Adopting the vocabulary of the authorities and internalizing a great deal of the new campaigns, many cultivators acknowledged the need to improve their economic status and that development (täräqqiyat) was best achieved through embracing the principles and methods of modern agriculture, but they also insisted on positive images of a largely idealized past when life was subordinated only to God’s will but remained free from other forms of interference. Some producers saw a confrontation between traditional, “religious agriculture” (diniy dixançiliq) characteristic of the pre-socialist period, which followed the rhythm of the seasons and was based on local knowledge, and



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“scientific agriculture” (pänniy dixançiliq), which was gaining ground during the socialist period. Cultivators readily acknowledged that new cultivation methods might bring quantitative changes, for example, in yields. But many were quick to point out the shadowy sides of the “green revolution,” such as the negative effects of the compulsory use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers on people’s health. Health problems, bad crops and the declining quality of local fruit were also frequently attributed to the nuclear tests regularly performed by the Chinese military in the Taklamakan desert. For all these reasons cultivators did their best to ignore or subvert state regulations which promoted the “green revolution,” using peasants’ traditional weapons of resistance in the face of state interference (Scott 1985). The concept of “local” in this discourse became a symbol of resisting subverting state control. The positive glosses of locality, not in terms of land but in terms of its produce and cultivation methods, were an accurate reflection of the adjustment to altered property relations: as has been mentioned above, in the post-reform period, the exact terms of land ownership for most peasants remain unclear and the future uncertain, but the right to some of their agricultural produce renders it suitable for symbolic expressions of attachment to locality.

The house If there is little evidence for attachment to specific plots of land property, one may ask if living quarters may ever become a primary focus of emotional attachment.12 The reforms introduced in the early 1980s have liberalized the market and opened up numerous ways of private accumulation. These changes, however, have not diluted the central place of the house as the focus of family life and basic attachment; rather, they have reinforced the role of the house as a site of economic and ritual production. The traditional scattered settlement pattern almost everywhere in Xinjiang was dramatically altered in the 1970s by the major road building programmes, which turned many, if not all, villages into almost geometrically arranged, orderly settlements. Many houses fell victim to this campaign, while others were transformed from ordinary living quarters to public buildings. During the excessive periods of socialist transformation, some buildings were temporarily turned into communal buildings, such as party offices, kindergartens, and workshops. Some of these were later returned to the original owners and turned back into living quarters; in some cases socialist slogans painted on the outer walls remain as reminders. In contrast to land, houses and courtyards and the tiny garden plots attached to them remained in private use throughout the Maoist period. It is perhaps thanks to this that in spite of the changes in both settlement pattern and the function of some individual houses, living quarters have never ceased to form the focus of attachment.13 During collectivization houses remained the focus of family life and constituted the only remaining form of private property, which could be legally passed down as inheritance. At times of heightened repression it also became the site of forbidden


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activities, such as illegal production for the black market for private gains or banned religious rituals. The reforms have made peasants de facto landowners, and in spite of the legal uncertainties they started passing down this land to the next generation. Details of how this is done and which principles guide farmers still await detailed research. As far as traditional, i.e. pre-socialist patterns of dividing inherited land is concerned, farmers gave a surprisingly uniform description of the basic principle, which made the primary distinction between the sexes: the general verdict was that daughters did not inherit land, only sons. Farmers were aware that this contradicted the principles of Islamic law, but insisted on the prevalence of this pattern in pre-socialist property relations. Clearly, this rather unified description encapsulated ideals rather than actual behaviour, as did similar references concerning, for example, the traditional gendered division of labor. Nevertheless, it contrasts strikingly with people’s generalized formulation of the ideal way of dividing the house equally between their children: daughters and sons should equally receive their fair share. If a couple has two daughters and two sons, and the house consists of four rooms, then each child should receive the furniture (or the value of the furniture) of one room, while the actual house will be the property of the son who takes care of his aging parents, usually the youngest. Although more ethnographic data is needed to determine how houses are passed down to the next generation, the contrast in normative ideals between house and land is clear. Land inheritance seems to be governed by hierarchical ideas, while the house by principles of equality. There is some uncertainty as to the time of the emergence of the inheritance ideals concerning the house: most people did not date it firmly to the pre-socialist period. One could tentatively suggest that this ideal is a relatively new development, which emerged during the collectivized period, as a partial response to the new ideology of gender equality as well as to the many uncertainties caused by the restrictions of property ownership. If this was so, then it could support the supposition that the house gained in importance during this period because other types of private property became redundant. Following the re-instatement of de facto land ownership of small parcels, continuous state interference with cultivation, production, and marketing have made the producers dependent on other income sources (Bellér-Hann 1997). In these circumstances many people who lived close enough to a market started to follow the government’s encouragement to engage in sideline production. In this context, it was the authorities that appealed to the emotional pull of “tradition” and “localism.” Production for the market was encouraged in crafts traditionally practised in certain localities. On occasion, even financial incentives were made available, for example through offering cheap credits. These policies, aimed at progress and modernization, also opened up ways which led to a reconfirmation of the house as the site of traditional practices. By the mid-1990s many households in the vicinity of Kashgar had started responding positively to these initiatives, and engaged in production for the market. Many cultivators were participating in crafts such as shoe-making, or shoe-repair, carpentry, felt making, intensive animal husbandry, tailoring, etc. The site of such production was typically the craftsman’s house and



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its courtyard where pre-socialist ideals of the division of labor along the lines of gender and generational ranking were re-activated. The economic reforms also had further repercussions which reinforced such trends. Following the restrictive years of Maoism, reforms once again encouraged the informal transmission of local knowledge, which often took the form of apprenticeship. Pre-socialist rituals with very strong religious connotations, the passing on of the names of the Islamic patron saints of a particular trade and Sufi texts teaching codes of conduct were all parts of this “modernizing package,” which ran counter to the government’s continued and persistent struggle against feudal customs and religion. These may have been conducive to the re-emergence of traditional forms of socialization in new garb. Thus the expansion of local markets entails the reclaiming the house as ritual space. The return to domestic production restored the house as the locus of economic production and related rituals which had receded during the commune period, but which continue to stand for those “traditional,” “feudal” values that the government continues to disapprove of. Elsewhere I have shown that the domestic cult forms the backbone of popular religion among the Uyghur (Bellér-Hann 2001). This focuses on the veneration of the spirits of dead relatives (rather than mythical ancestors of the lineage) for whose appeasement food sacrifice has to be performed to ensure their benevolence and support. In pre-socialist society the domestic cult was primarily but not exclusively centred on the house: rituals pertaining to the dead were multi-focal and could also be performed outside the household, in the cemetery, and during major religious holidays the celebrations could even spill out into the streets. During the decades of socialism, due to repressive policies against feudal superstitions, customs and religion and communal worship in the mosques and in the Sufi cloisters was seriously curbed. The domestic cult withdrew into the confines of the household and underwent a certain feminization. This was apparent in the fact that in the mid-1990s house-centred rituals, such as the Barat,14 and healing rituals, which in pre-socialist times used to have a mixed audience, were said to rely on a predominantly female audience. In addition, once again houses became the sites of women’s informal religious and social meetings. Participation in meetings with a religious character may have been tacitly tolerated by the authorities but subverted the official stance on practices condemned as feudal superstition. The close associations of houses, women, and ritual were further promoted by the introduction of compulsory family planning policies in the early 1990s among the minorities of Xinjiang. This had several repercussions on practices surrounding birth. Although, compared to pre-socialist conditions, medical care and the availability of health centres had improved in most places, since women feared that by giving birth in hospital they might risk being sterilized against their will and without their knowledge, they preferred to stay at home and give birth without professional medical help. This in itself confirmed the role of the house as a site of human reproduction underlined by practices surrounding birth. The symbolic connection between biological reproduction and the house was rooted in traditional practices surrounding birth. In both peasant and urban households custom grants a woman the right to give birth to her first two children in her natal house. After birth the child’s umbilical cord is


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buried in the mud floor of the house. This act symbolically confirms the child and the mother’s close relationship with her father’s house, i.e. with the matrilateral patriline. New ties with her husband’s house can be cemented only after subsequent births taking place in there. Such practices have survived into the socialist period. At the same time the customs that allow and even requires women to give birth to their first two babies in their mother’s home justifies a degree of mobility between households. This can be successfully instrumentalized in evading state intervention in fertility in cases when the mother’s house was in a different administrative district. Compulsory family planning for Han Chinese across the whole of China was introduced in the 1980s and extended to minorities in the late 1980s, but in southern Xinjiang it was first implemented in the early 1990s.15 One way of ensuring the implementation of these policies was the bi-annual house-to-house inspection of pregnancies and births, which was organized in every administrative basis but there was not much coordination between administrative units. Thus, the regulations actually favored the perpetuation of this tradition: unplanned pregnancies and babies could be temporarily hidden. The frequent moving of women between their natal households and their husbands’ home was further supported by women’s customary right, which allowed them to visit their mothers once every eight days (provided that she lived close enough).16 Attachment to the house was implied rather than overtly articulated in local discourse, e.g. it was symbolically suggested by burying the placenta in the house. Some other actions also have similar implications. It has already been mentioned how the earthen parts of an old house could be recycled in local fertilizer. Some farmers explained how, when they have to have a new house built and demolish the old one, they try to save the wooden ceiling of the paternal house and transfer it to the new one. This decision was made partly on pragmatic grounds, because wood was an expensive commodity, partly, in my understanding, because of the symbolic importance of the house in the perpetuation of the patriline.

Conclusion Attachment to and identification with locality may assume many different forms, as do the definitions of places to which humans may develop emotional attachment, ranging from the idea of a homeland to traditional settlements or administrative units. The object of identification may also be a small piece of land one cultivates or the house or street where one lives and which offers familiarity and a sense of security. One sort of attachment does not necessarily exclude others: even people who have experienced limited or no significant mobility or displacement throughout their lives can name several places as foci of belonging. Uyghur ethnic identity is nurtured by many sources of localism and oasis-based attachment is only one of the numerous possibilities. It may also be inextricably linked to Islam, which is also expressed through the handing down of extended place names which emphasize the unranked and essentially equal nature of places as abodes of Islamic saints, martyrs, and loci of pilgrimages.



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The frequent mentioning of the adjective “local” in the daily discourse of cultivators in the Kashgar region in the 1990s was a reaction to the abrupt changes and interventions introduced by the government: without these the attribute would be meaningless. Among villagers in the Kashgar region this term has become an encapsulated way of referring to the “ideal,” romanticized pre-socialist past which is often perceived or projected as unadulterated, more natural, and in many ways therefore preferable. Although we have little evidence concerning pre-modern sentiments of attachment to land and house, locality in modern discourse takes on positive glosses, it encapsulates more than the symbolic appropriation of a piece of land: it also claims one’s own past and tradition as opposed to the forces coming from outside: thus, emphasizing the virtues of things “local” has an element of at least verbally devaluing or resisting top-down innovation. In face of the increasing penetration of local social space by the state, indigenous strategies sanctioned by tradition are frequently mobilized. Such efforts are increasingly focusing on the house. Its function as an important focus of emotional attachment among farmers has been reinforced by a combination of factors: the introduction of the market economy, which has led to the partial domestication of the local economy; religious repression, which has confined the previously multi-focal domestic cult to the house; and family planning, which reinforces the role of the house as the site of biological reproduction. The increasing privacy and multi-functionality of the house in itself evokes memories of pre-socialist practice and constitutes a reaction to painful memories of the periods of socialist excesses, when the household was deprived of its elementary functions of commensality and social reproduction. Farmers are reclaiming the house and notions of locality in search of some degree of security which, however, remains compatible with ideas of broader identifications on an oasis/regional level. In these discourses locality becomes a symbolic space where relations of domination are acted out, and it can become the locus of strategies of passive resistance to unpopular state policies.

Notes 1 For a recent summary of the diverse research see Starr (2004), which also provides a useful bibliographical guidance. 2 Fairbank’s periodization is, by and large, applicable to local conditions (Fairbank 1989). 3 For a brief summary of these changes in China in general see Hinton (1990), Kelliher (1992), Seitz (2002: 221–35); for the situation in Xinjiang see Bellér-Hann (1997). 4 Continuities in ritual and daily practice may be seen when considering the evidence of indigenous and foreign testimonies dating from the late imperial and republican times. See Bellér-Hann (unpublished manuscript). 5 This trend was still in force in the 1990s, when my fieldwork data were collected. The general liberalization of the economy all over China has remained more restrictive in Xinjiang, where religious repression also remains in force. 6 About Turpan see also Jarring (1933: 16). Yarkand, Kashgar, Aqsu, and Khotan are also mentioned with the same epithets by a Central Asian author, Nushirvan Yavshef, in the early-twentieth century in a Tatar language publication, as cited by Zarcone (2001: 138–39).


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7 The extended oasis names ritualize and appropriate localities, as do many names of saintly shrines, which often double as place names (Dawut 2001). 8 In any case, given the unequal patterns of pre-socialist property relations, the majority of rural families had little or no land holding, instead they worked the land of others as landless tenant farmers or serfs (Hoppe 1998: 107); such families could not have made claims on their forefathers’ land property. 9 Cf. Nolan (1988). 10 Hann (1999). In the late-nineteenth century the Frenchman Grenard noted the presence of a certain pragmatic detachment rather than strong emotional attachment of peasants to their land (Grenard 1898: 158). We can only speculate as to this perceived lack of attachment to specific pieces of land: in traditional society land itself was only a guarantee of wealth when there was also enough available water to irrigate it. 11 Both male and female behavior was regulated by local concepts of morality. In line with the honor and shame concepts well known from the anthropological literature on Mediterranean and Middle Eastern societies, these expectations are usually centered on women’s behavior and their spatial movements. The local concept in which a number of related norms were encapsulated was the term namähräm, derived from Persian and Arabic. Well known from other parts of the Islamic world, its definition is based on the Koranic pronouncement, which, from the female point of view, differentiates between men who are strangers (namähräm) to her, and therefore potential marriage partners, and close relatives (non-namähräm), with whom kinship proximity forbids marriage and sexual relations. 12 Cf. Carsten and Hugh-Jones (1995). 13 This argument bears some similarity to, although is not identical with, Liu’s observation elsewhere in China, according to whom “the practical aspects of traditional kinship were in fact strengthened by the [Maoist] revolution, as the house became a stronger symbol of self” (Liu 2000: 50). 14 Described in more detail in Bellér-Hann (2001). 15 Croll et al. (1985); Kane (1987); Whyte (2000). 16 Fieldwork data, cf. Bellér-Hann (2004: 191).

References Basso, Keith. 1996. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico. Beller-Hann, Ildikó. 1997. The Peasant condition in Xinjiang. Journal of Peasant Studies 25(1): 87–112. —— 1998. Work and gender among Uighur villagers in Southern Xinjiang. In: Françoise Aubin and Frédérique-Jeanne Besson (Eds.), Les Ouïgours au XXéme siècle. Cahiers d’études sur la Méditerranée Orientale et le Monde Turco-iranien 25: 93–114. —— 2001. “Making the Oil fragrant”: Dealings with the supernatural among the Uighur in Xinjiang. Asian Ethnicity 2(1): 9–23. —— 2004. Law and custom among the Uyghur in Xinjiang. In: Wallace Johnson and Irina F. Popova (Eds.), Central Asian Law: An Historical Overview. A Festschrift for the Ninetieth Birthday of Herbert Franke. Topeka: Society for Asian Legal History, the University of Kansas. —— (unpublished manuscript) Community Matters. Towards a Historical Anthropology of the Uyghur in Xinjiang, 1880s–1990s. Bellew, Henry W. 1875. Kashmir and Kashgar: A Narrative of the Journey of the Embassy to Kashgar in 1873–7. London: Tübner.



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Carsten, Janet and Stephen Hugh-Jones. 1995. About the House. Lévi-Strauss and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Cesaro, Cristina. 2000. Consuming Identities: Food and Resistance among the Uyghur in Contemporary Xinjiang. Inner Asia 2(2): 225–38. —— 2002. Consuming Identities: The Culture and Politics of Food among the Uyghurin Contemporary Xinjiang. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Canterbury: University of Kent. Croll, Elisabeth, Delia Davin, and Penny Kane (Eds.). 1985. China’s One-Child Family Policy. London: Macmillan. Dawut, Rahilä. 2001. Uyğur Mazarliri. Ürümçi: Şinjañ Xälq Näşriyati. Fairbank, John K. 1989. Geschichte Des Modernen China 1800–1985. (Translated by W. Meimer). München: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag. Feld, Steven and Keith H. Basso. 1996. Introduction. In: Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso (Eds.), Senses of Place. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research. Fletcher, Joseph F. 1978. Ch’ing Inner Asia C. 1800. In: Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (Eds.), The Cambridge History of China, Late Ch’ing 1800–1911. Vol. 10. Part I. Cambridge: Cambridge University. —— 1995. Studies on Chinese and Islamic Inner Asia. Edited by Beatrice Forbes Manz. Aldershot: Variorum. Forbes, Andrew D.W. 1986. Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia: A Political History of Republican Sinkiang 1911–49. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Gladney, Dru. 1990. The Ethnogenesis of the Uighur. Central Asian Survey 9(1): 1–28. —— 1994. Representing nationality in China: Refiguring majority/minority identities. Journal of Asian Studies 53(1): 92–123. —— 1998. Internal Colonialism and the Uyghur Nationality: Chinese Nationalism and its Subaltern Subjec. In: Françoise Aubin and Frédérique-Jeanne Besson (Eds.), Les Ouïgours Au Xxéme Siècle. Cahiers D’études Sur La Méditerranée Orientale et Le Monde Turco-Iranien 25: 47–61. Grenard, Ferdinand. 1898. Le Turkestan et Le Tibet: Etude Ethnographique et Sociologique (J.-L. Dutreuil De Rhins: Mission Scientifique Dans La Haute Asie 1890–95. Deuxiéme Partie). Paris: Ernest Leroux. Häbibulla, Abdurähim. 1993. Uyğur Etnografiyisi. Ürümçi: Şinjañ Xälq Näşriyati. Hamada, Masami. 1978. Supplement: Islamic Saints and Their Mausoleums. (Special Issue: Historical Studies On Central Asia In Japan.) Acta Asiatica 34: 79–98. Hann, Chris. 1999. Peasants in an era of Freedom; Property and Market Economy In Southern Xinjiang. Inner Asia 1(2): 195–219. Hinton, William. 1990. The Great Reversal: The Privatization of China 1978–89. New York: Monthly Review. Hoppe, Thomas. 1987. Observations on Uygur Land Use in Turpan County, Xinjiang – A Preliminary Report on Fieldwork in Summer 1985. Central Asiatic Journal 31(3–4): 224–51. —— 1998 [1995]. Die Ethnischen Gruppen Xinjiangs: Kulturunterschiede Und Interethnische Beziehungen. Hamburg: Institut Für Asienkunde (Mitteilungen Des Instituts Für Asienkunde Hamburg 290). Hamburg: Institut Für Asienkunde (2. Auflage). Jarring, Gunnar. 1933. Studien Zu Einer Osttürkischen Lautlehre. Lund: Borelius and Leipzig: Harrassowitz. Kane, Penny. 1987. The Second Billion: Population and Family Planning in China. Harmondsworth: Penguin.


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Katanov, Nikolai Th. and Karl Heinrich Menges. 1976 [1936]. Volkskundliche Texte Aus Ost-Türkistan I.-II. Aus Dem Nachlass Von N. Th. Katanov. Herausgegeben Von Karl Heinrich Menges. 1936. Abhandlungen Der Preussischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften. 1976. Mit Einem Vorwort Zum Neudruck Von Karl Heinrich Menges Und Einer Bibliographie Der Schriften Menges’ Von Georg Hazai. Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat Der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Kelliher, Daniel. 1992. Peasant Power in China: The Era of Rural Reform. 1979–89. New Haven: Yale University. Kim, Ho-Dong. 2004. Holy War in China: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia 1864–77. Stanford: Stanford University. Le Coq, Albert Von. 1911. Sprichwörter Und Lieder Aus Der Gegend Von Turfan. (Baessler-Archiv Beiheft 1–8, 1910–17). Leipzig: Teubner. —— 1928. Von Land Und Leuten In Ostturkistan: Berichte Und Abenteuer Der 4. Deutschen Turfanexpedition. Leipzig: Dritte Auflage Verlag Der J.C. Hinrichs’schen Buchhandlung. (Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan. An Account of the Activities and Adventures of the Second and Third German Turfan Expeditions, Translated by A. Barwell). London: Allen and Unwin. Liu, Xin. 2000. In One’s Own Shadow: An Ethnographic Account of the Condition of PostReform China. Berkeley: University of California. Madsen, Richard. 1991. The Countryside Under Communism. In: Roderick Macfarquhar and J. Fairbank (Eds.), The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 15. The People’s Republic, Part 2: Revolutions Within the Chinese Revolution 1966–1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Mcmillen, Donald H. 1979. Chinese Communist Power and Policy in Xinjiang, 1949–77. Boulder, Co: Westview. Millward, James A. 1998. Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759–1864. Stanford: Stanford University. Millward, James A. and Peter C. Perdue. 2004. Political and Cultural History of the Xinjiang Region Through the Late Nineteenth Century. In: S. Frederick Starr (Ed.), Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Millward, James A. and Nabijan Tursun. 2004. Political History and Strategies of Control, 1884–1978. In: S. Frederick Starr (Ed.), Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Nolan, Peter. 1988. The Political Economy of Collective Farms: An Analysis of China’s Post-Mao Rural Reforms. Oxford: Polity. Rudelson, Justin. 1997. Oasis Identities. Uyghur Nationalism Along China’s Silk Road. New York: Columbia University. Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University. Seitz, Konrad. 2002. China. Eine Weltmacht Kehrt Zurück. Berlin: Berliner Taschenbuch Verlags Gmbh. Shaw, Robert B. 1984 [1871]. Visits to High Tartary, Yarkand and Kashgar. (Reprint of 1871 Edition with an addition of an introduction By P. Hopkirk). Oxford: Oxford University. Smith, Joanne N. 1999. Changing Uyghur Identities in Xinjiang in the 1990s. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Leeds. —— 2000. Four Generations of Uyghurs: The Shift Towards Ethno-Political Ideologies Among Xinjiang’s Youth. Inner Asia 2(2): 195–224. Soucek, Svat. 2000. A History of Inner Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University.



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Starr, Frederick S. (Ed.). 2004. Xinjiang. China’s Muslim Borderland. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Toops, Stanley W. 2004. The Demography of Xinjiang. In: S. Frederick Starr (Ed.), Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Valikhanov, Chokan-Veniukov. 1961. Sobranie Sochinenii Tom I. Alma-Ata: Akademii Nauk Kazakhskom SSR. Wei-Yin. T. 2002. Juñgo Musulmaniliriniñ Häj Pa’aliyätliri. Ürümçi: Şinjañ Xälq Näşriyati. Whyte, Tyrene. 2000. Domination, Resistance, and Accommodation in China’s One-Child Campaign. In: Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden (Eds.), Chinese Society. Change, Conflict and Resistance. London: Routledge. Zarcone, Thierry. 2001. Le Culte Des Saints Au Xinjiang De 1949 À Nos Jours. Saints and Heroes on the Silk Road. Saints et Héros Sur La Route De La Soie. Journal of the History of Sufism 3: 133–72.



Part II

Ethnic perceptions and reactions



3

Central Asian attitudes towards Afghanistan Perceptions of the Afghan war in Uzbekistan Peter Finke

In December 1979 Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in an attempt to assist the communist party who had seized power in Kabul one year earlier. This was their first direct military involvement in a Muslim country since the final incorporation of Turkestan and the Republics of Bukhara and Khiva in the 1920s. Many Western observers had long expected that the opposition of Muslims in the Soviet Union would one day pose a major challenge to the regime (Wheeler 1964; Allworth 1967; Rywkin 1982; Bennigsen and Broxup 1983; D’Encausse 1989). In their view, this aggression could be the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. The totalitarian communist regime, oppressing its Muslim colonies in Central Asia, could not survive this challenge (Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay 1984). The situation seemed to be particularly precarious because the northern parts of Afghanistan are inhabited by the same ethnic groups as on the other side of the border, so that many Soviet soldiers would have to fight their own brethren. Many soldiers who fought for the Red Army in Afghanistan were indeed from the Soviet Central Asian republics. Nearly every village in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, or Kyrgyzstan had at least one of its sons serving there, many of whom died during the fighting. In spite of this the above mentioned scenario largely failed to occur. There was neither open resistance against the war nor do we know of large numbers of Central Asians changing sides (although some undoubtedly did). Veterans of the war generally recall the fact that they had been Soviet citizens and followed their state’s interests, as soldiers do all over the world. Today, we know that the loyalty of the Muslims in Central Asia was never as tenuous as was suggested by some Sovietologists. When the Soviet Empire finally broke up, the Central Asian republics were practically forced into independence after Russia itself had already left the Union. In fact, many of them rather hesitated to become independent (Olcott 1996; Akiner 1996). When the USA and its allies began to attack the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in October 2001, history seemed to repeat itself. Once more there was anticipation of a broad Muslim fraternization in the Central Asian republics. This time, however, it was not imagined as an alliance against communism but as a threat to Western civilization. Again, nothing of this sort happened. When, in October 2001, we were about to leave for fieldwork in Uzbekistan, everyone thought this


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was not a good idea.1 Against our own judgment—which was that Uzbekistan would be relatively untouched by the events in Afghanistan—we postponed the trip for one month. When we finally arrived in Tashkent in November, we encountered the situation we had anticipated—and many friends there had reported in the meantime—that there was no hint of a war taking place just a few hundred kilometers further south. There was no news on TV, no heated debates in public or at home. “Here in Uzbekistan is peace!” was the phrase repeated over and over again when people mentioned the word Afghanistan. The cohorts of journalists, who had been flown in, had already disappeared again because they had nothing to write about. They did this not without annoying President Karimov with complaints about the human rights situation in Uzbekistan, the only topic they found worth reporting about, and enough people willing to talk about. In this chapter I give some hints as to why things were so different from what many expected. The main argument will be that Uzbek identity2 is of a very peculiar kind. One central aspect in this regard is the fact that Uzbekness, in contrast to many other identities in the region, is based primarily on local and regional communities (Finke, forthcoming). By way of increasing inclusiveness, the concept is extended to the nation-state as a territorial unit. Co-ethnics outside of Uzbekistan may also be considered Uzbeks but not to the same degree, while members of other ethnic groups living within Uzbekistan (depending on their perceived closeness) are included in a broader concept of (ethnic) Uzbekness. As a second factor, in the religious sphere fraternization was hampered by only a vague concept of the umma among Central Asian Muslims. While in the local or regional context Islam may be an important indicator of ethnic demarcation (primarily against Russians), Islamic identity does not transfer into large-scale expressions of solidarity (as is also reflected in the almost total lack of sympathy for the Chechen case in Central Asia). Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East are not considered particularly close, for that matter. Related to this is a third central feature of people’s identity, namely the ongoing identification with the Soviet Union. This does not necessarily imply socialist nostalgia (although it often does) but refers to its former status as a super power and a peak of civilization of which these people had been a part. The Middle East, in this respect, is regarded as backward, stuck in medieval customs and low-level technology.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and its impact on central Asia For most of its history, the northern parts of Afghanistan had been territorially linked and often politically united with the southern provinces of contemporary Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Areas north and south of the Amu Darya took part in the Bactrian and Kushan civilizations, among the first centers of Buddhist culture outside of India; they were also part of the later Islamic societies, the Samanids, Ghaznavids, Timurids, and Shaybanids that ruled most of the region between the ninth and eighteenth centuries. The ultimate inclusion into the present state of Afghanistan was only the result of the colonial Great Game, in which the Russian


Central Asian attitudes towards Afghanistan 63 and the British Empires established borderlines to mark their mutual spheres of interest (Lee 1996; Noelle 1997; Rasuly-Paleczek 2004). As a consequence, the ethnic composition is also very similar on both sides of the present border. The largest groups in each case are Uzbeks, Turkmens, and Tajiks, although the latter may only be cautiously called an ethnic group within Afghanistan, as the official designation does not necessarily match the self-perception of the respective population (Schetter 2003). The Kyrgyz in the north-eastern Wakhan corridor form yet another Central Asian element, although a much smaller one (Dor and Naumann 1978; Shahrani 1979). The Pashtuns, as the dominant group in Afghanistan, started to settle in the northern provinces in larger numbers only in the nineteenth century, as a result of governmental encouragement that aimed at bringing the region under tighter control (Grötzbach 1972; Rasuly-Paleczek 1998). Ethnic Uzbeks have been one of the major ethnic groups in the north of Afghanistan for centuries. They started to move in during the sixteenth century, in connection with the Shaybanid invasion in Transoxania (Rasuly-Paleczek 1998). A more recent wave of immigrants arrived in the 1920s and 1930s, fleeing the communist takeover in Central Asia (Shalinsky 1994). Most Uzbeks are engaged in agriculture and used to be a relatively prosperous community. Like other minorities, they later suffered from decades of domination and land appropriation by the Pashtuns. They had, however, a higher status than other minorities, like the Hazara, because of their Sunni orientation, which brings them in line with the religious majority in the country (Rasuly-Paleczek 1998). One recent estimation puts the Uzbeks at approximately 1.5 million or five to six percent of the population (Schetter 2003: 123 ff.), but the actual number may be substantially higher. Uzbeks have settled all over northern Afghanistan (Orywal 1983, 1986). The multi-ethnic composition has for long been considered one of the major issues in Afghan statehood (Dupree 1973; Orywal 1986; Rasuly-Paleczek 1998; Shahrani 2002). Since its development during the eighteenth century Pashtuns have dominated the political scene and, as a consequence, also much of the economic resources in the country. Ethnic Tajiks were in a somewhat privileged position because they formed a large part of the urban bureaucracy but other minorities were under increasing pressure. Pashtun dominance continued after the political takeover by the Communist Party in 1978. The communists tried to implement fundamental economic and social reforms but had little success, and soon most of the country slipped out of governmental control. The Soviets conceived this as a threat both for strategic as well as ideological reasons and responded with a military invasion in December 1979 (Bradsher 1983; Galeotti 1995; Magnus and Naby 1998). The consequences of this war are well known, both internally as well as internationally, and may have been one of the main impetuses for the end of the Soviet Empire (Galeotti 1995). The consequences in the Central Asian republics, however, are less clear. From the beginning of military activities Western scholars considered it a dangerous play by the Soviet elite. This assessment grew even stronger when news spread that many of the soldiers employed in the action were from Central


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Asia. Exact numbers are difficult to obtain, although casualty figures point to a significant involvement of Uzbeks, Kazaks, and Turkmens. The motives for the Soviet leaders to use these troops remain obscure. Either, they did not fear any unrest among the Central Asian groups, or they may have even wanted them to play an intermediate role in relations with the population. Outside the Soviet Union, however, many observers expected large-scale fraternizations to take form, in particular among Uzbeks and Tajiks, believed to be more religious, who would encounter large numbers of co-ethnics in Afghanistan. The fact that many of these soldiers were quickly withdrawn seems to support this presumption.3 While these prejudices did exist within the Red Army, the number of casualties shows insignificant differences among the troops of the Soviet Union (Galeotti 1995: 25ff.). It is nearly impossible to estimate how many Uzbeks or Tajiks were really affected by those relations. Clearly, for many this implied an exposure to Islam that had not existed before. They could purchase Korans in the bazaar and they could have discussions with the people on how religion and ethnicity applied to much of everyday life. But the actual impact of this situation is unclear. The majority of veterans in Central Asia certainly considered the invasion a mistake, but they claim that they participated as citizens of the Soviet state. It was part of their patriotic duty, and it seems that most never questioned their personal involvement, although they may have been critical of the overall presence of Soviet troops. Thus, they experienced their own role pretty much the way soldiers in other parts of the world do. The fact that they fought ethnic and/or religious brethren was rarely emphasized in interviews or conversations. In fact, most considered the Afghanistan resistance fighters as enemies. They claimed that their view was matched by the opposition of the other side, including the ordinary population, who conceived of the Soviet troops as occupiers, without regard to ethnicity. As one informant explained it: Of course, these people were Uzbeks and Tajiks just like us. And we could speak with them. But we were there as Soviet soldiers. So we had to fight for our country. And they would also not make a difference. They told us, “Yes you are Tajik but you are Soviet and not real Muslims. If we fight you, we will kill you.” (Alisher, a 35-year-old Tajik from Andijon province) The end of the story is well known. The communist regime, and with it the Soviet army, lost more and more the control over most parts of the country (Galeotti 1995: 205 ff.). Fighting and famine induced millions of people to take refuge in Iran and Pakistan where they received additional training in religious affairs. In 1987, after reports on casualties had been consistently rising and public opinion turned more and more critical, Gorbachev ordered the retreat of Soviet troops. This did not change the situation for the better. In the subsequent struggle for power, hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives and millions more took refuge in neighboring Iran and Pakistan. The internal fighting developed more and more along ethnic lines, especially in the northern provinces, where many of

Central Asian attitudes towards Afghanistan 65 the warlords had their bases of support and where they recruited their followers (Magnus and Naby 1998: 141 ff.).


The rise and fall of the Taliban regime: the Uzbek reaction After the Soviet withdrawal the fighting among the mujahedin became even more intense and devastating for the population. Their frequent changes in alliances created an extremely insecure situation (Magnus and Naby 1998: 179 ff.). This made it relatively easy for the Taliban to achieve power in 1996. Many welcomed them, even if they would not necessarily support their radical views on society, because they hoped that it would bring stability to the country. Soon the population realized that the results were far from their expectations. The new regime proved to be particularly ruthless against all opposition, and the increasing international isolation put additional stress on the economy of the country. Throughout most of the Taliban period the northern provinces remained outside their control. Here, after a series of re-alliances the former enemies Rashid Dostum and Ahmad Shah Masud formed a Northern Alliance, combining mainly Uzbek, Tajik, and Hazara forces. The relations of these two leaders with the Central Asian states were generally ambiguous. Although the president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, showed some support for Dostum, who is Uzbek, this was probably little more than strategic, directed primarily against the perceived danger of Islamic fundamentalism within his own country. The relation of Masud, a Tajik, with Tajikistan was somewhat closer but the devastating civil war there meant that the country was a partner in need of support rather than a strong ally (Magnus and Naby 1998). At the same time, relations between the Taliban and the United States deteriorated very quickly after the events of September 11. Even before that, the Taliban had been viewed with great suspicion, as they were harboring the world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden. Now that the latter had been identified as the mastermind behind the attacks on the World Trade Center the decision to go to war against his supporters was rapidly approaching. As in 1979 the expectations in the West concerning the reaction of the Muslims of Central Asia was one of anxiety. How would these countries and their populations, now freed from Russian paternalism, react? The fear of widespread solidarity was further fed by the emergence of fundamentalist movements within these states which had begun in the early 1990s. One fear was that crowds of Uzbek and Tajik Islamist volunteers would take up arms and move into Afghanistan to support the Taliban against the invading United States forces. Again, the overall appeal of transnational solidarity was difficult to assess. While reportedly a number of members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), headed by Juma Namangani, took part in the fighting, their impact on the overall events was not very significant. It is very likely that they participated primarily because they had to, given the support that bin Laden and the Taliban had for years provided the IMU. It seems that most of the Central Asian recruits perished in this war, including Juma Namangani.4


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Needless to say, the appearance of the IMU provided an inducement for the political leaders of Uzbekistan to crack down on local Islamist groups, perceived as an imminent danger. When the two airplanes hit the World Trade Center, Uzbek television did not interrupt its program to show what happened in New York City but rather replayed a speech Karimov had given one year earlier at the United Nations. In this he had warned the world of the threat of Islamic terrorism and advocated strong measures to counter it.5 The new events seemed to confirm his position. Similar to the Russian president Putin, Karimov took advantage of the situation in claiming that only rigid suppression of any signs of fundamentalist thinking could solve the problem, and that he had wrongly been accused of overreacting. Presumably, the already established fear that fundamentalist ideas would spread and create chaos in the region contributed to this attitude (Magnus and Naby 1998: 167 ff.). In fact, the ordinary people throughout the country did not express any disapproval of the war against the Taliban. There was no sign of a widespread sense of Muslim solidarity. One might think that this was at least partially due to the fact that the majority of the Uzbeks in Afghanistan were affiliated with the Northern Alliance and thus would be liberated by the fall of the Taliban. But this was not the point. The fate of the Afghan Uzbeks was, rather, of little concern to anyone. The overwhelming majority expressed no feelings of commonality with the people of northern Afghanistan, whether Uzbeks or any other groups. In fact, the war in Afghanistan was almost non-existent in public or private discussion; it was considered an event light-years away. It hardly had anything to do with the life of ordinary people in Uzbekistan. If events in Afghanistan were ever referred to, it was with an expression of gratitude that peace and stability were finally brought to Uzbekistan’s borders. The general attitude was that now that drug trafficking and terrorist attacks would be stopped, Uzbekistan could use all the resources previously spent on border protection for building up the country. Opposing views were seldom heard. Everyone seemed to support the attacks, from the political elite and the broader public in Tashkent to villagers in Khorezm, Bukhara, or the Ferghana valley. In a panel discussion in the capital, the representative of the US embassy came under severe criticism from young Uzbek students. It was not that they had any sympathy with their religious and ethnic fellows in Afghanistan or even that they objected to American neo-imperialism in the Middle East. Rather, they accused the US of practicing a double standard: why had they not more firmly supported the Russians in their fight against Chechen terrorists?

Aspects of Uzbekness To explain these attitudes, it is necessary to dig a little bit into the emergence of Uzbek identity and its variations over space and time. In the course of the past centuries this came to be the most numerous and centrally located ethnic group in Central Asia, partly due to its flexible character, which allowed the absorption of

Central Asian attitudes towards Afghanistan 67 other populations. As a consequence the local manifestations of Uzbekness also vary more than is the case for many other groups in the region.6


Traditional concepts of identity and Soviet ethnic engineering The ethnogenesis of the Uzbeks is very complex and reflects centuries of migration and conquest in Central Asia. A large part of the contemporary population are undoubtedly descendants of an earlier Iranian population (Krader 1963; Frye 1996; Fragner 1998; Rzehak 2001; Bregel 2003). Linguistic turkification started in the sixth and seventh centuries. Succeeding waves of nomadic conquerors started to mix with the local sedentary populations, usually adapting to their cultural and social patterns. This development culminated during the Mongol invasions, both due to the influx of new tribal groups and the depopulation of many of the oases. Only during the reign of the subsequent Timurid dynasty did nomadic–sedentary relations return to the mutual equilibrium of earlier times, one that renewed the strength of the Turkic element (Manz 1994; Fierman 1991). The Uzbeks proper were the last nomadic element in this mixture. After they seized power in 1500 from the last Timurid ruler they established a state with Bukhara as its centre that would later split into three independent khanates and emirates: Khorezm, Bukhara, and the Ferghana Valley (Soucek 2000; Becker 1968). Economic and social decay as well as frequent fighting made these states an easy target for Russian annexation in the second half of the nineteenth century (Bacon 1966; Becker 1968; Allworth 1990). Social identities during this period were more guided by territoriality and common residence than by language or presumed common descent (Gross 1992). In many oases Iranian- and Turkicspeakers lived closely intertwined. Bilingualism and mixed ancestry is a feature of this identity (Zhumayev 1992; Finke and Sancak 2002).7 Guided by Stalin’s definition of the nation during the early Soviet period, ethnic or national groups, as well as (more or less) ethnically defined administrative units, were created and linked hierarchically into the state structure. For that matter, each individual had to be assigned to one particular group, which in turn was defined by means of territory and cultural distinctiveness. In this process some groups were subsumed into others and disappeared, at least from the official records (Vaidyanath 1967; Schoeberlein-Engel 1994). With the disintegration of the Soviet Union the largest of the administrative units, the Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR), all became independent states, whose boundaries usually cut through ethnic as well as geographic entities (Schoeberlein-Engel 1994; Szporluk 1994). It was therefore expected that inter-ethnic conflicts would soon unsettle the region—a view that still exists even though, except for the civil war in Tajikistan, very few conflicts actually took place after 1990 (Lubin and Rubin 1999; Abazov 1999; Rashid 2002). Today, in all post-Soviet states, processes of nation building and identity politics are in full swing. The search for criteria to define the respective national units follows different directions in the various states, but in most cases they make use of symbols and historical figures already promoted in Soviet times (Adams 1999; Liu 2002). All the states, however, carefully avoid questioning


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existing geographical or ethnic boundaries, for the effects could be disastrous as ethno-national minorities can be found on all sides of contemporary boundaries. Internally, these states oscillate between the promotion of one ethnic group, the so-called titular nation, and an appeal to the rich multi-ethnic heritage of the Soviet Union. This oscillation is less pronounced in Uzbekistan, where the numerical strength of the titular group seems sufficient to ensure an unambiguous sense of national identity. Therefore, there is less need for an aggressive policy towards the suppression of minorities. Instead, the multi-cultural past of the country and the commonalities among all its populations are stressed (Finke, forthcoming). Uzbekness as a regional identity Closely related to this internal inclusiveness of an Uzbekistanian identity is the attitude towards its “Diasporas.” All its neighboring states today have sizeable Uzbek minorities, if not a local majority in some areas. The origin of these minorities usually does not lie in recent migrations but in the rather arbitrary drawing of boundaries that took place in colonial or Stalinist times. Uzbek populations usually occupy contiguous areas and share a common pre-Soviet history and regional identity. In contrast to neighboring Kazakstan, which has actively sought to bring members of the titular nation “back home,” the Uzbek diasporas were never invited back to Uzbekistan. Their possible resettlement was never an issue either in politics or in public opinion. The fact that Kazaks formed only a minority in their own state until 1991 certainly had a great impact on Uzbek thought, but it also suggests a different understanding of identity and the transmission of culture. Not only the political elites but most of the rulers of the country have shown no concern for their ethnic kinsmen abroad. They are considered Uzbeks in some ways but certainly not equivalent to citizens of Uzbekistan. When asked about the re-unification of the two Germany’s, I usually have pointed to 40 years of political separation, which resulted in the development of different cultural patterns that had to somehow be accommodated in the new state. This seems to be the reason for the current uneasiness about unifying the Uzbeks of the several states. For comparison, I asked for perceived differences in culture between Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, countries separated by more than a hundred years of colonial boundaries. People did not really understand what I was talking about. For them this was comparing apples and pears. While Germany seemed to be a natural political unit, separated by the consequences of World War II, the same did not apply in the Uzbek case. Those living in places like Afghanistan had little if anything in common with what is considered proper Uzbekness. Most people had heard about the existence of Uzbeks abroad but it was not believed that they had much in common. The situation with the Uzbek minorities in other Central Asian republics is somewhat different, as they had been living within the same state and had shared much the same experience. Nevertheless, they were not perceived as being of the same kind and no one expressed any wish for “re-unification.” This lack of identification with Uzbeks abroad finds its correlate in the attitude within the state towards people of various regional backgrounds. Those in


Central Asian attitudes towards Afghanistan 69 Bukhara consider those in Khorezm or the Ferghana valley as being so fundamentally different that they share little more than the name Uzbek, and vice versa (Finke, forthcoming). In cultural or linguistic matters they are said to be so distant as to prevent easy intelligibility. At the same time, all (sedentary) Muslims of non-Uzbek ethnicity living in the same region are considered co-culturals “of the same kind.” This strongly localized concept of identity is in opposition to, for example the Kazaks, among whom feelings of co-ethnicity with their “diasporas” are very pronounced, even if in everyday life relations with those who actually migrated to Kazakstan are anything but harmonious (Sancak and Finke 2005). In Uzbek society less importance is given to genealogical or biological aspects of group membership and transmission. The concept of Uzbekness is rather territorially based. The nation state is of central role in this and serves as an extension of the regional focus. On a larger scale all citizens of Uzbekistan become Uzbek— both in a national as well as ethnic or cultural sense—in contrast to people living, e.g. in Kyrgyzstan, who are considered “Kyrgyz” even if they are ethnic Uzbeks. People there are expected to behave as “Kyrgyz” even if they are Uzbeks. In a similar way to the point made about Afghanistan before, all Uzbeks outside of Uzbekistan are Uzbeks only in a sub-standard sense because “real” Uzbeks by definition live in the ethnonational state of the same name. Ethnic denominators are of secondary importance in this regard.8 This inclusion refers primarily to other Muslim groups. Russians can become Uzbeks only when they convert to Islam, which is very rare. Although it is difficult to trace any clear causality, the correlation with a distinct type of social organization seems hardly accidental. While Kazak or Turkmen society are organized around a relatively rigid patrilineal lineage system, in the case of Uzbeks and Tajiks it is based on extended families, bilateral as well as affinal kin relations, and neighborhood organization. Spatial closeness is the prime criterion. Apart from the extended family, the important social units were the village and regional communities. The sedentary character of the society correlates with a strong tendency towards village endogamy (Schoeberlein-Engel 1994; Fane 1996; Finke forthcoming). Indifference towards the umma A second larger entity to which most Uzbeks have no interest in belonging is the umma. Indeed, most people have only a vague notion of this concept. That is not to say that individuals from other Muslim countries are not viewed as religious fellows. Muslim individuals are in general considered closer than others. What is missing, however, is the vision of a common transnational identity, which unites people from different countries by religion and encourages mutual assistance or, at least, compassion. In a related way, this is also the outcome of a territorial understanding of difference and similarity. Cognitive tests, which I conducted in various parts of Uzbekistan, revealed a picture that usually puts Muslims in Central Asia into one larger group. Ethnic Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kazaks, Turkmens, Kyrgyz, and Qarakalpaks


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(in so far as the latter category was known) were perceived as most similar to each other.9 Within this group, usually Uzbeks and Tajiks were considered closest. Other Muslim groups were almost never included in the same category. Turks were generally grouped together with Iranians, sometimes with Arabs; and Azerbaijanis (whether they like it or not) with, in most cases, Georgians and Armenians. Chechens—of whom many live in Central Asia as a consequence of Stalinist deportation—were maybe the most difficult to classify, but they would also never be grouped into one category with local Central Asians. In general, they were thought of as one type of Caucasians together with Azeri or Georgians, sometimes also close to the Russians (because one would speak in Russian with them). Afghans, although some people know that there is no ethnic group with this name, were in most cases classified collectively with the Iranians—and in that case the Uzbeks or Tajiks of Afghanistan were classified in this general category. Interestingly also, the results hinted at no image of a Pan-Turkic ideal. It is rather a common cultural pattern shared with other local groups, which is the point of reference. This includes the Iranian-speaking Tajiks while the former nomadic Kazaks or Turkmens are only secondary and somewhat half-heartedly admitted into the same regional category. The common culture, although sometimes labeled as “the Muslim way,” seems to be based not so much on religion or language but on common history, habits, and territory. If people talk about Muslimness (Müsülmanchilik) they refer to a pattern of culture and social behavior shared by the indigenous groups in Central Asia, sometimes also limited to the sedentary groups. People are aware that these might differ from the situation encountered in Turkey or the Arab world. This was, however, not a major concern for them, because the relevant point of reference always remains the regional setting and the forms of appropriate conduct are defined within that. At the same time, most people are aware that their knowledge in religious affairs is fairly limited and that most of them lack a proper understanding of how to perform Islamic rituals. This is regretted, and growing numbers of individuals would like to change that. In no way, however, does it convince people to take the Middle East as a model for their own behavior. Being a Muslim is an important demarcation against Russians and non-believers. It is not a uniting bond towards a larger unity of the Islamic umma. Uzbekness and Soviet civilization The last point to make here is to some degree related to the preceding one. The commonality among the Central Asian republics and the perceived cultural frontiers against the Middle Eastern countries of Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkey, which it implies, is not only the result of experienced or imagined similarities among the indigenous cultures. It is may be even more the result of 70 years of common history within one political entity, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was for many years, and still is for the elder generation, the “imagined community” (Anderson 1983). This concerns not only shared history but many aspects of everyday life like movie stars, former prices of goods (which


Central Asian attitudes towards Afghanistan 71 were the same all over the Soviet Union), as well as drinking parties. Even more important is the widespread feeling of having been part of a common civilization, which is viewed as clearly superior to the Islamic-based Middle Eastern culture. Russia was the window toward European culture and the Soviet Union was a political and military super power, which equaled the USA (at least in the perception of its former citizens). Most Uzbeks are proud to have been part of that super power and—to some degree—regret its downfall. Russia supported this feeling indirectly by propagandizing for decades that traditional Muslim culture was backward, reactionary, and outmoded. This image found its way into every village and although modified and adapted to one’s own needs and ideas, nevertheless, left some traces in viewing the outside world. The Middle East is therefore looked down upon by most people in spite of its admitted superiority in terms of religious performances. Many authors in the early years of independence predicted a reversal of the Soviet hierarchy in that the formerly colonized would try to suppress their former colonizers. Therefore, tensions between Russians and the various Muslim groups were soon to be expected (Bremmer 1994; Smith 1996; Gumppenberg 2000; Geiss 2003). It was thought that non-members of the titular nation would inevitably have to perceive themselves as second-class citizens. This was not to take place. In particular places like Kazakstan, which were believed to be highly endangered by such trends, there were no signs of a major drift among these population groups. On the contrary, the vast majority of the population still feels attached to the former Soviet Union and expresses sympathy for Russians today. Although the situation in Uzbekistan is characterized by more “indigenousization,” still Russia is not viewed as an enemy or a cultural alien but as an old friend who shares many of the problems and challenges of the present day.

Conclusion In this chapter I have tried to explain why the expected widespread fraternization of Central Asians with the peoples of Afghanistan has not occurred: neither in 1979 nor in 2001. In the case of the Uzbeks—presumed to be the most religious of the Turkic-speaking groups in the region—it was argued that part of the reason lay in a particular configuration of identity. In contrast to other Turkic groups in Central Asia it is not so much based on primordial concepts of genealogies and blood relationships but linked with local and regional attachment to the nation state as the largest extension of the same principle. A second point raised was the lack of identification with the umma as a transnational social entity. Solidarity with religious brethren is therefore of a low priority and this clearly affected the perception of the recent events in Afghanistan. While Islam serves as a basis for social demarcation (at least in certain respects), it does not translate into an encompassing social unity to which one feels committed. There is no idea of sharing a common culture with the Middle Eastern countries. If there is any largescale social world to which people feel attached beyond the state, it is still a vague post-Soviet entity that functions as a major point of reference. With the coming


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of years, however, this attachment supposedly is getting weaker as the younger generations have little personal experience with people from outside their own republic or the larger Central Asian framework. This may point to a few larger issues. For all too long Central Asian studies have been treated merely as a subfield of “Sovietology,” which does not give adequate reference to the history of the region. For scientists more familiar with Russia and Eastern Europe, the image of Central Asia may often provoke the idea of traditionalism and Islamic fundamentalism. On the other hand, it is equally misleading to think of Central Asia merely as an extension of the Middle East. The long years of Russian and Soviet rule had great impact on every aspect of society, and not all these aspects are rejected nowadays. In fact, for most people today the Golden Age is the Soviet Age (in particular the Brezhnev period), rather than a distant presocialist time when Islam ruled social life and cultural expressions. A second point to make is a more general one beyond disciplinary boundaries. Central Asia, rather than being a testing ground for the “clash of civilizations,” is an ideal place to study the shortcomings of this theory. Rather, the Central Asian societies should be regarded as being not in-between but both Soviet (or post-Soviet for that matter) and Middle Eastern. Most people in Central Asia would strongly reject the idea that there is an impassible barrier between their ways of life and that of Russians; and they would equally reject the idea that they are part of a cultural world that extends from Morocco to Pakistan or Indonesia, just because they are Muslims. On the contrary, they feel comfortable—to some degree—in both worlds, creatively adopting elements from both of these legacies in an attempt to restructure their lives after the fall of the socialist system.

Notes 1 Fieldwork in Uzbekistan was conducted between 2000 and 2004 as part of a larger collaborative research project with Meltem Sancak. I am grateful to the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology for its financial and intellectual support. 2 In this chapter the label Uzbek or Uzbekness refers to the ethnic identity of people, in contrast to the affiliation with the nation state, which, following a common pattern in the former Soviet republics, may be termed as Uzbekistanian. 3 Some authors believe this had been due mainly to the fact that the first units to enter Afghanistan were reservists. As the closest located region, naturally many Central Asians were among those. As soon as the intervention became more professionalized other units would take over (Bradsher 1983: 183 ff.; Grau 2004). 4 Cf. the reports and debates on internet sites as www.eurasianet.org and numerous others. 5 Personal communication with Franz Wennberg, November 2001, IFEAC, Tashkent. 6 The following account deals mainly with Uzbeks living in different parts of the former Soviet Union. While the underlying concepts of ethnic identity and solidarity may in the past have been rather similar north and south of the Amu Darya, this has changed in recent decades, as the Uzbeks in Afghanistan had not been exposed to the artificial process of national engineering. 7 The population of the oases at that time is often described as belonging to three different categories of people, namely Tajiks, Uzbeks (still semi-nomadic Turkic speakers), and Sart (in some regions indicating non-tribal Turks, in others a general term for sedentary settlers). The Uzbeks themselves were made up of those tribes that had arrived with the Shaybanid


Central Asian attitudes towards Afghanistan 73 “landnahme” in 1500, those that had been there before, and sedentary Turks without any tribal affiliation (presumably the descendants of Turkified Iranians) (Karmysheva 1969, 1976; Zhdanko 1978; Shanyazov 1978; Baldauf 1991; Fragner 1998). 8 The regional basis of identity is equally valid for Tajiks in and outside of Tajikistan where it accounts for a weakly developed idea of national unity by many authors believed to have been the ultimate reason for the civil war in the early 1990s (Atkin 1993; Chvyr 1993; Akbarzadeh 1996; Dudoignon 1996; Horsman 1999). 9 These included both pile sorts (in which informants were asked to group cards with the names of ethnic groups into units that seemed meaningful to them) and triads (where people were given lists of each three groups and had to pick the one that appeared least similar).

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Dudoignon, Stephane A. 1996. Communal Solidarity and Social Conflicts in Late 20th Century Central Asia: The Case of the Tajik Civil War. Tokyo: Islamic Area Studies Project. Dupree, Louis. 1973. Afghanistan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University. Fane, Daria. 1996. Ethnicity and Regionalism in Uzbekistan: Maintaining Stability Through Authoritarian Control. In: Leokadia Drobizheva (Ed.), Ethnic Conflict in the Post-Soviet World: Case Studies and Analysis. Armonk, NY: Sharpe. Fierman, William. 1991. Language Planning and National Development: the Uzbek Experience. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Finke, Peter. Forthcoming. Variations on Uzbek Identity: Concepts, Constraints, and Local Configurations. NY: Berghahn Books. Finke, Peter and Meltem Sancak. 2002. Tajiki. In: Alisher Ilkhamov (Ed.), Etnicheskij Atlas Uzbekistana. Tashkent: Institut “Otkrytoe Obshchestvo”–Fond Sodestvija. Fragner, Bert G. 1998. Tadjik: Historical Developments of the Term from Timurid Times Onwards. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam 10: 63–4. Leiden: Brill. Frye, Richard N. 1996. The Heritage of Central Asia: From Antiquity to the Turkish Expansion. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener. Galeotti, Mark. 1995. Afghanistan, the Soviet Union’s Last War. London: Frank Cass. Geiss, Paul G. 2003. Pre-Tsarist and Tsarist Central Asia: Communal Commitment and Political Order in Change. London: Routledge Curzon. Grau, Lester W. 2004. The Soviet-Afghan War: A Superpower Mired in the Mountains. The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 17(1): 129–52. Gross, Jo-Ann. 1992. Introduction: Approaches to the Problem of Identity Formation. In: Jo-Ann Gross (Ed.), Muslims in Central Asia: Expressions of Identity and Change. Durham: Duke University. Grötzbach, Erwin. 1972. Kulturgeographischer Wandel in Nordost Afghanistan seit dem 19. Jahrhundert. (Afghanische Studien, Band 4). Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hahn. Gumppenberg, Marie-Carin. 2000. Die sozioökonomische Entwicklung in Kasachstan: eine Gefahr für den jungen Nationalstaat? Köln: Bundesinstitut für Ostwissenschaftliche und Internationale Studien. Horsman, Stuart. 1999. The Tajik Minority in Contemporary Uzbekistani Politics. In: Karl Cordell (Ed.), Ethnicity and Democratization in the New Europe. London and New York: Routledge. Karmysheva, Bel’kis Khalilovna. 1969. Etnograficheskiye Ocherki Uzbekskogo Cel’skogo Naseleniya. Moskva: Nauka. —— 1976. Ocherki Etnicheskoy Istorii Yuzhnykh Rayonov Tadzhikistana i Uzbekistana: Po Etnograficheskim Dannym. Moskva: Nauka. Krader, Lawrence. 1963. Peoples of Central Asia. Bloomington: Indiana University. Lee, Jonathan L. 1996. The “Ancient Supremacy.” Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731—1901. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Liu, Morgan. 2002. Recognizing the Khan: Authority, Space, and Political Imagination among Uzbek Men in Post-Soviet Osh, Kyrgyzstan. PhD dissertation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Lubin, Nancy and Barnett R. Rubin. 1999. Calming the Ferghana Valley: Development and Dialogue in the Heart of Central Asia: Report of the Ferghana Valley Working Group of the Center for Preventive Action. New York: Century Foundation. Magnus, Ralph H. and Eden Naby. 1998. Afghanistan: Mullah, Marx, and Mujahid. Boulder: Westview. Manz, Beatrice F. 1994. Central Asia in Historical Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview.


Central Asian attitudes towards Afghanistan 75 Noelle, Christine. 1997. State and Tribe in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826–1863). Surrey: Richmond Curzon. Olcott, Martha Brill. 1996. Central Asia’s New States: Independence, Foreign Policy, and Regional Security. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace. Orywal, Erwin. 1983. Ethnische Gruppen des Vorderen Orients: Quellen und Kommentare zur Übersichtskarte A VIII 13 des “Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients.” Wiesbaden: Reichert. —— 1986. Die ethnischen Gruppen: Kurzcharakterisierung und ausgewählte Literatur zur Verbreitung. In: Erwin Orywal (Ed.), Die ethnischen Gruppen Afghanistans: Fallstudien zur Gruppenidentität und Intergruppenbeziehungen. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Rashid, Ahmed. 2002. Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia. New Haven: Yale University. Rasuly-Paleczek, Gabriele. 1998. Ethnic Identity versus Nationalism: the Uzbeks of North-Eastern Afghanistan and the Afghan State. In: Touraj Atabaki (Ed.), Post-Soviet Central Asia. London: Tauris Academic Studies. —— 2004. Frontiers, Hinterlands, Centers, Peripheries: Adaption to Changing Fortunes— the Uzbeks of Afghanistan. In: Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek and Julia Katschnig (Eds.), Central Asia on Display. Proceedings of the VII Conference of the European Society for Central Asian Studies. Vienna Central Asian Studies, Vol. 1. Vienna: LIT. Rywkin, Michael. 1982. Moscow’s Muslim Challenge: Soviet Central Asia. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Rzehak, Lutz. 2001. Vom Persischen zum Tadschikischen. Sprachliches Handeln und Sprachplanung in Transoxanien zwischen Tradition, Moderne und Sowjetmacht (1900–1956). Wiesbaden: Reichert. Sancak, Meltem and Peter Finke. 2005. Migration and Risk-Taking: A Case Study from Kazakstan. In: Lillian Trager (Ed.), Migration and Economy: Global and Local Dynamics. Society for Economic Anthropology Monographs. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira. Schetter, Conrad J. 2003. Ethnizität und ethnische Konflikte in Afghanistan. Berlin: Reimer. Schoeberlein-Engel, John S. 1994. Identity in Central Asia: Construction and Contention in the Conceptions of “Özbek,” “Tâjik,” “Muslim,” “Samarqandi” and Other Groups. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University. Shahrani, M. Nazif. 1979. The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan: Adaptation to Closed Frontiers. Seattle: University of Washington Press. —— 2002. War, Factionalism, and the State in Afghanistan. American Anthropologist 104(3): 715–22. Shalinsky, Audrey. 1994. Long Years of Exile: Central Asian Refugees in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Lanham, New York: University Press of America. Shanijazov, K. 1978. Early Elements in the Ethnogenesis of the Uzbeks. In: W. Weissleder (Ed.), The Nomadic Alternative: Modes and Models of Interaction in the African-Asian Deserts and Steppes. The Hague: Mouton. Smith, Graham. 1996. The Nationalities Question in the Post-Soviet States. London and New York: Longman. Soucek, Svatopluk. 2000. A History of Inner Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Szporluk, Roman. 1994. National Identity and Ethnicity in Russia and the New States of Eurasia. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Vaidyanath, R. 1967. The Formation of the Soviet Central Asian Republics: A Study in Soviet Nationalities Policy, 1917–1936. New Delhi: People’s Pub. House.


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Wheeler, Geoffrey. 1964. The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia. New York: Praeger. Zhdanko, Tatiana Aleksandrovna. 1978. Ethnic Communities with Survivals of Clan and Tribal Structure in Central Asia in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries. In: Wolfgang Weissleder (Ed.), The Nomadic Alternative: Modes and Models of Interaction in the African-Asian Deserts and Steppes. The Hague: Mouton. Zhumayev, A. 1992. Buxoro Boxasi Uzbek va Tozhiklarining An’anavii Urf-odat va Marosimalari. Buxoro: F. Xuzhayev Nomli Davlat Dorilfununi.


4

Alignment politics and factionalism among the Uzbeks of northeastern Afghanistan Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek

This chapter highlights the various forms of alignment policies and factionalism among the Qataghan Uzbeks, one of the major Uzbek tribal confederations residing in northeastern Afghanistan. Following some brief notes on the socio-political history of the region I shall focus on the strategies that the Uzbeks of northeastern Afghanistan have developed since their final subjugation by the Afghan state in 1888. Living in an area inhabited by a large number of different ethno-linguistic groups, the creation of inter-ethnic networks became one of the major strategies to defend local political interests against the Afghan state, which tried to establish a firmer control in the region. Until the communist coup d’état of 1978 it was in particular the former tribal leadership of the Uzbeks—once politically dominant in northeastern Afghanistan—that played a crucial role as intermediaries between the Afghan state and local society and as coordinators of numerous inter-ethnic alliances. More than two decades of war and civil war have, however, resulted in major alterations of the socio-political structure of the country. Among the most notable changes are the emergence of new types of leadership, e.g. the Mujahedin commanders, and the growing politicization and self-awareness of Afghanistan’s minority groups, such as the Hazaras and the Uzbeks. All this had repercussions on the formation of alignment networks and the interaction of the various ethno-linguistic groups at the local and national level, as well as on the role of political leaders.

The Qataghan Uzbeks of Northeastern Afghanistan1 The Qataghan Uzbeks are part of the numerous Turko-Mongolian tribes—later on to be known as Uzbeks—who since the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries began to immigrate in large numbers into northern Afghanistan and southern Central Asia (today’s Uzbekistan and Tajikistan).2 Today, most Qataghan Uzbeks live in villages and small towns located in the lowland plains south of the Amu Darya and on the left bank of the Kokcha-Darya (areas belonging to the Province of Takhar, Kunduz, and Baghlan in northeastern Afghanistan). Smaller groups of Qataghan Uzbeks are also found on the right bank of the Kokcha Darya and in the hilly country further to the east (being part of the Province of Takhar and the


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Province of Badakhshan).3 North of the Amu-Darya the Qataghan Uzbeks primarily live in the border region of southern Tajikistan.4 Unlike most other Uzbek groups living in Afghanistan (especially in the northwest), the Qataghan Uzbeks, as well as the other Uzbek and pre-Uzbek Turkic groups of northeastern Afghanistan, have retained some of their tribal traditions.5 Today’s Qataghan Uzbeks emerged out of a tribal confederation (currently only of limited political significance) that had been established in the eighteenth century by unifying a number of Uzbek groups under a joint leadership.6 Assuming descent from a common apical ancestor the Qataghan Uzbeks are divided into a number of hierarchically ranked segments and sub-groups—locally called uruq or tayfa.7 Each group is still labeled by a common group name (most often referring to the supposed ancestor of the specific group). The members of the various subgroups of the Qataghan Uzbeks are usually located in the same settlement, which sometimes bears the name of the respective sub-group.8 Despite close ties among the various segments and sub-groups (e.g. assumed common descent, manifold marriages and political alliances) each segment and group considers itself as a distinct group (locally called qawm).9 As of today the Qataghan Uzbeks do not possess a deep sense of unity.10 Likewise, their links with other Uzbek groups living in the region or in other parts of Afghanistan are rather loose.11 So far, the Afghan Uzbeks have not developed a profound sense of unity and have not merged into an Uzbek nation. It was only since the beginning of the 1990s that ethnicity gained momentum among them.12 Originally, pastoral nomads using the steppe plains on both sides of the Amu Darya as grazing lands for their flocks, the Qataghan Uzbeks became settled farmers, especially since the early-twentieth century when new irrigation schemes were implemented and former swamps and pastures were converted into agricultural lands. Like the majority of the agricultural producers in the lowland plains of northeastern Afghanistan, one of the most productive areas of the country before 1978, the Qataghan Uzbeks were integrated into the market economy in the 1940s and 1950s, earning their living from cotton production on irrigated plots and animal husbandry.13 As a consequence of war and civil war, however—in particular the military confrontations between the Taliban militias and the forces of the Northern Alliance in the late 1990s and early 2000s—most of the villages, fields, and irrigation systems have been destroyed, leading to a dramatic decline in agricultural production.14 Due to lack of resources and international aid the reconstruction efforts are proceeding only at a rather slow pace. The Qataghan Uzbeks of Afghanistan share their habitat with several other ethnic groups, mainly those of Iranian or Turkic origins, such as the Qarluqs, Qongrads, Moghuls, Tajiks, Hazaras, and Pashtuns.15 Some of these groups, e.g. the Qarluqs and the Tajiks, had been long-established in the region before being superseded by the invading Uzbek tribes and driven off to less fertile lands (e.g. to the mountainous regions of Badakhshan). Others, like the Pashtun settlers, the Central Asian refugees—both Turkic and Persian speaking groups (locally called Muhajirin, Yengi Geldi, Nargh-e Bet)—or the labor migrants from Badakhshan as well as from northwestern Afghanistan, came more recently.16 In general, the


Alignment politics and factionalism 79 villages are ethnically homogeneous. Sometimes several ethnic groups are living in the same community, one of them usually outnumbering the others.17 Whereas the relations with the Pashtun settlers and the Muhajirins are primarily structured according to political as well as ethno-linguistic criteria, the relations with the labor migrants are mainly determined by economic and regional criteria. As a consequence of increased market orientation of the agricultural sector, mainly cotton growing—that started after the Second World War and made supplemental labor (locally unavailable) necessary—large numbers of labor migrants, primarily Tajiks from the mountainous dry farming areas of Badakhshan, immigrated into the region.18 These migrants, originally employed as seasonal harvest hands (e.g. in cotton picking), gradually settled down in the fertile plains of northeastern Afghanistan. Usually they are attached to a specific household, for which they either work as sharecroppers (dehqani) or as farm laborers (yetim). As long as they are employed by a local household they are viewed as dependents. In regard to their ethnicity, regional criteria are applied, such as Rustaki or Badakhshani for labor migrants from Rustaq or Badakhshan. Like the Muhajirin, they are not regarded as local groups, for example the local Tajiks, but are considered as separate and distinct.

Qataghan Uzbek interaction with the Afghan state Until their final subjugation by the Afghan state in the late-nineteenth century, the Qataghan Uzbeks and their tribal leadership (the Amir of Kunduz, the Begs of the various tribes belonging to the confederation) represented the dominant political force in the lowlands of northeastern Afghanistan.19 Forming their own more or less independent chiefdom, the Emirate of Kunduz, the Qataghan Uzbeks ruled over a mixed population of Turkic and Persian speaking sedentary and nomadic groups.20 The Emirate of Kunduz itself was a loosely organized chiefdom in which particular members of the Qataghan Uzbeks—usually deriving from the highest ranked lineages of the various tribes making up the confederation—were perceived as a kind of nobility solely entitled to hold power, and dominated the political and military scene.21 The paramount chief of the whole Qataghan confederation acted as Amir of Kunduz. Together with his close relatives (brothers and sons) he ruled in the Emirate’s center (the city of Kunduz and its immediate surroundings), whereas the Emirate’s periphery was usually administered by the chiefs (locally called Begs) of the other tribes belonging to the confederation. These Begs provided the link between the Amir and the other tribesmen. They were granted large-scale autonomy in the conduct of the internal affairs of their respective groups, and represented the latter’s interests before the Amir of Kunduz, who summoned them regularly to report to him and to deliver the taxes and dues they had collected on his behalf. Next to that, the Begs were also obliged to maintain peace within their tribe and to contribute troops to the raids and warring activities of the Amir of Kunduz. In collaboration with the members of the religious establishment (the ulema) the Begs were also in charge of the administration of law (e.g. punishment of criminals) on behalf of


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the Amir of Kunduz. At the sub-tribal level, affairs were managed by a special group of men (locally called Moyzafid or Aqsaqal), who acted as representatives of kin groups (e.g. lineages) or villages.22 They were entitled to solve local conflicts (e.g. disputes over land and water) and had to organize social and other activities (e.g. irrigation works, wedding or burial ceremonies, etc.). Here the recruitment was not based on “noble descent” but rather on age, experience in solving conflicts, or organizational skills. Although the Emirate of Kunduz had already been annexed by the Afghan kings in the second half of the eighteenth century, the Qataghan Uzbeks were able to retain their political power and to enjoy virtual autonomy. Because the Afghan kings were militarily and economically too weak to directly interfere in local affairs they had to rely on the Qataghan Uzbeks’ tribal nobility (Amir and Begs) to collect taxes and to levy troops. The Qataghan Uzbeks, however, despite their official obligation to act as local representatives of the kings, pursued their own political ends. Notwithstanding the nominal suzerainty of the Afghan kings, the Amir of Kunduz, and the Begs remained powerful contestants of the Afghan influence. At times the Amirs and Begs of the Qataghan Uzbek were even able to expand their own sphere of influence, such as, for example, in the 1830s when Sultan Murad Beg, the then Amir of Kunduz, brought large parts of northeastern Afghanistan under his control and raided territories further to the south and north of his own legacy.23 The Qataghan Uzbek political system finally came to an end when Amir Abdur Rahman Khan (1880–1901) ascended the Afghan throne in the year 1880 and following his successful suppression of a local rebellion in 1888—in which the Amir of Kunduz and the Begs of the Qataghan Uzbeks participated—set about to firmly incorporate northeastern Afghanistan into the Afghan state.24 The subsequent centralization efforts of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan led to a dramatic change in the local socio-political framework as well as in the relations between the Qataghan Uzbeks and the Afghan state. The tribal leadership of the Qataghan Uzbeks (the Amir of Kunduz as well as the Begs of the various Qataghan Uzbek tribes) was deprived of its political independence and influence. Instead of being appointed as local representatives of the Afghan king (as had been the case in former periods) they were replaced by officials, mainly Pashtuns, who were sent from Kabul to directly administer the region. Their remaining political influence was now essentially restricted to local affairs (basically the village and sub-tribal level).25 At the same time they were forced to play the role of middlemen between their own group (e.g. villages, tribal sections, etc.) and the Afghan state. Following their final incorporation into the Afghan state and the emergence of a more centralized political system that favoured the Pashtuns over the other ethnic groups in the country, the Qatagan Uzbeks like many of the other minorities of the country became underprivileged in the political system of the Afghan state.26 Even more crucial than the political deprivation were the effects of the settlement of large numbers of Pashtun tribes (peasants as well as nomads) in northeastern Afghanistan, imported by the Afghan state to enlarge its control in the region. Contrary to the period before 1888, when the Pashtuns—with


Alignment politics and factionalism 81 the exception of a few civil servants and soldiers—had seldom settled down permanently in the region, large numbers of Pashtuns were now transferred north of the Hindu Kush, primarily in two waves (after 1888 and in the 1930s). Provided with numerous privileges and support measures (e.g. allotment of land, especially irrigation plots and pastures, that had been taken away from their former owners, e.g. the Qataghan Uzbek; preferential treatment in all land distribution programmes and infrastructural improvements), these Pashtuns, mainly tribal groups from southern and southeastern Afghanistan, were now settled in the region.27 This settlement policy—often termed internal colonization or Pashtunization— not only led to far-reaching changes in the composition of the population (e.g. a numerical dominance of the Pashtuns in certain areas, such as in the Dasht-i Archi in the province of Takhar), but similarly provoked alterations in the inter-ethnic relations and in local politics. In addition, the influx of these Pashtun settlers put the indigenous population under severe economic pressures as the economically most profitable land was given to these newcomers.28 Furthermore, northern Afghanistan, especially the fertile plains of northeastern Afghanistan and the city of Kunduz, were closely drawn into the market economy and became major centers of agrarian and industrial production, in particular cotton production and animal husbandry.29 Until the beginning of the war in Afghanistan the region provided a substantial amount of the government’s tax and foreign exchange income.30 However, despite the region’s importance for the Afghan economy, public investment as well as foreign development aid projects remained at a low level and focused mainly on measures for further Pashtun settlements in the region.31 In comparison to other parts of the country, modern educational and medical facilities were provided to a limited extent and were implemented rather late—not before the late 1950s.32 In this it was often Pashtun villages that got access to these facilities first.33 Yet, the Qataghan Uzbeks were not only neglected in the Afghan government’s activities of improving the country’s infrastructures, but were also disadvantaged in public employment, a sector dominated by the Pashtuns and the Tajiks.34 Deprived of major excess to public employment (e.g. army and administration) most Uzbeks gained a living as farmers, artisans, tradesmen and workers in cotton mills. Thus, the Uzbeks like many other ethno-linguistic groups remained a marginal group in terms of education, socio-economic standing and political position with only limited upward mobility chances. It was as late as the collapse of the communist regime in 1992 that the Uzbeks—due to the decisive contribution of General Dostum to the victory of the Mujahedin and due to his military strength and cunning policies—remerged as an eminent factor in Afghan national politics and started to demand equalization within Afghan society and their proper share in the national power structure.35 At the same time a greater sense of a collective Uzbek identity emerged among the various Uzbek groups of Afghanistan.36

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Uzbek reactions to the new centralization Confronted with a gradually expanding state administration and a constant influx of Pashtun settlers that were sent to the region by the Afghan government and were granted extensive usufruct rights in agricultural and grazing lands—thus endangering the resource basis of the local population—the Qataghan Uzbeks reacted by focusing on two aims: on the one hand, neutralizing the influence of the Afghan state and its local agencies (e.g. administration, courts, police, and military personnel); on the other, developing viable strategies against the increasing number of Pashtun settlers that kept pouring into the settlement area of the Qataghan Uzbeks. In their reactions the Qataghan Uzbeks were strongly influenced by their historical experiences with the Afghan state. As military resistance had proven counterproductive (cf. aftermath of the rebellion of 1888 and turmoil in 1928/9), leading among other things to the settlement of even more Pashtuns in the region (e.g. in the early 1930s), the only remaining alternative was to seek peaceful cooperation with the Afghan state and to attempt to manipulate state institutions at the local level for their own interests. The political leadership of the Qataghan Uzbeks—the former Begs, now called Moyzafid-e Qawm to underline the break with the past—played a crucial role in this as intermediaries and middlemen for both the Afghan state and for the local society (e.g. their own village, sub-tribe or qawm).37 Until their dismissal by the communist regime in 1978, which also persecuted them, the political activities of the Begs/Moyzifids focused on defending their tribal and local interests and on acting as mediators in conflicts between the representatives of the Afghan government in the region (e.g. governor, military commander) or as go-betweens in disputes (e.g. over land and water) with other villages or other ethnic groups. Mediation in conflicts over vital agricultural resources became increasingly important owing to demographic pressures—created by high birth rates and the large influx of new settlers (mainly Pashtuns, often brought in by the Afghan government, but also labor migrations from other areas)—a fierce competition over land and water resources had evolved.38 This in turn led to enhanced tensions between the various groups living in the region, e.g. Qataghan Uzbeks and other old-established setters versus newly arriving Pashtun peasants and nomads, who were of course favored by state officials. Besides mediating in local conflicts the Begs/Moyzafids played a leading role in defending the interests of the local population against the new Pashtun settlers.39 Next to that the Begs/Moyzafid-e Qawms also acted as brokers and defenders of tribal and local interests versus the central government and local officials. Using their close ties with the representatives of the government—who were only assigned to the region for short periods and thus dependent on the them for information and support— the Qataghan Uzbek Moyzafids and Begs tried to neutralize the local influence of the Afghan state. By manipulating the local representatives of the central government (e.g. the governor) or by skillfully bypassing state institutions, they tried to counteract the state’s efforts to penetrate society with its institutions.40 And of course they tried to negotiate favorable conditions for their own group and for themselves.41


Alignment politics and factionalism 83 One of the major strategies used to defend these interests was the creation of new alliances at the local level, primarily between groups threatened by the new Pashtun settlers.42 Thus, the formerly politically dominant Qataghan Uzbeks entered into an alliance with groups they had subjugated before, such as the Qarluqs and Tadzhiks.43 These alliances, however, where not restricted to non-Pashtun groups. In some cases they also included earlier Pashtun settlers, who affiliated themselves with the non-Pashtuns against other newly arriving Pashtun groups.44 In the process of creating these inter-ethnic alliances the Begs/ Moyzafid-e Qawm of the Qataghan Uzbeks played a prominent role in mobilizing people to join these alliances, thereby attaching a new importance to their role as representatives of their respective groups. Under these conditions the Begs/Moyzafid-e Qawms not only represented their own tribe or sub-tribe, but also acted as spokesmen of the alliances that had been created by them. Given their reputation as successful brokers and defenders of tribal interests, and their fame as skilled mediators in local conflicts as well as in disputes with the representatives of the Afghan state, plus their elevated economic position owing to their ability to provide the financial means to secure the alliance, the Begs/Moyzafid-e Qawms became strategic to the formation of local alliances.45 These inter-ethnic alliances—which increasingly transcended traditional forms of cooperation—also had an impact on the formulation of local identities. Although the various Qataghan Uzbek communities considered themselves distinct groups in terms of language, customary practices, costumes, etc., they developed a sense of closeness with their non-Uzbek allies versus the Pashtuns that were considered “intruders.”46 Through many confrontations with the Pashtuns the local Uzbeks and Tajiks, and others allied with them, came to understand themselves as a single temporary social entity (that is a “qawm”). Thus, the formation of these inter-ethnic alliances also had repercussions on the local perception of and the discourses on collective identities and provoked alterations of the meaning of the term qawm.47 Initially, the term qawm, as used by the Qataghan Uzbeks, referred to the immediate kin group, the respective sub-tribe or tribe that the individual Qataghan Uzbek belonged to, and in a wider context (e.g. versus other Uzbek groups and other ethno-linguistic groups, such as the Qarluq, Arabs, Tajiks, or Pashtuns) to the Qataghan Uzbek confederation as a whole. Under the conditions of intensified political and economic competition the term qawm now acquired an increasingly broad significance, to include not only the immediate kin group, tribe, or the confederation, but also members of other ethno-linguistic groups belonging to the same alliance. At the same time the inter-ethnic alliances also influenced the elements usually considered crucial for defining the identify of the Qatagan Uzbeks and other alliance members. In the interactions with the Pashtuns the existing linguistic and other differences were usually employed to mark the differences between the various ethno-linguistic groups and so to indicate the distinction between “locals” and “intruders.” As most Uzbeks are bilingual (especially the males, who dominate the political discourses), language did not constitute a problem in these


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alliances. Furthermore, due to their long coexistence in the region the various ethno-linguistic groups (above all the Uzbeks, Qarluqs, and Tajiks) had mutually influenced each other. Although the Qataghan Uzbeks of northeastern Afghanistan generally realized their underprivileged position within Afghan society, the political discourse at the local level did not focus on demands for national rights (e.g. public acknowledgement of their culture and language). The alliances that were established primarily targeted neutralizing the influence of the state and counteracting the encroachment by the Pashtun settlers. Through these alliances the Uzbeks sought to make themselves key among the linkages with Tajiks, Qarluqs, Arabs, etc. to form the indigenous networks, and to promote their own interests and demands for sociopolitical and cultural rights on the national scene. Their main concern was to keep state influence as weak as possible at the local level and at the same time to secure their own prominence in the struggle against the Pashtuns. These local associations were, however, unstable so the Begs/Moyzafid leaders actively sought clients. In fact they competed among themselves for clients by establishing themselves as key representatives of the local community to government officials, and by cultivating special relations with those officials.48 They hosted officials stationed in their area and lavished gifts on them in order to create bonds of obligation that could be capitalized on in times of necessity. The Qataghan Uzbek Begs also sought to place their own people in the government’s local administrative system. Although the Beg remained in the background, whenever possible he placed members of his own family (sons, brothers, nephews, sons-in law) in key positions of influence, such as the office of Aq Saqal, a local position, to the provincial and national positions (that is, as Uluswali [subgovernor], Wali [governor], Kasandar and Wakil [parliamentary representative]). The Begs and their families also attempted to influence the deliberations of the Maslahats (local councils),49 and to manipulate the election of an Arbab (a kind of village headman).50 Besides securing the support of allies and recruiting clients in their alliance by stressing their primary role as brokers and defenders of local interests against the state and its local agencies, the Begs sought to mediate conflicts among their own kinsmen and between their kinsmen and the Pashtun settlers. Besides these strategies, they skillfully engineered marital links (endogamous as well as exogamous marriages). Polygyny and reciprocal marriages (locally called “Qarch Quda”) played, as in the past, an important role in creating and reaffirming networks of people. These links, however, now ranged from marriage arrangements with close kinsmen to other Uzbeks and even to members of other ethno-linguistic groups.51 Finally, patron–client relationships constituted an important means to recruit and to secure a following. Contrary to the past, when the distribution of booty acquired in raids (locally called alamans) and the presentation of gifts had been employed to pay off submission and support of their co-tribesmen, the Begs now made use of the growing economic stratification that had emerged as a consequence of the commercialization of agriculture (especially in cotton production).52 Supported by the Afghan state, which did not curtail their economic position, the


Alignment politics and factionalism 85 leadership of the Qataghan Uzbeks (that is, the Amir of Kunduz and the Begs of the various Qataghan Uzbek tribes, as well as some of the other rurally based groups), gradually transformed themselves into an economically elevated stratum. With the integration of the region into the market economy the Begs and their kinsmen began to monopolize the bazaar trade and the credit operations, which in turn helped them to establish patron–client relationships. However, as the obligation to redistribute some of the accumulated wealth and to support impoverished co-tribesmen and other individuals belonging to the alliance remained valid, these patron–client relations were not strictly exploitative in character.53 In the end it was generosity—in addition to almsgiving and the sponsorship of elaborate festivities (e.g. Buzkashi)—that created a following.54 It was this lavish distribution of economic resources in particular which—next to their role as brokers and mediators—established a Beg’s reputation and helped him to create a name for himself. And reputation in turn drew more people to the Beg and enabled him to enlarge and secure his network of alliances, or as Whittney Azoy pointed out in his book Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan, “Thus a man with a name is a man with a qawm.”55 With the communist coup d’état in 1978 and the subsequent Soviet invasion the Begs/Moyzafids were exposed to severe suppression by the new government and lost their position as middlemen between the state and the local Qataghan Uzbek communities. Furthermore, as most of the former Begs and Moyzafids had either been executed by the communist regime or had fled abroad, the traditional elite of the Qataghan Uzbeks—with few exceptions—could no longer play a major role in the resistance movement. Among the Mujahedin it was mainly young, educated men—often of modest origins—that became leading figures.56 Similarly, the former existing alliances which had united the Qataghan Uzbeks with other ethno-linguistic groups against the Pashtun settlers were transformed into new political formations aimed at organizing the resistance activities. Ethnicity never regained its importance among the former Mujahedin after the Soviet war was over; it was allegiance to a particular commander, or membership in a specific Muhajedin party, that united the Mujahedin in the 1990s. Yet, in the course of time, especially after 1992, social alliances began to resemble to the ethnic alliances of the past. Since the breakdown of the Taliban regime in 2001 the policies of the Qataghan Uzbeks are now influenced by two, somewhat contradictory approaches. On the one hand, like all other minority groups, they demand their fair share in the new power structure, at the provincial as well as the national level. On the other hand, they are aware that ethnic politics can prove counterproductive, leading to violence and destruction, especially in multi-ethnic areas like northeastern Afghanistan. In the mid 1990s, when ethnicity gained momentum in the region, a large number of clashes between various groups occurred, eventually resulting in the takeover of vast areas of northeastern Afghanistan by the Taliban in the summer of 2000. This in turn led to the destruction of most villages in the region, forcing tens of thousands of local people, mainly Uzbeks, Qarluqs, and Tajiks, to take refuge in other parts of Afghanistan or in Pakistan.57 Since then most of the people have returned to the region and have started to rebuild their villages.


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Today, many former Mujahedin commanders still play a prominent role in local politics, in particular, those that do not have a record of committing crimes and of using their arms to acquire land, women, or other resources—the commanders who still possess the support of the people. They have transformed themselves into local politicians and are engaged in organizing the rehabilitation of the local infrastructure and in providing security to the local population and to the NGOs working in the area. Besides the commanders, some of the former political elite have also re-entered the political sphere, especially in places where the Mujahedin commanders have lost the support of the local population. Needing political leaders that work for the people, the local population turns to members of the families that had provided leadership in the past. Profiting from their long experience as leaders and their reputation for working for the good of the people, the sons or grandsons of the former Begs/Moyzafid have surfaced as new leaders. Several members of these families are at present working in the local administration or have been campaigning in the recent parliament elections to serve as representatives of northeastern Afghanistan.58

Conclusion An assessment of the reactions of the Qataghan Uzbeks of northeastern Afghanistan to the centralization and nation-building process that has taken place during the past decades reveals that the Qataghan Uzbeks in their initial reactions focused more on local than national affairs. Led by members of their traditional elite (Begs and Moyzafids), they concentrated on keeping the influence of the state as weak as possible on the local level (in the village, tribe, etc.) and on developing viable strategies (e.g. formation of cross-ethno-linguistic alliances with the Tajiks, Qarluqs, Arabs, etc.) for opposing the advancement of the state supported Pashtun settlers. Like other minority groups (e.g. Hazaras), who have likewise been exposed to suppression and deprivation in the course of the centralization and nation-building process of the Afghan state, the Qataghan Uzbeks responded rather late (only since the late 1980s or early 1990s) to their minority status on a national level. This late reaction of the Qataghan Uzbeks to their marginal position within the Afghan state was due to various reasons. First, the Qataghan Uzbeks had neither developed a common identity that would embrace the various Uzbek groups (such as the Pashtuns with their collective genealogy and the Pashtunwali), and second, nor did they produce a political elite that would demand equal socio-economic and cultural rights for all the Uzbeks of the country. It was only after the establishment of the Islamic State of Afghanistan in 1992 that Uzbek ethnic identity became a force of politics. The collapse of the communist regime and the subsequent civil war not only led to further destruction, but also provoked violent confrontations between the various ethnic groups. In this constant battle for power and influence the previously marginal groups, such as the Uzbeks and the Hazaras, became increasingly politicized


Alignment politics and factionalism 87 and gained political and military importance. As for the Qataghan Uzbeks—as well as for the other Uzbek groups of Afghanistan—these developments led to alterations in their self-representation and identity construction leading to a stronger sense of Uzbek ethnic consciousness. Contrary to former times, when the Uzbeks denied their origin and tried to conceal their ethnic affiliation and language—especially when being outside of their home region—they no longer refer to themselves as, for example, “people from the north,” but represent themselves proudly as Uzbeks. Likewise, a new interest in the Uzbek language is developing. The growing importance of Uzbekness also became manifest in the emergence of a collective sense of unity among the Uzbeks of the country generally, who, until the early 1990s, did not perceive themselves as a united ethnic group. Currently, most Uzbek groups in Afghanistan are developing a new identity, which, as in the case of the Qataghan Uzbeks of northeastern Afghanistan, spans their rather narrowly defined group distinctions (qawm) and increasingly includes other Uzbek groups as well. Consequently, in the nationwide political context and in the discourse with other ethnic groups the term qawm has acquired a more encompassing significance. Besides meaning a person’s kin group, sub-tribe, tribe, or the member of inter-ethnic alliances, the term qawm now increasingly refers to all Uzbeks of Afghanistan. This enlarged concept of membership in the qawm is also visible in the responses of Qataghan Uzbeks to questions about membership in specific tribal groups or sub-tribal groups. Many of my informants were of the opinion that membership in a particular tribe or subtribe is irrelevant as “we are all one” (hamamiz bir). In contrast to this growing sense of unity and the associated reconceptualization of membership in the qawm, which is now stressing Uzbek ethnicity, the former connections with non-Uzbeks (e.g. Tajiks, Qarluqs, Arabs) in the local qawm has sharply declined, creating a strong antagonism between the formerly allied ethno-linguistic groups at the local level. However, despite the enhanced ethnic consciousness of the Uzbeks and the conflictual nature of their relationship with non-Uzbek groups—above all with the Tajiks—and the splitting up of the various Mujahedin factions along ethnic lines (during the 1990s), a movement promoting Uzbek nationalism and irredentism has not yet emerged. Until today political mobilization and enforced ethnic consciousness have solely led to a strong call for an acknowledgement of their political and cultural rights and for a fair share in the field of national politics. With regard to local politics, ethnicity—often highlighted by Western scholars as the driving force of Afghan politics—does not play a key role.59 Despite the history of the mass destruction and heavy human losses during the late 1990s and early 2000s owing to the dominance of ethnic politics, today most Qataghan Uzbeks are convinced that in order to achieve a stable peace, cooperation between the various groups in the region is indispensable.

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Notes 1 References on the Qataghan Uzbeks are primarily based on my own field research among refugees from northeastern Afghanistan in Pakistan (winter/spring 1991 and 1992) and in Turkey (September 1991) as well as on private communications since then. Additional information was gathered in the course of archival studies in the India Office Library (spring 1992) in London. In the following the term “Afghans” refers to the citizens of the Afghan state as a whole and not, as is often the case in daily debates, to the “Pashtuns.” Re: Pashtun and Afghan are considered as synonymous terms cf. Richard Tapper (1984: 239), Vercellin (1988: 222, 224), Pstrusinska (1990: 27). 2 Cf. Lee (1996), Allworth (1990), and Nölle (1997). 3 Cf. Adamec (1972: 95) and the map of the provinces of Takhar and Kunduz in his appendix. Koshkaki (1979: 67), Centlivres (1975: 29, 35). 4 Until the collapse of the communist regime there were no contacts between the Qataghan Uzbeks on both sides of the Amu Darya. Re: Qataghan Uzbeks in today’s Tajikistan cf. Karmysheva (1976). 5 According to Richard Tapper (1984: 233) the Uzbeks of northwestern Afghanistan have completely lost their tribal affiliations. 6 Lord (1839). 7 For details cf. Lord (1839) and Rasuly-Paleczek (1999a). The terms “urugh” and “taifa” are ambiguous and are used to designate without proper distinction of levels of segmentation within the tribe any level of the tribal structure. Thus the terms “urugh” and “tayfa” refer to the totality of all Uzbek tribes, as well as to the Qataghan Uzbeks and their various segments and sub-groups. 8 Adamec (1972), Lord (1839). 9 Within the Afghan context the term “qawm” has a large variety of meanings and is used to denominate various social groups. “Among its connotations are ‘ethnic group’ and ‘tribe,’ but it can be both broader and narrower than these: not merely ‘nation’ but also descent groups and their subdivisions down to the family, and linguistic, regional and occupational, groups, sects, castes. Perhaps most often it implies linguistic and/or tribal identity” (Richard Tapper 1984: 27; cf. Canfield (1987 and 1988). 10 Rasuly-Paleczek (1998, 1999b, 2001b). 11 Together with the many other Uzbek groups in the country the Qataghan Uzbeks represent one of the major segments of Afghanistan’s multi-ethnic and multi-lingual population accounting for roughly 10 percent of the total population in the late 1970s. In total there are some 0.76 million to 1.7 million Uzbeks living in Afghanistan. The Uzbeks represent the largest of the many Turkic groups of the country. The main settlement area of the Afghan Uzbeks lies in northern Afghanistan, more precisely in the Provinces of Fariyab, Jozjan, Balkh, Samangan, Kunduz, and Baghlan, where they constitute the majority or plurality of the population thus living in close proximity to other ethno-linguistic groups such as the Tajik, Pashtun, Turkmen, and Arabs to mention just the most important ones. Cf. Pstrusinska (1990: 3–17), Orywal (1986: 23 ff.), Grötzbach (1990: 68, 74), Montgomery (1979: 159 ff.), Naby (1984: 3), Jarring (1939). Smaller groups of Uzbeks are located in cities like Kabul, Qandahar, Herat, and Laskargah, where they either came as a consequence of Amir Abdurrahman’s deportation policies that followed the defeat of their rebellion in 1888 or due to labor migration in more recent times. Cf. Balland (1976: 211, 220 ff.), Naby (1984: 3, note 11), Richard Tapper (1984: 237), Orywal (1986: 23 ff.). 12 Cf. Roy (1992) and Rasuly-Paleczek (1998, 2001b). 13 Grötzbach (1972: 126–37), Centlivres (1976: 259, 263 ff.), Centlivres-Demont (1976: 273) 14 For details cf. Rasuly-Paleczek (2001a). 15 Centlivres (1975), Jarring (1939: 13–35), Grötzbach (1972: 85–98).


Alignment politics and factionalism 89 16 Grötzbach 1972: 55 ff., 64–9, 93–6; Centlivres and Centlivres-Demont 1983). With regard to the Pashtun immigrants it has to been mentioned that a small influx of Pashtuns—primarily administrative and military personell—occurred already in the nineteenth century. 17 Cf. Centlivres (1975: S.28–37), Adamec (1972: 94–6 ff., Table II), Jarring (1939: 13–35), Koshkaki (1979), Grötzbach (1972: S.85–98), Orywal (1986: 18–73; 1983). With the exception of the inter-ethnic relations in Rustaq, Dascht-e Qala, Darqat, and Yang-e Qala (Province of Takhar), no detailed study has, according to my knowledge, been undertaken yet in the region, cf. Centlivres-Demont (1976). 18 Grötzbach (1972: 64–9, 88). 19 In the former Uzbek chiefdoms the governors of provinces or sub-districts as well as the nobility of the Uzbek tribes were called Begs. When the traditional political system of the Uzbeks ceased to exist due to the latter’s integration into the Afghan state the title Beg was replaced by the term Moyzafid-e Qawm. 20 Cf. Lee (1996), Nöelle (1997). For details on the Qataghan Uzbeks cf. Lord (1839) and Rasuly-Paleczek (1993, 1994a, 1994b, 1996, 1998, 1999a, 1999b, 2001b, 2004). 21 Cf. Wood (1872: 138 ff., 155), Lord (1839), Koshkaki (1979: esp. IV ff., 8–15), Adamec (1972: 9 ff., 94 and 1979: 18–36). 22 To distinguish the Moyzafid from the Beg/Moyzafid-e Qawm the former were later on called “Moyzafid-e Qeshlaq.” 23 Cf. Wood (1872: 138 ff., 155), Lord (1839), Koshkaki (1979: esp. IV, 8–15), Adamec (1972: S.9 ff., 94; 1979: 18–36), Grevemeyer (1982: 41–56; 1987: 39–53, 82), Grötzbach (1972: 52 ff.). 24 Ishaq Khan—a cousin of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan—had acted as the Amir’s governor in northeastern Afghanistan since 1880 when Abdur Rahman Khan became Amir of Afghanistan. However, Ishaq Khan allied himself with the former Amir of Kunduz and other Uzbek notables and instigated a revolt again the Kabul Amir. For details cf. Grevemeyer (1984). After Amir Abdur Rahman Khan had defeated the rebels, Ishaq Khan, the Amir of Kunduz as well as many of the Uzbek tribal leaders and large numbers of ordinary Uzbek tribesmen, fearing the revenge of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan, fled across the Amu Darya into the then still existing Emirate of Bukhara. Some of these refugees returned to Afghanistan after the establishment of the Soviet Union. For details cf. Rasuly-Paleczek (1993). 25 Grevemeyer (1987: 59–65); Rasuly-Paleczek (1993). 26 Shahrani (1990: 45). 27 Cf. Centlivres (1976: 257 ff., 261 ff., 263 ff.); Centlivres-Demont (1976: 272 ff.); Grötzbach (1972: 56, 67 ff., 82, 94 ff.); Adamec (1972: 7, 96); Tapper (1983); Roy (1992: 74). On support for Pashtun settlers cf. Grötzbach (1972: 65, 97 ff.); Centlivres-Demont (1976: 273). 28 Large tracks of land belonging to the local population had been confiscated by the Afghan state after the subjugation of Ishaq Khan’s rebellion and had remained in the hands of the state (Naby 1984: 8; Montgomery 1979: 160; Grötzbach 1990: 399, Table 28; Roy 1992: 74 ff.). 29 Cf. Grötzbach (1972: 126–37; 1990), Centlivres (1976: 259, 263 ff.), CentlivresDemont (1976: 273), Barfield (1981). 30 Grötzbach (1972; 1990). 31 Shahrani (1979: 183 ff.), Newell (1987: 112). 32 Cf. Shahrani (1979: 183 ff.), Montgomery (1979: 162 ff.). 33 The first public elementary school in the Dasht-e Archi area in northeastern Afghanistan was opened in a Pashtun village. (Personal information from the Arbab of one of the Qataghan Uzbek sub-tribes, February 1989.) 34 Shahrani (1979: 181), Montgomery (1979: 161). As for public employment, here the Pashtuns were dominating in the army and the high level bureaucracy, whereas the Tajiks represented the majority of the middle and low level administrative staff.

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35 36 37 38

39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50

51 52 53

54

Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek Roy (1992), Rasuly-Paleczek (1998, 2001b), Fänge (1995). Rasuly-Paleczek (2001b). Grevemeyer (1987: 59–65); Rasuly-Paleczek (1993). Since the late-nineteenth century successive Afghan governments transferred large numbers of Pashtun tribesmen (peasants as well as nomads) north of the Hindu Kush, primarily in two waves (after 1888 and in the 1930s). Provided with numerous privileges and other support (that is, in the allotment of land, especially irrigation plots and pastures, that had been taken away from their former owners, the indigenous Uzbek population; also in preferential treatment in the land distribution programmes and infrastructural improvements), these Pashtuns were also settled in northeastern Afghanistan. Cf. Centlivres (1976: 257 ff., 261, 263 ff.), Centlivres-Demont (1976: 272 ff.), Grötzbach (1972: 56, 67 ff., 82, 94 ff.), Adamec (1972: 7, 96), Tapper (1983), Roy (1992: 74). On support for Pashtun settlers cf. Grötzbach (1972: 65, 97 ff.); Centlivres-Demont (1976: 273). Montgomery (1979: 164); Roy (1992: 75). One of the strategies of the Begs/Moyzafid-e Qawms used to neutralize the Afghan state’s influence at the local level referred to the creation of close links of friendship with the ruling governmental elite (e.g. by acting as host to the local representatives of the Afghan state, e.g. the governor, or by giving lavish gifts to them). For details cf. Rasuly-Paleczek (1994a, 1994b and 1996). Rasuly-Paleczek (1994a, 1994b). Montgomery (1979: 164), Roy (1992: 75). For details cf. Roy (1992: 74), Centlivres-Demont (1976: 237), Shalinsky (1986: 300), Grötzbach (1972: 65, 96 ff.) and Rasuly-Paleczek (1994a: 201, note 41). Roy (1992: 74), Centlivres-Demont (1976: 237), Shalinsky (1986: 300), Grötzbach (1972: 65, 96 ff.), Rasuly-Paleczek (1994a: 201, note 41) In creating and reconfirming alliances and political support the redistribution of resources, generosity, etc., stills plays an important role in/for winning and re-establishing political support. For details cf. Rasuly-Paleczek (1998; 2001b). For details cf. Rasuly-Paleczek (2001b). for details cf. Rasuly-Paleczek (1994b). Maslahat is a meeting of household heads, Aq Saqals etc. to solve conflicts (e.g. disputes over land and water) or to organize community activities (e.g. irrigation works, wedding and burial celebrations etc.). The rank of the participants in the maslahat and its composition depend on the level of conflict or the scale of the problem. In its present form the institution of the arbab seems to have been introduced around 1921. Usually each qawm elects its own arbab. However, contrary to the aq saqal the election of an arbab has to be confirmed by the provincial governor who can veto the election. Among the responsibilities of the arbab are the following tasks: tax collection, recruitment of soldiers, organization of public works, etc. Many of the arbab’s obligations (e.g. collecting taxes, sending local recruits to join the army, organizing local activitites, etc.) correspond significantly with the tasks of the Aqsaqals/ Moyzafid-e Qeshlaqs. For details cf. Centlivres and Centlivres-Demont (1988), Grevemeyer (1987: 61 ff.) Contrary to most other ethnic groups, the Pashtuns usually do not give their daughters in marriage to non-Pashtuns. The introduction of cotton production in the 1920s led to extensive changes in the land use and tenure patterns. Furthermore, cotton production opened the region for market economy and industrialization. Grevemeyer (1980: 144, 153 ff., 158–62, 167 ff.; 1987: 59, 65, 68, 70, 76); Holzwarth (1980: 218–25). To describe this relationship Holzwarth uses the expression asymmetrical institutionalized structures of redistribution (orig. asymmetrische institutionalisierte Verteilungsstrukturen). Grevemeyer (1980: 158 ff.), Holzwarth (1980: 219, 226).

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55 56 57 58

Azoy (1982: 42). Cf. Grevemeyer (1989). For details cf. Rasuly-Paleczek (2001a). Personal communication with members of the former leading families as of August 2005. 59 Cf. Schetter (2004). For a critique on this assumption cf. Barfield in this volume and 2005.

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Alignment politics and factionalism 93 Nöelle, Christine. 1997. State and Tribe in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan. The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826—1863). Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. Orywal, Erwin. 1983. Verbreitungskarte der etnischen Gruppen Afghanistans. TAVO-Blatt A VIII/6. Wiesbaden: Reichert. —— 1986. Die ethnischen Gruppen: Kurzcharakterisierung und ausgewählte Literatur zur Verbreitung. In: Erwin Orywal (Ed.), Die Ethnischen Gruppen Afghanistans: Fallstudien zur Gruppenidentität und Intergruppenbeziehungen. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Pstrusinska, Jadwiga. 1990. Afghanistan 1989 in Sociolinguistic Perspective. Central Asian Survey Incidental Papers Series No.7. London: Society for Central Asian Studies. Rasuly-Paleczek, Gabriele. 1993. Beg, Moyzafid und Arbab: Das Politische System der Chechka-Uzbeken und der Afghanische Zentralstaat. In: André Gingrich, Sylvia M. Haas, Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek, and T. Fillitz (Eds.), Culture, History and Power. Studies in Oriental Society. Festschrift for Prof. Dr. Walter Dostal on the Occasion of his 65th Anniversary. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation. —— 1994a. Verwandtschaft und Heirat als Mittel zur Festigung von Macht und Einfluß: Ein Fallbeispiel aus Nordost-Afghanistan. In: Bert G. Fragner and B. Hoffmann (Eds.), Bamberger Mittelasien Studien, Konferenzakten Bamberg 15.-16.1990. (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, Band 149) Berlin: Karl Schwarz. —— 1994b. Kinship and Politics Among the Uzbeks of Northeastern Afghanistan. In: Ingeborg Baldauf and Michael Friederich (Eds.), Bamberger Zentralasienstudien, Konferenzakten ESCAS IV, Bamberg 8.-12. Oktober 1991. (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, Band 185). Berlin: Klaus Schwarz. —— 1996. Widerstand und Vermittlung: Lokale Herrschaft und Staatliche Politik in Afghanistan. In: Franz Kolland, Erich Pilz, Andreas Schedler, and Walter Schicho (Eds.), Staat und Zivile Gesellschaft: Beiträge zur Entwicklungspolitik in Afrika, Asien und Lateinamerika. (Historische Sozialkunde, Vol. 8). Frankfurt am Main: Brandes and Apsel. —— 1998. Ethnic Identity versus Nationalism: The Uzbeks of Afghanistan and the Afghan State. In: Touraj Atabaki and John O’Kane (Eds.), Post-Soviet Central Asia. London, New York, Leiden, Amsterdam: I.B. Tauris and The International Institute for Asian Studies. —— 1999a. Tribe and State: The Afghan and Central Asian Example. In: Zmago Šmitek and Rajko Muršič (Eds.), MESS Mediterranean Ethnological Summer School, Vol. 3, Piran/Pirano, Slovenjia 1997 and 1998. Ljubljana: Županjčeva knjižnica. —— 1999b. Kollektive Identitäten und Ihre Transformationen am Beispiel Afghanistans (Collective Identities and their Transformations: the Afghan Case). Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 129: 175–87. —— 2001a. Afghanische Flüchtlinge—von der Welt vergessen. Asylkoordination Aktuell 1: 27–40. —— 2001b. The Struggle for the Afghan State: Centralization, Nationalism and Their Discontents. In: Willem van Schendel and Eric J. Zurcher (Eds.), Identity Politics in Central Asia and Muslim World, Nationalism, Ethnicity and Labor in the 20th Century. London: I.B. Tauris. —— 2004. Frontiers, Hinterlands, Centers, Peripheries: Adapting to Changing Fortunes— The Uzbeks of Afghanistan. In: Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek and Julia Kaschnig (Eds.), Central Asia on Display. Proceedings of the VII. Conference of the European Society for Central Asian Studies. (Vienna Central Asian Studies, Vol.1). Vienna: LIT.


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Roy, Olivier. 1992. Ethnic Identity and Political Expression in Northern Afghanistan. In: Jo-Ann Gross (Ed.), Muslims in Central Asia: Expressions of Identity and Change. Durham: Duke University. Schetter, Conrad. 2004. Kriegsfürstentum und Bürgerkriegsökonomien in Afghanistan. Arbeitspapiere zur Internationalen Politik und Außenpolitik (AIPA 3/2004). Cologne: Lehrstuhl für Internationale Politik Universität zu Köln. Shahrani, M. Nazif. 1979. Ethnic Relations Under Closed Frontier Conditions: Northeast Badakhshan. In: William O. McCagg and Brian D. Silver (Eds.), Soviet Asian Ethnic Frontiers. New York: Pergamon. —— 1990. Afghanistan: State and Society in Retrospect. In: Ewan W. Anderson and Nancy Hatch Dupree (Eds.), The Cultural Basis of Afghan Nationalism. London: Pinter. Shalinsky, Audrey, C. 1986. Uzbak Ethnicity in Northern Afghanistan. In: Orywal, Erwin (Ed.), Die Ethnischen Gruppen Afghanistans: Fallstudien zur Gruppenidentität und Intergruppenbeziehungen. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Tapper, Nancy. 1983. Abd-al-Rahman’s North-West Frontier: The Pashtun Colonisation of Afghan Turkestan. In: Richard Tapper (Ed.), The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan. London: Croom Helm and New York: St. Martin’s. Tapper, Richard. 1984. Ethnicity and Class: Dimensions of Intergroup Conflict in NorthCentral Afghanistan. In: M. Nazif Shahrani and Robert L. Canfield (Eds.), Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies. Vercellin, Giorgio. 1988. Le Fait Ethnique dans les Politiques des Etats Iranien et Afghan. In: Jean-Pierre Digard (Ed.), Le Fait Ethnique en Iran et en Afghanistan. Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Wood, John. 1872. A Journey to the Source of the River Oxus. London: John Murray.

5

Afghanistan is not the Balkans


Central Asian ethnicity and its political consequences Thomas Barfield

With the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 the question of reconstituting a national government in Kabul became a priority. But, after more than 20 years of warfare, some argued that this process was doomed to failure. Their assumption was that ethnic groups in Afghanistan would naturally use their bases of regional power to break up any unitary Afghan state. They predicted that Afghanistan would soon divide along ethnic lines, either in the form of new independent mini-states or by combining with their co-ethnic neighbors (Kinzer 2001). This argument had particular resonance because the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and the genocidal ethnic strife in Central Africa were fresh on the minds of the international community. And in the former Yugoslavia there seemed no end to the chain of demands for ever-smaller ethnic states or the willingness of small regional ethnic groups to sabotage any plans that called for multi-ethnic states. Since a large number of the expatriates arriving to assist in Afghanistan’s reconstruction had experience in the Balkans, they were particularly attuned to such potential problems. There was also a general belief that ethnic divisions were more intractable than other divisions (political, religious, class, geographic, etc.) that might impede the re-creation of a centralized state. No one, however, had informed the Afghans of this inevitability. It was true that the war had empowered regional ethnic groups in Afghanistan to an extent not seen since Amir Abdur Rahman had crushed their autonomy at the end of the nineteenth century. It was also true that ethnic lines had become sharper during the 25 years of war. But it was striking that not a single Afghan political or military leader had ever threatened to secede from Afghanistan to form an independent state or expressed any interest in joining with co-ethnic neighboring states, not even as a negotiating tactic. Instead, even the very powerful regional warlords cooperated in the loya jirga that created the provisional Afghan central government, these military leaders, and the more democratically selected delegates, all asserted that some kind of working central government was an absolute necessity for a country of which they all (regardless of ethnic divisions and old grudges) saw themselves a part. What explains the lack of movement toward ethnic disintegration in a country where all the elements for such a division are present? The answer lies both in the nature of ethnicity in Central Asia and the pragmatic outlook of Afghan leaders who, like poker players at a card game, are

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more interested in dividing the pot than they are in dividing the table at which they sit.


Ethnicity and politics Ethnicity has become one of the most popular categories in which to understand political divisions in recent years, superseding such concepts of tribe and race that were common to nineteenth-century anthropology. But there has long been a split about how to view the phenomena. Geertz (1963) argued that ethnicity had a particular power because it was primordial, coming out of a deep history. It was seen as relatively permanent and unchanging with firm boundaries, but relatively passive in the sense that it was taken for granted. Others took issue with this view, contending that ethnicity was circumstantial, instrumental, employed strategically, and subject both to choice and change (Keyes 1976). Political scientists have been drawn to the primordial view, seeing ethnic groups as so fixed and deeply rooted that conflicts between them are particularly intractable. Anthropologists, on the other hand, have gravitated to the circumstantialist point of view, sometimes portraying ethnicity as a simple change of cultural clothes that individuals can cast off at will. Both these assumptions are misleading in their polar forms. In analyses of politics, ethnic groups are often portrayed as more solid than they really are and assumed to be of a different structural order than other categories that unite or divide people such as religion, class, race, caste, or ideology. But the assertion that ethnic identity is a product of personal choice that can be changed or manipulated at will as conditions warrant tends to ignore the stickier aspects of group identification that make such transformations difficult, particularly within a single community. For the decision to change identity for any reason is only the first hurdle; the second is getting such change accepted and validated. Indeed, as Patterson (1975) noted on this score, most examples of changing identities are the result of changing location in which boundaries of ethnic identity or the definitions of ethnic groups themselves are different. In such cases one’s previous identification is either unknown or irrelevant. Success at changing or manipulating ethnic identity within a single community where past histories are well known or where some boundaries are seen as socially fixed is much less common. Although ethnicity has long been of interest to scholars, it was the work of Barth (1969) that gave it much of its current context. In a seminal work he argued that ethnic groups had four characteristics: 1 2 3 4

They were biologically replicating. They shared fundamental cultural values. They constituted a field of communication and interaction. There were defined through self-definition and definition by others.

The first two criteria were nothing new. Biologically reproducing communities had long been a focus of nineteenth-century anthropologists in their concern with


Afghanistan is not the Balkans 97 “race,” and most earlier work by cultural anthropologists had often enumerated in detail the particular cultural attributes members of such groups shared in common (food, clothing, beliefs, occupations, etc.). It was Barth’s emphasis on the latter two criteria that took the study of ethnicity in new directions, particularly by giving more attention to boundaries rather than specific content. Content or styles might change within a group without resetting its boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. Ethnic groups set up a field of communication that signified who they were (or were not) that became salient in their interaction with other such groups. By looking at the boundaries of ethnic groups, their internal definition became clearer. Their most important attributes were therefore revealed by investigating problematic cases in which groups or individuals were seen as not belonging because they failed to meet some vital criteria. But perhaps Barth’s greatest insight was to realize that ethnic definitions were of necessity reciprocal: groups or individuals could declare an identity, but it was not socially real unless others (outside the group) gave it validity by recognizing this. This criterion also proved to be an excellent research tool because if a group declared themselves to be “x” and their neighbors agreed they were indeed “x,” we could define that group as “x” ethnic group. It was not necessary to determine whether that group met any universal set of criteria or on what basis they chose to make such distinctions. Nor did it matter (except perhaps to the group itself) if such a claim was historically valid or completely invented, the practical results were the same. Later, in a less cited work, Barth (1994) reconsidered his original thoughts on ethnicity in light of that category’s explosive growth popularity among social scientists. In particular, he noted that his original work had focused on persistent ethnic boundaries in multi-ethnic societies where the groups involved and their boundaries were longstanding. It was not designed to explain the dynamics of shorter duration phenomena, such as of refugee groups or trans-national populations, where both the existence of the group itself and its boundaries within a surrounding society were unstable through time even though they might appear to be fixed to the participants. As an example he cited “Pakistanis” in Norway. Pakistani is not an ethnic category in Pakistan, but rather the national label for the inhabitants of that multi-ethnic and multi-lingual state. Only in a foreign land could all immigrants from Pakistan (Sindhis, Punjabis, Baluchis, and Pathans alike) be unproblematically viewed as a single ethnic group. If accepted by insiders and outsiders, of course, such a label could come to define a new ethnic group, but since it was of such recent origin there was no way to determine in advance whether it was stable or merely a transitory phenomenon. It could easily disappear if succeeding generations of immigrant children assimilated into Norwegian society, if its sub-groups succeeded in gaining separate recognition, or if it was amalgamated into some trans-national “South Asian” category. Barth argued that many of the debates about ethnicity (particularly whether it was fixed or manipulated) depended on what perspective the investigator chose: micro, middle, or macro. Ethnicity was most problematic for determining patterns at the micro, or individual, level. Here there were too many possibilities and these were often contradictory. Mixed marriages, cultural assimilation, physical


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movement, or occupational mobility could cross boundaries or give a person a choice of identities to assume. This was particularly true in states where “individual rights” trumped “group rights” in political discourse (Barth 1994). It was the middle level in which the classic ethnic group emerged. Here local populations saw themselves as having something in common and distinct from other similar groups. Such groups, unlike individuals, always defined themselves in unproblematic and essentialist terms. This provided an opportunity for the emergence of “ethnic entrepreneurs” who sought to represent the ethnic group as a whole, particularly in state societies. These leaders stressed the importance of boundaries and maintained ideologies to preserve them. They often created elaborate histories or glorified aspects of “folk culture” to justify their group’s uniqueness. In this form ethnic groups acted in instrumental ways to mobilize themselves politically. They were particularly drawn to nationalist rhetoric in which controlling the state’s power was seen as a natural pursuit of an ethnic group. The goal of such a pursuit ranged from simply preserving a place (or benefits) for themselves within a multi-ethnic society to demanding complete state power and the expulsion of other groups from shared territories. If nationalist ethnic groups sought state power to express their dominance, states often chose to create ethnic categories by administrative fiat. At this macro level groups could be defined as “ethnic” using criteria that grouped people together who had not seen themselves as unitary before, such as Pakistani in Norway. Such administrative categories might remain purely descriptive but they often served as crucibles for creating ethnic identity where none had existed before, particularly when there were benefits to be derived through claiming membership. On a negative side the state could also create “communities of Fate,” people with nothing more in common than a label imposed upon them. Jews in Germany’s Third Reich were persecuted and killed not on the basis of their own ethnic self-identity or religious belief but rather on the Nazi state’s racial definition. In such a situation ethnic identity was imposed from the outside, a category that was stamped onto official papers, in which self-identification was irrelevant.

Ethnicity in Central Asia Ethnicity is often assumed to be the natural partner of nationalism and the nationstate. The nineteenth-century unification of Germany and Italy were both rooted in the belief that people who share the same “race, language, and culture” constitute natural political units. Such a political ideology undermined and then destroyed the old multi-ethnic Hapsburg Empire in Eastern Europe as Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Slavs all argued for the right to self-determination that was granted after the First World War. Similarly the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire in the Middle East fell victim to a rising Arab and Turkish nationalism that had been growing well before its formal dissolution into national states by the European powers. Even the new Marxist Soviet Union, which posited class as the only true divider of people, felt impelled to created “ethnic republics” within the Soviet state. The largest and most numerous of these were in Central Asia.


Afghanistan is not the Balkans 99 Ethnicity in Central Asia, however, had taken a different historical trajectory. In particular the nationalist element was completely lacking. Here, states had always been multi-ethnic and the belief that the rulers of the state must be drawn from its majority population was an alien idea. Indeed such multi-ethnic empires and khanates were normally ruled by dominant minorities who had established their right to rule by force. For close to 1,000 years they were mostly drawn from invading tribal and nomadic Turco-Mongolian people who had used their military power to establish dominance. However, such rulers did not have a monopoly on high government positions because they depended on literate Persian-speaking administrators who had better command of the complex issues of governance, such as taxation and economic policy. Indeed, so closely integrated were the two that a proverb arose that “a Turk without a Persian is like a head without a hat.” Similarly, regardless of historical origin or language spoken, the population of the irrigated river valleys and the cities tended to have no distinct ethnic identity. In Transoxiana, for example, Turkic- and Persian-speaking peasant and urban populations were rarely defined in ethnic terms but rather by the localities in which they lived, or by such terms as Sarts, which were devoid of specific ethnic content. These labels were descriptive rather than organizational and individuals saw themselves as filling multiple and cross-cutting roles. How they defined themselves to others (or to themselves) depended more on the context of the question than to any rule-based system. If there was a notion of self-rule and ethnic group consciousness, it was best developed among the tribal people of the region who traced descent from some common ancestor. But they were generally illiterate and inhabited the marginal mountain, desert, and steppe regions and so had little political impact. In addition, while tribal identity might be strongly developed, it was hamstrung by internal sub-divisions that made overall unity difficult or impossible to achieve. For example, in Central Asia the Turkmen and Kirghiz had clear clan-descent groups but these were never combined into a centralized political organization. The Kazaks were divided into regional hordes that competed for power among themselves and were unable to unite against Russian expansion. Along the South Asian frontier that encompassed today’s Afghanistan and the Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), tribes were even more notoriously divided. The famous seventeenth-century Pashtun warrior and poet, Khushal Khan Khattak, for example, revolted against the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in defense of tribal autonomy, but spent almost as much time (and devoted as many poems) to his blood feuds with the rival Pashtun clans. When the Pashtun dynasty did come to power in Afghanistan it depended heavily on non-Pashtun Kizilbash soldiers and a Persianspeaking bureaucracy to maintain itself in power (Barfield 2004). Therefore in Central Asia the concept of ethnic nationalism had to be imposed from the outside. This was done by the Soviet government following its consolidation of power over Central Asia in the 1920s. The Soviets here divided the region’s three geographically based and multi-ethnic khanates (Khiva, Bukhara, and Kokand) into five arbitrary ethnic republics (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kirghizstan, and Kazakhstan). The boundaries of these new ethnic


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republics were designed to fragment geographic areas that had common histories and economic relations in favor of divisions based on common ethnicity. In Fergana in particular, a single valley system was divided among Uzbekistan, Kirghizstan, and Tajikistan—including the creation of ethnic enclaves that were surrounded by the territory of another state—from northern to southern Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan without crossing into Uzbekistan when the high mountain passes were closed. Similarly the main highway linking Samarkand and Tashkent passed through a small bit of Kazakhstan’s territory. Although in theory the division of Central Asia by the Soviets was based on the premise of ethnicity, its larger purpose was to destroy older sets of relationships: political, economic, and cultural. It stressed what divided the region rather than what united it. And what it did do effectively was to begin to erase the older territorial khanate and regional identities that did have deeper historical roots. It also undermined the pre-Soviet regional political ideologies that had proclaimed the unity of Central Asia either in terms of panTurkism or the greater Islamic community. After 1949 China followed the same practice in its own Central Asian territories. From the beginning the identification of ethnic territories was problematic. First, the Central Asians had divided themselves into a much larger number of groups than were recognized in the Soviet system. Second, among residents of the irrigated valleys, who constituted the bulk of the region’s population, identification was by location and not descent. When the Soviet government forced people to choose a single identity for administrative purposes, an individual’s decision was based more on pragmatism than a deep sense of personal identity. It was generally assumed that there were advantages to being a member of the nationality of the republic in which you lived, so people often chose that nationality in preference to others they might have more accurately claimed. Soviet officials themselves complained that people were often choosing identities based on expedience and found different national registrations even within single families. This became the subject of ridicule, even in the controlled press, where in one published cartoon a man with Kazakh features and dress writes his identification as Uzbek on the Uzbekistan side of the border, while a man with stereotypical Tajik features and dress living in Kazakstan proclaims himself a Kazak (Figure 5.1). The Soviets attempted to create distinct ethnic identities in these new republics by having people choose a single ethnic identity by which they would be classified henceforth and by rewriting the history of the region in ethnic terms. This never really took root because such a redefinition did not excite the cultural or historical imagination of the region’s people the way it did in Eastern Europe. It was particularly problematic in the most populous Central Asian state, Uzbekistan, where most of the population had previously identified itself non-ethnically by locality or clan and where the old urban centers of Bukhara and Samarkand were the Persian language presence was strong. Kazakhstan also had problems because the titular ethnic group did not even constitute a majority, after the settlement there in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries of so many Russians and Ukrainians and their severe population decline because of Stalin’s collectivization policies. The Kokand Khanate’s rich Fergana valley was distributed


Afghanistan is not the Balkans 101

Figure 5.1 Source: Mushtom, Journal no. 11, October 3, 1924 Cited in Allworth 1990: 204

piecemeal among Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, dividing a population that had long had a geographical unity. There it was hard to convince similar people living in the western part of the valley in Uzbekistan that they were a completely different nationality from their neighbors upriver in the east in Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan. But until the Soviet Union collapsed, such divisions were almost completely theoretical except as part of the state administration. They had little impact on the bulk of the population which remained organized around local solidarity groups based on a variety of criteria. As Fredrik Barth (1994) has noted, when ethnicity is created by a state administrative fiat, people may quickly move to fill niches that are to their advantage (or fall victim to persecution if such redefinition is negative), but such creations are nonetheless artificial and lack the cultural power to move people to action. While the Soviets were successful in replacing older terms of identification, such as Sart with Tajik or Uzbek nationalities, such new labels were still descriptive and local populations remained wedded to their local solidarity groups in terms of political organization. Thus it was striking that in both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods political rivalry was less between differently


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defined ethnic groups than between regional rivals within the same administrative categories (Roy 2000: 96–100, 109–15). After independence, as these borders become barriers to movement, their arbitrary nature became all too clear. For this reason the new states have found it difficult to instill a common ethnic national identity except among the Turkmen and Kirghiz who already had a common tribal identity. Uzbekistan was able to define its diverse population as primarily “Uzbek”: only by moving to geographical criteria in which all the people (past and present) who ever lived in Uzbekistan’s territory are viewed as single group. Thus the non-Uzbek fifteenth-century Turkish conqueror Timur became their national historical founder, relegating the founder of the original Shaybanid Uzbek state to the margins of their history. Similarly the famous Persian-speaking poets and philosophers of Samarkand and Bukhara were grafted into the historic tree of Uzbek culture. The Kazakhs initially had to downplay the ethnic status of their state where Slavic immigrants constituted an equal proportion of the population. And while Tajikistan has found it relatively easy to apply a common Tajik ethnic label among its majority Persian speakers, it has found it impossible to get them to think of themselves as a national unit—a situation that fostered divisions that erupted into civil war between the north and south in 1992 and 1993. Roy (2000: 96–100, 109–15) documented this process in detail in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In both countries he found that local solidarity groups were the basic political unit. At the lowest level these were basically the collective farms where people got their basic services. At a higher level it was regional alliances that played a greater organizing role and the most powerful government posts came under the control of regionally based elites. In Soviet times Moscow often purged these elites when their power got too strong, allowing rival cliques to emerge in the same roles. This pattern continued into the post-Soviet period, but without an outside power to referee. Thus in Uzbekistan the longstanding tension between the political elites in the Fergana Valley Uzbeks and those from Samarkand remained after independence because the national government under President Karimov was seen as favoring his Samarkand allies. It is important to note that such tensions were not expressed in ethnic, but regional terms. In Tajikistan regionalism was even more pronounced and led to civil war. The factions involved were not ethnically based because, as Roy notes, all the Persian language speakers were categorized as Tajiks and it was among them, and not minority Uzbeks, that violence flared. Here, cliques of individuals supported and promoted their own regional clients to such an extent that it was regional identity that took precedence over ethnic identity.

Afghanistan Although ethnicity was never a legal category in Afghanistan as it was in Soviet Central Asia, ethnicity was important politically. Because the categories were not state generated, they represented local conceptions of identity which underlay alliances and rivalries. However, the utility of employing national ethnic labels


Afghanistan is not the Balkans 103 as clear units of political analysis has always been problematic since local social organization is based on kinship groups or regional communities. In Afghanistan solidarity groups known as qawm were basic political blocs at the local level, a term that was also extended to apply generally to the country’s major ethnic groups, although these were more descriptive than operational. The most important of these major ethnic groups in Afghanistan were the Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmen, and Hazaras, although a number of smaller ethnic groups have regionally important roles (most notably the Nuristani and Baluch). The country’s Pashtuns, about 40 percent of the population, historically inhabited the area south of the Hindu Kush. Some were later resettled (or deported) north to increase Pashtun representation in border areas. The imposition of the so-called “Durand Line” divided the Pashtuns between British India and Afghanistan in the late-nineteenth century, and so an equal or larger number also reside in Pakistan. The Pashtuns are tribally organized, all claiming descent from a common ancestor but they are divided into a large number of clans and lineages. The largest division is between the Ghilzai Pashtuns straddling the Pakistan border and the Durrani Pashtuns based around Kandahar. Although the Ghilzais have historically been the larger group, for most of the country’s history the Durranis were politically dominant. They maintained an exclusive hold on political leadership through a royal dynasty that was only displaced by the communist coup of 1978. Even at that time, however, power remained in the hands of the Ghilzai Pashtun faction of the Afghan communist party until the Soviet invasion. The choice of Karzai as the leader of the provisional government of Afghanistan has returned the Durranis to a level of influence that they had lost 25 years earlier. With a few isolated exceptions Pashtuns are exclusively Sunni Muslims. In rural areas, however, there is a melding of their tribal law (the Pashtunwali) with religious belief so that interpretations of religious law and tribal code were often seen as inseparable. Local charismatic religious leaders, known as pirs, played important roles in politics historically because they and their disciples crossed tribal lines and could act as counterweights to the landowning tribal khans. Under the Taliban, Pashtun religious leaders actually ruled the Afghan state for the only time in its history. The Tajiks, Persian-speaking Sunni Muslims, make up the second most important population. Constituting around 30 percent of the population, they did not have a tribal organization, but identified themselves by locality. They made up the bulk of Kabul’s urban population and dominated the mountainous regions of the northeast where their co-ethnics inhabited Tajikistan and parts of Uzbekistan. Persian speakers also dominated western Afghanistan (where they were often called Farsiwan rather than Tajik), but they had closer cultural and economic links to Iran. The Afghan Tajiks were particularly important as a group because Persian was both the lingua franca of Afghanistan and the language of government. If the Pashtuns dominated the most of the military and political leadership positions, it was the Tajiks who ran the bureaucracy. As a more urbanized and literate population, they were also more strongly represented in the ranks of the orthodox clergy, that is those who received state stipends or held state positions. During the war, under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Masud, the Tajiks came to dominate the


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northeast and established their own local administration. In the west, Ismail Khan came to rule Herat and the northwest. Uzbeks and Turkmen, Turkish groups who were extensions of ethnic groups that now dominate the adjacent Central Asian states of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, predominate in northwestern Afghanistan. The Turkmen, like the Pashtuns, are tribally organized and maintain elaborate genealogies that divide them into a series of named clans. The Uzbeks, by contrast, have a weaker tribal organization with less political significance. Both groups are Sunni Muslims but were influenced by the Sufi orders of Central Asia, such as the Naqshbandiyah. Before the Soviet war these Turkish populations had little visibility nationally. But, following the establishment of an Uzbek militia under the command of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, they became a major power in the northern areas around Mazar under the communists. By artful side-switching the Uzbeks have generally retained that power under successive regimes. The Hazaras were the major Shia population Afghanistan. The made up about 15 percent of the population and were located in the mountains of central Afghanistan and in urban enclaves in major cities, particularly around Kabul and Mazar. Although Persian speaking, they claim descent from the Mongol armies that invaded the region in the thirteenth century. Historically they had hostile relations with the Pashtuns, stemming from Amir Abdur Rahman’s awards of their land to Pashtuns who participated in his conquest of the Hazarajat in the late-nineteenth century. Although much of their land was returned to them by later rulers, they continued to face discrimination from Pashtun dominated governments. Iran developed close ties to the Hazaras during the Soviet occupation period and has retained considerable influence among some groups there. They formed their own powerful militia group and now have complete autonomy in the Hazarajat and have become equal players in the country’s regional politics. The war broke down the old ethnic hierarchy in which Pashtuns were most favored, followed by Persian-speaking Tajiks, while Turks (Uzbeks and Turkmen) were ignored and Shia Hazaras were positively discriminated against. At the fall of the communist regime in 1992, each controlled its own region, was well armed, and capable of resisting other ethnic groups that attempted to encroach on each other’s territory. Because the old communist stronghold of Kabul sat on the fault line between these ethnic groups, it suffered major destruction as each of these regional groups or their allies attempted to control the capital. This led to a political and military stalemate. In 1995 a new movement, the Taliban, arose in southern Afghanistan that threatened this regional–ethnic status quo. Organized on the basis of a conservative religious ideology rather than by tribe or ethnic group, the Taliban quickly came to dominate the Pashtun southern and eastern regions of the country. One reason for their success was that although the movement was religious its membership was overwhelmingly Pashtun, and many Pashtuns saw it as a vehicle for restoring their dominance in the country as a whole. The movement was also aided militarily by Pakistan (whose government also wanted to see the restoration of Pashtun domination as a way for Pakistan to control Afghanistan) and financially by the so-called Afghan Arabs such as Osama bin Laden (who


Afghanistan is not the Balkans 105 needed a cooperative regime to give them shelter). Over the course of three years they gained control of the entire country, with the exception of the northeast. The Taliban never won a decisive battle as they came to power. They won when local power brokers decided to defect to them because it looked like they were winners or because it could pay them better. But as they rose, so they fell. When the United States intervened against the Taliban for its support of Osama bin Ladin in the wake of the September 11 attacks, their support vanished in a matter of a few weeks in non-Pashtun areas of the north and west, and only slightly longer in the Pashtun areas of the south and east. Control of the regions returned once gain to the ethnic-based leadership of local commanders.

A unitary state Although the fall of the Taliban restored the power of regional leaders and left a vacuum at the national level, there was no move by any ethnic group to fight over the establishment of a new government or to break away from it. (And this in a country where ethnic and regional cleavages had become sharper through ten years of civil war that had pitted ethnic groups against one another.) The main reason for this was because no central state structure existed in Afghanistan to fight over, so the occupation of the capital or seizing its empty structures could not give any group a decisive advantage. The post-Taliban negotiations therefore centered on recreating a national state, not controlling the assets or political strength of an existing one. That all parties agreed there should be a central government and a unitary state might at first seem surprising. In other parts of the world such disarray at the center would have been used as an opportunity for regions and ethnic groups to declare their independence (á la former Yugoslavia) or propose some grand alliance with their co-ethnic neighbors to create some “Greater Tajikistan/ Uzbekistan/Turkmenistan/Pashtunistan.” The first reason for the lack of interest in independence was rooted in the old Central Asian view that decoupled ethnicity and nationalism. The concept of ethnic nationalism that drove the dissolution of Yugoslavia did not have a cultural counterpart in Afghanistan. They saw multi-ethnic states as the norm and not as historic deviation that demanded redress. The question was who would be politically dominant in such a multi-ethnic system, not that any group would be a region’s exclusive inhabitant. They also knew very well that gross ethnic labels like Pashtun or Tajik hid the myriad divisions within such a group that would make formal unity difficult or impossible to achieve. Such gross ethnic labels lacked the potential to mobilize people. The second reason is that each ethnic group felt secure in its own region. The pre-1978 ethnic hierarchy that gave Pashtuns an almost monopolistic control of the Afghan state has been destroyed. During the anti-Soviet war and subsequent civil war each of the subordinate ethnic groups became armed and militarized. The Pashtuns themselves have realized that they cannot restore the status quo ante even if they should wish to. All the factions that engaged in the negotiations to create the new Afghan state controlled their own region so firmly at the local


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level that they did not fear being displaced by a restored central government that would need their cooperation to function. The third reason is geopolitical. Afghan regional leaders recognized that if they broke apart they could be dominated much more easily or even attacked by their neighbors. As a country the size of France, they could hold their own. This would allow regions such as Herat to have very close ties to Iran, but know that it could rely on a central government to keep Iran’s influence limited. The same would apply for relations with Uzbekistan and most importantly with Pakistan, the country that Afghans most blame for their problems. That no region proposed amalgamation with a neighboring state is equally practical. The last thing neighboring countries want is a piece of unruly Afghanistan and its troublesome people. The last thing any Afghans want is to be a subordinate part of someone else’s state. Besides, you cannot smuggle if there is not a border and Afghans have done very well moving goods across boundaries they have no respect for. Finally for the Afghan regional leaders creating a new central government is like an arranged marriage, not a love match. Ethnic nationalism is fundamentally a romantic concept that attempts to give people a common conception of themselves as a single people with common dreams, histories and aspirations. Their view of ethnicity is always primordial; something that one is born with and cannot change. Afghan ethnicity, by contrast, is explicitly circumstantialist; there is no immutable history or commonality that cannot be jettisoned for self-interest. Afghan ethnic groups often cooperate with other groups they do not like and have even fought with, just as they divide within ethnic groups. They are well aware that in the long history of Afghanistan no enemies (or friends) are ever permanent. And Afghan factions well understand that the resources of the international community can only be effectively tapped if there is a national government to deal with the outside world, even if only to cash the checks and redistribute the money. This cannot be done effectively at the local level and ethnic mini-states are likely to get only mini-grants or nothing at all. This dynamic can be seen in the creation of the Constitution of Afghanistan (2004). Had ethnic fissures truly divided the country, a strongly federal system should have been the result. However, it was notable that the constitution refused to recognize ethnic groups as an administrative category and even banned the formations of political parties based on ethnicity, language or region (Article 35, 2, 15). The constitution did however give formal recognition to the country’s many language groups, mentioning specifically Pashto, Dari, Uzbeki, Turkmani, Baluchi, Pashai, Nuristani, Pamiri (alsana), and Arab.1 In addition, while naming Pashto and Dari as the country’s official languages, it gave official legal status to Uzbeki, Turkmen, Baluchi, Pashai, Nuristani, and Pamiri in districts where speakers of those languages constituted a majority (Article 16, 1, 16). The Hazaras, who as Dari speakers did not appear on this list, did receive recognition of their Shia school of law in cases dealing with personal matters involving the followers of Shia Sect (Article 131, 7, 16). Other parts of the constitution called for the creation of provincial councils that would have limited local power (Article 137, 8, 1&2).

Figure 5.2

Source: Adapted from Afghan Electoral Commission http://www.afgelectionresults.org/english/english.htm



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Thus, although many of the non-Pashtun groups had favored some sort of federal system, they accepted the recognition of their language rights and the promise of provincial councils as sufficient since everyone seemed to agree that the greatest danger to the country was the center’s current weakness. Regional representatives therefore went along with the proposed structure that created a strong presidential system. The constitution was passed by acclimation and no group (save the Taliban) challenged its legitimacy. The presidential elections that gave Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, an absolute majority on the first round in October 2004 showed that while ethnicity and region were very important factors, the country was not hamstrung by them. Karzai could not have taken his 56 percent of the total vote of approximately eight million without substantial support from non-Pashtun regions as well. Yunus Qanuni, a Tajik, took second place with 16 percent of the total vote, followed by Mohammad Mohaqiq representing the Hazaras with 12 percent, and the Uzbek commander Abdul Rashid Dostum with 10 percent. As Figure 5.2 reveals, the northeast and west split their votes rather evenly.

Conclusions Ethnicity in Afghanistan is of a pre-nationalist variety in which ethnic groups have economic and political interests but no ideology. This dynamic makes it much easier to resolve conflict at the national level than in situations where ethnic groups believe that only sovereignty will solve their problems. And for every new ethnic state, we have a new minority within demanding its own independence. Beliefs that Afghanistan would devolve into ethnic warfare missed the point, armies may be mobilized in Afghanistan to fight as ethnic groups, but they do not fight for the ethnic group. They fight for themselves as much smaller regional and kin groups whose scope for alliance and compromise is much greater. At the local level much fighting appears ethnic because this is how the factions are organized, but they are fighting over control of resources (political, economic, military), not in support of an ethnic ideology. And after 25 years of warfare there is also the hope that by giving more power to the central government, future civil wars can be prevented.

Notes 1 There are some anomalies here. Although there is an Arabic ethnic group in Afghanistan, they do not speak Arabic but rather Dari or Uzbeki (Barfield 1981). There is no “Nuristani” language; groups defined as Nuristanis speak five different groups of languages. Similarly Pamiri languages include a half dozen small languages or dialects (Strand n.d.).

References Allworth, Edward. 1990. The Modern Uzbeks. Stanford: Hoover Institution. Barfield, Thomas. 1981. The Central Asian Arabs of Afghanistan: Pastoral Nomadism in Transition. Austin: University of Texas.


Afghanistan is not the Balkans 109 —— 2004. Problems in establishing legitimacy in Afghanistan. Iranian Studies 37(3): 263–93. Barth, Fredrik. 1969. Introduction. In: Fredrik Barth (Ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Boston: Little Brown. —— 1994. Enduring and emerging issues in the analysis of ethnicity. In: Hans Vermeulen and Cora Govers (Eds.), The Anthropology of Ethnicity: Beyond “Ethnic Groups and boundaries”. The Hague: Nijhoff International. Constitution of Afghanistan, The. 2004 [1382]. Washington, DC: Embassy of Afghanistan. Geertz, Clifford. 1963. The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States. In: Clifford Geertz (Ed.), Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa. New York: Free Press. Keyes, Charles F. 1976. Towards a New Formulation of the Concept of Ethnic Group. Ethnicity 3: 202–13. Kinzer, Stephen. 2001. Break up Afghanistan? Why not? New York Times, December 1, A15. Patterson, Orlando. 1975. Context and Choice in Ethnic Allegiance: A Theoretical Framework and Caribbean Case Study. In: Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan, Ethnicity: Theory and Experience. Cambridge: Harvard University. Roy, Olivier. 2000. The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations. New York: New York University. Strand, Richard. n.d. Nuristan: Hidden land of the Hindu Kush. http://users.sedona. net/~strand/lngFrameL.html.

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Pukhtun identity in Swat, northern Pakistan


Charles Lindholm

Images of the individual: autonomy and equality In this chapter I am going to begin by assuming that we can reach a better understanding of the Pukhtun of Swat, in northern Pakistan, by making comparisons with the United States. This would seem a preposterous claim at first glance—the Swat Pukhtun live in a remote mountain valley, far from the centers of power. The mostly illiterate population of the valley has been justly described as “backward” and “tribal.” They are not stratified by the capitalist division of labor; their fealty to the central nation-state of Pakistan is minimal. Instead, they are loyal to their local clans, and their relationships are structured by a patrilineal segmentary lineage system divided into factions based on the rivalry between cousins. Instead of formal law, feud and self-help remain the main instruments for maintaining order; rational bureaucracy is at a minimum, as the traditional values of the Pukhtun code of honor—hospitality, refuge, and revenge—continue to motivate people’s actions and beliefs (for standard studies of Swat and the Pukhtun in general see Caroe 1965; Barth 1959; Ahmed 1976, 1980; Lindholm 1982). All this is very far from the social complexity, bureaucratic-legalistic rationality, and capitalistic free-enterprise system of the United States. Yet, there are fundamental similarities in worldview that make comparisons both plausible and significant.1 Most importantly, in both the United States and in Swat, people are assumed to be essentially independent actors, each separately responsible for his or her own fate and endowed with a God-given potential for free choice and agency. Moreover, in both societies each separate individual is believed to be motivated by a natural desire for self-aggrandizement and the accumulation of desired goods: money in the United States, honor among the Pukhtun. As anthropologists have often noted, these assumptions about human nature are hardly universal; in fact, “sociocentric” views of life are probably more predominant worldwide. A correlating similarity between the value system of the United States and that of the Pukhtun is the profound faith that all men (though not women) are equal before God and the law, and have an absolute right to assert their value as human beings deserving of respect.2 Consequentially, among the Pukhtun and in the United States all individual men—the poor and the rich, the landless and the landowner—in principle may eat side by side, speak among themselves with an


Pukhtun identity in Swat, northern Pakistan 111 absence of abasement or insolence, and look one another directly in the eye.3 In sum, the Pukhtun, like the citizen of the United States, envisions human beings as “possessive individuals,”4 that is, as free, equal, autonomous agents, each essentially similar, each acting for personal self-interest.5 In their understanding of human nature, these two societies are unlike the vast majority of social formations that are motivated by a more collective and hierarchical vision of humanity. The most extreme contrast is with caste society India, but the societies of Europe also have (or had, until they became Americanized) notions that human beings are ranked and differentiated by class and occupation. To be clear, I am not arguing here that there are no hierarchical and collective distinctions in either Swat or the United States. That is obviously untrue, especially in the USA. I am arguing that such distinctions are not considered to be intrinsic and permanent; as a result, superiors are not offered the deference of their subordinates, and subordinates do not accept the condescension of their superiors. However, superiors and inferiors do exist, as do collective identities, and social relations must take account of reality, despite a dominant ideology of equality and individualism. The problem of conceptualizing and rationalizing distinction and collectivity in an egalitarian individualistic society is what we might call a fundamental existential dilemma both in Swat and in the USA, and in all other societies with similar worldviews. The first to consider the way in which this dilemma has an effect on the actual workings of a specific social formation was Dumont (1970), who began his analysis at the opposite extreme from egalitarian individualism, with the caste system of Hindu India. Dumont assumed that collectivist and hierarchical social orders must have within them impulses toward individualism and equality that could appear only covertly. In India this impulse was expressed by the highly individualistic caste-renouncing saints who present themselves at right angles to the predominant ideology of distinction and subordination. He then hypothesized that in egalitarian societies distinction, subordination, and collective identity could similarly be revealed only in a masked manner. According to Dumont, this can occur when invidious distinctions are disguised and validated as the “natural” consequence of the inferiority of groups who, because of their color, are designated subhuman and outside the umbrella of equality. Dumont therefore made the extraordinary claim that this impulse is the source of American racism against blacks, which results in a covert two-caste system in the purportedly egalitarian United States. In other words, a racist ideology is a likely correlate of a value system that stresses equality and autonomy above all. If this is so in one egalitarian individualist society, then it ought to be true in others. And in fact Dumont’s thesis gains plausibility when we discover that a similar “naturalization” of inferior roles exists in Swat where the same premises of egalitarian individualism prevail. Among the Pukhtun, subordinate categories of person are also attributed with “innate” characteristics that condemn them to permanent servitude to their Pukhtun betters. For instance, barbers are thought to be naturally “effeminate,” while leatherworkers are “too passionate” and so on. All inferior groups are believed to lack the intrinsic bravery and honor of the true Pukhtun, and


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the Pukhtun believe such people are therefore bound to be ruled, just as cattle are made for the service of humanity. Similarly, women are also thought to be naturally incapable of reason or honor, and therefore require the firm command of men. We would expect to find similar attributions of a collective essence to inferiors in other egalitarian individualist societies. The major example is the Middle East where, as Marshal Hodgson has written, “equality was the basic principle… Every free Muslim should be accorded that personal liberty and dignity which was expected by the Arabian tribesman” (Hodgson 1974: 344, 253). And indeed, when we consider the historical record of this radically egalitarian and individualistic cultural universe, we find that dominant Arabs have traditionally patronized non-Arabs as intrinsically inferior, enslaved blacks have been relegated to subhuman status, subordinated women have been viewed as incapable of equality, and so on. Egalitarian individualism, it seems, has an almost inescapable impulse to essentialize inferiority. But in focusing on the way the elites in egalitarian individualist societies justify subordination through the attribution of a collective essence to inferiors leaves aside an even more interesting problem which I wish to make the subject of this chapter, i.e. the conceptualization and legitimization of superiority in an egalitarian society. In other words, how do those members of the society who are actually inferior and yet who are not collectively stigmatized by “natural” attributions of inferiority make sense of their subordination in a value system based on the premise that all men are equal and independent. In the next few pages, I will explore how this problem of the acceptance of authority among supposed coequals has been symbolized and enacted in Swat, occasionally utilizing examples from the United States and the Middle East for comparison and illustration.6

Manly character and secular leadership In order to grasp the way individuals have managed to accept their subordination in a society of supposed equals I need first to point out another similarity between Swat and the United States: both societies are characterized not only by pervasive premises of equality and autonomy, but also by intense internal competition and rivalry. At first this combination seems to be a contradiction. When we think of egalitarian societies we tend to picture noble savages sharing their meager resources without rancor or rivalry. This may be true among some isolated primitive tribes where for ecological reasons cooperation within the collective is paramount, but it is not so where individualism rules. In his classic Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville (1969) brilliantly demonstrated that the combination of egalitarianism with an ideology of personal liberty necessarily implies aggressive rivalry among co-equals. Tocqueville reasoned that the absence of ascribed positions among equivalent actors in an open social environment obliges each individual to struggle to gain and retain a social space through achievement and competition. As he writes: “Some men still enjoy great privileges, but the possibility of acquiring them is open to all. From which it follows that those who possess them are constantly preoccupied with the fear of losing


Pukhtun identity in Swat, northern Pakistan 113 or sharing them…The immediate result is an unspoken warfare between all the citizens” (Tocqueville 1969: 566). In the United States we find public approval of and identification with the pursuit of personal success primarily in the realm of the economy, where the ruthless entrepreneurial manipulation and conspicuous consumption of the rich and famous are admired and emulated by the masses, while in the political arena power seeking is not permitted to appear in an overt fashion.7 But in Swat, as in the Middle East, political authority was traditionally not sanctioned or constrained by abstract ideals of justice or service to the interests of a constituency, but was simply validated by the capacity of the rulers to dominate the ruled. As Gibb and Bowen put it, politics in this context consists of “a theory of rights acquired by force and maintained by force, a state whose institutions are inspired by fear and mistrust, where loyalty is discounted and honesty can be secured only by threat of punishment” (Gibb and Bowen 1950: 31). In Swat, then, raw coercive power is sought with the same absence of moral qualms as the pursuit of the dollar in America, and the forceful Pukhtun khan who sits surrounded by armed guards in his guest-house is a culture hero and model for popular fantasies, just as much as Donald Trump is an ideal for Americans. In both cases, success in gaining a desired result, not the means by which the result is attained, is culturally valued; like a capitalist investor who must dispense with sentiment, ethics, and tradition to rely instead on a cold and clear-eyed business sense, a secular leader in Swat must be pragmatic and ruthless.8 As Barth writes in the Swati polity, “it is the fact of effective control and ascendancy— not its formal confirmation or justification—that is consistently pursued” (1985: 175). Manipulation, undermining opposing factions, making use of all of the tools of intimidation and appeasement—these are the ways power is held in this environment. In the Pukhtun’s pragmatic world of opportunism and power seeking no social opprobrium is attached to the stark quest for personal authority over others, just as in America no opprobrium is attached to the entrepreneur who succeeds in driving his or her rivals out of business. In social arenas in which the self-interest of each competitive individual is accepted as the driving force for action, the individual who achieves success in this competitive arena is considered merely a person especially capable of enacting and expressing the cultural values of opportunism and self-seeking which are held by the population at large. The authority of a successful political leader in Swat, like the wealth of Donald Trump in America, is not considered to be a result of caste position or heredity. Power or wealth is never thought to be ascribed or preordained; it is always imagined to be achieved, despite the fact that the khan’s father was also a great khan and that the realtor king was born into a real estate dynasty. Power in each instance is justified solely by the holder’s possession of personal qualities that supposedly allow him to rule over his fellows—an individualized variant on the trope of “natural” distinction that Dumont wrote about as validation for the subordination of a collective. Among the Pukhtun, the qualities of the “natural” leader include foresight, intelligence, courage, ruthlessness, pride, pragmatism,


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forcefulness, rhetorical skill, vengefulness, and generosity. Men with these characteristics are believed to gain advantage in the perpetual internecine competition to become the heads of factions because they naturally inspire the confidence and submission of their co-equal cousins and allies. Unsurprisingly, these attributed capacities are exactly the same traits considered the normal characteristics of every Pukhtun man. The ability to be a secular political leader is, in fact, accepted as an essential quality of true Pukhtunness, so much so that, as the Pukhtun writer Ghani Khan points out, “the Pukhtun thinks he is as good as anyone and his father rolled into one” (1958: 47).9 As I discovered, it is quite difficult to discover where real authority lies in a Swati village, since many men will claim leadership for themselves, and denigrate the claims of other villagers. This reflects reality, since the social hierarchy is actually quite fragile and shallow, relying as it does on allegiance that is freely offered and can be just as freely withdrawn. In this uncertain world, every Pukhtun man can at least dream of holding power, drawing inspiration from ancestors and relatives who have dominated in the past or who dominate in the present. The affirmation of his own personal “natural” leadership qualities by the ordinary Pukhtun serves two purposes. In the first place, it distinguishes him from the “naturally” submissive inferior peoples of the Valley who are under Pukhtun rule. Even more important, the egalitarian Pukhtun in this way also asserts that his character is equivalent to all other Pukhtun, whatever their political power. The man who really is in authority is therefore regarded as merely “primus inter pares,” a co-equal who has, by happenstance, managed to assert his essential Pukhtun character to gain the Pukhtun ideal of power, but who is fundamentally no different than the other competitive and ruthless Pukhtun men who give him temporary loyalty. His rule is impermanent; his authority can be overthrown. And then, who knows who may rule? The problem, of course, with this form of authority is that it is hardly “legitimate” at all in the Weberian sense. Instead, the secular leader is just the “dominant fact in the political field” (Barth 1985: 173); a man who is respected by his coequal “subjects” insofar as he embodies the virtues they feel to be central to their own visions of themselves and who leads because of his demonstrated capacity to manipulate and intimidate. And just as wealth is admired in America, even though the wealthy are nonetheless thought to be normal guys who had a good idea, worked hard, and got lucky, the Pukhtun secular faction leader is in no way other-worldly or awesome; he is simply someone who has used his normal manly abilities to win the political game, if only temporarily. Under these circumstances, acting within the mythical charter of equality and independence, and lacking the notion of a public good, every man, following the ideology of the regent and aggrandizing self that pervades in Swat, hopes to become a petty dictator, just as every American hopes to become wealthy. No one in either society feels any great moral horror at another man’s single-minded pursuit of the cultural ideal; he is just doing what “anyone” would do if they had the chance. And just as in the United States, where, to the puzzlement of the left, class solidarity has consistently been undermined by the popular faith that “anyone


Pukhtun identity in Swat, northern Pakistan 115 can make it.” In Swat, too, the landless peasant does not wish to transform the content of the relationship, but instead hopes to become powerful himself. This attitude reaches down to the lowest levels of society. As a landless Pukhtun laborer once told me, “the landlords sit upon the necks of the poor. God grant that I may become a landlord!” Fredrik Barth has commented on this characteristic laissez-faire Swati attitude toward power in the following insightful passage: A basic premise of stateless society was precisely that other people’s political relations were their separate concerns, not a collective responsibility. Independence and personal sovereignty were highly, perhaps inordinately, valued; but they were conceptualized as goods for each to seek for himself, not as rights for all, to be collectively safeguarded by all. A person who commanded effective and sufficient sanctions to dominate and exploit others was not particularly condemned and his acts were not collectively resisted— indeed he would rather be admired and sought as ally and leader, unless he was so feared for the threat he might pose to one’s own autonomy that one sought to build a defensive faction against him. (Barth 1985: 169)

Possibilities and limitations of rule by force In Swat the absence of any notion of the duties of a legitimate secular authority and the popular lack of indignation over a leader’s assertion of raw power has coincided with an inability to resist domination when it does occur. Unlikely as it seems, the war-like and independent Swati tribesmen accepted the imposition of a central authority quite passively for much of the past century, when they were ruled by two authoritarian dictators: the famous Badshah and his son, the Wali. Similarly, in the Middle East, tyranny has a long history and deep roots despite the prevalent cultural values of respect for the equality and autonomy of the individual; dictators retain their authority in the region even today, in spite of the widespread democratic ideology of the modern nation-state system. In contrast, India, despite its hierarchical caste system, has been a functioning democracy since it gained independence. Why should the culture area with the most egalitarian worldview be the one that has also favored dictatorships the most? To understand this paradox, Tocqueville may again be of use. He warned Americans that men concerned with their own particular freedom and autonomy might progressively withdraw from the public world of obligation and co-operation to retreat into the realm of capitalistic self-aggrandizement. In hot pursuit of their own ends they were likely to submit to the rise of a tyranny if it would provide them with a space for the economic entrepreneurship they found so compelling. To offset this tendency, he recommended continuous practice in collective democracy, so that the populace would become accustomed to taking responsibility for their own governance.


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If we extend Tocqueville’s insight, it is plausible to assume that the Pukhtun tribesmen accepted the yoke of the ruler so long as they were allowed to continue their own petty local factional disputes. Similarly, in the Middle East, tyrants historically did not intrude themselves too much into daily life. As Lambton writes of the Seljuks: “All the Sultan expected of his subjects was that they should pay their taxes and pray for his welfare, while they expected from him security and justice. The state did not demand, or receive, the loyalty of the common man (Lambton 1968: 205).10 Of course, the situation in Swat is quite different from that which Tocqueville warned against, since the Pukhtun emphasis on self-assertion finds its expression in the pursuit of political power, rather than in the economic realm, which is relatively undeveloped and held in contempt as undignified and servile. This means that the Pukhtun “everyman,” far from withdrawing from public life into the marketplace, instead actively seeks public recognition and power. But the parallel remains that the Swati political world is similar to the economic sphere in the West in that there are no formal or ideological structures supporting collective responsibility, nor is there any ethic of public service to mitigate against pure power seeking. As a result, what occurred historically over hundreds of years of Swati politics was a welter of constantly shifting factions gathered around pragmatic powerseeking political actors. In this environment, no one person could gain ascendance for any length of time. As in the Smithean economic theory that underpins Western entrepreneurship, within the Pukhtun “marketplace” of political manipulation the “unseen hand” of free competition maintained a relative balance of power among the competitors, but without the advances in production that occurred in the West. Perhaps I might postulate that a free market based in competitive politics leads to serial tyrannies, while an economic free market is a precursor to the invention of the steam engine. Be that as it may, it is clear that when one group did manage to gain authority in Swat—partially through the covert external influence of the British, partially in resistance to external encroachments—the rest of the Pukhtun were unable and unwilling to join together to resist effectively. Instead various oppositional groups arose bound together solely by a desire to gain power for themselves; these attempts were undermined by the Ruler’s clever manipulation of the jealousies of the other Pukhtuns, who themselves wished to lead, and could not mediate behind any single leader or strategy. Furthermore, the Pukhtun relied on the ruler to judge their disputes, since none of them would call on their antagonistic co-equals for that task. As judge, the Ruler always favored the weaker party, undercutting the stronger faction, building alliances with the weaker, and so increasing his own power.11 The maintenance of the center in this instance is certainly not derived from mere coercion; instead it is power gained from playing upon the disarray and rivalry of the subjects, who would never admit the right of another Pukhtun to unite them—even against a dictator. But even though Pukhtun leadership had no ethical base beyond gaining power, it never generated a violent tyranny, due to another implication of the social premises of equality and autonomy within a framework of competitive


Pukhtun identity in Swat, northern Pakistan 117 individualism. A number of authors (Lipset 1963; Riesman et al. 1961, following Tocqueville 1969) have argued that conformity is yet another inevitable consequence of an absence of clear status markers in an egalitarian society. Such openness and fluidity stimulates not only competition, but also a fear of appearing out of place, and a compensatory monitoring and mirroring of the behavior of others to reaffirm that one’s own actions are appropriate. The result is, as Tocqueville writes, a “countless multitude of beings, shaped in each other’s likeness, among whom nothing stands out or falls unduly low” (1969: 704). Tocqueville was speaking of America, but we see the same effect in Swat, where the fiercely independent tribesmen nonetheless believe “even the bravest man dare not go against custom” and are extremely fearful that others may “laugh behind them.”12 Under these circumstances, the leader too is obliged to follow custom, and display the rigid conformity that is so important in this society. Because of the pressure toward conformity, any leader must continuously enact the part of the “real Pukhtun” in order to retain his own positive self-image as well as the authority grudgingly granted by subjects who regard him as no more than “one of us.” Any leader’s domination is therefore far more constrained than one might imagine it to be, since he must exemplify not only the expansive values of strength and ruthless power seeking, but also the far more delimiting and socially useful virtues of hospitality, charity, and piety; nor is he able to innovate to any significant degree, since changes that go against custom imperil his honor. The ruler is therefore bound up by the ideology of what a “good Pukhtun” would do, and cannot stray too far from those standards—a limitation that operated in the traditional Middle East as well. But even if he lives up to the community ideals of manhood and is judged a “real Pukhtun,” the moral claims of the ruler to loyalty of his subjects remain very dubious, since, as I have shown, the ruler’s right to rule is understood by the subjects as an expression of its brute reality—he rules simply because he has the power. Of course, as a Pukhtun, he must rule as a Pukhtun would rule, but that is to be expected. A real man, that is, a man who can dominate, will also act according to the code. If he did not, his followers would abandon him, and he could not lead. Correspondingly, when a leader loses power, he has shown his own weakness and hence his unmanliness and lack of honor. Unable to hold his faction together, he forfeits his subjects’ loyalty and their respect as well. Thus the history of Swat—and the Middle East in general—reveals quite clearly that secular authorities are liable to be continuously opposed by co-equals who assume they too have an equivalent right and personal ability to command; an ability that can be tested only in struggle with the powers that exist.13 Given the cultural value system and the personal self-image of the Pukhtun, this rivalry inevitably extends right into the leader’s own household, internally dividing his family and allies and undermining the potential for any long-term dynasties. In Swat, for example, the downfall of the royal house was due in large measure to crippling factionalism within the Swati royal family.

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Legitimizing and constructing sacred leadership There is, however, a second alternative way to gain legitimacy that stands in radical contrast to the fragile secular form outlined previously. This is to attribute a sacred quality to the leader, so that he is elevated out of the realm of the ordinary. His qualities then become quite different from those of men in general, and he is thought to acquire his power from a higher sacred source that gives him a capacity to inspire a following in a manner distinct from the pragmatic secular leader. This was, in fact, the way the Swati royal family originally gained legitimacy, as I shall discuss shortly. In the United States such a sacred quality inheres to a degree, as I have already noted, within the political sphere, which is differentiated from the purely secular arena of economic competition. The office of the presidency in particular has a distinctly religious aura attached to it, derived from the charisma of Washington and other great predecessors and from the sacred documents of the republic; this charisma has been institutionalized and routinized within a bureaucratized network of rights and obligations, but nonetheless it retains its capacity to transform the office-holder into a quasi-religious figure.14 As Weber long ago remarked, democratic political systems are especially prone to this form of charisma, since elected officials gain office not because of their professional competence, but on the basis of their personal appeal to the electorate (Weber 1978). Outright demagoguery, however, is muted by the necessity of appealing continually to the voters for approval, and by the imagery of service that permeates American political rhetoric. But in Swat, as we have seen, the political realm has been the center for the enactment of the values of independent, amoral competition between co-equals. It has not been divided off from the economy and given a sacred quality, as occurred in American history. Instead, politics is understood to be a realm of pure power; a desacralized arena of violence and struggle as maximizing secular individuals compete for domination.15 However, this extraordinary pragmatism is balanced by the equally extraordinary occasional rise of sacred charismatic figures that Barth has described as “saints” (1959). A great deal has been written on the typologies of “saintly” leadership in Swat and in the Middle East, and I do not wish to elaborate on the controversies of this literature. Here I simply wish to say that the religious leader in Swat generally (though not always) comes from a non-Pukhtun lineage, often makes claims to descent from the Prophet Mohammad, and is reckoned to have characteristics that are in many senses the reverse of those of the Pukhtun. The Pukhtun carries weapons, the saint does not; the Pukhtun intimidates by force, the saint inspires by virtue; the dashingly mustached Pukhtun declaims to his followers who gather in his guest house, the austere saint strokes his long beard and speaks quietly to his disciples in the mosque or Sufi lodge; the Pukhtun is self-assertive, the saint is self-effacing. But what is especially notable for my purposes is the contrast between the natural authority of the Pukhtun “everyman” leader as against the acquired powers of the sacralized religious figure. We can make this contrast clearer by noting that a religious leader in Swat traditionally belonged to Sufi orders, and was accredited with special baraka


Pukhtun identity in Swat, northern Pakistan 119 (spiritual power) gained through learning and austerities. For instance, the founding saintly ancestor of the Rulers of Swat underwent rigorous training at a Sufi lodge and also was a renowned ascetic. His asceticism and training gained him Pukhtun disciples, who utilized him as a mediator in their disputes, ceded him land, and eventually used him as a unifying leader in their war against invading colonial forces. More recently, with the decline in the legitimacy of Sufism, some religious figures have gained local prominence not by austere practices or discipleship in Sufi schools, but through the more orthodox route of their scholastic knowledge of the Koran and other holy writings, which gives them the right to judge the behavior of others according to sacred law and, by extension, to rule with moral authority (see Ahmad 1983; Lindholm 1999 for examples). There are differences in practice that ensue if one follows either the Sufi or the orthodox pathways to the sacred, but what is significant for my argument is the shared claim that spiritual power is not a “natural” quality, but is instead a result of a profound transformation of identity.16 This may seem less apparent in the case of the scholar, but it must be recalled that religious learning is believed to be not simply a matter of textual knowledge, but of spiritual elevation. Those who have studied and grasped the meaning of the sacred texts are thought to have been raised to a higher plane by their labors and by their self-abnegation in the pursuit of learning. Furthermore, while the Pukhtun tries to dominate a world of co-equals the religious figure attains rank within a pre-existent hierarchy of knowledge perhaps as a disciple of a Sufi order who has mastered esoteric practices, or as a star pupil in a college who has memorized important texts (Trimingham 1971). In each instance, the diligent and able pupil slowly moves up the ladder of success. His progress is monitored by his teacher, who then validates his rise by granting him formal recognition. Afterwards, the pupil can become a teacher in turn, and transfer the knowledge he has won with his efforts on to the next generation. These relationships of servitude and authority, student and teacher, are paralleled to the relationship between slave and master, worshipper, and the divinity.17 Even in orthodox Koranic scholarship, the spiritual seeker must first submit completely to the domination of a master whose absolute authority was specifically modeled after God’s power over humanity. In both Sufi and orthodox training, the teacher imparted sacred knowledge to the student not only through memorization of texts, but also by subjecting him to harsh austerities and brutal discipline. As Eickelman observes: “when a father handed his son over to a faqih (scholar), he did so with the formulaic phrase that the child could be beaten” (1992: 117). Violence was just one aspect of a systematic effort to break the arrogant spirit of the disciple, teaching him to empty himself of ego in order to become the receptive vessel of sacred knowledge. The selflessness and discipleship of religious leaders is in direct contrast to secular Pukhtun leadership since, according to Pukhtun folk wisdom, “he who wishes to lead does not follow.” The same folk wisdom prevails throughout the Middle East where, as Gellner has written, “only those who refuse to be governed are themselves fit to rule; political education is to be had in the wilderness alone” (1981:


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28). Within this ideological framework, a potential leader cannot bow his head to a master, or even recognize that any man is his superior, but must instead express of his own innate and “natural” personal strength. Unlike the religious practitioner, in pursuing leadership, the Pukhtun is not transformed, nor is his individual identity lost; instead, he becomes more than ever “himself” in assuming command, since in leading he asserts what he takes to be his essential character as a man and a Pukhtun. In other words, the saint seeks holiness through passive submission to a stronger force that eliminates his personality and fills him with sacred knowledge, which he can then teach to others;18 the warrior seeks authority through active expression of his own inner capacity to dominate those weaker than himself.

Possibilities and limitations of sacred authority Sacralized hierarchies made up of “saints” and their disciples tend to occur throughout the Middle East at the interstices of egalitarian segmentary systems, offering an alternative mode of authority for the atomized tribesmen, who, as we have seen, cannot agree among themselves to accept any legitimate secular leadership that emerges from their own midst because of their premises of egalitarianism and competitive individualism. In contrast, precisely as a result of his distinctiveness and his claim to a sacred legitimacy within a collective hierarchy of spirituality, a religious figure can stand apart and bring the tribes together in times of distress. This was clearly the pattern in traditional Swati society, as Sufi practitioners and learned individuals acted as arbitrators, united the Pukhtun against invaders, and gave birth to the eventual rulers of the Valley. The same pattern is also apparent elsewhere in the history of the Middle East, as Sufi leaders have occasionally offered nodes for the crystallization of resistance among tribesmen and have sometimes lead them in the establishment of new regimes. The Almohads, the Almoravids and the Safavids are probably the most famous dynastic examples. We have then in Swat, as elsewhere in the Middle East, two contrasting types of leadership: the secular and the sacred. What is interesting in terms of building a dynamic model is that the rulers of Swat, who descended from great saints, themselves repudiated the spiritual power of their ancestors and tried to become secular leaders, “first among equals,” concerned primarily with gaining the “respect” of their peers through their manifestation of strength and acuity, as opposed to revealing the baraka of the saint. In earlier works, I have discussed some of the structural and political reasons for this shift (Lindholm 1981, 1982, 1986a). Here, however, I want to stay within the framework of the ideology of self-construction and authority in Swat in order to formulate a more abstract answer. As mentioned above, the local understanding is that the religious leader claims permanent elite status due to the training and special experience that has filled him with the mystical powers of the supernatural. Thus, instead of expressing local values of independence and autonomy, the religious leader is “bound,” a slave to God who demands absolute moral submission from those he rules. Because of these beliefs about the sources and implications of sacred authority, religious practitioners are viewed with considerable ambivalence and even fearful


Pukhtun identity in Swat, northern Pakistan 121 hostility by the Pukhtun, as we can discover by a cursory look at myths and legends concerning them. In these stories, the great saints of Swati history are by no means the benevolent figures Westerners might imagine. Instead, manifestations of their spiritual power are very often frightening and destructive. In the lightest incidents, the saint is a trickster: train conductors who demand fares from him suddenly find their trains are immobilized, their watches stopped, but all comes right again when abject apologies are made. In other cases, saintly power is far more dangerous: those who cross the sacred figure, even unintentionally, are cursed, and die miserably; the wondering malang (Sufi beggar) is feared for his evil eye, and so on. Similar terrifying stories are told of saints throughout the Middle East.19 Most tellingly, in Swat the holy man often is attributed with an ability to overcome infertility; a capacity that has a double edge for the Pukhtun, who firmly believe the saint has an excessive sexual appetite and is prone to seduce the desperate women who go to him for his blessings. Many stories are told of this trait, which threatens the honor of the staunchly patrilineal Pukhtun at its heart, and men with birthmarks on their faces are pointed out as the products of saintly lust. At the same time, the saint is reckoned to have the potency, translated into sexual terms, the Pukhtun lacks, a potency necessary for maintaining the family line, albeit in a tainted fashion. The holy man, who stands outside the lineage order, and who is part of the magical religious hierarchical fraternity, can provide sons for the Pukhtun because of his secret knowledge and seductive sexual power, a combination that evokes envy, rage, and fear among the Pukhtun. A related accusation is that holy men are hypocrites who pretend piety while actually indulging their hidden vices under the cover of their beards, which, as the Pukhtun say, “any fool can grow.” This accusation has its roots in the manufactured quality of the holy man’s moral authority that stands in radical contrast to the “naturalness” of the character of Pukhtun secular leaders. Since the authority of the religious figure does not spring from his essential core, but from his subjugation in discipleship, he has the potential for being false, pretending to be what he is not; on the other hand the Pukhtun see their own leaders’ naked ability to command as transparently immediate and real. In short, because of their heritage of hierarchy and passivity, which are completely opposed to the Pukhtun value system, the holy man can be envisioned as all that the Pukhtun would like to believe he is not: hypocritical, deceitful, lascivious, cowardly, avaricious and unmanly. In reaction to this negative imagery, powerful “saintly” lineages in Swat which have gained a degree of power and authority now have become Pukhtun in all but name, and act in a manner fully parallel to their combative countrymen, accepting all the values of Pukhtunness and struggling with their Pukhtun neighbors for the right to be recognized as “first among equals” while repudiating any claims to spiritual distinction. This is certainly the appropriate mode of action when the social system is not under great stress, where the virtues of equality and independence are unchallenged. The men of holy lineage, influenced by local beliefs, in the absence of a demand for their own ambiguous sacred influence, wish to compete on the same solid moral ground as the tribesmen who surround them, avoiding the moral ambivalence that attends any assertion of sacred authority.


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Yet there is another side to this picture. Within the Pukhtun ideology of equality and independence, only saints offer the potential for a sacralized and truly legitimate form of authority. Those in power naturally wish to utilize this justificatory ideology to validate their own claims. But, as we have seen, of sacred authority stands so much at odds with the social values of the people that it is intolerable in practice and can be accepted by the Pukhtun only in a diluted form. As a result, the special and sacred power of saints is valorized in the distant past in a manner that offers no threat to the status quo, and can even ratify it. One way this is accomplished is through respect for the sacred dead, who are no longer potential political actors and are therefore harmless. The tombs of saints become places of pilgrimage for the downtrodden and needy, while the descendents of the saints who maintain a claim to baraka serve as attendants, and may make considerable incomes from the supplicants. In this way, the power of the dead saint is recognized, while simultaneously the living members of his group gain a living, yet lose honor due to the servile nature of their task.20 But aside from relegating sacred power to the peaceful safety of the tomb, powerful Pukhtun lineages also make a more active effort to appropriate saintly baraka into their own history through telling myths in which the holy men of the past are assimilated into the origin stories of the great Pukhtun clans. These stories always have the same plot: a poor Pukhtun ancestor gives up his family’s last livestock to feed a beggar who is later revealed to be a powerful holy man in disguise. In gratitude, the saint awards the Pukhtun clan with the right of ascendancy over its less generous neighbors. In these origin stories, the Pukhtun affirm their own distinctive virtue of hospitality, and assert that the holy man is dependent upon them, reliant on their generosity for food. Yet simultaneously they admit that the saint has a special spiritual power for granting and legitimizing authority that the Pukhtun lack. The hope is that by living up to Pukhtun values the blessings of religion can be elicited, and secular authority can gain a degree of validation not usually available to it.21 Meanwhile, after awarding power to the Pukhtun, the saint dies and is entombed, where he can grant lesser degrees of baraka to those supplicants who bring gifts to his descendants. Of course, these stories are mainly for consumption within each clan, as ways to argue for a permanent right to rule either in the present or in the future. Their rivals have similar myths of their own.

Conclusion In this chapter I have used comparative material from the United States to understand the intersection between Pukhtun values of egalitarian individualism and the forms in which authority is conceptualized and enacted. I have purposely left out much of the ethnographic detail, which has been covered elsewhere, in order to concentrate on Pukhtun ideas about the self and society, and their logical implications for the manner in which distinction and hierarchy are manifested in among a people who value equality and independence above all else. Essentially I have reasoned that the premises of egalitarianism and autonomy imply two ways in which authority can be conceptualized, accepted, and enacted.


Pukhtun identity in Swat, northern Pakistan 123 One is the secular form, wherein the leader expresses the “natural” strength and the power to command that are thought to be equally characteristic of the people who are his subjects. Because domination is thought to be simply the temporary rule of a coequal, Pukhtun are willing to accept secular rulers with a minimum of moral outrage. Yet, simultaneously, they do not give them any loyalty; ties to the leader are purely pragmatic and are justified solely in terms of the advantages gained by submission. In contrast, political authority in the United States, despite its parallel ideology of egalitarianism and independence, is imparted with a sacred quality and muted by a rhetoric of service. Meanwhile, in the economic realm ruthless pragmatism is validated in much the same way as political power seeking is validated in Swat. I have also argued that the contradictions implicit in maintaining and living out such a strongly secularized and pragmatic political realm awaken occasional upswellings of sacred authority; these charismatic manifestations are ideologically grounded not in a person’s natural strength and manifestation of the idealized Pukhtun character, but on the accumulation of magical potency acquired through passive discipleship. In this type of authority, the Pukhtun values of equality and self-affirming personal independence are countered by manifestations of hierarchy and self-abnegating dependence within a collective. In consequence, the holy man is regarded with the distaste the Pukhtun feel for all ambiguous figures—a distaste tinged, however, with fear, awe, and envy, since the saint poses a very real threat, both symbolically and in political terms, to the Pukhtun world which he both mirrors and reverses. Swati society is therefore caught in a dilemma. Authority that is secular and deemed “natural” must be fleeting and weakly legitimized, while power that is potentially permanent is held by ambivalent characters whose very essence is a refutation of Pukhtunness. We see efforts by the Pukhtun to overcome this quandary through myths of spiritual blessing and by devaluation of the saints as lecherous, mendacious, and avaricious. Yet the impasse of secular authority remains unsolved, meaning that holy leadership lies just below the surface, ready to redeem the tribesmen from their eternal battles by a revelation of mystical authority and a command to submit. This model implies that religious figures, whether Sufis or scholars, will continue to call for purification of the faith and the ascendance of the righteous—that is, themselves; in times of stress their efforts may succeed in the short run, but will eventually be met by accusations of hypocrisy from Pukhtuns who find their deepest values threatened by content of saintly claims for secular authority. This paradigm, I would argue, can be profitably extended to apply to societies in the Middle East and elsewhere which have similar beliefs in egalitarian individualism, and which share a similarly disenchanted view of the secular state.22

Notes 1 The same case could be made for Australia, where egalitarianism and autonomy are also highly valued in the construction of the self-made individual. 2 Because of the systemic exclusion of women from public positions of power in Swat, I will henceforth use masculine pronouns in my discussion.


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3 Of course, in the USA there are evident hierarchical distinctions seen in terms of accent, dress, and so on, but these are the object of considerable ambivalence and even derision in a society where the overwhelming majority of persons unhesitatingly define themselves as “middle class.” The less complex society of the Pukhtun also has some internal distinctions, particularly in formal respect offered by juniors to elders. But standardized deference behavior, which can in any case be overridden by the exigencies of the moment, is hardly equivalent to the caste distinctions found, for instance, in Hindu culture, or even to the European class and status markers which remain elaborately coded and difficult to surmount. In this respect then, the Pukhtun are far more “American” than European. 4 The term “possessive individuals” comes from Charles MacPherson (1962) who argues that this way of viewing people is a product of the rise of free market capitalism. This may be true in the West, but it obviously is not the case in Swat or elsewhere. The cross-cultural history of notions of the person and their political implications remains understudied. 5 There are exceptions. Durkheimian sociology begins with the group and considers that the individual only gains any sense of moral value and consciousness through participation in the community. Otherwise, people are simply animalistic creatures seeking self-preservation. See Durkheim (1973) for the clearest statement of this sociological point of view. 6 For an extended discussion if these issues in the Middle Eastern context, see Lindholm (2002). 7 In the American context, raw political power is muted by an affirmation that political leaders are not superior, but are subordinate to the electorate; the possession of political power is thereby hidden beneath a rhetoric emphasizing the influence of the voters, so that the Senator is designated a “civil servant” at the command of his constituency. This imagery does not permit any claims to raw power by the political elite—such claims must always be posed on the grounds of pursuing the interests of the voters the power-holder represents. When the pursuit and exercise of raw personal power does become evident, the office holder may be voted out of office, charged with “corruption,” “power hunger,” “self-seeking,” and the like. This sacralization of political life in America has been discussed in Bellah (1992) and elaborated in Hall and Lindholm (1999). 8 In Weberian terms, political power in Swat, like economic success in the West, is characterized by the restless and amoral workings of instrumental rationality, as opposed to the more constrained functioning of value rationality, which must utilize correct means to reach its goal (Weber 1978). 9 With his characteristic wit, Ghani Khan completes his aphorism by remarking that the unfortunate Pukhtun is foolish enough to try this out with his wife. “She pays for it in her youth, he pays for it in his old age.” 10 For a more complete discussion of the sources and limits of tyranny in the Middle Eastern context, see Lindholm (2002). 11 This technique is discussed at length in the Badshah’s autobiography (Wadud 1962). 12 Of course, there are substantial differences in the manner in which conformity is engendered and enacted. In the West it is manifested within a world where roles are amorphous; anxiety is thought to be a product of this very lack of definition. In Swat, on the other hand, there is a very specific and clear image of appropriate masculine behavior, one that every man must seek to enact. Thus, while Americans may suffer alienation from society, the Pukhtun may suffer from too great an integration into society—they call it being “narrow.” But, in both cases, there is no possibility of breaking stereotypes and ignoring the opinions of neighbors. The modern Westerner may therefore be searching for the appropriate model for action, while the Pukhtun knows quite well how to act; but each is haunted by the fear of being shamed and suffers from the tension of being obliged to find one’s own way in a fluid and antagonistic social world.


Pukhtun identity in Swat, northern Pakistan 125 13 The typical solution to this problem in traditional Middle Eastern state systems was the installation of slaves in all positions of power, coupled with exile of potential family rivals. This prevented uprisings by relatives, but at the cost of undermining the clan solidarity that had permitted rule in the first place. See Ibn Khaldun (1958) for the classic statement of this quandary. 14 In England, on the other hand, mundane political activity and institutionalized charisma of office have been strictly divided, as the royal family fills the role of ritualized head of state, but is prohibited from exercising power. 15 It is the desacralization of political power that helps to account for the preponderance of slave dynasties in the great states of the Middle East. Traditionally, men of moral fiber and good family isolated themselves from the dirty and cruelly pragmatic business of politics, leaving it to foreigners, slaves, and other lowly orders to dominate the political sphere. See Crone (1980), Pipes (1981), Lindholm (1986b) for more. 16 This is somewhat of an overstatement, since certain lineages are believed to have inherent potential to manifest baraka because of their descent from holy men or from the Prophet. But such descent is not a necessary precondition for becoming a religious leader, and in fact leaders arise out of almost every social strata and occupation group. Nor are those of holy descent necessarily more spiritual than other men. I have met men from the holiest lineages who work in the most menial jobs. 17 This imagery of domination is also sometimes associated with the saint’s supposedly ambiguous sexuality. For instance, religious men were often assumed by the Pukhtun to have had sexual intercourse with their acolytes—a clear symbolization of the sway of the master over his disciples. 18 We could look at this pattern from the point of view of Victor Turner’s theory of the status reversals that occur in certain societies prior to the ascension to power (1982). But from his perspective, these reversals occur in hierarchical social structures, whereas here the submission of the holy man occurs in an egalitarian context. I would argue that it is precisely in such contexts that a sort of permanent symbolic negation of superiority is a logical necessity. 19 For example, a man who failed to give a suitable donation to Abu Said (a famous Sufi saint known as “love’s bondsman”) was later devoured alive by his own dogs. See Nicholson (1921) for this and other instances of saintly nastiness. 20 It is noteworthy that the tombs of the saintly ancestor the Swati ruling house has lost most of its sacred appeal to pilgrims, who now patronize tombs of saints whose descendents do not have secular power, showing the inverse ratio of secular power to saintly baraka. 21 We can see a similar impulse at work in the use of religious figures to proclaim and legitimize the rulers of Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East. The myth of the founding of Swat also is based on an alliance between a secular ruler and a holy man. 22 For a more extended discussion, see Lindholm (2002).

References Ahmed, Akbar. 1976. Millennium and Charisma Among Pathans. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. —— 1980. Pukhtun Economy and Society: Traditional Structure and Economic Development in a Tribal Society. London: —— 1983. Islam and the District Paradigm. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 17: 155–83. Barth, Fredrik. 1959. Political Leadership Among the Swat Pathans. London: Athalone. —— 1985 The Last Wali of Swat. New York: Columbia University. Bellah, Robert. 1992. The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial. 2nd Edn. Chicago: University of Chicago.


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Caroe, Olaf. 1965. The Pathans. London: MacMillan. Crone, Patricia. 1980. Slaves on Horses. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Dumont, Louis. 1970. Homo Hierarchicus: An Essay on the Caste System. Chicago: University of Chicago. Durkheim, Emile. 1973. The Dualism of Human Nature and its Social Conditions. In: Robert Bellah (Ed.), Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago. Eickelman, Dale. 1992. The Art of Memory: Islamic Knowledge and its Social Reproduction. In: Juan Cole (Ed.), Comparing Muslim Societies: Knowledge and the State in a World Civilization. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Gellner, Ernest. 1981. Muslim Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Gibb, Hamilton A. R. and Harold Bowen. 1950. Islamic Society and the West: A Study of the Impact of Western Civilization on Moslem Culture in the Near East. Vol. I, Part I. London: Oxford University. Hall, John A. and Charles Lindholm. 1999. Is America Breaking Apart? Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hodgson, Marshall. 1974. Venture of Islam. Vol I: The Classical Age of Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago. Ibn Khaldun. 1958. The Muqaddimah. Translated by Franz Rosenthal. Princeton: Bollingen. Khan, Ghani. 1958. The Pathans: A Sketch. Peshawar: University Book Agency. Lambton, Anne. 1968. The Internal Structure of the Seljuk Empire. In: J.A. Boyle (Ed.), Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Lindholm, Charles. 1981. The Structure of Violence among the Swat Pukhtun. Ethnology, 20: 147–56. —— 1982. Generosity and Jealousy: The Swat Pukhtun of Northern Pakistan. New York: Columbia University. —— 1986a. Leadership Categories and Social Processes in Islam: the Cases of Dir and Swat. Journal of Anthropological Research 42: 1–13. —— 1986b. Kinship Structure and Political Authority: The Middle East and Central Asia. Comparative Studies in Society and History 28: 334–55. —— 1999. Justice and Tyranny: Law and the State in the Middle East. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Third Series) 9: 375–88. —— 2002. The Islamic Middle East: Tradition and Change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Lipset, Seymour. 1963. The First New Nation: the United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective. New York: Basic. MacPherson, Charles. 1962. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nicholson, Reynold. 1921. Studies in Islamic Mysticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Pipes, Daniel. 1981. Slave Soldiers and Islam. New Haven: Yale University. Riesman, David with Nathan Glazer and Ruel Denny. 1961. The Lonely Crowd. New Haven: Yale University. Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1969. Democracy in America. Garden City: Doubleday. Trimingham, John Spencer. 1971. The Sufi Orders of Islam. Oxford: Oxford University. Turner, Victor. 1982. The Ritual Process. New York: Aldine. Wadud, Abdul. 1962. The Story of Swat as Told by the Founder. Transcribed and translated by Ashruf Husain. Peshawar: Ferozsons. Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California.


Part III

Devices of mutual support



7

The impact of war on social, political, and economic organization in southern Hazarajat1 Alessandro Monsutti

Local factions: between the local and the global In his seminal work on the Turko-Persian tradition, Canfield (1991) focuses on broad historical trends and demonstrates how analytically fruitful it can be to look globally at the area where Iranian and Turkic languages are predominant. In the past and present days, this region of the world has been characterized by the development of large polities but also by the pregnancy of local factionalism. My goal here is to show the multi-layered logic informing political games in specific settings. Among the Hazaras of central Afghanistan, who are my case study, people form temporary alliances in their effort to secure resources, and they dissolve them as social, political, and economic opportunities change. During periods of conflict, members of solidarity groups strategically diversify their political affiliations in order to always have someone on the winning side. In the course of its history, the Hazarajat has repeatedly been the stage of dramatic events. Between 1891 and 1893, the emir of Kabul, Abdur Rahman, attacked the region in a campaign that featured massacres and atrocities (Kakar 1973; Mousavi 1998; Poladi 1989). From then on, the Hazaras, who have the disadvantage of being both a religious and ethnic minority (they are Shiites, while the majority of the Afghan population is Sunni), were socially, politically, and economically marginalized. In the conflicts following 1978, Hazarajat was spared the worst effects of the war, but deep inner tensions altered social relationships among Hazaras (Grevemeyer 1988; Harpviken 1996; Monsutti 1999, 2005). At first, the former tribal chiefs (mirs) and religious elites (sayyeds) were replaced by young religious leaders—often of modest origin—trained in Iran. Then, after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, most existing Hazara groups joined the newly created Hezb-e Wahdat, a party which developed political claims based on ethnicity without abandoning the reference to Shiism. These changes were suddenly interrupted and a new period of exclusion was begun when the Taliban took control of the Hazarajat in autumn 1998. Now, with the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001 and the institution of a democratic process (two loya jirgas in 2002 and 2003–4, presidential and legislative elections in 2004 and 2005), the political participation of the Hazaras at the governmental level seems to be more important than ever.


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To understand the complexity of the Afghan situation, one must constantly go back and forth between the local and the regional, the national and the global. In this chapter, I will first present the modes of organization of the Hazara society before addressing the changes and the conflicts at the local level that have taken place during the war. The district of Jaghori at the east of the province of Ghazni, on the southern border of the Hazarajat, will serve as an example for this purpose.

A precarious economy The Hazarajat is a mountainous territory with peaks as high as 5,000 meters. Its climate is extreme: every winter the snow isolates many villages for several weeks; summers are mild, but short. The Hazaras living at the south of the chain of the Koh-e Baba (Day Zangi, Day Kundi, Behsud, Ghazni) are sedentary farmers. For those living in the immediate north (between Yakawlang and Bamyan), animal husbandry plays an important part in the domestic economy. Situated somewhere between 2,000 and 3,600 meters, the district of Jaghori lies in the east of Ghazni province, on the southern fringes of Hazarajat. It covers 1,855 square kilometers and has a population of more than 150,000 with an average of 6.7 people per household (Johnson 2000: 46). Given the region’s climate, the high altitude and rare precipitation (less than 300 mm every year, Geokart 1984), population density (about 80 inhabitants per square kilometer) is very high. When re-calculated on the basis of people per square kilometer of cultivable land, the density of Behsud area (province of Wardak, with similar ecological conditions to Jaghori), for instance, is greater than that of Bangladesh (Johnson 2000: 46). Farming is hard; every plot of ground that can be cultivated is used. Nevertheless, despite the constant migratory flux, the demographic pressure remains intense. Small terraces are arranged for irrigated agriculture (ābi), using underground canals (kārez). Wheat, barley, corn, potatoes, beans, onions, carrots, turnips, clover, and alfalfa are cultivated. On the slope of the mountains, dry agriculture (lalmī) of low capacity is also practiced. Some orchards cheer up the landscape (mulberries, apples, apricots, walnuts, almonds, and so on). Poplars supply timber. Every family owns some sheep and goats, and sometimes one or two cows. In summer, the children lead the herds up the mountains close to the villages. However, unlike the practice on the high plateaux of northern and eastern Hazarajat, they do not stay for long periods in the high altitude hamlets (aylāq) (Huwyler and Meyer 1979). The basic food is bread (nān) dipped in thin broth (shurwā) often prepared with dried mutton (qadid). Dairy products provide essential nutrition; butter (maska) and buttermilk (dugh) are made from yoghurt (māst), qrut, a mass of pure casein, is made from the dried buttermilk, and cream (qaymāq) is also consumed. Despite, or perhaps owing to, the isolated situation of the Hazarajat, trade has become more important during the years of war. Poverty and insecurity have forced many Hazaras (like other Afghans) to leave their country, though most stay in touch with it. They have created extended transnational networks that encourage economic exchanges (Monsutti 2004, 2005). Jaghori—comparatively open to the outside world, close to the important Kabul-Kandahar road but at the same


The impact of war in southern Hazarajat 131 time protected by high mountains, and in regular contact with the Pakistani town of Quetta—has played an important part in the making of these networks. Situated outside the main war zones during the Soviet occupation, the region has become a sanctuary for many trading activities, as made evident by the important bazaars of Sang-e Masha and Anguri. Merchants sell manufactured products (pots, cloth, soaps, etc.) and food of foreign origin (rice, cooking oil, tea, sugar, etc.), particularly from Pakistan but also from Iran and the ex-Soviet Union.

Social structures A very useful source of information on the Hazarajat before its subjugation by Abdur Rahman are the different reports of the Afghan Boundary Commission, whose members traveled in Afghanistan between October 1884 and October 1886. Captain P. J. Maitland (later lieutenant-colonel) has written more precisely on the areas in which Hazaras and Turkmens dwelled. According to him, the Hazaras were originally divided into eight tribes (Maitland 1891: 284):2 Dai Zangi, Dai Kundi, Dai Chopān, Dai Kalān (the modern Shekh Ali), Besud, Faolād, Khatai, and Dāhlā. The first five are always mentioned, while one of the last three is sometimes substituted by the Dai Mirdād. Maitland (1891: 286) gives the following list of the principal divisions of his time: Besud, Dai Zangi, Dai Kundi, independent Hazaras Yaghistan (in the modern Uruzgan), Ghazni Hazaras, Shekh Ali, Hazaras of Bamian, and Hazaras of the Afghan Turkistan (fragments of tribes). For Bacon (1958: 6–7), the most stable of the Hazara tribes are the Dai Kundi, the Dai Zangi, the Besud, the Polada, the Jaghuri, and the Uruzgani (Dai Khitai and Dai Chopan). She mentions also the Sheikh Ali, the Dai Mirdad, the Chahar Dasta, the Muhammad Khwaja, and the Jaghatu.3 Actually, it seems vain to give a definitive list of past or present tribes. A number of authors have already pointed out that the former tribal names tend, nowadays, to refer to territories (Schurmann 1962: 121, 122; Gawecki 1986: 16). Schurmann rightly underscores “the inconsistencies and contradictions between these various lists…Such lists would perhaps always tend to differ from one another. This fact mirrors the general breakdown of social organization based on blood descent groups” (1962: 128). The Hazara tribal system was partially disorganized after the region was forced to submit to the central power of Kabul, at the end of the nineteenth century and progressively penetrated, at the local level, by the state’s administration (Canfield 1971). It would be useless to try to find systematically encasing levels or one-way affiliations. Due to the mobile nature of the affiliations, the image of the “Chinese Box” used by Mousavi (1998: 19, 45 ff.) translates better as social representations and values than an observable fact.4 The Jaghori Hazaras are listed by Maitland among the Ghazni Hazaras. They occupy the upper Arghandab valley, a then largely unknown region: The territory of the Jaghuri is divided into seven dastas or sub-districts, each of which is inhabited by three to seven sections, and is commonly called by the named of its principal section. Apart from the seven dastas are the lands of the Mir section. (1891: 370)


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Until his execution by the emir Abdur Rahman in 1882, the leader of the whole tribe was Sardar Ali Khan, whose name is still famous today. Maitland has drawn a list of the tribal sections of Jaghori (1891: 369–75; see Table 7.1). Some of my informants have drawn a different picture of the qawm of Jaghori. Local people concurred with Hazara researcher Mohammad Isa Ghargjestāni (1989) in distinguishing four main branches and two sub-branches: 1 2 3 4

The Baighani or Āta, divided into Oqi (including the lineage of the mir), Maska, Bābā, Dahmarda, Yār Mohammad, and Khosha. The Yazdari or Ezdari: Sa’id Ahmad, Allāhudāl, Khwāja Ali, Mirdād. The Bāghocari: Busayd, Khodādād, Bāya, Lumān. The Gari: Dolsha, Dāwud, Zerak, Haydar.

Other groups present in the region were not directly affiliated to the Jaghori tribal group and were thought to have different origins: 1 2

The Qalandar (late-nineteenth-century refugees from Day Chopan and Arjestan). The Pashi (present in Jaghori and Malistan districts and thought by many to be directly descended from Genghis Khan’s troops).

At this local level too, it would be misleading to impose an arbitrary order on this diversity (Tapper 1988). As a multiform term, qawm exemplifies well the complexity of the Afghan social reality. Most often translated as “solidarity group” (Canfield 1973: 34; Roy 1985: 23), it refers to a group of agnatic kinsmen, but the level to which it refers varies. In turn, it can mean enlarged kinship, lineage, tribe or ethnic group, even a professional or religious group. In Jaghori, if asked about his qawm, a man can answer without ambiguity by naming his lineage, his village, his district of origin, or by declaring himself Hazara. Such polysemy is not due to a conceptual vagueness, but expresses the fact that the relevant identity depends on the context and the supposed knowledge that people facing each other attribute to one another. Until the submission of Hazarajat by the emir of Kabul at the end of the nineteenth century, powerful tribal chiefs, the mirs, dominated the society (Roy 1985: 194; Mousavi 1998: 47, 91–2). Their sphere of influence reached several valleys. They owned most of the land and controlled the main means of production. Usually, the position of chief was transmitted from father to son. The functional socio-political entities were based mainly on networks of clients, entrusted with a genealogical ideology, according to which each tribal segment possessed a common male ancestor. In spite of the presence of some redistributive practices,5 social relationships seem to have been very hierarchical. Over the past century, Jaghori was placed under the control of a powerful mir originating from the tribal segment of the Oqi. The name of Sardar Sher Ali has remained famous and his descendants are still important landowners in the region. Faced with both the degradation of the socio-economic situation and the

The impact of war in southern Hazarajat 133


Table 7.1 Maitland’s tribal sections of Jaghori Dastas1 or sub-districts

Sections

Mehtars2 or headmen

Location

I. Ezdari (total 700 families)

1. Khwāja Ali

Muhammad Takí Sultān, Sayad Ahmad, Khair Beg

Aludán et Kharbed

400

Kamrak et Surkhjui

300

II. Hájíbíní (total 750 families)

1. Hjībnī

Zafar, Mehtar

Lomān

300

2. Beg

Karo, Mehtar

Bārik

100

3. Busaid

Mulla Husen, Mehtar

Lomān et Shahar-i Zaida

200

4. Shoghla

Sher Ali, Mehtar

Shoghla

150

1. Geri

Muhammad Husen, Mehtar

Tezao et Nairun

400

Angūrī

300

3. Haidar

Khuda Rahím, Mehtar

Saosang et Kadi

200

1. Maska

Ali Karam Naib

Gazak et Tanachob

100

2. Ātā

Zafar Ikhtiār

Maska et Sang-i SulĀākh

300

3. Oki

Muhammad Husen, Mehtar

Udkol (Aokol?)

600

Gulzār

100

Shāh Husen, Mehtar

Chalmadak

100

Pātū

120 100

III. Geri (total 900 families) IV. Maska (total 1,420 families)

2. Bāghochari

2. Angūrī

4. Dāmardah 5. Khosha 6. Pātū

No. of families

7. Bābā

Zafar Ali, Mehtar

Bābā

V. Kalandar (total 1,000 families)

Sections not known

Khuda Bakhsh Khán

Kalandar

1,000

VI. Sherdāgh (total 500 families)

Sections not known

Nasīr, Mehtar

Sherdāgh

500

VII. Pashē (total 800 families)

Sections not known

Ibrahīm Sultān et Sabz Pashē Ali, Mehtar

800

VIII. The Mír division (total 220 families)

Ālam Beg

Murtaza, Naib

Sang-i Māsha

100

Zardak

Zar Muhammad, Mehtar

Zardak

120 6,290

Notes 1 In the Dari–English dictionary of the Center of Afghanistan Studies, dasta means “a group of people” (1993: 363). 2 In the same dictionary, mehtar means “chief, head, leader” (1993: 715).


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political control imposed by the central government, the power of the mirs diminished. Although they were still important landowners, they had lost their political authority and had become simple intermediaries between the population and the civil servants, most often of Pashtun origin. The term mir, emptied from its substance, is slowly becoming obsolete. Nowadays, the term khān is preferred when speaking of a person whose influence is based on personal wealth, kinship or other social connections. Another category of influential men among the Hazaras is religious public figures, particularly the sayyed. Sayyeds are supposed to be the descendants of the prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima. They form a sort of religious aristocracy and constitute a large network which goes beyond the limits of a tribe or a particular region. They rarely give their daughters to non-sayyed, but they do marry Hazara women. They are a socio-cultural unit that is indistinguishable from the rest of the Hazarajat population. Some have managed to study in the important religious Shiite centres of Iran or Iraq and have become important spiritual guides. The sayyed, who often wear a black turban as a distinctive sign, are external to tribal genealogies; as such, they play an important part in public affairs where they act as mediators and referees in case of conflict. Unlike the mir, their influence is based on spiritual precedence and not directly on political or economic power (Kopecky 1982). At the level of local communities, other people play an essential role. First, the arbāb (or malek) is chosen as a representative, usually at the suggestion of the villagers but not without the consent of the khān. Often, the khān and arbāb are related and allied. The arbāb serves as an intermediary between the local community and the civil servants. He benefits from his position but is also a protective screen against external intrusions (Centlivres and Centlivres-Demont 1981–2: 523–4). Depending on the region, the arbāb can represent different entities: village, group of village, tribal segment, and so on. Lastly, there are the rish-safid, the “white beards,” the elders of the village and more generally every person of male sex with some experience of life. They are consulted every time a decision of some importance must be taken. Sometimes they wear a blue turban, a sign that they have made the pilgrimage of Kerbela (Iraq) to the shrine of the Imam Hussein (they are then respectfully addressed as karbalā’ ī), more often visited by the people of Shiite religion then the hajj of Mecca. The Hazaras are of patrilineal descent, as are the other groups around them. An individual belongs to the lineage of his father; the members of a same lineage consider each other as from the same male ancestor. Hazaras practice patrilocal residence and often all married sons live in the their father’s compound. The general pattern is to marry among relatives. The circle of marriage prohibition is very narrow: siblings, parents and direct ascendants, children and direct descendants, but strategies tend to diversify the social assets of a domestic group. Often, a father will try to marry one of his sons within his close kinship, and another outside. There is no clear pattern for a man to marry his father’s brother’s daughter, as in other parts of the Middle East. However, the incidence of unions between cousins is high. Until the war, the rare matrimonial unions contracted outside


The impact of war in southern Hazarajat 135 the ethnic group most often followed the same pattern: Hazara daughters were married to men of other groups. As providers of women, the Hazaras were in an asymmetrical relation revealing the inferior place they occupy in the social hierarchy. Today, with the feeling of insecurity created by the war, such unions are so unusual that no conclusion can be drawn. An important consequence of the submission of Hazarajat at the end of the nineteenth century was the opening of the region to Pashtun nomads, who appropriated the best grazing lands for their herds. The relation between the two communities was difficult. Divergent economic interests added to the religious rift. The Pashtun nomads were not only stockbreeders but also tradesmen. By lending money and selling manufactured products, they gained a position of economic superiority over sedentary Hazara farmers, who were then often forced to sell their properties to their creditors in order to pay off their debts. Thus, they became sharecroppers on their own land (Ferdinand 1962). During the twentieth century, many impoverished Hazaras were forced to migrate to cities like Ghazni, Mazar-i Sharif, and, most importantly, Kabul to do menial jobs. These were difficult times for the Hazaras who were considered second-class citizens. After the upheaval of the war of 1891–3, and until the communist coup d’état of 1978, the internal structure of local communities does not seem to have gone through tremendous changes. Social questions in the village were generally settled by influential men and elders through complex negotiations, where the apparent consensus can mask the reality of the power relation (Ferdinand 1959).

Lineages and modes of residence in Jaghori In Hazara discourse and representations, but also by their social practices, the district (uluswālī) of Jaghori can be divided into a little more than 20 regions (manteqa), which have never, however, been officially acknowledged (Avicen 1990). Our analysis is based on Dahmarda, at the extreme south of Jaghori. It is a small valley, a tributary of the Arghandab, with no direct contact with the rest of the district (at latitude 32°51’ north and longitude 67°25’ east). Mountains reach 3,142 meters at the north and 3,038 meters at the south. The downstream side (west) is enclosed by gorges. Toward the east, the valley forms quite a wide basin at an altitude of 2,400–2,500 meters (Adamec 1985).6 Therefore differences of altitude are not significant. Until the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Dahmarda was connected to the outside world by only one road suitable for motor vehicles, through the Rasana Pass (around 2,700 meters east of the bazaar), which goes across zones of Pashtun people, especially from the Taraki tribe (a district of Gelan). This road reaches the rest of Jaghori district (by Hutqol and Anguri) and the Tarnak valley (and the Kabul-Kandahar road). Two bad tracks communicate with the Arghandab valley (Zabul province), south through the Qaro Pass and west through the valley. A trail from Qarqol reaches Rāsh and then Pātu to the northwest. In 2004, an unpaved road linking Dahmarda and the Zabul province was built with the support of the United Nations.


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The population is difficult to estimate but is probably more than 3,000. It is divided among more than 400 households (khāna), which live in many small hamlets (qaria or āghel). Downstream, where the valley has steep sides, the houses rarely have surrounding walls, but further up the landscape opens out and people live in larger homes with high adobe (qal’a) walls. It is here that the main community buildings are to be found: a mosque and a school recently converted by a local non-governmental organization (NGO). There is also a bazaar consisting of 70 shops, but it is not very active and rarely has more than a dozen shops open at the same time. There are no craftsmen, except for a couple of blacksmiths, a carpenter, and a miller. The properties are mostly of small dimension and settlement is scattered. My information on Jaghori tally with those that Schurmann gives on Yakawlang (1962: 153–2): the households own an average of about six jerib of irrigated land (one jerib is equivalent to 0.2 hectares). In Dahmarda only a few wealthy people own 30 or 40 jerib. The economy is essentially based on irrigated agriculture and the financial contribution of the men who work in the coal mines around Quetta, Pakistan, or do manual labor in Iran (Monsutti 2004, 2005). A family consisting of the 65-year-old father, his wife, their two sons, the oldest son’s wife and their young male baby, and two unmarried daughters, for instance, owns five jerib of irrigated land and has a right to water from seven kārez. They produce almost 2,000kg of almonds (mostly for sale), a little more than 800kg of wheat, a few apricots, carrots, turnips, and fodder crops (clover and alfalfa). As they do not produce enough for their domestic consumption, the youngest son moved to Iran and now sends his savings to complement their livelihood. Dahmarda owes its name to the 10 original lineages (dah “ten,” mard “man”), in order of importance: Omur, Dawrān (or Dawro), Wafā, Dali, Rāzi, Basmanai, Khoshdād, Tolgha, Dawlatjām, and Kharida. An eleventh lineage was added at an undetermined time, the Āhingar (or Ayngro, which means the “blacksmiths,” Pashtuns converted to Shiism and “hazarized”). The largest lineages (in particular the Omur and the Dawrān) are then divided in sub-groups with their own names, a prelude to a future segmentation. One can add to these 11 lineages a few sayyed. Their number is rather low in Jaghori: little more than one or two percent of the inhabitants of Dahmarda, while it can represent half the population in other regions of the Hazarajat, particularly in Yakawlang (Schurmann 1962: 112). There are also some refugees, designed as farāri (exiled) or hamsāya (neighbors), who originated from the region of Dai Chopan, north of the province of Zabul. They arrived at the end of the nineteenth century, the first victims of the conflicts and repressions conducted under the leadership of Abdur Rahman. Farmers without land, very vulnerable socio-economically, most of them went to try their luck in Pakistan or Iran during the war. In Dahmarda, no lineage is grouped in only one site, and hamlets which are occupied by only one lineage are rare. Each community is composed of several descent groups, which all have family relationships in some other place. In other words, kinship, and neighborhood are not congruent.7 Besides being called qawm, the lineage can also be referred to as khānwār (family) or by saying awlād-e (children of) followed by the name of the eponym


The impact of war in southern Hazarajat 137 ancestor. Locally, the term khānawāda (family, dynasty) has a more restricted reference, while khāna (house) is reserved for people actually living under the same roof. Kinship vocabulary fluctuates and reveals strategies. It structures relationships and daily activities. Thus, an individual will call a male member of his lineage kākā (paternal uncle, FB) if the latter is older, bach-e kākā (paternal cousin, FBS) if they are the same age. In the same way, the terms māmā (maternal uncle, MB) and bache māmā (maternal cousin, MBS) are used with members of the mother’s lineage. The subtle use of the terminology at their disposal allows proximity and friendship to be marked, but also hostility and distrust. More or less, all social relations in Dahmarda are conceived through the kinship mode. However, the inhabitants of the valley are related by many differentiated obligations. First, belonging to a patrilineal descent group imposes a number of duties: revenge, mutual financial aid (for example, in case of marriage, to put together the brideprice, gala8), participating in common celebrations, and so on—in short, a diffuse solidarity and the feeling of sharing a common destiny. The other types of kinship relations (through the women, by the mother, sister or wives) are often less compelling and perhaps because of this allow more space for personal feelings. The descent group of the maternal uncle is sometimes referred to as māmākhel, the kinship by marriage as khesh, and the whole of kinship ties as qawm o khesh. Second, the inhabitants of the same hamlet often share ownership of one or two irrigation canals, whose maintenance they ensure and whose water they share, following a predefined cycle. These rights are transmitted from one generation to the next with the land, and are successively divided among the heirs from the time the kārez was built. In Dahmarada, there is no mirāb, responsible for the irrigation, as in other regions of the country, where canals are more important. If this tight cohabitation can create conflicts, it also imposes concessions and a thorough interdependence. A third type of relation is important: several hamlets may join their efforts to maintain a place for reunions with a religious goal, the member,9 and to pay the services of a mollā who can ensure Qur’anic readings and a basic teaching (Edwards 1986; Bindemann 1987: 43 ff.). Today, there are a dozen members in Dahmarda, which serve as places of reunion and prayer, and as guesthouses and Koranic schools; one membar-e omumi, is common to the entire valley. In the past, the leader of Dahmarda was designated by the term mehtar, which has been abandoned for that of qariadār at the time of the 1964 Constitution. He was alternately chosen between the two main lineages (Omur and Dawrān). Furthermore, each lineage possesses its own chief, called malek or arbāb. The representative of a hamlet, when he exists, is named dārugha. As elsewhere in Afghanistan and in the Hazarajat, the few sayyed present and some people with religious instruction (mollā, sheikh) also intervene in the public affairs of the valley.

The interplay of factions and parties10 Besides the many different kinds of solidarity ties, what is very remarkable are both the physical violence and the endemic insecurity that characterize social relations and everyday life in Jaghori. The region (and especially Dahmarda) is situated on


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the ethnic boundary between the Hazaras and Pashtuns. At the beginning of the 1990s, shortly after the Soviet military withdrawal, very severe fighting took place between groups of Pashtun and Hazara mujāhedin. No major clashes accompanied the arrival of the Taliban in autumn 1998 and their defeat in 2001. Nevertheless, even after the presidential and legislative elections (October 2004 and September 2005), the situation remained strained due to the depth of internecine tensions and the proximity with the unsettled provinces of Zabul and Uruzgan. Dahmarda was comparatively untouched by fighting during the Soviet occupation. Few bombs and two or three raids by Soviet tanks were the extent of external interference that the valley experienced. However, as in the rest of the Hazarajat, internal conflicts and socio-political upheavals have been profound, reaching a proportion unknown in the tribal war. Settling of feuds can be murderous, more so now that everyone owns heavy arms (automatic guns, or even rocket launchers and flame-throwers). As a result, the atmosphere is tense. People distrust one another, the bazaar is often empty, and the mollās have prohibited music and dance, even during wedding ceremonies. During the war, a new political actor began to play a major part: the secular intellectuals. Often from the wealthiest and most powerful lineages (even those of the former mir) and proportionally more numerous in Jaghori than elsewhere in the Hazarajat, they were affiliated with parties of Maoist inspiration. The beginning of the 1980s witnessed merciless conflicts between the latter and the religious circles, which in the end gained control over most of Hazarajat (Roy 1985: 194–205; Harpviken 1996). At first, a nationalist and leftist movement founded in Pakistan by emigrated Hazaras, the Tanzim-e Nasl-e Naw-e Hazara-ye Moghol (Party of the New Generation of Mongol Hazara), was evicted by the Shura-ye Ettefaq-e Islami (Council of the Islamic Union), a vast traditionalist movement controlled by the sayyed. In a second period, between 1982 and 1984, pro-Iranian parties, the Sazman-e Nasr (Organization of the Victory) and the Sepa-ye Pasdaran (Army of the Guardians), took the upper hand. They were led by young religious men, often of modest origin, who studied in Iran and were inspired by the Khomeynist revolution. Despite their ideological proximity, these two movements are distinct and often rivals. Their division reflected the faction clashes which tore apart Iran. Under Islamic radicalism, ideological differences have emerged: the first gives more value to its independence from the great Shiite patron and is more sensitive to the problem of ethnic discrimination (Harpviken 1996: 88); the second is more attached to the installation of an Islamic state following the Khomeynist model. In 1989, the red army retired from Afghanistan. Afraid of being excluded from peace talks, the Hazara leaders understood that unity is the way to salvation. Owing to recent disruptions, this unity could only be built on a new ideological ground, that of Hazara identity. With the active support of Iran, the main Shiite factions were striving to bury their past disagreements and agree to form a vast unitary movement, the Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami-ye Afghanistan (Party of the Islamic Unity of Afghanistan). The reins of power remained in the hands of the religious leaders, the ruhāni, but the new party also incorporated many secular intellectuals, including former Marxists and Maoists (soldiers,


The impact of war in southern Hazarajat 139 engineers, doctors, teachers, etc.). They were trying to become indispensable and to play again a political role by creating NGOs that serve in such areas as health care, education, construction of roads, etc. Outside this dominant trend, however, we once again found the Islamic fundamentalists who remain faithful to the model of the Khomeynist State and who refuse the ethnic turn. Most of them are members of the Sepa.11 At a local level in Dahmarda, struggle between political parties has been added to the already deep divisions in the society caused by competition for rare resources (agricultural land, water, humanitarian assistance, etc.). The war has profoundly modified the political structures. One hardly talks anymore of qariadār, mehtar or malek. In the 1980s, three offices were created: the ra’is, a sort of mayor; the qomāndān-e amnyat, who is responsible for public order; and the qomādān-e nezāmī, the military chief responsible for defense.12 Ideally, these three public figures are elected by the family chiefs of the valley but, in fact, they are mostly a visible expression of the power relations between the different factions, while depending on a party implanted at the regional level. A young sheikh, originated from the Dali, a secondary lineage, and linked to the Sepa, took control over the region in 1986 and became its ra’is. The members of previous prominent families were marginalized. After a few years, new tensions crystallized around school attendance. Formerly, there was only one madrasa (the religious school associated with the membar), which began in the 1970s. But since 1991, outside financial aid coming from an Afghan NGO enabled the construction of an elementary school in 1994. The director of this school was chosen among the powerful Omur lineage, which alone represents about a quarter of the population of Dahmarda. He came from the Nasr, a majority of whom have rallied to the Wahdat. He however had a leftist past, having been a member of the Tanzim-e Nasl-e Naw-e Hazara-ye Moghol at the beginning of the war. Having opposed social, political and academic backgrounds (governmental schools for the first, religious studies in Iran for the second), the ra’is and the school director quickly came into conflict. Events took a dramatic turn during the first local elections organized in autumn 1994. At that time, the lineage of the Omur—politically divided for a long time— rallied around the school director. Having recently joined the latter and closely related to him, the qomāndān-e amnyat and the qomāndān-e nezāmi were confirmed in their offices while a new ra’is was elected. Afraid that the Omur would become too powerful and would begin to dominate local life, a majority of the members of the less well represented lineages got together to form a coalition. Indeed, two teachers in disagreement with the director were excluded from the school, which the children belonging to the families in favour of the former ra’is had ceased to attend. A train of violence followed that ended with a series of burglaries in the bazaar, and then with the murder of the former ra’is (winter 1994–5), who had refused to hand over the arms in his possession. Since then, tension remains high and the village is truly divided into two factions (incidentally, the newly elected ra’is quickly renounced his office). The partisans of the murdered ra’is—who was from then on presented as a shaheed, a martyr—undertook the


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construction of a new school, in all likelihood with financial help from the government of Rabbani, which was at war with the Hezb-e Wahdat. Political labels, assigned with as many insults, circulate at a good pace: some speak with disdain of the “infidels” (kāfer), while others malign the “Khomeynist mullahs.” In autumn 1995, the school director was accidentally killed in a landslide. Feelings did not quiet down, however, and a new escalation of violence began. It culminated at the end of the winter with the massacre of more than 10 men associated with the Sepa. These local events were happening parallel to the evolution of the Hazarajat, in which the Wahdat extended its control in a quasi-uniform way. In October 1995, the Khalili forces took Bamyan after violent fighting against the Akbari faction backed by Massoud. In Dahmarda, with the opposition having been smothered, the Nasr-Omur faction ruled without too many problems and managed to keep its pre-eminent position, even after the Taliban entered the district of Jaghori in autumn 1998.13 In their hope to consolidate their power, its leaders—representing the old class of notables who overthrew the Khomeynist new men—later supported M. Karim Khalili, who became closer to Hamid Karzai and eventually became his vice-president in autumn 2004. Their strategy of collaboration with the central government alienated most of the population of Dahmarda. More and more isolated at the local level, the leaders of the Nasr faction were finally forced to step down after the presidential and legislative elections.

Factionalism: a constitutive feature Relatively spared by the Soviet invader, the Hazarajat has truly been through a civil war of its own. Hazara society is extremely divided because of demographic pressure, the scarcity of agricultural land, and the lack of water as well as by the competition to obtain outside help (military and humanitarian). The fault lines are many and one has to go beyond easy explanations, such as ethnic conflict, archaisms, or tribalism, to begin to understand the situation. Subtle and constantly changing strategies cross one another. On the one hand, the game of alliances strives to maintain a certain equilibrium between the forces present in order to prevent one of the factions from becoming too powerful; on the other, there seems to be a real strategy of diversification of affiliations. Even if a qawm is the core of a political faction, it always has members on the opposite side. Sometimes, this is insurance in case of an unfavorable political or military development because the potential loser can find a protector among the winners. But kinship ties can also entail jealousy, competition, and enmity, leading to opposed political positions. Indeed, there is a fundamental ambiguity in Afghan society—exacerbated during the war—in which two opposite features coexist: family and community solidarity on the one hand, and internal competition and rivalry among close agnates on the other. Cooperation and trust do not automatically emerge from a given social tie and it is always necessary to have long-term relationships with people outside of one’s solidarity group (Monsutti 2004). Political groups and alliances follow a complex pattern and are not exclusively determined by kinship and ethnicity. They tend to form for a specific activity and then dismantle. There are multiple


The impact of war in southern Hazarajat 141 sources of solidarity. The logic that operates at the local level mirrors political logic that has come to operate in Afghanistan as a whole. During the war, political parties became a major actor on the national arena and their intrigues entered the local sphere. In Hazarajat, such an evolution is linked to the emergence of a new elite struggling for power against the traditional notables. The Taliban essentially progressed by rallying popular support. Their success could not only be explained by support from Pakistan, which was often denounced. They managed to exploit the discontent of a certain fringe of the Afghan population and the internal divisions of their enemies by supporting the pretensions of yesterday’s losers. Even their rapid defeat in 2001 cannot be understood without reference to the local logic. It was not only caused by the American military intervention but also by the same internal factors which induced their success. The stated ideological aversion of the Taliban to the Shiites had not prevented some Hazara commanders from joining them. This was the case in Jaghori where several commanders of the region accepted their leadership. They came from movements that had been marginalized by the unification operated by the dominant trend of the Hezb-e Wahdat or were previous notables trying to keep their pre-eminence at any cost. Despite external threats, the inhabitants of Dahmarda were not able to stifle their old rancour and divisions. But one must insist on the fact that none of the lineages was in its totality allied to one of the two factions. The Nasr was locally constituted by the majority of the most powerful lineages, and an important minority of all the other kinship groups. The Sepa rallied the majority of the members of the smaller lineages, but also included a few Omur families. People always try to have a protector among the opposing side. In their effort to promote their interest and to secure resources in an overall state of insecurity, they form temporary alliances, which may disband quickly. The only constant pattern is the permanence of two opposing factions, whose members are always changing with respect to circumstances.

Notes 1 I would like to thank Robert Canfield, Antonio Giustozzi, Sarah Kamal, Valérie Outemzabet, Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek, and Paul Titus for their invaluable assistance in improving my English and for their helpful comments. 2 I have respected his transcription. 3 See also Poladi (1989: 29–41). 4 “The Chinese Box is made up a series of several boxes in consecutive sized fitting one another, with the largest box containing all. The Chinese Box of Afghanistan is made up of several smaller ‘boxes’ of different peoples and nations…; with each in turn representing an independent Chinese Box” (Mousavi 1998: 19). 5 For example, the nazr, votive offerings, which often take the shape of a meal offered to the poor by a rich public figure in memory of a deceased, or any other act of charity (khayrāt). One must also mention the zakāt, the legal alms intended for the destitute, and the khums, the fifth of the income collected and administered by the sayyed, usually for realisations concerning the public good (Kopecky 1982). 6 See also the maps 1: 253, 440 published by the Surveyor-General of India (1941–2). Dahmarda is mentioned under the name Gilzār (map I-42 T).


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7 Keesing (1975: 43) has carried out a typology of the articulation of kin groups with local groups. We are confronted here with the situation described in the following terms: “A community consists of several descent groups. Some or all of the local descent groups are related by common descent to groups in neighboring communities. Hence they have external ties of kinship and local solidarity with their neighbors.” 8 In the 1990s, the brideprice could go from 700,000 to 3,500,000 afghanis, about $100–500. After the fall of the Taliban and the revaluation of the afghani, it could be equivalent to $1,000. 9 We find here the local pronunciation of minbar (“chair of the mosque”). In that context, the term has the same meaning as the Persian takya-khāna. The Hazaras of Quetta (Pakistan) talk of imāmbārga or imāmbāra. The setting for the Shiite religious meetings are referred to in that way. They are mostly used during the month of moharram (first month of the Islamic lunar year) to commemorate the martyr of the Imam Hussein (grandson of the prophet Mohammad, killed at the instigation of the Umayyad caliphate in AD 680) with dirges (the nawha). 10 See also Monsutti (1996). 11 The cadres of the Nasr furnish most of the armour of the Wahdat (it was the case of Abdul Ali Mazari and then of M. Karim Khalili, who became vice-president of Afghanistan in 2004), while the historical leader of the Sepa, Sheikh Akbari, sides with Massoud and then rallied to the Taliban in 1998. 12 Until the Taliban took over the region in autumn 1998, a sort of village militia had been set up: the young men took turns guarding the bazaar and the main access routes with their own arms and munitions. 13 The Taliban took the control of Mazar-e Sharif on August 8, 1998, then of Bamyan on September 13. They were in control of most of Afghanistan until the end of 2001.

References Adamec, Ludwig W. 1985. Historical and Political Gazetteer of Afghanistan. Vol. 6: Kabul and Southeastern Afghanistan, map VI-18-A (scale 1 : 300’000). Graz: ADEVA. Avicen. 1990. Hazarajat: The Development of the EPI Programme in the Central Provinces. Peshawar: Afghanistan Vaccination and Immunisation Centre. Bacon, Elizabeth E. 1958. Obok: A Study of Social Structure in Eurasia. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation. Bindemann, Rolf. 1987. Religion und Politik bei den schi’itischen Hazâra in Afghanistan, Iran und Pakistan. Ethnizität und Gesellschaft. Occasional Paper 7. Berlin: Das Arabische Buch. Canfield, Robert L. 1971. Hazara Integration into the Afghan Nation: Some Changing Relations Between Hazaras and Afghan Officials. Occasional Paper 3. New York: Afghanistan Council. —— 1973. Faction and Conversion in a Plural Society: Religious Alignments in the Hindu Kush. Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan. —— 1991. Introduction: the Turco-Persian Tradition. In: Robert L. Canfield (Ed.), TurkoPersia in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Center for Afghanistan Studies. 1993. Dari-English Dictionary/Farhang-eF rsi wa Englisi. Omaha: Center for Afghanistan Studies. Centlivres, Pierre and Micheline Centlivres-Demont. 1981–2. Village en Afghanistan. Commentaire 16: 516–25.


The impact of war in southern Hazarajat 143 Edwards, David B. 1986. The Evolution of Shi’i Political Dissent in Afghanistan. In: Juan Cole and Nikki R. Keddie (Eds.), Shi’ism and Social Protest. New Haven: Yale University. Ferdinand, Klaus. 1959. Preliminary Notes on Hazāra Culture. (The Danish Scientific Mission to Afghanistan 1953–5.) Historisk-filosofiske Meddelelser udgivet af Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab 37(5): 1–51. —— 1962. Nomad Expansion and Commerce in Afghanistan. Folk 4: 123–59. Gawecki, Marek. 1986. Structure and Organization of the Rural Communities of Central and Northern Afghanistan. Ethnologia Polona 12: 7–35. Geokart. 1984. National Atlas of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Warsaw: Geokart. Ghargjestāni, Mohammad Isā. 1989. Tārix-e Hazāra wa Hazāristān. Quetta: Gharjestãni Publisher. Grevemeyer, Jan-Heeren. 1988. Ethnicity and National Liberation: The Afghan Hazara Between Resistance and Civil War. In: Jean-Pierre Digard (Ed.), Le Fait Ethnique en Iran et en Afghanistan. Paris: CNRS. Harpviken, Kristian Berg. 1996. Political Mobilization Among the Hazara of Afghanistan: 1978–1992. Rapport 9. Oslo: Department of Sociology. Huwyler, Edwin and François-Xavier Meyer. 1979. The Central Provinces of Afghanistan: A Monography Based on the Available Literature, with an Annotated Bibliography. Berne: Directorate for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid. Johnson, Chris. 2000. Hazarajat Baseline Study – Interim Report. Islamabad: UN Co-ordinator’s Office. Kakar, Hasan K. 1973. The Pacification of the Hazaras of Afghanistan. Occasional Paper 6. New York: Afghanistan Council. Keesing, Roger M. 1975. Kin Groups and Social Structure. Fort Worth, Chicago: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Kopecky, Lucas-Michael. 1982. The Imami Sayyed of the Hazarajat: The Maintenance of their Elite Position. Folk 24: 89–110. Maitland, Lieutenant-Colonel P. J. 1891. The Hazāras of the Country Known as the Hazārajāt, and Elsewhere. Afghan Boundary Commission Report, Vol. 4. Shimla: Government Central Printing Office. Monsutti, Alessandro. 1996. Dehmarda: Un Village Divisé. Afghanistan Info 38: 8–9. —— 1999. Guerre et ethnicité en Afghanistan, Tsantsa 4: 63–73. —— 2004. Cooperation, Remittances, and Kinship among the Hazaras. Iranian Studies 37(2): 219–40. —— 2005. War and Migration: Social Networks and Economic Strategies of the Hazaras of Afghanistan. New York and London: Routledge. Mousavi, Sayed Askar. 1998. The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical, Cultural, Economic and Political Study. Richmond: Curzon Press. Poladi, Hassan. 1989. The Hazāras. Stockton, CA: Mughal Publishing. Roy, Olivier. 1985. L’Afghanistan: Islam et Modernité Politique. Paris: Seuil. Schurmann, Herbert F. 1962. The Mongols of Afghanistan. La Haye: Mouton. Tapper, Richard. 1988. Ethnicity, Order and Meaning in the Anthropology of Iran and Afghanistan. In: Jean-Pierre Digard (Ed.), Le Fait Ethnique en Iran et en Afghanistan. Paris: CNRS.


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An inter-regional history of Pashtun migration, c. 1775–2000 Robert Nichols

Circulation is different from simple mobility, inasmuch as it implies a double movement of going forth and coming back, which can be repeated indefinitely. In circulating, things, men, and notions often transform themselves. Circulation is therefore a value-loaded term which implies an incremental aspect and not the simple reproduction across space of already formed structures and motions.1

Recent South Asian scholarship has recognized processes of movement and circulation as integral to a full understanding of regional social, economic, and cultural histories, especially in the modern period, after the mid-eighteenth century. Markovits et al. have posited that the “totality of circulations occurring in a given society and their outcomes” define a kind of “circulatory regime” that varies over time and shapes society, “which can be seen as an ensemble of crisscrossing circulatory flows.”2 This study examines how processes of circulation have linked regions across the Indian Ocean, especially as circulatory regimes have been influenced and transformed by colonial and post-colonial dynamics. There has been an accumulating amount of research on social and political change among communities in Pashtun majority settlement territories, including the greater Peshawar valley and neighboring districts—a diverse region characterized by agrarian village economies, ethnic Pashtun/Pakhtun social dynamics, and a history of close involvement with sub-continental networks of politics, employment, and trade.3 This chapter introduces a larger, continuing study of the historic impact of circulation and emigration on select Pashtun communities and socio-cultural practices as residents left the Peshawar valley, often for decades or permanently, to pursue outside employment and opportunity. Over generations, Pashtuns in permanent or temporary diaspora were transformed by the range of possible social consequences as they circulated in the greater Indian Ocean region, variously experiencing degrees of assimilation, integration, ethnic self-awareness, and, increasingly, notions of “national” identity. For centuries in the second millennium of the common-era, Pashtuns traveled within the Indian sub-continent and greater Indian Ocean arenas.4 After c. 1775 Pashtuns circulating in northern India from both urban and rural settings moved increasingly in British imperial spheres. After 1947 Pashtuns sought opportunities


An inter-regional history of Pashtun migration 145 within a rapidly changing Pakistani urban environment and within the new nationstates left by departing empires. From the early 1970s Pashtun workers pursued livelihoods within a global economy transformed by the demand for Middle East energy resources. This chapter briefly traces these processes and uses the historical case study of particular districts within colonial and post-colonial South Asia to introduce questions about migration and globalization, including theories that have attempted to explain economic, social, and cultural changes and continuities observed in local villages, Pakistan, and the world during the late modern period, c. 1775–2000. This study is a preliminary statement contributing to wider interpretations of interregional history and to more difficult discussions of complex regional “Pashtun” identities and how they have, inevitably, undergone change over time.5

Manpower circulation in South Asia Regionally, for centuries, agrarian districts with little irrigation and limited rainfall in eastern Afghanistan, the northern and western colonial Punjab, and the Northwest Frontier Province produced surplus workers looking outside the immediate village economy for subsistence and opportunity.6 Markovits et al. have proposed that ecological differences in Indian regions—between dry, “semi-dry,” and wet zones—opposing pastoral and agrarian political economies, produced some “highly routinized productive processes,” but also “provided scope for a mobile and skilful peasantry and groups of merchants and artisans,” including “in the ‘dry zone’ of Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia.” Particularly, “in the North Indian context,” and arguably the Pashtun homelands, “this interaction was manifested through a regular pattern of circulation of manpower, including military manpower, goods, capital, expertise, ideas, techniques, etc., from the ‘dry’ areas to the ‘wet’ zones.”7 In the eighteenth century tens of thousands of “Rohillas” migrated from west of the Indus to settle northeast of New Delhi in the Rohilkhand region. In the early-nineteenth century many migrants sought “service” in East India Company territories or in areas still under local rulers. After 1849 and the British occupation of much of the north Indian region, a small administrative cadre was recruited for low level colonial government service. But most of the surplus labor force, including poorly educated villagers of the Peshawar valley8 and neighboring districts such as Swat and Kohat, sought unskilled or semi-skilled work in police and military service, agriculture, or urbanizing market towns and port cities such as Karachi that grew rapidly after 1850. In the mature colonial period, after the imposition of direct rule by the British crown in 1858, Pashtuns from the Peshawar valley were also drawn to or recruited for positions in the colonial plantation and trade networks that linked South Asia, Africa, various Indian Ocean archipelagos, and Southeast Asia. Some Pashtuns became traders, including selling livestock across northern India. Others became shopkeepers and small financiers. Under colonial penal codes Pashtun prisoners were transported “across the water” to the Straits Settlements and the Andaman Islands.


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This study discusses aspects of this Pashtun diaspora within the provinces and princely states of colonial India and continues to follow this human circulation after decolonization within the independent nation-state of Pakistan. It then examines participation in globally integrated overseas labor markets, especially in the Middle East in the late-twentieth century. Especially from the early 1970s Pakistan state development policies encouraged external labor flows to the rapidly growing economies of the oil states in the Gulf, Libya, and Iraq. This phase saw dramatic numbers of Pakistanis employed in the Middle East, with resulting complex social consequences.9 Remittances to home villages transformed local architecture and consumption patterns even as the possessors of new wealth challenged established social hierarchies for degrees of status and leadership. Gender relations were increasingly adjusted or upset as women left behind by migrating husbands often took charge of family affairs and finances. Irregular and illegal migration proliferated, even as old power structures tried to monopolize access to the new opportunities. Forces of globalization, including informal labor and financial networks threatened to undermine the sovereignty of nation-states attempting to set policies and regulate savings and expenditures.10 In examining these potentially disruptive influences at the village and family level and placing these findings in the context of the past two centuries of regional history, this study argues that indeed there is a “recurrence of certain important migration patterns over time,” that colonial era labor migration “echoes” contemporary migration from Pakistan to the Middle East, and that studies of post-independence labor migration within Pakistan in the 1950s and 1960s “reflect a number of similarities” with recent migration to the Middle East.11 By rooting this research in the history of the Peshawar valley this chapter contributes to literature, noting the effects of historical global processes (migration, capitalism, industrialization, etc.) at the regional level, where local socio-cultural relations and practices may more readily reveal dynamics too easily subsumed within macro studies framed on the nation-state level. Theoretical approaches to historical processes of migration and globalization, especially in the South Asian and Pakistani context, have been formulated by economists, anthropologists, and others impressed by the impact of British colonial economic policies and by great waves of national and international mobility experienced during colonial and post-colonial movements of urbanization, industrialization, and transnational labor migration. The approach here focuses upon the specific relevance for migration study of the Indian Ocean, especially when considered, in Bose’s term, as an historic “inter-regional arena” of cultural, economic, social and political exchange continuously linked to distant cultures and political economies.12 Studies of colonial-era South Asian labor migration record the integration of a global system of European colonial capitalist production. The nineteenth-century British imperial system of developed indentured and contract labor recruitment to operate commercial plantations from the Caribbean to Fiji. This has been studied as a substitute for abolished slave labor and as an ideological system creating permanent, docile worker pools.13 Post-independence scholarship has analyzed the continued high mobility of Pakistani labor, internally and externally. Scholars


An inter-regional history of Pashtun migration 147 have explained processes of rural to city urbanization and overseas migration from perspectives framed by both neo-classical and structural theories of economic change. Recent social science literature has also attempted to theorize the nature and impact of contemporary global forces of communication, world markets, and cultural exchange.14 Especially since the early 1970s, Pakistani government and research center studies have used classical economic approaches to judge the empirical costs and benefits of labor migration. This work has produced a substantial body of relevant literature.15 But different problems faced in this effort have included difficulties in acquiring truly accurate statistical databases as well as the inability of macro-level national studies to offer insight into village-level change or into less quantifiable regional social and cultural dynamics often shaped by ethnic and linguistic differences. Structural approaches to migration and development theory and the Pakistani experience have narrated change as occurring due to inherent inequalities within and between regions and economies. Scholars have tried to determine the extent to which centers of economic power and capital, including the oil-rich Middle Eastern states, have turned to labor surplus countries to cultivate relations of dependency and labor stratification.16 Yet both classical and structural approaches to Pakistan’s migration history, especially to the Middle East, have been critiqued for failing to fully characterize either the historical experience of the colonial period or the past 50 years of independence. Classical modeling has suffered from an inadequate, “fragile database” and an inability to keep up with or explain a diversity and complexity of changes. As well, structural arguments are weak on explaining specificities, such as the historic roles of modern Libya and Iraq, “no client states of capitalism,” in recruiting Pakistani labor.17 Anthropologists have attempted to trace the impact of migration and economic globalization at the Pakistani village level,18 but also have theorized broadly about how localities experience modernity and reflect the influences of migration and globalization. A general theoretical statement supporting a focus upon social change at the village and district level, derives from Appadurai’s notion that a specific place of research becomes less a case study than, “a site for the examination of how locality emerges in a globalizing world, of how colonial processes underwrite contemporary politics, of how history and genealogy inflect one another, and of how global facts take local form.”19 The following sections introduce later chapters in the history of Pashtun circulation and diaspora in a greater Indian Ocean arena. These moments reveal Pashtun agency, but also adaptation as local practices and possibilities reacted to and were modified by inter-regional and global processes.

Assimilation and transformation: the Rohilla experience Numerous scholars of northern India have produced eighteenth-century regional histories, attempting to understand the complex processes at work during the expansion of British colonial interests northwest of Bengal.20 One research question has


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involved gauging the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century influence of the growing British presence on processes of Pashtun or “Rohilla” migration for agricultural labor, trade, and political influence in the districts of the historic region of Katehr or Rohilkhand, north and east of Delhi.21 Indeed, centuries-old processes of political, economic, and cultural mobility and exchange across northern South Asian territories were upset, transformed, and subordinated by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British colonial political agendas and alliances. For this study it becomes useful to look past the immediate political history of the era and past the politically convenient assumption held by some in the lateeighteenth century that the “Rohilla” population simply disappeared in 1774 with the military defeat of the last independent Rohilla chief, Hafiz Rahmat Khan.22 The more interesting question concerns the political and social effects of the conquest and the gradual integration of the region into the British Indian empire. The colonial state “penetrated society much more deeply than it had before,” replacing “a shared and layered concept of sovereignty” with new unitary demands.23 By the late-eighteenth century perhaps 100,000 “Afghan” or “Puthan” migrants had established several generations of political control and economic consolidation within numerous Rohilkhand communities, often predominately non-Muslim in population. These local polities had prospered after about 1720, in competition with the formerly dominate Mughal political and economic system centered in Delhi that continued to fragment and decentralize.24 Though derived from norms of Pashtun or Afghan leadership and heritage, over generations of settlement in north India, the “Rohilla” name reflected less a fixed ethnicity based on kinship or cultural than a constructed, inclusive, often professional identity that “reinvented” lineage idioms and norms to integrate a diverse body of individuals and interests.25 After 1774 the scattered, autonomous local polities that had developed in previous decades were subsumed within the growing British Indian colonial sphere of influence. Contemporary, eventually discredited, colonial narratives at first argued that the Rohilla communities had been exterminated in 1774 as a British colonial army aided the Nawab of Awadh in the conquest of the Rohilla territories. Some Rohilla military leaders were exiled. Other families left the region. But aside from the losses in battle, relatively few of the Rohillas were killed or fled. Most stayed in the region. Many rallied to the new princely state of Rampur, a dependency (jagir) set up to diffuse Rohilla resistance and subordinate the leading lineages to the influence of the Nawab of Awadh and his allies in the East India Company. What became of the Rohilla population and identity, especially under the changing conditions in the Rohilkhand region briefly outlined by Gommans at the conclusion of his study? The evidence suggests that processes of socio-cultural assimilation and adaptation slowly diminished Pashtun legacies of language and culture even as a “Rohilla” identity continued to evolve and circulate. After 1774 Rampur city grew, under a hierarchical ruling dynasty, while Rohilkhand agricultural market (qasba) towns and communities declined. Outside of Rampur state, Rohilla landlords were superceded by agents of the Nawab of Awadh. Inter-regional labor and trade networks declined as the Nawab repressed wider linkages between the Rohilkhand region, northern India, and areas as far as


An inter-regional history of Pashtun migration 149 the Peshawar valley. The political subordination of the region also restructured the political economy of military employment for thousands of migrant “soldier entrepreneurs,” a process that would continue to affect their descendants through the nineteenth century.26 Yet on the fringes of empire, “Rohillas,” of one kind or another, would “serve” as military entrepreneurs for another century. When the East India Company consolidated its rule in Bengal after 1757, company managers debated the need to assert political and military influence on neighbors to the west. Diplomacy with neighboring kingdoms often included discussion of “subsidiary” treaty conditions, including requiring reductions in the size of indigenous armies. Vast armies with tens of thousands of cavalry and as many infantry were seen as direct threats to Company territories, and as expensive drains on local budgets better dedicated to Company interests. As early as 1768, the East India Company tried by treaty to reduce the size of the army of the Nawab of Awadh from over 48,000 cavalry and infantry to 35,000. New European military tactics and standards of military training and arms directly threatened established north Indian patterns of military recruitment and “service.” Expensive, high-status cavalry units were to be replaced by drilled, comparatively smaller infantry units armed with modern firearms. This expensive cavalry included Pashtun and Rohilla troops employed by the Nawab of Awadh. The East India Company effort to closely control this new military expertise included a 1768 treaty stipulation that only 10,000 of the Nawab’s reduced army could be trained “in the discipline of the English troops.”27 Warren Hastings lifted restrictions on the size of the Nawab’s army for the 1774 campaign. The armies in conflict in Rohilkhand in 1774 reflected the historic diverse, free market aspect of north Indian martial interest, obligation, and service. Before his defeat on April 23, 1774, Hafiz Rahmat Khan had rallied thousands, the “army being reinforced by large bodies of the Rajpoot zemindars, and also by the Pathans from Mow and Furrukhabad.”28 The Nawab’s opposing officer corps had several apparent Rohillas among “the principal sirdars,” including “Bussunt Ullee Khan,” “Muhboob Ullee Khan,” and “Syyud Ullee Khan.” The inter-regional nature of military service across the Indian Ocean in the precolonial period was exemplified by the leader of troops sent by the Nawab into Rohilkhand after the defeat of Hafiz Rehmat Khan. “On the 12th of Suffur, a large force under the command of Seedee Busheer, an African, was dispatched towards Pillibheet.”29 “Sidi” sailors, soldiers, and leaders of African descent were better known on the west coast of India, particularly in the Bombay region. After 1774, the Nawab of Awadh controlled Rohilkhand with “Nawabi” regiments, often led by British officers. By treaty, East India Company regiments also served within Awadh. “Rohilla” recruits were taken into the Nawab’s service, while others preferred service under the semi-independent Nawab of Rampur. If, over decades, “the British Company would in the 1798 to 1818 period, achieve something approaching a demilitarizing of India,”30 this process occurred regionally from 1774, by degrees, as thousands of soldiers were dismissed from service in the post-Rohilla war period, including from service with the Nawab of Awadh. British officers assigned to regiments of the Nawab lobbied the East


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India Company for better firearms for the infantry and for the dismissal of thousands of under-employed, often unpaid and mutinous, cavalry troops.31 Rohilla cavalrymen migrated west and south, looking for service, and for new agrarian or political opportunities. Apparently abandoned Rohilkhand districts, occasionally described by lateeighteenth-century travelers, illustrated shifts in personal residence, employment, and political loyalties. At the village level, surviving Rohillas remained as local landlords (zamindars) over village holdings of various sizes. Through the nineteenth century, as the Rohilkhand districts were absorbed by the British Empire, Afghan and Pashtun descendants were absorbed in ways into local economies and cultural influences. If name forms (Khan) and genealogical lineage remained important, the Pashtu language itself would slowly disappear. Late-nineteenth-century Rohilkhand district censuses continued to list “Pathan” as one of the four categories of enumerated Muslim populations, yet marriages with non-Pashtun spouses blurred notions of pure descent. Those individuals, as across pre-colonial India, who had followed mixed personal economies, representing old patterns of “mobility of labor” activity, as seasonal farmers, weavers, transporters, and soldiers,32 were now often reduced to more sedentary existences. Large numbers of Muslim weavers (julahas) listed in late-nineteenth-century Rohilkhand district census reports hint of the possibility that more than one landless descendant of Rohilla migrants found lower status refuge as an artisan in district market (qasba) towns and Rampur City. Initially, in the late-eighteenth century, in territories they newly controlled, the British continued to reduce often large armies of indigenously raised cavalry and infantry to smaller, better-trained and armed, “disciplined” infantry regiments. But in the early decades of the nineteenth century, as the East India Company expanded westward around the Delhi area, they raised new regiments of “irregular” cavalry from local recruits, once again providing employment for “Rohilla” and other recruits. Again, from the 1820s through the 1840s, as colonial administrative control “settled” much of northern India, many of these recruits would be periodically dismissed. But often now, through strategic retirement and pension policies, many of the dismissed would be granted parcels of farmland on uncultivated, “waste” lands in strategic locations. As the colonial power pensioned off experienced soldiers to become revenue-producing agriculturists, many “Rohillas” settled permanently outside of the former Rohilkhand districts on critical “frontier” borders.33 Evidence from 1858 suggests the survival of degrees of a Pashtun-derived lineage-based identity in villagers of the old Rohilkhand districts. Yet 80 years after the end of “Rohilla” sovereignty and pre-colonial Rohilla migrations, such identities were marked as much by signs of assimilation and transformation as any continuity. As the British army re-conquered north Indian districts after losing control in the revolt of 1857, they closely documented lists of “rebels” to be arrested for potential punishment. One contingent of 63 villagers from “Sambhal parganah” in “Moradabad zillah” (district) was wanted for having fought in the name of the


An inter-regional history of Pashtun migration 151 “rebel Nawab of Bareilly” Khan Bahadur Khan.34 The British compiled a detailed report in an effort to apprehend those involved from “Tureenoo Suraee”35 village. The report contained personal descriptions of the villagers and reflected both colonial and internal perceptions of significant aspects of individual identity. Tarin-i Sarai was a “suburb” of Sambhal town, apparently named after original Tarin lineage settlers from the Afghan highlands. Perhaps from informants and prisoners, the British special commissioner assigned to restore law and order collected personal details able to readily identify the wanted persons on both physical and social levels. The 63 were listed by the five categories of “Name of the Rebel,” “Father’s name,” “Tribe,” “Residence,” and “Description of Person.” Forty of the men listed, or their fathers, had the Pashtun ethnic marker “Khan” in their name. All of these were recorded as of the “tribe” of “Puthan.” The remaining individuals were listed by “Tribe”; as Sayyid (five), Sheik (11), Turk (two), Mughal (one), Kumboh (two), and “Carpenter” (one).36 Apparent brothers and fathers and sons were listed. All the 63 were residents of Tarin-i Sarai or the Sambhal area. The colonial “ethnographic” personal descriptions of each of the 63 men hint at a Rohilla social history more complex than the simple reproduction of normative “Pashtun” or “Afghan” families and lineages descended from putative ideal-type tall, thin, fair Pashtun forefathers and “father’s brother’s daughter” brides.37 Personal characteristics, including distinction by skin color, were noted. If indicating notions of colonial or local “racial” difference, this diversity might also mark the complex ethnicity of original “Rohilla” settlers, including descendants of finally sedentary male migrants who married into local families. Individuals were described by age, distinctive scars, height, weight, and color. Ages ranged from 18 to 60. Akbar Khan, one of the two leaders, was described as “Wheaten, broad forehead, mark of wound on head, age 35 years.” “Khubel” Khan, son of Naeem Khan, was described as “Fair, tall, thin, 50 years.” “Suddoo” Khan was “Wheaten, ordinary stature, age 35 years.” Abdul Kadir Khan was “Dark, middle size, stout, age 40 years.” Three men were listed as “fair,” 36 men were listed as “wheaten,” and 22 as “dark.” Akbar Khan, son of “Futeh oollah” Khan, “Puthan” of “Tureenoo Suraee” was described as “Black color, short, neither stout nor thin, age 30 years, was a sowar of some irregular cavalry.”38 The social categories under the “tribe” label reflected normative, internal divisions socially constructed within a Pashtun ethnic community. Pashtun khans were political and household leaders and agricultural landowners, entitled to sit in village councils. Religious figures, sayyids and sheiks, were affiliated to the community and important, but represented spiritual rather than economic or political leadership. Even the identification of one participant by his trade, carpenter, was a normative Pashtun social distinction of a dependent (hamsaya) low status artisan, a carpenter or tarkhan. Yet status seemingly fixed by birth remained subject to assertion, revision, and reinvention. A Rohilla identity, as an independent military entrepreneur of nominal Afghan or Pashtun heritage, evolved throughout the nineteenth century. As the British assumed control over greater areas of the Indian subcontinent, the name Rohilla became a pejorative label reflecting the colonial bias against any mobile, armed,


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unsettled Indian population. Regardless, Rohillas, “Puthans,” and “Pathans” continued to serve across India in regional forces and as the coercive power for revenue collecting regional administrators and local zamindars. Through the decades of the nineteenth century, Rohillas were continuously employed, dismissed, and denounced as bandits and criminals, often by the same regimes in different periods. In the late spring and summer of 1836 the princely state of Hyderabad in southern India was being pressed by East India Company advisers to regularize revenue collections and reduce military expenses. In May the Nizam’s government tried to dismiss all Rohillas from government service and remove them from Hyderabad city and from postings with local talukdars and others. For decades in the vast territories of the Nizam of Hyderabad, revenue farmers and local authorites had hired “Rohilla” cavalry as collection agents.39 The Hyderabad Rohillas were not to be easily dismissed. The resulting correspondence between East India Company officials and Hyderabad state ministers outlined the survival and adaptation of pre-colonial forms of inter-regional military recruitment and service, including the presence of thousands of “Arabs” in Hyderabad. In May 1836, when the Nizam’s Rohilla troops in Hyderabad city were dismissed from service, they simply gathered outside the town and camped. The Hyderabad state mobilized other troops, including regiments with British officers, but negotiations were started to reach a peaceful solution. The Rohillas refused to simply leave Hyderabad for their home districts. Instead, they “solicited a delay of a few days in order to settle their private affairs in the town.”40 Up to 4,200 Rohillas had been in service with the Hyderabad state. Many had become money-lenders and had financial and property interests in the city and other villages. These interests would not be abandoned. The Rohillas demanded they be paid their final monthly dues, and that Arabs in service should also be dismissed. Over days, the immediate crisis was diffused and the Rohillas gradually left as they settled their accounts. In a note discussing the continued need for the Arab presence in Hyderabad, the Nizam’s Minister narrated that Arabs had been in local service since the time of Nizam Ali Khan, including “Seedee Yoonus” and others, and that for the security of the court the Arabs were still needed. It was “on account of their former services and of the negligence of the people of this country 2,000 Arabs are kept in the city for guards at the palace and 2,000 are stationed in the talooqs.”41 The Minister explained that he had economized and “1,500 horses, 5,000 Sikhs, 4,200 Rohillas have been reduced.” Still, “on account of certain internal troublesome people, it has been found necessary to retain these Arabs who have been long in service.” In August 1836 the Hyderabad Minister would issue a proclamation ordering all Rohillas to leave Hyderabad. But the utility of the “service” rendered by such irregular troops meant that they were never completely displaced by local landlords and officials. In 1846 colonial records included the “Nizam’s application for assistance to expel Rohillas from his dominions.” In 1851 a file discussed “Approval of the proposal of the Resident at Hyderabad to make the prohibition stronger against the employment of Rohillas in the service of the


An inter-regional history of Pashtun migration 153 officers of the Nizam’s government.” In 1859 a report listed “Preventive measures against incursions of Rohillas into the Madras Territories.” In incidents in the 1860s and 1870s, Arabs in service to the Nizam of Hyderabad with family political interests in the Persian Gulf actually sent Rohillas from Hyderabad to the “Hawdramant” coast of the Arabian Peninsula. At least one group of Rohillas departing from Bombay for the Gulf claimed to be pilgrims in transit to Mecca. Political Agents in the Gulf and officials in British India wrote endless notes and summaries untangling relationships and attempting to control such long distance connections and initiatives. By the end of the nineteenth century the word Rohilla finally began to disappear from colonial correspondence. Inside the Rohilkhand districts the Rohilla or Pathan name began to represent little more than a fixed category in colonial census and ethnographic tables. In Rampur state the myth of the martial Pashtun survived in a dynasty descended from Faizullah Khan (r. 1774–83). The dynasty remained fully loyal to the British during the revolt of 1857–8 and until the empire’s end in 1947. Across the rest of India, Rohilla would become a generic term for bandit or mercenary, long disconnected from any Afghan, Peshawar valley, or Rohilkhand history or heritage. Yet, within Rohilkhand, family memories of distant origin often endured. As late as the year 2000, one member of a family who had lived for generations in Rampur, would assert a personal heritage as a “Yusufzai Pathan,” originally from the Peshawar valley.42

Integration into the colonial political economy Archival research has yielded useful material to trace nineteenth-century “labor” flows, military recruitment, and general mobility into and from the Peshawar valley. From 1857 onwards, treated as members of a key “martial race,” Afghan border “Pashtuns” and Peshawar region “Pakhtuns” were taken in large numbers into British Indian armies. Many enlisted at the military cantonment in Mardan town in the eastern Peshawar valley, where a soaring late-nineteenthcentury memorial was dedicated to the many men killed in Kabul in the second Afghan War. Career and retirement files of local recruits often listed the home villages and many postings of soldiers, and their post-retirement activities. Such files traced the scale and scope of colonial military and police employment of Peshawar valley residents across the Indian Ocean. Even before direct recruitment from the Peshawar valley, Pashtun emigrants to north India had long served in colonial armies. A well-traveled veteran, Buland Khan, received recognition for his service in 1857–58 helping the British retake districts from “rebels” in the Rohilkhand region. Born about 1800, listed as of the “caste” of “Puthan,” Buland Khan had enlisted with the East India Company army in 1814. His military campaigns included the Nepal War period, 1814–16 and Mahratta fighting in 1817–18. He served in Afghanistan in 1838–40, in the Sikh Wars of the 1840s, and in the Burma campaigns in 1854–6.43


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In the late-nineteenth century, as the British completed new irrigation canals in the Peshawar valley and the Punjab, tens of thousands relocated. Many migrated down from the Afghan highlands as seasonal field laborers while others, including retired military personnel, resettled as higher status landowners.44 Much of the eastern Peshawar valley was transformed by new colonial irrigation works from the 1880s. New networks of trade and transport developed as commercial agriculture and a new rail system into the valley connected Peshawar residents and cash crops such as sugar and tobacco to sub-continental networks and markets. The nineteenth century also continued to involve the Peshawar valley in longestablished pilgrimage and economic networks reaching into Central Asia, Persia, and the Indian Ocean region. The rise of new modern states and empires, including Russian expansion into Central Asia, re-channeled or severed some of these linkages. Pashtuns regularly visited the Muslim holy sites in the Middle East, as pilgrims on hajj and undoubtedly as entrepreneurs servicing and facilitating transportation and associated trade. Local and distant trading and financial networks interacted with, facilitated, and influenced systems of labor migration. As Dale and Markovits have situated histories of South Asian merchant communities within Asian and world contexts, a study of Peshawar valley migration inevitably follows paths of mobility and livelihood across imperial, national, and area studies boundaries.45 Nineteenthand twentieth-century imperial and national documentation placed Pashtuns in diverse colonial locations from South Africa to the Andaman Islands. Specific Pashtun narratives derived from the ever-changing “relationship of Asian intermediary capital and migrant labor with the broader structures of colonial and paracolonial capitalism.”46 In the 1873–1916 period, English ships carried up to 35,000 contract laborers from India to the Dutch colony of Suriname where many worked on large sugar plantations. Steamships typically sailed from Calcutta to Paramaribo with passengers recruited by the Dutch colonial government for five-year renewable contracts. Many were from the districts of northern India, including Muslims from Rohilkhand and the Peshawar valley. They left poverty and lack of employment for uncertain futures in Suriname and other Caribbean colonies, including neighboring British Guyana. In the Dutch records, hundreds of migrants had the name “Khan,” and were listed by “kaste” as “Pattan” or “Mosulman.” Only a handful traveled with wives or children.47 On July 4, 1877, “Jamin Shaw,” 25-year-old son of “Moduf” Khan, sailed from Calcutta for Paramaribo, Suriname. Zamin Shah was from “Shawajgunah” village, Peshawar district. The day after his arrival he was contracted for five years to a plantation. Perhaps indicating failure in the colony, Zamin Shah’s record included a final note, “vertrokken naar” (left to) “Calcutta…op 30 Oct 1879.” Abdul Malik, 26 years old, son of Gulam Rasul, was from a village near “Mardain” (Mardan) in “Pichaur” (Peshawar) district. He sailed May 12, 1913, from Calcutta on the steamer Mutlah. The day he arrived, June 23, 1913, he was contracted to a plantation for five years. On the same ship was a “Pattan” woman listed only as Zizan, 24 years old, daughter of Mazid, from “Bar” village in


An inter-regional history of Pashtun migration 155 Bareilly district. The day she arrived in Paramaribo she was contracted to another “Planter” for five years. In late October 1914 she delivered a child, but the baby died within two weeks. Zizan returned to Calcutta in spring 1920.48 Unlike other women, her record did not list a husband. Others from the Rohilla districts migrated as well. Eighteen-year-old “Habibarrahman” from Rampur State sailed from Calcutta in 1907. Abdul Hafiz Khan, age 22, also from Rampur State, landed in Paramaribo in 1913.49 Rehman Khan (1874–1972), literate from a religious education, was hired at age 24 as a “saradara” (headman) to lead a sugar plantation labor crew. As a community teacher he covered Hindu and Muslim subjects and literature. His numerous written works included an autobiography. Still to be fully explored are the relations of Pashtun migrants with other Muslim communities. These included trading groups that established themselves along many of the same routes traveled by labor recruits. Daudi Bohras, Memons, Ismailis, and other traders provided networks of information, credit, and currency remittance for migrating workers across the British Empire and in the post-colonial world. Such questions blurred distinctions between trade, religion, and ethnicity and carried across the temporal divide between the colonial and post-colonial periods. They remained relevant for thinking about the internal migration experienced within post-1947 Pakistan and the external flows of labor to the Middle East developed after 1970.

Service as labor in the inter-regional arena Despite the scholarly debates over the nature and meaning of labor migration from Pakistan after 1947 it is clear from migration scholarship that colonially derived analyses of the village as a static site of unchanging tradition are not, and have never been, useful or valid. Pakistan began its history absorbing the vast migrant populations generated by the partition of British India. In the 1950s and 1960s Pakistan’s economic situation and development policies contributed to the production of one of the highest rates of internal migration in Asia. By the 1970s the promises and processes of economic development and urbanization had drawn up to 1.5 million residents of the NWFP, mostly Pashtuns, to migrate to other provinces within Pakistan. Typically, migration was the strategy of an extended family sending out an individual, bound by family honor and duty, to earn, save, and remit as much as possible to the home. Over two-thirds of Gulf migrants had a network of family or friends to help them resettle in new destinations. Within Pakistan, semi-skilled Pashtuns or those with trade skills, some acquired in military service, migrated to areas being developed with public sector funding. An historically important transition point came at the end of the 1960s as major Pakistani construction projects, often funded by international organizations, began to finish. Foreign construction firms held many of the Pakistani construction contracts. As these companies shifted to new projects in the Middle East after the 1973 rise in oil prices, they recruited their experienced Pakistani workmen


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to follow.50 In the wake of the 1971 fragmentation of Pakistan and the loss of east Pakistan as independent Bangladesh, the Pakistan government and Prime Minister Z. A. Bhutto (1971–7) made a conscious decision to embrace Middle Eastern economic and cultural connections. By 1984, of a national population of 100 million, perhaps two million Pakistanis were at work outside the country, “representing at least 10 percent of Pakistan’s households and more than seven percent of its labour force.”51 Wage rates in the Middle East were at first up to ten times the rate for similar work in Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, migrants were attracted by wages for skilled and unskilled workers that remained six to seven times higher than rates paid at home.52 Individuals found work in the Middle East through individual contacts, through contracts organized on a government-to-government basis, through private laborrecruiting agents, and through informal, unregulated networks. Because private recruiting agents soon became the key mediators between companies and potential employees and because of informal, unregulated financial instruments and systems, such as the hundi or hawala, the government of Pakistan was unable to closely control the recruitment or flow of workers to the Middle East or the flow of remittances back to Pakistan. In the Peshawar valley networks of recruiting and travel agents informally supplied services to potential recruits. In the Gulf, Pashtun workers, after minor episodes of early community solidarity based on lineage norms of honor and justice, were quickly subordinated. Employers did not hesitate to turn to other Muslim or Asian countries for labor recruits.53 Unions were illegal. Worker tenures were strictly limited by visa and contract duration, though capable and connected employees might renew contracts and spend full careers abroad. Due to established contacts, and a reputation for hard work, in the boom of the 1970s and 1980s Pashtuns were recruited to the Middle East at a rate two to three times their population percentage within Pakistan. Due to the high turnover and ease of mobility, one estimate thought that over a 20-year period at the peak of Middle East employment the “number of working males in high migration districts of the NWFP going to the Middle East would have been on the order of one out of every three or four.”54 The history of this labor migration process in the Peshawar valley and neighboring districts illuminated global forces through the lens of a unique locality. Peshawar region Pakhtuns participated and competed in a global labor market, to the extent that by the late 1980s Middle East employers did replace less skilled and more expensive Pakistanis with workers from Bangladesh and the Philippines. Structural theories of labor exploitation and peripheral incorporation struggled to explain the range of effects of migration and return migration on local villages in Pakistan and the Peshawar valley. Scholarship drawing upon anecdotal evidence of social change caused by remittances highlighted effects on morality, politics, and religion, while the psychological pressures and costs of separation and dislocation remained to be fully studied.55 One question for continuing research complicates economic theory by examining the role of “traditional” social and cultural practices at the local level of labor


An inter-regional history of Pashtun migration 157 supervision and recruitment. To what extent did labor crew leaders, especially in the Middle East, recruit new employees through Pakistani, and Peshawar valley kinship (biradari) and neighborhood ties? Indeed, modern, South Asian industrial economy employment situations, within a labor market apparently responding to supply and demand, have been distorted by older forms of pre-market patronclient ties of obligation, dependency, and subordination.56 Surveys of the Pakistan to Middle East labor flow indicate that at the very least networks of friends and family already overseas have been vital to providing needed information about the hiring needs of companies and recruitment agencies. Twenty years earlier, in the 1980s these labor communities drew upon Pashtun norms of honor and justice to mobilize resistance to perceived labor exploitation by construction companies and contractors.57 This labor militancy grew from the stresses of displacement, social isolation, and culture shock experienced by Pashtuns newly subordinated to hierarchies of wealth and nationality.58 After two decades of experience as wage workers, including competition from other South Asian and Asian laborers, Pashtuns in Al Ain, including the Sanaiya neighborhood of earlier resistance, had made grudging accommodation to still difficult conditions. Lives continued to reflect the multiple and unresolved ambiguities and tensions first generated in the colonial era by “extraterritorial identity,” nationalist sensibility, and now faded ideals of religious, “universalist aspiration” and commonality.59 Successful workers remitted funds to their homes periodically during the course of their employment term. The cumulative local economic, social, cultural, and political effects of remittances suggested that a process of historical change had begun to transform certain social dynamics, perhaps while contributing to the stability or reinvention of other practices thought of as ethnically unique or “traditional.”60 In some regions, early remittances were dedicated to raising levels of consumption of food, clothing, and shelter, and then were used to finance house building and land purchase. Evidence from areas of the Peshawar valley revealed the broader socio-economic effects of new income levels. Cultural and social investments were made in new schools and mosques and became a material record of how and when repatriated savings were spent. Regional political competition was influenced as newly affluent returnees sought to raise their social status through electoral politics.61 In judging other dynamics, it was difficult to detail whether or not certain women gained from periods of household authority and higher family incomes. If some women assumed new household authority in the absence of men, to what extent were they perceived as threatening gendered notions of honor or morality? A last question remained important to any assumption that migration inevitably led to “modernity,” and “development.” It seemed quite likely that remittances and the migrant experience contributed to the rise of Islamist religious politics in Pakistan in the 1990s, including the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) coalition that swept provincial elections in the Northwest Frontier Province in late 2002.


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Addleton proposed that “large-scale labor migration to the Middle East became the single most important economic event in Pakistan during the 1970s and 1980s.”62 Arguably, Pashtun circulation, for labor, service, and trade, had heavily defined regional Pashtun society and economy throughout history. Particularly over the past 200 years, and in the current generation, important questions related to Pashtun migration and circulation shaped the most critical of contemporary local and inter-regional histories. In agreement with Markovits and colleagues, “‘Circulation’ therefore…is also meant as a kind of shorthand for the capacity of…society over the centuries to generate change.”63

Notes 1 Markovits et al. (2003). 2 Markovits et al. (2003: 3). 3 See the well-known anthropological works of Ahmed (1980), Barth (1959), and Lindholm (1992), and for the regional histories of Rittenberg (1988) and Jansson (1981). Especially note more recent works of the historian Shah (1999) and the anthropologist Banerjee (2000). 4 Sixteenth-century regional literature, including Akhund Darweza’s Tazkirat al-Abrar wa al-Ashrar, repeats tales of Pakhtuns in service to the armies of Mahmud of Ghazni in the eleventh century. 5 Ahmed (1981: 167–72). 6 Pasha (1998). 7 Markovits et al. (2003: 10). 8 In 2000, Pakistan’s Peshawar, Mardan, and Swabi districts. 9 For one early effort to understand this process, see Ahmed (1984). 10 Addleton’s title summarizes his argument (1992: 17–26). 11 Addleton (1992: 39). 12 See Bose (2006). 13 See Tinker (1974, 1977); Kale (1998). 14 Appadurai (1996). 15 Gilani et al. (1981). The late-twentieth-century boom in Middle East labor migration and associated scholarship has been directly linked to the effects of the October 1973 Middle East war and the consequent sharp rise in oil prices and national incomes (Guisinger 1984). 16 Amin (1976), Halliday (1977; 1982). 17 Addleton (1992: 17–26). 18 Lefebvre (1999). 19 Appadurai (1996: 18). 20 Including Bayly (1983); Marshall (1987). 21 Gommans (1995). In the 1850s, the districts of the “Rohilcund” division included “Bijnore,” “Moradabad,” “Budaon,” “Bareilly,” and “Shahjuhanpoor.” See Raikes (1858, Appendix A). The listed 1852–3 district census data counted 15,094 “mouzuhs or townships” and a population of 5,217,507. “Rohillah” was a word derived from “roh,” foothill or mountain, indicating the highland roots of many of the Pakhtun or Afghan migrants from west of the Indus. 22 For discussion of the politics of the Hastings period and a rejection of the narrative of Rohilla extermination by the British and their ally the Nawab of Oudh, see Strachey (1892). 23 Bose (2006: 24–5). 24 See Alam (1986), Bose and Jalal (1998).


An inter-regional history of Pashtun migration 159 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

Gommans (1995). Kolff (1990). Barnett (1980: 83). Buhadoor (1831: 114). Buhadoor (1831: 122). Kolff (2001: 217). See National Archives of India (1776). Kolff (2001: 218). Alavi (1998, 2001). National Archives of India (1858a). Perhaps Tarin-i Serai, (caravan) serai-resting place of the Tarin. Note the Rohilla Serai in Delhi and Tarin Kot, a provincial capital in Afghanistan. Also, the Tarin of Haripur, now in Hazara district, NWFP, Pakistan. “Sheik Mointullah,” son of “Ameen ood deen” was perhaps mislabeled, in a column series of “ditto” markings as also “Puthan.” See discussion of Pakhtun norms and stereotypes in Ahmed (1980, Chapter 4). National Archives of India (1858). A sowar was a cavalryman. “During the eighteenth century the state suffered from the inroads of the Marathas; and when order was restored, the revenues of the state were farmed out to bankers and to Arab and Pathan soldiers”; from “Hyderabad State” entry in the Imperial Gazetteer (1908). National Archives of India 1836a. National Archives of India. 1836b. Personal history related by a retired Pakistani professor, recorded in Baltimore, MD, 2002. National Archives of India. 1858b. See Ali (1991); Nichols (2001, Chapter 9). See Dale (1994); Markovits (2000). Bose (2006: 26). See the National Archives of the Netherlands online database for details of Suriname migrants: http://www.nationaalarchief.nl/suriname. For these three and other sample records, see the websites by Raymond Chickrie (“History”). From National Archives of the Netherlands, Surinmane Migrant database. Burki (1980). See Addleton (1992: 37). Addleton (1992: 3). Sarmad (1985: 25, nt. 8). See Ahmed (1984) for anecdotes of Pakhtun social norms in conflict with a social environment dominated by Arab ethnicity and economic class divisions. Addleton (1992: 93). Ahmed (1981); Sarmad (1985: 26–32). Chakrabarty (1989). See Ahmed (1984). Ahmed (1984) includes an estimate that 20,000–30,000 men had migrated to the Gulf out of the 300,000 total population of the South Waziristan Agency in Pakistan on the Afghan border. Stress-related effects were called the “Dubai syndrome.” Bose (2006: 31). See Ahmed (1981); Addleton (1992); Lefebvre (1999). See Magnarella (1979, especially Chapter 10) on remittances narrowing socio-economic divisions in a Turkish village. Ahmed (1981). Addleton (1992: 4). Markovits et al. (2003: 11).

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References Addleton, Jonathan S. 1992. Undermining the Centre: The Gulf Migration and Pakistan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ahmed, Akbar. 1980. Pukhtun Economy and Society: Traditional Structure and Economic Development in a Tribal Society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. —— 1981. The Arab Connection: Emergent Models of Social Structure Among Pakistani Tribesmen. Asian Affairs 12(2): 167–72. —— 1984. Dubai Chalo: Problems in the Ethnic Encounter between Middle East and South Asian Muslim Societies. Asian Affairs 14(3): 262–76. Alam, Muzaffar. 1986. The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and the Punjab, 1707–48. Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press. Alavi, Seema. 1998. The Sepoys and the Company, Tradition and Transition in Northern India 1770–1830. Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press. —— 2001. The Makings of Company Power: James Skinner in the Ceded and Conquered Provinces, 1802–40. In: Jos Gommans and D. H. A. Kolff (Eds.), Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia, 1000–1800. Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ali, Imran. 1991. The Punjab under Imperialism, 1885–1947. Delhi: Oxford University. Amin, Samir. 1976. Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large, Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Banerjee, Mukulika. 2000. The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North West Frontier. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research. Barnett, Richard. 1980. North India Between Empires: Awadh, the Mughals, and the British, 1720–1801. Berkeley: University of California. Barth, Fredrick. 1959. Political Leadership Among Swat Pathans. London: Athalone. Bayly, Christopher A. 1983. Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the age of British Expansion 1770–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Bose, Sugata. 2006. A Hundred Horizons, The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire. Boston: Harvard University. Bose, Sugata and Ayesha Jalal. 1988. Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy. New York: Routledge. Buhadoor, Nuwab Moost’ujab Khan. 1831. The Life of Hafiz ool-Moolk. Translated by Hafiz Rehmut Khan. London: Murray. Burki, Shahid Javed. 1980. What Migration to the Middle East May Mean for Pakistan. Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 3(3): 47–66. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 1989. Rethinking Working-Class History. Princeton University. Chickrie, Raymond. History of My People: The Afghan Muslims of Guyana. http://www. guyana.org/features/afghanguyanese_muslim.html (accessed July 4, 2003). Dale, Stephen. 1994. Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600–1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gilani, Ijaz, M. Fahim Khan and Munawar Iqbal. 1981. Labour Migration from Pakistan to the Middle East and its Impact on the Domestic Economy, 3 Vols. Research Report Series, No. 126. Islamabad: Pakistan Institute of Development. Gommans, Jos J. L. 1995. The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, c. 1710–1780. Leiden: Brill.


An inter-regional history of Pashtun migration 161 Guisinger, Stephen. 1984. The Impact of Temporary Worker Migration on Pakistan. In: Shahid Javed Burki and R. Laporte (Eds.), Pakistan’s Development Priorities. Karachi: Oxford University Press. Halliday, Fred. 1977. Migration and the Labour Force in Oil Producing States of the Middle East. Development and Change 8: 263–91. —— 1982. Labour Migration in the Arab World: The Ugly Face of the New Economic Order. Labour, Capital and Society 15(1): 9–27. Imperial Gazetteer of India. 1908. Coondapoor—Mahāvinyaka, Vol. 13. Oxford: Clarendon. Jansson, Erland. 1981. India, Pakistan or Pakhtunistan? The Nationalist Movements in the North-West Frontier Province, 1937–47. Stockholm: Uppsala University. Kale, Madhavi. 1998. Fragments of Empire, Capital, Slavery, and Indian Indentured Labor in the British Caribbean. Philadephia: University of Pennsylvania. Kolff, Dirk. 1990. Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— 2001. The Polity and the Peasantry. In: Jos Gommans and Dirk Kolff (Eds.), Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia, 1000–1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lefebvre, Alain. 1999. Kinship, Honour and Money in Rural Pakistan, Subsistence Economy and the Effects of International Migration. Richmond: Curzon Press. Lindholm, Charles. 1992. Generosity and Jealousy. New York: Columbia University. Magnarella, Paul. 1979. The Peasant Venture. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman. Markovits, Claude. 2000. The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750–1947. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Markovits, Claude, Jacques Pouchepadass and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. 2003. Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia, 1750–1950. Delhi: Permanent Black, and Bangalore: Orient Longman. Marshall, Peter James. 1987. Bengal: The British bridgehead of eastern India 1740–1828. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. National Archives of India. 1776. Secret Department, Secret Branch correspondence on English pressures on Nawab of Oudh to reduce the size of his army, the March 1776 mutiny of the Nawab’s army, and the continuing of British efforts to install British officers in the Nawab’s army, dismiss cavalry units, and substitute well trained, “disciplined,” less expensive infantry. —— 1836a. Foreign Department, Political Consultation, 6 June. From: J. Stewart, Resident, Hyderabad. To: Macnaghton, Secretary to the Government of India, Letter No. 106. Other details from Letters 106–111. —— 1836b. Foreign Department, Political Proceedings, 22 August, No. 75, “Translation of a note from His Highness the Nizam’s Minister to Lieutenant Colonel Stewart received 27th July 1836.” —— 1858a. Foreign Department, Political Proceedings, Fort William, 31 December. Letter No. 1747, “List of Rebels…” from J. C. Wilson, Commissioner on Special Duty, Camp Moradabad. —— 1858b. Foreign Department, Political Proceedings, Fort William, 31 December. Letter No. 1776, “Descriptive Roll of a Risaldar of the 8th Regiment Irrergular Cavalry recommended for admission to the Order of the British Empire for exemplary loyalty and good service rendered to the state.” Nichols, Robert. 2001. Settling the Frontier, Land, Law and Society in the Peshawar Valley, 1500–1900. Karachi and New York: Oxford University Press.


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Pasha, Mustapha Kamal. 1998. Colonial Political Economy: Recruitment and underdevelopment in the Punjab. Karachi and New York: Oxford University Press. Raikes, Charles. 1858. Notes on the Revolt in the North Western Provinces. London: Longman. Rittenberg, Stephen Alan. 1988. Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Pakhtuns: The Independence Movement in India’s Northwest Frontier Province. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic. Sarmad, Khwaja. 1985. Pakistan Migration to the Middle East Countries. Studies in Population, Labour Force and Migration Project, Report No. 9 (February). Islamabad: Pakistan Institute of Development Economics. Shah, Sayyid Wiqar Ali. 1999. Ethnicity, Islam, and Nationalism: Muslim Politics in the North-West Frontier Province, 1937–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strachey, John. 1892. Hastings and the Rohilla War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tinker, Hugh. 1974. A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830–1920. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —— 1977. The Banyan Tree: Overseas Emigrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Part IV

Mechanisms of authority and influence



9

Political games in post-Soviet Uzbekistan Factions, protection, and new resistances Boris Petrić

The collapse of the USSR and the opening of the central Asian Republics are an opportunity for anthropology to propose another reading of the reality of power in Soviet and post-Soviet Uzbek society. The variety of political practices in the Soviet Union, depending on the regions, have often been minimized due primarily to the impossibility of reaching the social reality directly. Kremlinologists have attached considerable importance to institutions and ideology. They have thus often overlooked the complex running of these societies. In the 1980s, several political and financial scandals were unveiled. The most tremendous one was the “White Gold” scandal in Uzbekistan. The First Secretary of the Uzbek Communist Party at the time, Sharaf Rashidov, and the son-in-law of Leonid Brejnev were at the center of a vast embezzlement system of cotton production, the Central Asian Republic’s main wealth. The entire social fabric was involved in this system and revealed the existence of an underground economy and of extremely complex solidarity networks. Nowadays, this ex-Central Asian Soviet Republic enables us to observe the articulation of a heavy Soviet heritage with the specificity of cultural Uzbek practices. This sheds light not only on the current running of this society but also on the past Soviet reality. In post-Soviet Uzbekistan, the State and its institutions continue to play a central role in the society’s organization. And even though the Muscovite center no longer exists, new type of actors—the international organizations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs)—interact with the running of this young political area. This chapter proposes to analyze two main dimensions of Uzbek political life: the different ways to gain a political position and the sources of legitimacy to exercise power.

Historical perspective: an imposed independence Before tackling these questions, the conditions of this young state’s attainment of independence should be briefly remembered. Notwithstanding the official ideological line of the current Uzbek authorities, independence was more a result of Moscow’s will to disengage itself from the South than of a popular struggle. At the end of the 1980s, a number of Russian members of parliament held the Central Asian Republics responsible for the Soviet system’s failure. For a number


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of Russian politicians, the cotton scandal was a result of the system’s contamination by Uzbek clientelism. The Bielovisk agreements1 signed in June 1991 are the extension of these initial controversial discussions regarding the relationship between Russia and the other republics of the Union. By initiating the formation of the Community of Independent States (CIS) which consisted of Russia, Ukraine, and Byelorussia, these agreements de facto declared the USSR’s death. The Central Asian Republics’ sovereignty emanates more from the decision made in the suburbs of Kiev by Boris Eltsine and his Ukrainian and Byelorussian counterparts than from their own collective national liberation movement. In the Uzbek republic, the elite in power have thus had to elaborate a new set of imagined national representations (Pétric 2002a) under the guidance of the Communist Party’s first secretary, Islam Abdouganievich Karimov, who became the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan. These imagined national representations are contradictory at times because they strive to express a break with the past era while maintaining a certain continuity essential to the legitimacy of the elite in power. Since the fall of Tashkent and Samarkand that marked, from the nineteenth century onwards, the Russian colonial regime’s establishment, the Central Asian region has experienced a radical transformation of its spatial and social boundaries. Previously, Central Asia (Fourniau 1994) was divided into three distinct political areas. The political system of the Khanats of Kokand and Khiva and of the Emirate of Bukhara was based on dynastic legitimacy with hazy and changing territorial frontiers. The interaction between the Turkic populations (Turk), who were engaged in a process of sedentarization, and the sedentary Iranian populations (Tat) has greatly influenced these societies. During the sixteenth century, several members of the Shaybanid dynasty (who claimed descent from the üzbek tribes2) took hold of the political power in the various states and provoked a de facto acceleration of the sedentarization as they settled progressively in towns. At that time, the Kazakhs’ identity was reinforced as they refused to accept Shaybanid domination and moved to the northern steppes. Similarly, the Kyrgyz expressed their identity by refusing the power emanating from the city and chose to settle in the mountains, far from the state’s influence. Power dealings and urban relationships (Suxareva 1962) are thus deeply influenced by the interaction between the new holders of political power and the urban populations, the majority of which are Persian speaking. Before the Russian military invasion the different identities (üzbek, kyrgyz, tajik, turkmen, kazakh), rather than being sociologically opposed, were born out of the same social context and were not the product of isolated social constructs. Their otherness is not built of itself (Barth 1995) but a result of interaction in a given political context. The current Central Asian states do not correspond with the previous political spaces (the Kokand and Khiva Khanates and the Bukhara Emirate). The construction of the Soviet administrative system shaped the current political territories through an official distinction between Uzbek, Tajik, Turkmen, Kirghiz, and Kazakh nationalities, granting to each of them a political and administrative space. These national categories were established by the Committee of Nationalities inspired by Stalin’s presumptions about ethnic


Political games in post-Soviet Uzbekistan 167 nationality. The decision about which ethnic categories to identify as “nationalities” was not obvious, and particular “nationalities” were favored (Baldauf 1991), if not invented, and others were passed over and disappeared entirely (for example Sart). Through various censuses and statistics, the creation of specific “national” institutions (national parliaments, national communist parties, etc.) a social reality was created that recognized these national categories. The result for Uzbek intellectuals of today has been an internalization of these national distinctions; for them the national social reality has not been artificially created. Today the operative political entities are no longer dynastic, as once was the case, but “national”; that is ethno-nationalist. From the residential units to the administrative districts, the various authorities have contributed towards a crystallization of territorial entities that now have a certain social efficiency. The administrative boundaries3 and the carving up of Soviet social realities have thus created cognitive maps that now objectify “nationalities” in post-Soviet Central Asian societies. The Uzbek, Kirghiz, Turkmen, Kazakh, or Tajik states are based on administrative districts created in 1936 by the Soviet authorities. These states are nowadays conceiving of their history as a series of distinct developments independent of and without respect to developments in other ethno-national groups even though these populations lived for centuries in a shared social space without thinking of themselves as living in separate worlds. The country of Uzbekistan, our particular interest here, thus grounds its current national ideology on a conception of “nationality” that was artificially imposed by Soviet policy (Karimov 1994).

The post-Soviet context: a break in the continuity For the Uzbek elite, the transition from a Soviet republic to an independent state was taken for granted; there was no real break between the two political systems for the political staff and no change in the conceptions of national identity promoted by the new state. The Uzbek elite continued to draw from their previous claims to legitimate themselves. During the Soviet era adherence to the Communist Party was a sine qua non for a rise to power in Uzbek society. In the post-Soviet Uzbek political system, it is no longer necessary to belong to a party, although the political game that took place within the one-party system—in which different regional factions fought to gain power (Gleason 1986)—continues. In earlier struggles, Muscovite power assumed the role of arbiter, distributing power between the various factions. At the moment of independence, the Popular Democratic Party replaced the old Uzbek Communist Party, but adherence to this party does not seem to be essential for social and political advancement. However, the regional factions’ internal struggles and the inter-personal ties of loyalty necessary for advancement are still the inescapable requisites for entering politics. After Perestroika, Islam Karimov, a young economist, was at the head of the Communist Party. He drew his legitimacy from his membership in the “Sambuh” faction (based in Samarkand-Bukhara) that came back to power after having been excluded from


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it for several years (Carlisle 1986). His advancement was accompanied by his faction’s return to public affairs. However, now as president Karimov intends to assume the role of arbiter, previously played by Moscow during the Soviet era, distributing power between the different regional factions. In such a system, where no distinction is made between administrative and elected mandates, the nomination and the selection of political personnel occurs primarily in training institutions; these are the real antechambers of power. The specific logic of Uzbek politics is manifest in the way these institutions are run. Although it is essential that a person claim a regional identity in order to have some political weight, this source of leverage must absolutely be combined with education in national institutions. In the current context, the old School of the Party, renamed the University of Diplomacy, and the brand new Academy of Social and State Construction4 are the two main institutions for accession to power. Even though elections take place that seem to choose the Members of Parliament (Oli Majlis), public opinion cannot be fooled; the real basis of power and social influence resides elsewhere. The benches of parliament are not a place for debate on how to run the polis, and there are no parliamentary groups that oppose each other on ideological grounds. Laws are developed in the presidential apparatus, and the legislative deputies are relegated to a subsidiary role.

The construction of local networks of influence: spatial inscription of gift exchange In a number of post-Soviet societies, the state is still a major actor in social affairs. It continues to exercise strict control over education and the economy. In such a context, social advancement can only be pursued by participation in the institutions of the state. At the same time, any wealth that is accumulated can hardly be invested in economic ventures without political protection. Even though embryonic forms of a market economy are emerging in various sectors, all economic activity is closely controlled by the State through fiscal and legislative means. The maintenance of informal networks for political protection is still primordial. For a civil servant, the most important wealth that an Uzbek citizen must garner is still social capital: his or her solidarity network. For example, a person must rely on his or her solidarity network even to gain admittance into the state’s training institutions. Solidarity networks are spatially situated. In a society where great importance is given to the neighborhood community, the mahalla (Arifxanova 1998), the solidarity network builds and maintains itself through a complex system of gift and counter-gift exchanges (Pétric 2002b). The most visible expression of these exchanges is during the rites of passage (toy, cf. Ismoilov 1992) and the place of the exchange is the mahalla. However, the network is not held together by family or neighborhood relationships, but by other types of relations: friendships, professional contacts, etc. During a toy,5 numerous goods are exchanged. It is a conspicuous ceremony that provides means for gaining power. Because the participants usually keep an account book of the gift exchanges (sharbatnama), their books provide records of the way gift exchanges create and maintain solidarity.


Political games in post-Soviet Uzbekistan 169 There are two main reasons for keeping such records. The first is the obligation to remember to make a counter-gift when the time comes, but the value of the gift is also important to record since the intention is to reciprocate with a gift whose value is, if possible, greater; so there is an inflationary logic in the system. As long as one can continue to repay gifts generously one may maintain or even extend one’s solidarity network. But when a participant in this exchange system can no longer keep up the pace of excessive generosity, his influence declines and his network of “loyal clients” disintegrates. The effect of this practice on the society is the circulation of power. The fortunes of local participants in the gift exchange system rise and fall. The gift exchange records reveal that solidarity networks are very localized, as are matrimonial strategies in which regional endogamy is standard. This does not necessarily imply that the network is limited to a single town. On the contrary, the networks link people within a wider region. Indeed, in wider social contexts Uzbeks from a certain region find it useful to invoke their regional connections in order to gain access to crucial institutions. For instance, for someone to be admitted to a national training institution, which is an essential vector for acceding to the highest political office, one must have a solid network “friends” from one’s own locality.

Selection processes: the weight of regional factions This practice of cultivating relations in a regionally based solidarity network reveals itself particularly through the way in which students and interns at the Academy or at the University identify and stigmatize each other. Ethnic identity can be a factor but only marginally; mainly student solidarity networks are based on regional associations. Regional factions are stereotyped according to a presumed social history. The “FAN” faction (Ferghana, Andijan, Namangan) feel excluded from power and are ascribed feminine traits by the students. In contrast, the “Surqash” (surhandaria) and “Sambuh” (Samarkand, Buhara) factions are given male characteristics, manifested in their active participation in political affairs (Petric 2002a). A student finds himself entangled in a factional system as soon as he or she joins a high-level training institution. In fact, in addition to considerations of the competence of the candidates, this other factor, regional connections, influences the admission process. Implicitly, regionally based networks are recognized in quotas and manifest in the number of students from each region that are admitted; the Academy tries to maintain a balance among different Uzbeks from different areas. The Academy of Social and State Construction is at the very heart of the Uzbek political apparatus. Each year’s class of 120 students is a breeding ground for future high-ranking positions in the administration. In a system where no distinction is made between the status of a high-ranking civil servant and an elected political figure, this institution plays a key role in the distribution of power by preparing the main political leaders (regional governors, ministers, head of state, and so on) for state service. For example, a person who becomes a regional governor


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(hokim) in his home region is placed there to represent state interests. He must rely on local connections to establish a ground of legitimacy in the region in which his is assigned. The Academy recruits its young interns mostly from among civil servants already holding high positions in their regional administration. In order to be admitted to such an institution, students/interns need a sponsor in the regional administration (the hokim or a member of his entourage), who recommends him to the Academy, before he can take the entrance examination. At the same time, students develop personal relationships with members of the staff of the Academy and usually rely on them to facilitate their integration into the Academy. This intermediary, who can be a professor or a member of the institution’s administration, is identified by a term borrowed from military vocabulary: he is known as “the tank” (tanka). The tanka generally comes from the student’s native region and facilitates the student’s permanent integration into the administration; he also connects him into an established solidarity network that entails rights and obligations. In this network, the intern must entertain personal relations inside the administration. His permanent access6 to “the resources” is thus conditioned by this type of relation. Such relations will be critical to him throughout his career. A person who receives a position in a training institution and later on in the administration is thereby bound into a solidarity network. But the network is maintained through the system of gifts and counter-gifts.

The logic of a factional system: regional identity This logic—personal connections linking people in networks of solidarity that are maintained through gift exchanges—permeates the entire society. In Uzbek society, the institutions of the state (schools, ministries, etc.) are “spaces” where various regional factions struggle for control of key offices. Each ministry or training institution has an appearance of regionality. Civil servants whose legitimacy is regionally based establish patronage relations with people in their region and provide them with temporary access or means of integration (as civil servants) into the state apparatus. Hence, there is a particular logic of power relations. In the recruitment of students to the Academy, informal regional quotas characterize each class. Students come to Tashkent to the Academy for training before returning to their native region. The state uses leaders from local areas because they have a double source of legitimacy, their connections in the society and the training they have received in a national institution. However, this system is not rigid because state policies ensure that there is a circulation of power. A regional faction’s control over a resource or a ministry is temporary and precarious. Through a strategy of dismissals, the President ensures that power will circulate. For instance, Karimov regularly organizes visits at the local level and, while there, takes the opportunity to dismiss a regional Governor, who is accused of corruption. He uses the same practice with all the ministries of his government in order to assure a regional turnover among the political staff. But this political game now takes place in a new geopolitical context. The withdrawal of Moscow’s influence has entailed the absence of an arbiter in this game


Political games in post-Soviet Uzbekistan 171 among factions. President Karimov attempts to fill this role by detaching himself from his native faction. During the Soviet era the running of a kolkhoze (a faction, or even a ministry) was entrusted to an Uzbek while the second-in-command was a “European” (for example, Russian, Ukrainian) in charge of controlling the local official. Nowadays, this policy remains but the second-in-command is no longer a European: he is now a reliable member of the President’s faction (Sambuh). This pattern of factional association pervades the society. For example, at the Academy the Dean is a politician (Azizkhodjaev) who belongs to the Tashkent faction (Tachkenti) but the first vice-Dean is a Sambuh and all the important decisions pass through him.

A new actor: international organizations An additional actor has entered this game of factions. Uzbek independence was marked by the massive arrival of international institutions or NGOs that seek to facilitate the society’s transformation. Those that want to reform political affairs—the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the United Nations Development Program, the European Union through its TACIS7 projects, and certain projects of the World Bank—came to assist Uzbek authorities in the reform of their political institutions. These international organizations have become an integral actor in Uzbek political affairs, not only as agents of change but also as a resource which the various political factions at different levels may now try to control in their own interest. In fact, there is no village chief who does not talk about the World Bank’s micro-credit, and no minister who does not insist on the need of his ministry to develop a project with an international institution. In a society where political promotion is closely linked to the manipulation of wealth, international organizations and NGOs are considered to be resources that can be used. A technical assistance project funded by the European Union has been established to reform the Academy of the Construction of the State. Among other things, the TACIS project at the Academy (1997–8) was designed to enhance the status of civil servants, which will influence their respective rights and obligations. The effect of this project will be to distinguish the grounds of authority of state functionaries, which are derived from the state, from local authorities, whose eminence is based on popular election. The potential for competition between state and local authorities is therefore still in place. The European Union was not able to impose its distinction between administrative and political positions. As a matter of fact, the European project of technical assistance is trapped in its contradictions. During formal meetings, the Dean of the Academy thanks the Europeans for their intention to improve Uzbek highranking civil servants’ competence, and in fact the TACIS project has contributed to the broadly supposed belief that the poor service of the Uzbek state arises from weaknesses in the technical competence of its civil servants, not from the nature of the state itself. So, the European Union has ended up reinforcing the logic of a system that it intended to reform.


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Furthermore, the project has become entangled in a factionalist logic within the Academy. The Dean, who is supposed to be the main interlocutor of the project, is not necessarily the real power-holder within the institution. The first vice-Dean, who belongs to the regional faction of the President, was in fact the main decision-maker within the school. In this complex environment, the Uzbek partners have developed various strategies of resistance to the Europeans. They reinforce the logic in place in the society by “connecting” themselves to international financing, so the project becomes a locus for the struggle between the different regional factions and for the distribution of positions that can control the resources of the State and the country. This European project, like most international cooperation projects, finds itself entangled in the logic of the country that it intends to change, so that in spite of its efforts it ends up reinforcing it. The Academy houses various international cooperation projects. The Dean uses the Academy as a territory granted to him for a short period of time in order to attract all sorts of funding. The renting out of the premises to foreign institutions (Konrad Adenaeur Foundation, JICA the Japanese foundation, etc.), to NGOs or to foreign private firms provides important revenues that the Head of the Academy can use in his pursuit of power. The Academy deliberately does not ensure proper coordination between the different competing sponsors so that computers or other technical equipment can be duplicated. Owing to the absence of dialogue, computers and other technical equipment are frequently over-supplied within the very same institution.

Conclusion By looking at the various levels of Uzbek society, one can notice that solidarity networks are key political entities, operative in local settings but also at the national level. The gift and counter-gift exchanges that are very visible in the mahalla during toys affect the way institutions are administered. The nominations for positions and the dismissals resemble the patterns of gift and counter-gift exchange since these actions are based on personal affiliations. In this society, a position within the administration is similar to a gift exchange because it implies obligations for the beneficiary. The temporary appropriation of a ministry or of a resource by a leader of a regional faction is a kind of “gift” that implies a counter-gift, for he has obligations to redistribute a part of the resources under his control and also to accept a future redistribution of his power. In this game of counter-gift exchange, international aid such as the European Union’s project in the Academy for the Construction of State and Society is unintentionally favoring one or another of the factions. Unable to remove itself from this system, its attempts to reform end up reinforcing it.

Political games in post-Soviet Uzbekistan 173


Notes 1 This agreement was an initiative from the President of Russia (Eltsine) in order to dismantle USSR and to put an end to Gorbachev’s power. 2 The term üzbek is used here to distinguish the ethnic/tribal identity from the national Soviet category “Uzbek.” A similar distinction is made here between kyrghyz and Kyrghyz, tajik and Tajik, etc. 3 This observation agrees with Anderson’s theory according to which the colonial administrative carve-up creates, in the long run, a certain social reality (cf. Anderson 1983). 4 The latter is an administration school that trains 120 students a year. In contrast to the University of Diplomacy, it is only open to civil servants. 5 This term is used to define rites de passage in Central Asia (circumcision, marriages, funerals). 6 There exists an other sort of intermediary who protects economic activities or who grants an authorization or a temporary administrative favor. He is known as the toīi (krisa) or as the signature (podpis). 7 Technical Assistance of CIS countries.

References Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: New Left Books. Arifxanova, Z. X. 1998. “Rol” Maxalli v Vozrozdenii Nacional’nyx Tradicii Uzbeskogo Naroda (The Role of the Mahalla in the Revival of the Uzbeks’ National Traditions). Obcestvennye Nauki v Uzbekistane, 1998. Tashkent: Uzbek Academy of Sciences. Baldauf, Ingeborg. 1991. Some Thoughts on the Making of the Uzbek Nation. Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique 32(1): 79–96. Barth, Fredrik. 1995 [1969]. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. In: Ph. Poutignat and J. Streiff-Fenart, Les Théories de L’ethnicité. Paris: Puf. Carlisle, David. 1986. The Uzbek Power Elite: Politburo and Secretariat (1938–83). Central Asian Survey 5(3–4): 91–132. Fourniau Vincent. 1994. Histoire de L’asie Centrale. Paris: Puf. Gleason, Gregory. 1986. Sharaf Rashidov and the Dilemmas of National Leadership. Central Asia 5(3–4): 133–60. Ismoilov, H. 1992. O’zbek Toylari. Tashkent: Ozbekiston Editor. Karimov, Islam. 1994. Istiqlol va Man’navijat (Independence and Spirituality). Tashkent: Ozbekiston Editor. Pétric, Boris-Mathieu. 2002a. Pouvoir, Don et Réseaux en Ouzbékistan Post-Soviétique. Paris: Puf. —— 2002b. La Mahalla: Vecteur de Construction d’un Imaginaire National. Cemoti 33: 243–66. Suxareva, O. A. 1962. Pozdnefeodal’nyj Gorod Buxara Kanca Xix Nacalo Xx Veka (The City of Bukhara at the Late Medieval Period: From the End of the 19th Century to the Beginning of the 20th Century). Tashkent: Nauka.


10 Female mullahs, healers, and leaders of Central Asian Islam Gendering the old and new religious roles in post-Communist societies Habiba Fathi

The collapse of the Soviet Union not only turned Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan into independent states of Central Asia but transformed the role of Islam, as a faith, a culture, and an identity, from a marginalized religion into the rehabilitated faith of the newly independent states. Although Islam is not the official religion of these states, which espouse a secular model of government, it is, however, the faith of the majority. Islam, with its deep historical roots and centuries-long presence in a traditional Turkish–Iranian arena that has been Sovietized, is now in a position of cultural and religious dominance and is playing a major role in society. The revival of Islam today is part of the overall phenomenon of re-Islamization, observed since the end of the 1980s in all Muslim countries and also outside the Dar al-Islam, as, for example, in Muslim communities of Europe or America. This revival began as a result of the reforms initiated by Mikhaïl Gorbachov whose attitude toward religion was much more tolerant and accepting than all the former Soviet leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The leaders of Central Asia inherited this religious revival from the perestroika period and are now building a national Islam to reinforce their policies of national consolidation. Since declaring independence, they have encouraged re-Islamization “from the top,”1 a process which has undoubtedly favored the revivification of Muslim behaviors that can be officially practiced in accordance with the prevailing religious laws of their secular regimes. Who are the real agents of re-Islamization at the grass roots level? And how are these new agents of re-Islamization managing to have a religious influence among basic Muslim believers on a collective level? This chapter will try to answer these questions by focusing on the female religious milieu in the five newly independent states of Central Asia. It will precisely examine how the old female religious roles of Central Asian Islam survived the former Soviet system and how new ones have emerged since independence. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Muslim societies of Central Asia are facing a new wave of re-Islamization. Re-Islamization for various Muslim populations, “which were Islamicized many centuries ago,” must be understood as a process of continuity.2 The role played by Muslim women in the re-Islamization of Central Asian Muslim societies has not yet received any attention for two main reasons. First, because the practice of Islam presents a rather masculine image.


Female mullahs, healers, and leaders of Central Asian Islam 175 Second, there is no longer unanimity among scholars, religious theologians, and Muslim believers in faith and/or observance throughout the Muslim world. Even in Muslim communities of Europe, opinions about Islamic issues, ranging from the role of women in society to attitudes towards Islam, vary considerably from one country to another, as well as among theologians and Muslim believers. The religious world of Muslim women is still little known. Most Western and Soviet scholars have been more interested in the social liberation of Muslim women of Central Asia than in their daily religious life. They tended to approach Islam as a traditional way of life opposed to the discourse of modernity generated by the Soviet ideology in the 1920s.3 Thus, the generally popular notions concerning the legal position of the Muslim woman in public life throughout the Muslim world are almost inevitable when one examines the role of Islamic perspectives on modernization.4 This reveals how confusing the status of Muslim women is and explains why their religiosity is often relegated to a minor category and why their spiritual experience has not yet been analyzed.5 In fact, there is still a lack of knowledge concerning the folk beliefs of Islam, a domain often neglected by gender studies, which do not reference the symbolic dimension of religion in a Muslim context.6 The Central Asian example illustrates Islamic meanings by exploring how religion as faith, identity, culture, and ideology in a political environment, inherited by the “Soviet regime,” is now reconfiguring the boundaries of a new religious scene. Indeed, in the Turkish– Iranian area of Central Asia that has been Islamicized and Sovietized, Muslim women can not only participate in the daily religious life of their communities but can even have an influence on religious practices and discourses. By Islam, as experienced by women, we do not mean the status mentioned in the Qur’an or that which is fixed by legislations of Muslim countries—both questions that are still debated and involved in controversy—but rather we mean the religious status which exists in the everyday observance of Islam and which varies among Muslim societies.7 This study is based on fieldwork that required a combination of various disciplines, although social anthropology “predominated” in order to shed light on different aspects of the everyday Islam that exists outside the religious institutions of official Islam. The fieldwork began in 1995, continued in 1996, and for another two successive years from 1997 to 1999, during which time I was associated with IFFFEAC (French Institute for Central Asian Studies)8 based in Tashkent. It was carried out in all the five countries of Central Asia with an emphasis on the traditional Muslim regions: the Ferghana Valley which is situated in eastern Uzbekistan, northern Tajikistan and western Kyrgyzstan; and in southern Kazakhstan which is composed of more than 20 holy places. I have distinguished three female Muslim social agents9 of re-Islamization who fulfill a function of authority in the Islam of the newly formed Central Asia: the female mullahs, the leaders of female Islamic associations, and the female healers, including shamans of Muslim confession.10 Although each of these three social female Muslim agents plays a different role in everyday religion, all of them are trying to develop strategies of re-Islamization. We put together a sample

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of 76 women of authority in Islam who are represented by these three types of female Muslim social agents. The religious women of our sample have the following characteristics: • • • • • •

Most of them are retirees. They come from various Muslim ethnic groups of contemporary Central Asia (Uzbeks, Tajiks, Tatars, Uighurs, Arabs, Ironis).11 They profess to either Sunni or Shia Islam.12 They are from various social and professional backgrounds: we can find workers as well as engineers or academics. Many come from urban areas as from settled rural areas.13 Most of them claim descent from saintly families.14

The female mullahs can be mainly found in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and in Tajik and Uzbek communities living in the neighboring countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan). Both of these countries belong to a sedentary civilization and share many social and cultural traditions. The leaders of female Islamic associations can only be found in the huge territory of Kazakhstan and are native Kazakhs. Re-Islamization is proceeding differently for the Kazakh women of Kazakhstan, coming from a nomadic civilization. As for the female healers, they can be found in both Sunni and Shia Muslim groups of post-Soviet Central Asia, and are born of both sedentary and nomadic civilizations. This short chapter based on a brief historical background of Central Asia, is crucial to an in-depth understanding of the ongoing, changing religious situation in contemporary Central Asia, as its various Muslim ethnic groups, recently integrated into the ex-Soviet modern nation-states, are now independent.15

Women of authority in Central Asian Islam Since the Central Asian countries achieved independence in 1991, both men and women of authority play an ever-greater role in the religious life of the Muslim population. Their role is growing because of the deep social transformations affecting contemporary Central Asia. These people of authority oversee the religious life of other Muslims and thus contribute to the spread of re-Islamization and community restructuring in the Muslim societies that had been de-structured by Russian colonization and then by Sovietization. The authority of these men and women is similar to that attributed to Muslim holy persons.16 Often born of families said to be holy, they feel invested with a spiritual power and act as guides for other Muslims of more ordinary destinies. Thus, their authority is not grounded in the wielding of power as such, but derives from the general assent among most members of the group. For it is indeed the group as community, defined as an ethnic group, a specific religious group (Shia/ Sunni, Sufi affiliation, holy forebears), a spatial unit such as the neighbourhood (mahalla), or a religious association, that defines their status, thereby legitimizing their power. Being the bearers of “sacred authority,”17 they represent a symbolic


Female mullahs, healers, and leaders of Central Asian Islam 177 capital18 for their followers. The question is to account for the ways and means through which the traditional religious roles of women are redefined, causing new religious functions to appear in various Central Asian Islamic societies now experiencing transition. The process involves Muslim women whose authority and prestige derive from the performance of a number of functions. These women of authority in Islam are acting as community religious leaders outside the boundaries of the official religious institutions that have been set up in each country of Central Asia (their respective Muslim Religious Boards). Their authority does not derive from the approbation of the ulamā or the muftiat, which are subordinated to the political power of the independent state and whose duties are more to exercise control over the believers than to defend their interests. Since the beginning of the 1990s, a number of religious women have been recruited to teach in the two female madrasa of Uzbekistan (Bukhara, Tashkent) and other female religious schools of Tajikistan (Dushanbe) or Kazakhstan (Tshimkent, Taraz), although there are no female religious leaders on the five Religious Muslim Boards of Central Asia. If these women of authority are not contesting the power of the ulamā that symbolizes the institutionalized “sacred authority,” it is because they do not yet possess automatic religious authority. Representing the interests of a Muslim female population that has been Sovietized and who is now in search of God, they need the support of their followers or clients to gain authority. Female mullahs of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan In Islam men and women are equal in the eyes of God, as it is stated by one of the Qur’anic verses (vs. 33, Thirty-fifth Surah).19 Both are morally equal in God’s sight and are expected to fulfil the same religious duties of worship, prayer, faith, almsgiving, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca. In the history of Muslim communities, Muslim women had always emerged in the public scene, thus transcending the limits of the patriarchal realms. Many sources emphasize the role of these Muslim women, who have held political power in Islam as far back as the eighth century and who took part in the religious life of their community. During the time of the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt and Syria between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Muslim women memorized the Qur’an, studied religious subjects with male teachers, were responsible for the religious education of men as female religious teachers, went to the mosque in order to listen to men’s office, were able to play a role in the transmission of the hadith, and could even be in competition with them as female transmitters (muhaddithât).20 Thus, in the different parts of the Muslim world, gender boundaries have never been clearly fixed. Since the origins of Islam, religious education has always been an informal system. In Islamic Central Asia, informal structures of the religious domain still remain and religious education depends more on a personal relationship with a teacher than an attachment to a religious or state institution. In such a system of Islamic transmission, women have always played a significant role by fulfilling functions of authority in Islam.


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The local Muslim population traditionally calls female mullahs otin-oyi in Uzbek or halpa in the region of Khorezm (Uzbekistan) or bibi-khalife in Tajik. In the city of Bukhara, they are called mullah-oyi or bibi-mullah. The etymology of these Turkish and Iranian words refers back to the history of Islamic Central Asia and more precisely to the status of the women living at the court.21 These women of high ranking Turkish–Iranian dynasties belonged to a privileged class within the emirate of Bukhara and the two khanates of Kokand and Khiva. They had access to education, which at that time was saturated with religious doctrine. In fact, Otin (or Ātūn in Persian) and Bibi (Bībī) were honorific titles and referred to educated ladies, especially ladies of the court. Many poets of the Turkish and Iranian world were accustomed to be called Bibi and could come either from a wealthy milieu,22 or from a popular one.23 In the region, the word Bibi is also used to name female religious figures, like for example Bibi-Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad and the wife of the fourth caliph, Ali Ibn Abu Talib. And thus, it is equivalent to Lalla, an honorific title that is carried by saintly women of the Maghreb, such as Lalla-Mimuna in Morocco.24 In the history of Islamic mysticism, Muslim women always played a significant role in Sufi devotional practices.25 The term Lalla in the Muslim Arab-Berber area of North Africa also refers to mystical woman as Bibi as well as in the Muslim Turkish–Iranian area of Central Asia. Sufi women of Central Asia participate in the dhikr, a Sufi ritual in remembrance of God, with prayers, litanies and poetry. They could even be spiritual leaders of female Sufi orders.26 As for the term Oyi or Āyī which means “mother” in the Turkish languages of Central Asia, it was used to address women of nobility, especially in the Ferghana Valley. The function of the female mullah is probably one of the most remarkable aspects of Central Asian history. Throughout the Muslim world, the term “mullah” is generally used to identify a religious functionary, and a “cleric,” a learned person or any person with religious education. During the Islamization of Central Asia, after Islam was brought by Arab conquerors to the region, no women held officially religious titles, which did not necessarily mean that they were excluded from the religious life. Little by little, Islam had to adapt itself to the world of the Central Asian steppes but we can not say when precisely the function of otin-oyi or bibi-khalife appeared in the region—a question which probably requires a separate historical study. We think that it is linked with two factors: the particularities of the female religious world and the social position of Muslim Turkish–Iranian women, who held a more enviable position compared to Muslim Arab women.27 Religious life among Muslim women had always been, and still is, informal. At the present time female mullahs also exist in diverse Shia communities (Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq)28 at an informal level and are especially present during the rituals performed around holy shrines which are visited more by women than men. In China, we also find female religious leaders called akhund who are almost equivalent to female mullahs and who do officiate in mosques.29 In contemporary Central Asia, the function of female mullah rests upon an ancestral religious tradition that has survived a century of ideological upheavals, especially during the Soviet period, when Moscow did its best to combat all forms


Female mullahs, healers, and leaders of Central Asian Islam 179 of religious practice. Central Asian Islam survived the Soviet system, thanks to the actions of some traditional female mullahs who practiced clandestinely.30 Nowadays otin-oyi and bibi-khalife are female Muslim dignitaries who oversee the lives of other Muslim women believers on a daily basis. Although responsible for the education of women from birth to death—including the non-practitioners and non-believers as well—they do not always possess a formal knowledge of Islam. Nevertheless they wield great influence over all the Muslim population. First of all, they are regularly invited by Muslim families to come into the women’s part of the home to carry out the main rituals marking the different stages in a person’s life (birth, marriage, death). Second, some of them also perform a variety of rituals specific to the Central Asian region, like the commemoration of a blessed ancestor or the anniversary of a relative’s death or of an Islamic spiritual figure (Mawlūd, the commemoration of Muhammad’s birthday). Third, they are in charge of dispensing religious teaching, essentially founded on the main tenets of Islam: the five daily prayers, the duties of a Muslim believer, the main formulaic religious blessings which are recited before beginning a meal, for example, and the chanting of the Qur’an in Arabic (tajwīd). They are particularly known for chanting or reading special chapters (sura) of the Qur’an during rituals, such as Ramadan, a month considered to be sacred and holy for Muslims. In fact, there also appear to be female religious teachers among the female Muslim community. They are responsible for teaching not only children (boys and girls) but also other women, the memorization of the Qur’an and for telling religious or legendary stories devoted to saintly figures and the spiritual works of Central Asian mystics. This was and continues to be their main function.31 Although re-Islamization has grown by leaps and bounds since 1991, when Central Asia opened her doors to the countries of Dar al-Islam, it is still in the process of rebuilding its religious networks. As it has happened, this process has not favored the revival of the otin-oyi and bibi-khalife as an influential social religious type, as it existed before 1917. First of all, they cannot go back to their original working environment, the maktab (elementary religious schools), since these sections have not been fully restored. The fact is that the old course of study followed in traditional religious education from maktab to madrasa32 has today at least partially disappeared. Though one prestigious madrasa is functioning again in each capital of the Central Asian states under the oversight of the Muslim Religious Boards, the maktabs have been replaced by local mosques and various Islamic centers in towns where believers can pray or memorize the Qur’an. The two masculine madrasa of Bukhara (Mir Arab) and Tashkent (Imam al-Bukhari) in Uzbekistan, whose word is law in all of Central Asia, play an entirely different role: they are training the region’s best ulamā, whose depth of knowledge leaves nothing to be desired compared to theologians from other Muslim countries. It is not surprising that these schools are also highly selective. Instruction in these two madrasa is offered to men only. The official religious authorities and the political leaders of the Central Asian states consider learning a “man’s affair,” offering only an elementary and secondary education to women. This is especially true in the Islamic University of Tashkent which was opened in 1999 and which also


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offers secular subjects. They do not wish to see women enter the upper-level schools. The visibility of women practicing Islam in sacred spaces (mosques, madrasas) often makes some religious men angry. These religious men are not necessarily fundamentalists but some are very conservative and, consequently, opposed to the female teaching and praying in official religious places. Some of them have even brought pressure on the Uzbek government to expel women from official religious institutions. In the beginning of 1992, the Muslim Religious Board of Uzbekistan decided to close down the women’s section of the Imam al-Bukhari madrasa. Religious women who were working there as Muslim teachers, or otin-oyi, demonstrated in Tashkent and asked for a new place to continue teaching, but they were scattered by OMON forces.33 In 1998, the local authorities of the region of Osh, in Kyrgyzstan, forbade women to come to the mosque to pray or to learn in the women’s part of the main mosque of Osh because of the pressure of radical Muslim men who protested against the presence of women at the Friday prayer and the religious education dispensed by several otin-oyi. More recently, in October 2004, the question of the religious education of women in official mosques had been raised again in Tajikistan among religious men, which led the Tajik president Imomali Rahmonov to claim that woman were not obliged to go to a mosque for praying and could simply pray at home. Since the beginning of independence, however, some leaders of the Muslim Religious Boards in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan continue to call upon some otin-oyi and bibi-khalife to supervise young girls, adolescent girls and women as well in the female sections of the mosques and madrasas, which exist exclusively in the main towns of the region (Samarkand, Khodjent, Dushanbe, Tshimkent, Taraz). Even though the two female madrasas of Uzbekistan that appeared after 1993 are separated from the men’s space, they are in fact managed by men. All the religious women who work in them teach Arabic, Islamic notions, Turkish Tchagatay (called Old Uzbek or Turki), history of the country, modern Uzbek literature, the books of the president Islam Karimov, Uzbek institutions, cooking, sewing and English. Although the religious women have the opportunity to work as female religious teachers in any official religious institution of the state, they prefer to distinguish themselves from official Islam because they can be more autonomous and can thus freely organize their religious activities and practices. Moreover, although there are very few female religious centers situated in the main cities of the countries, they do not exist in rural areas at all. In the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990’s, the apparition of political Islamic movements especially in the Ferghana Valley and Tashkent,34 led the Uzbek regime to strengthen its battle against all religious ideology. Moreover, Uzbekistan was worried about the political situation at its boundaries with Tajikistan. In this neighboring country, for the first time since the independence of Central Asia, an Islamic organization (Islamic Renaissance Party) succeeded in the sharing of political power with the neo-communist regime of Dushanbe, an event which led the country to civil war in 1993.35 All the independent countries of Central Asia are secular and, according to their constitutions, they observe a strict separation of state and religion. However, we notice a strict control on religion by all these


Female mullahs, healers, and leaders of Central Asian Islam 181 five Central Asian regimes through state religious institutions (Muslim Religious Board) which are facing the development of political Islam, especially since the fall of the former Soviet Union. There are various radical religious groups, the best known are: the Legal Tajik Renaissance Party and the two clandestine transnational organizations: the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT). Since the American intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, the IMU has become weak and the real threat now comes from the HT. Muslim people support this radical party more for private, social, and economic reasons than for purely Islamic ideological convictions, especially in Uzbekistan, where there is great support among the younger generation. All the political Islamic movements of Central Asia, in contrast to the secular regimes of the region, seek to impose their own visions and interpretations of religion by convincing Muslims to have a political position in order to go back to the original Islamic community of the birth of Islam, considered a model of reference. Their influence has spread to many Muslim believers who were discovering the religion of their ancestors and who were in search of “true” Islam, even if they were not always aware of what “true” Islam really meant. During our first stay in the region in Summer, 1993, we met two religious Uzbek women at the Muslim Board of Uzbekistan in Tashkent. They explained that they were both otin-oyi, were educating people according to Islamic rules and were wondering if they were wahhabi, a term which in all the former USSR is often associated with political Islam. They claimed that they belonged to a generation of “new” otinoyi and were opposed to the old generation of otin-oyi who had been educated, according to them, in the dark about Islam. That’s why they tried to convince Muslims to get rid of some local practices and beliefs, such as the veneration of holy tombs or the “return” of the soul of a dead. In Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, political authorities still seek to control the religious activities of the believers through religious leaders and fight against persons who adhere to Islamist ideas. Both countries are thus contributing to the creation of official otin-oyi or bibi-khalife who are just executing the state’s religious policies. In order to exercise strict control over the believers and in order to combat radical beliefs, both regimes have provided an official document for any mullah or dignitary, allowing them to teach or to officiate in a religious institution. In Uzbekistan, most of the otin-oyi and bibi-khalife, who had been subjected to state requirements of religious knowledge, have now received a certificate to teach religion in their homes. Both regimes have also tried to give official status to these otin-oyi and bibikhalife. But the majority of these religious women are accustomed to organizing their religious activities among women without the interference of any religious establishment and without men. Their religious activities have been carried out in accordance with Central Asian traditions for centuries. Indeed, they have always managed their own religious life for themselves and for other women believers in the female space of the traditional Central Asian home. Even the female maktabs were situated in the otin-oyi’s homes at the time of the Bukharan emirate and the khanates of Kokand and Khiva. The preservation of a religious female function


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was preserved thanks to the mahalla (from the Arabic, “place”), a traditional Central Asian neighborhood in which all the individuals live in harmony with the rhythm of the community. During the Soviet period, the Bolsheviks destroyed the mosques and transformed them into district committees (mahallinskie komitety) to launch their anti-religious policy and introduce their ideological propaganda. However, some otin-oyi and bibi-khalife succeeded in maintaining the organizational structure of traditional society as well as the illegal teaching of religion. Since independence, it is still in the mahalla that otin-oyi or bibi-khalife are most active. Each mahalla is directed by a president, a man nominated by local authorities. These local authorities elected a woman to be the head of the branch of the Women’s National Committee whose duties are to introduce the state’s family policy. As for the otin-oyis and bibi-khalifes, they can also be elected as a head of the local women’s Committee for political reasons.36 But most of the time, they remain autonomous and are regularly consulted by all the Muslim population of the mahalla on religious questions, even by the president of the mahalla in order to perform a ritual in a family, as for instance during a celebration of a marriage. A religious network directed by an otin-oyi or a bibi-khalife first appears in a mahalla and then can be extended to other mahalla of the city or the village. An otin-oyi always begins its religious activities by teaching elementary knowledge of religion in her own family. She dispenses her teaching at home for her daughters who will in turn become otin-oyi. In religious families claiming to be descendants of the Prophet through Sufi affiliations, all the girls and women will have to follow the religious tradition within the family. Initiated by all the members of the family (religious men and women) since infancy, they are destined one day to take over from their teachers. All the otin-oyi’s granddaughters and grandchildren participate in this religious education. But children (girls and boys), and young and elderly women of the mahalla can also be given such religious education. Thus, an otin-oyi slowly builds a regular clientele: other families living in the neighboring village or city can call on her to get some of her religious services as well. In that case only, she has to leave her own mahalla to extend her religious duties and activities to other parts of her native place, even in other regions of the country. Thanks to the different religious activities practiced in various places, she is in fact favoring social relations between and for women. However, otin-oyi do not necessarily want to pass over the boundaries of their own mahalla to gain prestige and authority. Each otin-oyi is free to organize her religious activities as she chooses. The otin-oyi and bibi-khalife of our sample are very different from one to another. We have interviewed 66 otin-oyi and bibikhalife including two women who were also healers at the same time. Indeed, two women of our sample were both otin-oyi and healer37 and consequently were exercising two functions which have in fact many similarities: they were simultaneously teaching traditional religion and curing people, thanks to the spirits which were supposed to live in their bodies, and they were able to diagnose disease and foretell the future. We asked all the women of our sample how and why they decided to become women of God and participate in the religious


Female mullahs, healers, and leaders of Central Asian Islam 183 ceremonies they led in their homes or in the neighboring areas. Most of them claimed that it was through heredity and they were just following a noble tradition within their religious family (Awliyā, Khādja, Īshān, Sayyed) to perpetuate the function of the female mullah. Some of them explained how they became religious after having mystical dreams. Only very few of them told us that it was purely a personal thought process. They came from various backgrounds and had different biographical trajectories. The analysis of these 66 profiles revealed that they had different discourses on practices and beliefs. We have divided these sixty-six otin-oyi or bibi-khalife in two groups: the traditional ones (29) and the modern ones (37). The modern otin-oyi and bibi-khalife began exercising their function after their country achieved independence. They did not base this function on hereditary transmission, unlike the traditional otin-oyi or bibi-khalife. These new and modern otin-oyi or bibi-khalife fell into two categories: the non-radical (21) and the Islamists (16).38 The former only imitate the gestures and know-how of the traditional otin-oyi or bibi-khalife because, since the wave of independence, they have seen a growing demand for rituals. As for the Islamists otin-oyi or bibikhalife, they reject traditional Islam and, unlike all the other women of authority, are in favor of the application of Islamic religious law (sharia). In just one century, otin-oyi and bibi-khalife as a religious group have experienced enormous upheavals. In the past, the initiation of such religious women only took place within the social class of ulamā or religious groups and new recruits were almost without exception designated by heredity. At the present time, since everyone has access to the Qur’an, any young girl or woman can aspire to becoming a religious figure. Heredity is no longer the determining factor. Leaders of women’s religious associations in Kazakhstan As most of the otin-oyi and bibi-khalife of our sample, the Kazakh leaders of female Islamic associations of Kazakhstan come from Muslim intellectual families who were active before the Sovietization of Central Asia. However, they pray and practice religion differently. First of all, they are all against the cult of holy saints which are not only venerated by traditional otin-oyi or bibi-khalife and healers but even by a very huge majority of the Muslim women of Kazakhstan and all Central Asia, including the non-practitioners. In that case, they seem to be closer to the Islamist otin-oyi or bibi-khalife as both of these women of authority condemn folk or popular beliefs. Nevertheless, the Kazakh leaders of female Islamic associations disapprove of their connections to radical Islam. Their position is much more moderate: they will adapt their faith to the conditions of modern life. They also differ from otin-oyi and healers because they are not denigrated by the Kazakh regime who, on the contrary, supports their activities which are not relegated merely to religious questions. Thus they contribute to creating a new Islamic image of urban women who are currently engaged in battles over women’s rights. In Kazakhstan, the phenomenon of religious associations is much more common than in the neighboring countries of Central Asia. Despite the fact that it has submitted to the law on religion as in other states, the Kazakh legislation


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devoted to religion seems to be more flexible. During the time of perestroika, in all the former republics of Soviet Union people of various faiths (Judaism, Christian, Buddhism, Islam) began to gather around religious lines to promote their ethnic culture, which was inseparable from their faith. Many religious societies appeared, for example, Women Catholics of Lithuania and The Women’s League of Muslims of Kazakhstan. After Soviet Kazakhstan achieved independence in 1991, these informal religious societies were legalized, a process which of course has contributed to their proliferation. In our study, we have distinguished three female Islamic associations of Kazakhstan. Among them, the Women’s League of Muslims of Kazakhstan is the most important. It was born in 1990 but was registered at the Ministry of Justice only in 1992. In the middle of 1999, during the time of our fieldwork in this country, it had more than 30,000 members. The League is led by Amina Nugmanova, a former singer. This female religious leader, at the age of 75, comes from Semiapalatinsk, a town in northeast Kazakhstan. She explained to us how, in the mid-1980s, she began to have an interest in the religious past of her family. In December 1986, she participated in the nationalist demonstrations which were held in Alma-Ata the former Kazakh capital. At that time, she was working on a doctoral dissertation devoted to Kazakh folk music but after her participation in these nationalist riots, she was expelled from the Soviet state’s University of Alma-Ata. This new situation allowed her to engage herself in religion matters and to create the League: Our League is aimed at any Muslim woman of Kazakhstan regardless of her ethnic group (Kazakh, Tatar, Uzbek, Uïghur, Tchetchen). Our people have suffered considerably from the lack of spirituality during the Soviet times and our League is calling for a return to our Muslim faith, traditions, identity and beliefs.39 The Regional Fund for Peace is the second female Islamic association of Kazakhstan. Although the Fund is open to any woman of the country regardless of her ethnic group and religion, it is more concerned about social questions than religious ones. Indeed, it is devoted to the defence of women’s interests. Created in 1990, it has a religious section. In 1999, Dariga Turlibekova led the Islamic section of this Fund. This 55-year-old woman studied at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow and, during the Soviet times, she worked at the ideological section of the former Kazakh communist Party in Alma-Ata. She explained to us how she became a Muslim believer in the 1990s, a period which has favored the revival of Islam in all of Central Asia’s countries. She argued that she was in search of her authentic roots and she needed to revive her ethnic Kazakh Muslim background. Rayimbek is the third women’s Islamic association of Kazakhstan. Led by Saule Qajji Bekenqizy, a former agronomist who had secretly received a religious education within her family during the Soviet period. She claimed that it was only during the perestroika that she began to feel herself a true Muslim believer and to act as a militant woman in the restoration of Kazakh cultural traditional values and faith. She thought that the Sovietisation of the region had led many people


Female mullahs, healers, and leaders of Central Asian Islam 185 to live godlessly. She is the only religious woman of authority who works on the redaction of religious pamphlets devoted to the knowledge and practice of Islam. These pamphlets are written in Russian and Kazakh and explain how to conduct the five daily prayers (salat) and the holy month of Ramadan, two of the five pillars of Islam; they also have some religious formulas in the Arabic language, that serve as an to initiation to the practice of religion. The main goal of these women’s Islamic associations of Kazakhstan is to bring Muslim women back to the religion of their Muslim Kazakh ancestors. They attempt to educate Muslim women culturally and religiously. For instance, many Kazakh women have not only received a secular education but also have been culturally Russified for Soviet ideological reasons. The ongoing re-Islamization of Kazakhs or of non-Russian ethnic groups of Kazakhstan is often accompanied by a process of de-Russification and a discovery of their original identity. All of these Islamic associations have their main office in Almaty but there are many branches in all the administrative regions of the country. They regularly organize seminars, lectures, and gatherings relating to Islamic questions in secular spaces such as cinemas, auditoriums and state’s universities. Particularly attentive to the state family policies and gender questions, they may participate in the political debates carried out by the governing board of family’s issues. The female healers of Central Asia The 11 women healers of our sample were called during our study in the field: folbin/fālbin, tabib/tabīb and bakhsī or shamans. The term shaman (which comes from the Tunguz language) can be found in Russian or any westernized language. Uzbek or Kazakh languages rather use the word baqsi. Shamans or baqsi are sometimes called folbin in the local languages of the region, especially among Tajik and Uzbek peoples. None of the healers of our sample used the term baqsi during our fieldwork. Two of them, an Arab woman in the village of Ghidjuvani (Bukhara region) and an Uzbek in the city of Tashkent used the term folbin to name themselves. Two Kazakh healers (two sisters) we met in the female holy place of Aysha-Bibi nearby the city of Taraz (former Djambul) in July 1999 told us that they were just specific women with supernatural powers because they belonged to a holy family but did not mention a particular word to name their function. They argued that they descended from Arslan Bab, a holy saint who is considered to be the teacher of Ahmad Yasawi (died c. 1166–7),40 the founder of the Yassawiyya, a very popular Sufi brotherhood in South Kazakhstan whose shrine is in the holy town of Turkestan. But most of our interviewed healers were called tabīb. Female healers can be found in any Muslim group of contemporary Central Asia regardless of their specific religious affiliation: they come either from the Sunni or Shia Muslims of Central Asia. As several traditional otin-oyi or bibi-khalife of our sample, most of these women healers told to us that they had a spiritual experience of the divine and had been chosen by God. Others explained how the spirit of a holy ancestor or a venerated Muslim holy person like Bahauddin Naqshband (1318–89)—the founder of the Naqshbandiyya Sufi brotherhood whose tomb is


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located near Bukhara—asked them to take the function of otin-oyi or bibi-khalife while they were dreaming. They added that saintly spirits of their ancestors lived in their own body and allowed them to communicate with other spirits of dead holy persons. According to them, their supernatural powers helped them to cure suffering women who permanently consult them in their homes, especially in rural areas. They thought that they had received a gift of God that enabled them to carry on their religious and curative functions. Their own spiritual experience is very close to the initiation processes of shamanism, even if they retain many Sufi elements. In classical sufism as well as in shamanism, the neophyte meets symbolically with death before being reborn again in a new life. First, these women were ill or had psychological troubles which brought them close to death; then, they were revived again with a new religious identity and a new social status.41 They were entirely devoted to God and, consequently, were no longer suffering. They were able to develop magical and religious powers to fulfill their traditional curative activities. As Muslim believers, they had a very intense spiritual life, were almost isolated from the world of the living, and regularly visited the cemeteries and holy places. They only met with people who were suffering in order to cure them.

Collective functions of women religious leaders The analysis of various women’s religious practices reveals that their main characteristic is based on a form of socio-community gathering, structured by women of authority. Broad aspects of this religious life rely on the maintenance or the redefinition of social, cultural, and community norms necessary to the preservation of a wealth of symbolism. These groups form according to modes of belonging that defend common values and interests. The creation of a religious network gives individuals a chance to become part of a group that generates social relationships. The affiliations are primarily familial and ethnic, as much in the minority as the majority in a country of eponymous and religious nationality. Other components of the group’s identity come into play, like a neighborhood including diverse ethnicities, or the region. The development of women’s solidarity networks set up and organized by women of authority is one of the most significant particularities of the religious practices of women of the Turkish–Iranian cultural zone. The role of these women of authority shows the importance of informal relationships, which elude not only men’s control, but also that of the state. We are indeed dealing with a woman’s Central Asian social space completely managed and structured by women of God. Collective worship and religious meetings convey these women’s commitment to creating and above all maintaining social relations within their community. Their concern for affirming the social identity of the group in the newly independent states of Central Asia is closely related to the de-structuring of their Islamic societies due to Russian cultural integration and Communist rules. The expressions of women’s Central Asian Islam have always had a collective character. Religious activities are shared by the familial, ethnic, or neighborhood


Female mullahs, healers, and leaders of Central Asian Islam 187 communities. The need to gather together is another characteristic of Central Asian women’s religious practice. It is precisely the role played by these women of authority, which addresses this need. Being among women during a religious ceremony is a way of sharing one’s concerns and discussing one’s day-to-day problems, which is another particularity of Central Asian women’s Islam. But the main particularities of women’s religiosity relate more to the status of women in day-to-day religion than simply to gender difference. They permit the four following conclusions. First, the female population of a Muslim culture that had been Sovietized needs a charismatic female figure to construct and concretize its relationship to God. In fact, the women of authority are guides for all those who are in search of God. Beyond their diversity, these women of authority aim to guide the female population and to re-Islamize it by reforming behaviors. While the idea may be to make Muslim women practice religion fully, not all the women of authority have the same conception of these behavioural reforms. What we are faced with are indeed different kinds of leaders with different ways of conceiving of religion: •

•

•

The traditional otin-oyi or bibi-khalife and all the healers practice an Islam based on the world of saintliness, ancestor worship, and the recital of poems or religious texts in chanted form, glorifying divine love.42 This traditional Islam interacts with elements of other cultures born of remnants of ancient beliefs, like shamanism or witchcraft which are imbued with great mysticism. This traditional Islam, even if it is relegated to the popular level, does indeed belong to Islam. The Islamist otin-oyi or bibi-khalife not only want to reform the behaviors of all Muslim women, be they non-practicing, laywomen, Russianized, or perceived as bad Muslim women, but they also want to purify traditional Islam, despite its broad base throughout Central Asia. The presidents of the Islamic women’s associations, who also reject traditional Islam, are the only ones who want to rebuild women’s religion around associations, legally. They are in fact recognized by the Kazakh state, but have autonomy because they function outside of the official Kazakh Islam.

Second, we note that the role of women of authority stretches beyond the religious domain into the social domain. Particularly attentive to the worries of their female clients, they always listen to them and try to defend their rights. In addition to the religious services they provide for a fee—except for the Kazakh leaders of Islamic associations—they are expected to solve all sorts of questions linked to their clients’ family lives (conflict between a husband and his wife or a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law). Beyond their religious role, they also act as mediators, lawyers, counselors, and therapists. In societies still very marked by the weight of patriarchal laws, it is often the word of an older, religious woman that is not only heard but also considered. The discourse of the Kazakh women of authority in Kazakhstan is particularly original: it is through religion that they want to contest the legitimacy of patriarchal laws. Like big sisters, these women of authority


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provide help and support to other women so that they can cope with the trials of life. Indeed, they can also provide help, advice and support for any Muslim woman who had been discriminated against. In that way their actions are very close to those of the Feminist League of Kazakhstan.43 The end of the Soviet system and the transition to a market economy tend increasingly to make Central Asian households vulnerable. The burden of the entire family weighs on the lives of these women who, even if they are not officially the heads of the families, nonetheless shoulder all the responsibilities. Under these conditions, it is easy to understand why Muslim women, including non-practicing ones, systematically rely on religion to make their home feel safe, and make use of the services of a Muslim woman of authority to make it sacred. Third, the role of women of authority covers a symbolic dimension. In the public mind, they are much more than simply religious figures: they embody saints who have the power to perform miracles. As Central Asian households increasingly suffer the consequences of the socio-economic crisis plaguing all of Central Asia, mothers think that these saints can solve their day-to-day problems by bringing prosperity to their home and making their lives as marvellous as the supernatural dimension expressed by the religious ceremonies. In Central Asian societies still very marked by ritual practices, the miraculous is part of daily life— all the more so because of two exclusively female rituals (Bibi Mushkul Goshay and Bibi Seshanbe), which are led by traditional otin-oyi or bibikhalife and healers to allow homemakers to put an end to their problems.44 Furthermore, since the wave of independence, women from varied social backgrounds visit healers. The new female clientele consults them not only to put an end to moral suffering but also to express personal requests such as: bringing a difficult pregnancy to term; having a first child, preferably a boy; bringing a son home safely from the army; finding the ideal daughter-in-law or son-in-law; combatting unemployment or poverty, etc. Traditional otin-oyi or bibi-khalife and healers are said to improve the lot of individuals through the practice of rites revolving around a religious culture with which the women’s community can identify, at least symbolically: invocation of God and the Prophet Muhammad, homage paid to Islamic saints, incantations, sacrifices, propitiations and appeals to the spirits. Fourth, one notes the predominance of mysticism in the forms of expression of traditional women’s Central Asian Islam. It consists of repetitions of religious formulas that are recited during the practice of a dhikr and poems of Sufi inspiration. Although many of these classical Sufi poems were written by men, only the women continue to chant them at all religious gatherings and not only during the practice of the dhikr. It is interesting to note that the teachings of the Central Asian Sufi brotherhoods (turuq) are still perpetuated by women. Strictly speaking, it is not classical teaching. In women’s as well as in men’s Central Asian circles, mysticism is experiencing a revival, particularly since the wave of independence.45 However, Muslim men and women have different ways of expressing their relationship to mystical entities. The former seem more attached to learning doctrine dispensed by a leader and by a hierarchical and authoritarian organizational structure, while Muslim women prefer to organize their ritual practices in an informal manner.


Female mullahs, healers, and leaders of Central Asian Islam 189 The religious life of Central Asian Muslim women who did not adhere to radical Islamic values develops within their homes and around the tombs of saints. The family home is considered that which is most sacred and is thus naturally associated with a sanctuary where the family’s deceased ancestors’ souls are supposed to rest, venerated in the same way as saints. If women’s Central Asian religious life develops in the private sphere or around tombs, it’s because these places provide the ideal conditions for an act of faith, expressed in an emotional manner. Because Central Asian women are not able or do not want to participate actively in official Islam, most of the faithful prefer to take part in devotional practices outside the official realm. In fact, the farther they go from institutions, the more freedom they have to express their religious sentiment and the more their appetite for devotional expression can have free rein. Homes and holy places are practically the only places where emotions can be expressed freely. If women’s Central Asian practices are controversial and under attack from several branches of Central Asian Islam, including radical ones, it is essentially because they produce an emotional charge. That which is at issue is not so much women’s religion but this emotional charge which manifests itself during a religious ceremony. We must remember that belief, based on the spiritual and the emotional, was combated by reformist Central Asian Muslims (jadids) at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, and continues to be repressed by the independent state and the supporters of political Islam.

Notes 1 Roy (1992a) has demonstrated that re-Islamization in any Muslim country is proceeding at two levels: “at a high level” thanks to the actions of the state who favors a religious revival, and at “the low level” through religious associations and individual leaders. 2 Although the introduction of Islam in the territories of the present day Central Asia began in the eighth century, the Islamization of all these territories nevertheless occurred at different periods. Islam first appeared among the local sedentary people of the region. As for nomadic populations of the region, they embraced Islam later and some Turkish tribes of the region only converted to Islam in recent times, that is, in the nineteenth century. On these questions, see Bosworth (1979); DeWeese (1990); Frank (1993). 3 Bolsheviks considered Islam a backward religion and consequently Muslim women were seen as victims of a “feudal” Islamic system inherited from the past. That is why they became the principal targets of political, cultural, and economic changes of Soviet Central Asia through the policy of hujum, an offensive launched simultaneously against Islam, veiling, cloistering, slavery, illiteracy and traditional lifestyles. On analyzes based on the approach of the discourse of modernity opposed to the discourse of tradition, see Bennigsen (1959); Carrere-D’encausse (1959); Klimovitch (1959); Pal’vanova (1982); Tolmacheva (1993). On the hujum question, see Northrop (2004). 4 For Chafiq and Khosrokhovar (1995), two French sociologists from an Iranian background who studied the condition of women in different Muslim countries, the claims of Islam and the claims of modernity are incompatible. The studies of the Moroccan sociologist Mernissi (1987, 1990) devoted to the Muslim women’s issue give rather greater importance to feminism ideology. A Turkish sociologist, Göle (1993), explains how a radical movement of Muslim women in Turkey holds an

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Habiba Fathi original position on such fundamental questions as the meaning of their religion in a contemporary society and believe in an accommodation between Islam and modern life. A French sociologist, Babes (1997), argued that Muslim women of North Africa had always been relegated to a minor category by social sciences because their spirituality has not yet been analyzed. The study of popular or folk beliefs in Islam is often seen as a marginal domain, as if gender and feminist perspectives are not considered necessarily significant in the approach to Muslim women’s issues. In a recent study Fernea (1998) wonders what feminism means for various Muslim women living in different Muslim countries and if the idea of feminism is a universal ideology that transgresses the borders of class, religion and culture. Other American woman scholars, Saliba et al. (2002), extended the boundaries of global feminism and focused on the complex relations to power that shape Muslim women’s strategies for identity and agents who participate in religious, cultural and nationalist movements in order to gain political, economic and legal rights. On the notion of observed Islam, see Geertz 1968. As a doctoral candidate at INALCO (Paris) I worked on a PhD dissertation devoted to the religion of Central Asian Muslim women which led to a book: Fathi (2004). On the notion of social agent or social actor, see the French sociologist Touraine (1992). Female shamans of Muslim confession seem to be unique to the Muslim Turkish– Iranian universe; see Baldauf (1998); Centlivres and Centlivres-Demont (1988: 149–67). On the different Muslim ethnic groups of Central Asia, see Bennigsen and Wimbush (1985); Wixman (1984). I have studied the Shii communities of Bukhara and Samarqand (Ironi people), two traditionally Tajik-speaking cities of Modern Uzbekistan. Most Muslims in the region are Sunni and follow the Hanifi school, though Shiism can be found among Ironis, Azeris and peoples of the mountainous Pamir in the territory of Tajikistan, who are Ismailis. The fieldwork was done in the following cities of Central Asia: Andijan, Bukhara, Khiva, Kokand, Marghilan, Namangan, Samarkand, Tashkent, Urgut, Bishkek, Osh, Almaty, Tshimkent, Taraz, Ashkhabad, Mary, Dushanbe, Khodjent. As for rural areas, it was done in the following villages: Oyim near Andijan, Bogholon near Urgentsh in the Khorezm region of Uzbekistan, Langar near Tshimkent, Ghidjuvani and Samirjon near Bukhara, Tchaklovsk near Khodjent. These different pious families observe a strict practice of Islam and claim to descend from the Prophet’s family through a chain of succession (nasab-nāme). To name themselves, they use various Arab Turkish Iranian words such as Awlād/Avlod, Īshān, Khwāja, Mīr, Oq-Suyak, Sayyed. For more information on these holy groups, see Abaeva (1964); Demidov (1976); Muminov (1996). On that question, see Atabaki and O’Kane (1998); Roy (1997); Suny and Martin (2001). Sufi orders, particularly the Naqshbandi order, have strong roots in all Central Asia; see Babajanov (1998); Chismatulin (2001); Schimmel (1986). On the notion of “sacred authority” in Islam, see Eickelman and Piscatori (1996). On the notion of “symbolic capital,” see the works of Bourdieu (1980). According to the French version of the Qur’an translated from Arabic by Berque (1995). Berkey (1991). Among the Turkish Iranian area, six Mongol queens, including Kutlugh Khatun and her daughter Padishah Khatun, exercised political power in the thirteenth century. In Mernissi (1990: 137).


Female mullahs, healers, and leaders of Central Asian Islam 191 22 Szuppe (1996). 23 In his book named Ash’ori Nivsan (Women’s poetry) published in 1914, Ibrahim Davron, an Uzbek poet from Kokand, who collected various poems of 22 women of his native town, pointed out that most of them came from a popular milieu. Cited by Zhalolov (1980: 131). 24 Dermenghem (1954: 69–70). 25 Schimmel (1998). 26 Otin-oyi or bibi-khalife of the past recited the Qur’an during Sufi ceremonies (dhikr) among Female Sufi brotherhoods. On that question, see the description of a Sufi ritual performed by Qadiri women in the 1920s in the old city of Tashkent presented by Trockaja (1929). 27 In his travels through Crimea, the Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta (1304–78) was shocked by the fact that Muslim Turkish and Mongol khans received him while they were sitting next to their wives without any veil. See the French translation of his travels (vol. 3, 1997). 28 The status of Female mullahs of the Shii world has been mentioned in a study on folk Islam by Fernea and Fernea (1972). 29 On Female Muslim akhund of China, see Alles (1999). 30 On that question, see Fathi (1997). 31 On the contents of the religious works used by present otin-oy in Ferghana and Khorezm, see Kleinmichel (2001). 32 Before the Sovietization of Central Asia, girls and women from rich and high ranking families were only able to have a religious education in female maktabs led by an otin-oyi or bibi-khalife. Men of any families, either poor or rich, were able to have a religious education in maktabs and then in madrasas. On traditional Muslim education, see Bendrikov (1960); Williams (1965). 33 Otrjad Milicii Osobogo Naznatchenija, that is, special task forces. On these religious events in Tashkent, see Mutahharhon (1992). 34 See Babajanov (2000; 2001a). 35 See Olimov and Olimova (2001). 36 In Oyim, a village near to Andijan (Uzbekistan), the leader of the women’s Committee in the mahalla was an otin-oyi who was trying to educate religiously the women in accordance with the state’s policy for women. On these women’s Committees, see Kamp (2004). 37 Murodov (1975: 98–105), a Tajik scholar, mentioned that in a village of the Zerafshan Valley in the beginning of the twentieth century, an unmarried and blind Tajik woman named Qari-Kulmurad Sadrieva was both bibi-otin (beotin) and healer. She had inherited magical and curative-powers from her parents, īshān who were called azāimkhān because they were specialized in the purification of ill persons. She had studied in a religious school (qārī-khāna) to become a reader of the Qur’an (qārī). Thus she was chanting the book, telling religious stories and curing ill people with sacred formulas and drum playing (dāira). 38 The term “Islamist” was not necessarily approved by our interviewers. However, we decided to use it because their positions and discourses on Islam and the way they practice are radical. The Islamist bibi-khalife of Tajikistan of our sample were very closed to the Islamic Renaissance Party. In all the Muslim world, we see a radicalization of Islamist, fundamentalist views in the discourse of Muslim practice. The boundaries between political Islam, Islamic radicalism, Islamism, Islamic fundamentalism or neo-fundamentalist, wahhabism or neo-wahhabism, salafists are often confused. For clarification and definitions of theses concepts, see the works of Roy (1992b, 1999, 2002). 39 Personal interview, November 1999, Almaty. 40 According to the Kazakh scholar Ashirbek Muminov, Arslan Bab is purely a legendary holy saint. Personal interview, Tashkent, 1999.


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41 The different steps of the new identity and the social status had been analyzed by Van Gennep (1909) in his famous concept of “Rites de passage.” 42 Traditional Uzbek or Tajik otin-oyi can recite poems written in Persian as well as in Turkish–Tshagatay, even in a religious ceremony devoted for example to a mourning ritual (ta’ziya). They have knowledge of classical Central Asian poetry (Navoï, Hafiz, Bedil) or sufi popular lyrics (Hikmatlar of Ahmad Yasawi) and during any religious ritual they always mix poetry or popular lyrics with formulas in Arabic which plays a huge role in the Muslim faith. 43 This Feminist League provides help and support for any woman of Kazakhstan regardless of faith and ethnicity. Personnal interview with Evguenia Kozyreva, the president of this League, Almaty, July 1999. 44 Bibi Mushkul Goshay and Bibi Seshanbe are two mystical female figures who can resolve Muslim women’s problems during special female rituals; they are also called Bibi Mushkul Goshay (Lady who resolves problems) and Bibi Seshanbe (Lady Tuesday). These two rituals are also the names of two religious stories recited or chanted by otin-oyi or bibi-khalife; the second religious fairy tale (Bibi Seshanbe) is the Central Asian version of Cinderella. In fact, these two female saints never existed and are purely imagined female saints that have a part in all Central Asia cenotaphs that are exclusively visited by women Muslim pilgrims. These cenotaphs have a purely symbolic dimension, which serves the believers who live under the protection of women holy saints that are in fact invisible. These two imagined female Muslim saints are linked with the real mystical figure of Bahauddin Naqshband, the founder of the Naqshbandiyya sufi brotherhood in the fourteenth century, who is still very popular in all the newly independent countries of Central Asian. 45 Today there is a renewal of Sufi orders activities in all Central Asia and we even participated in these Sufi ceremonies among Yassawi and Naqshbandi women in southern Kazakhstan during a fieldwork done in Summer 2003. On the renewal of this phenomena among men, see Babajanov (1998; 2001b).

References Abaeva, T.A. 1964. Otcherk Istorii Badahshana. Tashkent: Fan. Alles, E. 1999. Des Oulémas Femmes, Le Cas Des Mosquées Féminines En Chine. Revue Des Mondes Musulmans Et De La Méditerranée 85–86: 215–36. Atabaki, Touraj and John O’Kane (Eds.). 1998. Post-Soviet Central Asia. Leiden and London: Tauris. Babajanov, Bakhtiyar. 1998. Le Renouveau Des Confréries Soufies En Ouzbékistan. Cahiers D’asie Centrale (Boukhara-La-Noble) 5–6: 285–311. —— 2000. Islam Officiel Contre Islam Politique En Ouzbékistan Aujourd’hui: La Direction Des Musulmans Et Les Groupes Non-Hanafî. Revue D’études Comparatives Est-Ouest 31–33: 151–64. —— 2001a. O Dejatel’nosti “Hizb At-Tahrir Al-Islami” V Uzbekistane. In: Aleksej Malashenko and Martha Brill Olcott (Eds.), Islam Na Postsovetskom Prostranstve: Vzgljad Iznutri. Moscow: Filosofskij Fakul’tet Sankt – Petersburgskogo Gosudaverstvennogo Universiteta. —— 2001b. Vozrozhdenie Deyatel’nosti Sufiskih Grupp V Uzbekistane. In: A.A. Chismatulin (Ed.), Sufizm V Central’noj Azii. Saint-Petersbourg: Filosofskij Fakul’tet Sankt-Petersburgskogo Gosudaverstvennogo Universiteta. Babes, Leïla. 1997. L’islam Au Féminin, Le Culte Des Saintes Au Maghreb. In: F. Lautman (Ed.), Ni Eve, Ni Marie, Luttes Et Incertitudes Des Héritières De La Bible. Genève: Labor and Fides.


Female mullahs, healers, and leaders of Central Asian Islam 193 Baldauf, Ingeborg. 1998. Zur Religiösen Praxis Özbekisher Frauen In Nordenafghanistan. In: Klaus Sagaster (Ed.), Religious and Lay Symbolism in the Altaic World and Other Papers (Proceedings of the 27th Meeting in Walberberg, Federal Republic of Germany, June 12–17, 1984. Wiesbaden: Permanent International Altaistic Conference. Bendrikov, Kirnak E. 1960. Otcherk Po Istorii Narodnogo Obrazovanija V Turkestane, 1865–1924. Moscow: An Pedagogitcheskih Nauk Rsfsr. Bennigsen, Alexandre. 1959. La Famille Musulmane En Union Soviétique. Cahiers Du Monde Russe Et Soviétique 1: 83–108. Bennigsen, Alexandre and S. Enders Wimbush. 1985. Muslims of the Soviet Empire. London: Hurst. Berkey, Jonathan P. 1991. Women and Islamic Education in the Mamluk Period. In: Nikki R. Keddie and B. Baron (Eds.), Women in Middle Eastern History, Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender. New Haven: Yale University. Berque, Jacques. 1995. Le Coran, Essai De Traduction De L’arabe Annoté Et Suivi D’une Étude Exégétique. Paris: Albin Michel. Bosworth, Clifford Edmund. 1979. Central Asia. In: Joseph Schacht With Clifford Edmund Bosworth (Eds.), The Legacy of Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1980. Le Sens Pratique. Paris: Éditions De Minuit. Carrère-D’encausse, Hélène. 1959. La Femme Musulmane En URSS. Esprit 25(7–8): 46–65. Centlivres, Pierre and Micheline Centlivres-Demont. 1988. Et Si On Parlait D’afghanistan? Terrains Et Textes, 1964–1980. Neuchâtel-Paris: Institut d’ethnologie de Neuchâtel. Chafiq, Chahla and Farhad Khosrokhevar 1995. Femmes Sous Le Voile, Face À La Loi Islamique. Paris: Editions Du Félin. Chismatulin, A. A. (Ed.). 2001. Sufizm v Central’noj Azii. Saint-Pétersbourg: Filosofskij Fakul’tet Sankt-Petersburgskogo Gosudaverstvennogo Universiteta. Demidov, Sergej. 1976. Turkmenskie Ovlyady. Ashkhabad: Ylym. Dermenghem, Émile. 1954. Le Culte Des Saints Dans L’islam Maghrébin. Paris: Gallimard. DeWeese, Devin. 1990. Yasavian Legends on the Islamization of Turkestan. In: Dennis Sinor (Ed.), Aspects of Altaic Civilization, Proceedings of the 30th Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference, Bloomington, Indiana, June 19–25 1987. Bloomington: Indiana University. Eickelman, Dale F., James Piscatori (Eds.). 1996. Muslim Politics. Princeton: Princeton University. Fathi, Habiba. 1997. The Otines, Muslim Women Clerics of Central Asian Islam. Central Asian Survey 16(1): 27–43. —— 2004. Femmes D’autorité Dans L’asie Centrale Contemporaine: Quête Des Ancêtres Et Recompositions Identitaires Dans L’islam Postsoviétique. Paris: Maisonneuve and Larose. Fernea, Elizabeth W. 1998. In Search of Islamic Feminism: One Woman’s Global Journey. New York: Anchor. Fernea, Robert A. and Elizabeth W. Fernea. 1972. Variation in Religious Observance among Islamic Women. In: Nikki K. Keddie (Ed.), Scholars, Saints and Sufis: Muslim Religious Institutions in The Middle East Since 1500. Berkeley: University of California. Frank, Allen. 1993. Tatarskie Mully Sredi Kazahov i Kirgizov v Xviii-Xix Vekah. In: G.F. Valeeva-Sulejmanova (Ed.), Ku’ltura, Iskusstvo Tatarskogo Naroda: Istoki, Tradicii, Vzaimosvjazy. Kazan: Ijali Im. G.I. Ibragimova. Geertz, Clifford. 1968. Islam Observed: Religious Developement in Morocco and Indonesia. New Haven: Yale University.


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Göle, Nilufer. 1993. Musulmanes et Modernes: Voile et Civilisation en Turquie, Paris: La Découverte. Ibn Battuta. 1997. Voyages. Paris: La Découverte. Joseph, Suad and Susan Slyomovics. 2001. Women and Power in the Middle East. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Kamp, Marianne. 2004. Between Women and the State: Mahalla Committees and Social Welfare in Uzbekistan. In: Pauline Jones Luong (ed.), The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies From Soviet Rule To Independence. Ithaca: Cornell University. Kleinmichel, Sigrid. 2001. Halpa in Chorezm und Atin Ayi in Ferghana, Zur Geschichte Des Lesens In Uzbekistan, Anor. Berlin: Verlag Das Arabish Buch. Klimovitch, L. 1959. Islam I Zhenshchina. Moscow: Nauka. Mernissi, Fatima. 1987. Le Harem Politique: Le Prophète et les Femmes. Paris: Albin Michel. —— 1990. Sultanes Oubliées: Femmes Chefs D’état en Islam. Paris: Albin Michel. Muminov, Ashirbek. 1996. Veneration of Holy Sites of the Mid-Sïrdar’ya Valley: Continuity and Transformation. In: Michael Kemper, Anke Von Kügelgen, Dmitry Yermakov (Eds.), Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag. Murodov, Otamurod M. 1975. Shamanskij Obrjadovyj Fol’klor U Tadzhikov Srednej Tshasti Doliny Zeravshana. In: Gleb Pavlovic Snesarev and Vladimar N. Basilov (Eds.), Domusul’manskie Verovanija i Obrjady v Sredenei Azii. Moscow: Nauka. Mutahharhon, R. M. 1992. Zhenshching v Fschadre. Musul’mane Movaroumahra 2: 8–11. Northrop, Douglas. 2004. Veiled Empire: Gender in Stalinist Central Asia. Ithaca: Cornell University. Olimov, M. and S. Olimova. 2001. Polititcheskij Islam v Sovremennom Tadzhikistane. In: Aleksej Malashenko and Martha Brill Olcott (Eds.), Islam Na Postsovetskom Prostranstve: Vzgljad Iznutri. Moscow: Art-Biznes-Centr. Pal’vanova, Bibi. 1982. Èmansipacija Musul’manki: Opyt Raskreposhchenija Zhenshchin Sovetskogo Vostoka. Moscow: Nauka. Roy, Olivier. 1992a. Les Voies De La Réislamisation. Pouvoirs 62: 81–92. —— 1992b. L’échec De L’islam Politique. Paris: Seuil. —— 1997. La Nouvelle Asie Centrale: Ou la Fabrication des Nations. Paris: Seuil. —— 1999. The Foreign Policy of the Central Asian Islamic Renaissance Party. New York: Council on Foreign Relations. —— 2002. L’islam Mondialisé. Paris: Seuil. Saliba, Therese, Carolyn Allen and Judith A. Howards (Eds.). 2002. Gender, Politics and Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago. Schimmel, Annemarie. 1986. Le Soufisme ou les Dimensions Mystiques de L’islam. Paris: Editions Du Cerf. —— 1998. Mon Âme Est Une Femme: La Femme dans la Pensée Islamique. Paris: Jc Lattès. Suny, Ronald Grigor and Terry Martin (Eds.). 2001. A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin. New York: Oxford University. Szuppe, Maria. 1996. The Female Intellectual Milieu in Timurid and Post Timurid Herat : Faxri Heravi’s Biography of Poetesses, “Javâher Al’Ajayeb.” Oriento Moderno 15(2): 119–37. Tolmacheva, Marina A. 1993. The Muslim Women in Soviet Central Asia. Central Asian Survey 12(4): 531–48.


Female mullahs, healers, and leaders of Central Asian Islam 195 Touraine, Alain. 1992. Critique De La Modernité. Paris: Fayard. Trockaja, A.L. 1929. Zhenskij Zikr v Starom Tashkente. Sb. Muzeja Antropologii I Ètnografii 7: 71–79. Van Gennep, Arnold. 1909. Les Rites De Passages: Etude Systématique Des Rites. Paris: Librairie Critique. Williams, D. S. M. 1965. The Traditional Muslim Schools of the Settled Regions of Central Asia during the Tsarist Period. Central Asian Review 13: 339–49. Wixman, Ronald. 1984. The Peoples of the Ussr: An Ethnographic Handbook. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe. Zhalolov, Tükhtasin. 1980. Üzbek Shoiralari. Tashkent: Ghafur Ghulam.

11 Efficacy and hierarchy


Practices in Afghanistan as an example Robert L. Canfield

Medical anthropology and efficacious practices in Islamic contexts A step-child of the biomedical tradition, medical anthropology has been loath to stray too far from its roots in Western empirical science, but its concern with how “the natives” deal with issues of health and well-being has drawn the field ever deeper into phenomenological questions normally considered exogenous to medical inquiry.1 Kleinman (1978) noted the problem in a formative period of the subdiscipline. More recently Waldram (2000) observes the problem in respect to questions about the efficacy of “traditional medicine,” and urges anthropologists to “return to the field” to gather “more data on indigenous understandings of efficacy.” At the same time he exemplifies the dilemma: he recognizes Adelson’s (1998) argument that Cree concepts of health and illness differ from the categories of Western biomedicine (which suggests that terms like “traditional medicine” may mis-frame a people’s understanding of illness and efficacious means of relief), but at the same time he must deploy the terms of the subfield: “traditional medicine,” “medical systems,” “alternative or complementary medicine.” But can medical anthropology be turned into a discourse about the whole range of influences on health that other societies identify? The range of relevant influences can become so numerous and broad that the boundaries of the subdiscipline become indeterminate, turning “medical anthropology” into a mere topic within the wider discipline of cultural anthropology. Take, for instance, an ethnography of the Gayo of Indonesia, Muslims through Discourse, by John R. Bowen. As far as I can tell, no one regards it as a contribution to “medical anthropology”; in any case, it received no notice in the medical anthropology journals. Even so, the book devotes whole chapters to conceptions of illness and the means of healing: Chapter 4, “Spell, Prayer and the Power of Words” (28 pages), discusses the efficacy of spells, the power of Qur’anic forms to cure, the way to get results from such devices; Chapter 6, “The Healer’s Struggle” (21 pages), describes the ways a healer gains power over the forces that cause misfortune; Chapter 7, “Exorcism and Accountability” (20 pages), examines the “medical resources” of the Gayo healer (p. 151). As far as I know, the only work that addresses Muslim practices of efficacy as a “medical anthropology” problem is Sargent (2006).


Efficacy and hierarchy 197 Anthropologists need a more general, non-biomedical framework for examining the ways people seek to manage their hardships—identifying illness as a misfortune generally, not distinguishable (as a particular group might see it) from many other problems. At the risk of drawing medical anthropology into a more encompassing cultural anthropology, I assume here that the quest for efficacy in distress is ubiquitous and treat it as a cultural practice. Specifically I point to the political entailments of the “culture of efficacy” as practiced among folks in Greater Central Asia.2

The problem Apart from the realm of politics—where public affairs are vitally fraught with shifting and conflicted alliances, competing claims to authority, diverse and cacophonous rhetorics, new governments, and oppositionist movements—the less politically engaged people of Greater Central Asia have maintained a consistency in the ways they have sought efficacy in distress. Coups d’etat, revolutions, civil wars, uprisings, internecine battles, famines, and international invasions have had little affect on the way they cope with the exigencies of human life. Shrines and coping in Central Asia Take the frequenting of shrines, for instance. Shrines were being venerated in the Soviet Central Asian states despite Soviet disapproval, some shrines, according to Maria Subtelny, being emblems of national identity. The Kazakhs, for instance, embraced the shrine of Ahmad Yasavi as their “national saint”; the Turkmen cult of holy places was “linked to the cult of tribal ancestors”; in the North Caucasus the shrines of Sufi sheikhs killed while fighting Russian invaders were major places of worship. And some Sufi leaders were popular owing to their roles “as popular preachers, faith healers, dispensers of amulets and talismans, and as custodians of the so-called holy places.”3 In Chapter 10, Habiba Fathi says that the religious life of non-Islamist women of Central Asia “develops within their homes and around the tombs of saints” because they “provide the ideal conditions for an act of faith expressed in an emotional manner” (page 189). Pilgrimage and worship at shrines, as well as other practices, have continued among Central Asian women, she says, despite opposition from many sources. Other recent reports suggest that the veneration of shrines is vitally salient in other sectors of Greater Central Asia. William Dalrymple visited tribal territory in Pakistan in 2005 and reports that near Kohat there is “a small whitewashed shrine that had recently been erected by the side of the road.” It is new. “That is where the army ambushed and killed two Al Qaeda men escaping from Afghanistan,” someone explained. Local people soon began to see the two martyrs in their dreams. Now we believe that they are saints. Already many cures and miracles have been reported. If any of our women want to ask anything special from God, they

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first come here…They say that each shahid [martyr] emitted a perfume like that of roses. For many days a beautiful scent was coming from the place of their martyrdom.4 In this tribal area, where political affairs are organized quite differently from those in the Soviet successor states, shrine veneration is likewise practiced “as an expression of emotion.” Here women seeking efficacy in their hardships have imputed sacred power to the tombs of two “martyrs” of the holy war against America. Some of them, having seen the men in dreams, come to the tombs “first” to pray, to seek “cures and miracles,” “to ask anything special from God.”5 A similar phenomenon has developed in the area of Tora Bora, where many Al Qaeda fighters died in a notorious American offensive. There, near the village of Markhangi, 23 “martyrs” of the battle are buried and their graves have become “a shrine for Afghans seeking miracle cures.”6 It is not merely martyrs of the anti-American struggle whose graves have become shrines for healing. The grave of the famous “Lion of Panshir,” Ahmad Shah Mas’ud, military leader of the Jamiat-I Islami political organization, became, almost immediately after his assassination on September 9, 2001, “a shrine for pilgrims seeking cures from illnesses ranging from epilepsy to madness.”7 These reports on the veneration of shrines in the Soviet Union, in the successor states, in tribal Pakistan, and in contemporary Afghanistan, closely resemble practices I found in Afghanistan in the 1960s. Here are two examples: 1

2

[A teacher in Bamian, in Dari, regarding Sunni practices there] Many grooms take precautions against this black magic [a charm to cause impotence], especially if there is a disappointed suitor who could purchase a charm [ta’wīz]. Before a wedding the groom and a few friends visit a shrine and walk around it saying a prayer for protection from a black charm. Often the groom obtains a charm that will counteract a black charm. And in the marriage ritual sometimes a prayer [du’a], is recited in order to preserve the marriage from black magic. [A young man in a tea shop in Bamian, pointing to a man sitting nearby, in Dari] This man is a jinndi, a person who has a jinn. This is a sickness that comes from being frightened, seeing a jinn at night. You are attacked by a jinn and your mind is choked. The jinn attacks your throat. You may see him in the daytime—more often at night. They are afraid of the light. A man who is a jinndi says whatever comes to his mind. He needs to go to shrines [to be healed].

These three examples represent different sectors of the population. The woman who had wept at a shrine came from a well-to-do family and spoke excellent English. The young man who described circumambulating a shrine was moderately well educated and came from a provincial town. The young man who pointed out the jinndi who needed to be healed by a shrine worked for his father in a teashop and was very likely illiterate. The veneration of shrines, mentioned by


Efficacy and hierarchy 199 all of them, was a part of their social worlds taken for granted, just as it still seems to be in the successor states of Central Asia and in Pakistan. Actually, shrines have been venerated for a long time by the people of Greater Central Asia—indeed, in the face of criticism and scorn, as Habiba Fathi points out. Since early in the Islamic era the popular tendency to resort to shrines was criticized by the sharia-minded ulama,8 and in the modern period in Central Asia it has been opposed by various social elements: the leaders of the Jadid movement during the Russian czarist era; by the Soviet state as it promoted secularism for 70 years;9 by the governments of the successor states now in power; and by the Islamists who now actively make war against those regimes.10 Yet the practice persists in the successor states of Central Asia and in the tribal zone of Pakistan. Somehow in the informal world of ordinary social life the veneration of shrines has continued to be a vital practice for many ordinary people. A complex of efficacious practices But this is not a singular practice. It does not stand in isolation. Other practices are somehow related to shrine veneration, as the statements above indicate.11 The statement by the educated woman referred to pirs before segueing into her shrine experience. The young teacher mentioned prayers and the quest “for protection from a black charm.”12 The tea shop owner’s son described the deleterious influence of jinns. Pirs who have spiritual power, prayers that are efficacious, black magic that causes impotence, jinns that cause sickness, shrines that cure—these are elements of a complex of practices that we can call “a culture of efficacy.” The critical feature of this complex of practices is its orientation toward practical resolution of stressful situations like pain, personal crisis, and the search for relief or protection from misfortune. In the abstract, this complex of cultural practices may include, of course, biomedical treatments for illness, but for some people in Greater Central Asia biomedical services have been limited, and the misfortunes of life include many other sorts of problems anyway. Even when biomedical means are available they are never sufficient for all the problems of life. Many of the most pressing causes of distress are not physical but mental and social. This complex of efficacious practices seems to exist alongside biomedical practice.13 A deployable resource The practices that comprise this complex are culturally constructed in the sense that they are never the only ones possible and are constantly being negotiated and reproduced. And while they are not a fully articulated set of relations, they are loosely related. The culture of efficacy consists of a cluster of mutually reinforcing categories and conventions, “an aggregate of elements” more or less rationally connected, despite logical breaks, ellipses, even contradictions.14 My surmise in this work is that among the diverse people of Central Asia, where social relations


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are convoluted and power and influence are circumstantially constituted by local histories,15 this set of practices has been a cultural resource (one among many). It has been “a repertoire of signs and practices”16 that have been learned and acquired, deployed, invoked, or otherwise enlisted when actions have been taken and situations interpreted, according to individual abilities and interests. Indeed, the very performance of such practices reveals people’s concerns, the “realities” that occupy their thoughts, demand their attention.17 A habitus of practices As a cultural set such a culture of efficacy has other entailments. It is linked to displays of authority and the recognition of competence; to conventions of courtesy and etiquette; to the exercise of rights and expressions of significance—that is, to the habitus of everyday life. Among these people the “system of structured, structuring dispositions [that]…is constituted in practice and is always oriented toward practical functions”18 is, as Bourdieu expressed it, a “a product of history” and at the same time tends to produce similar practices “more history—in accordance with the schemes generated by history [and so] ensures the active presence of past experiences, which…tend to guarantee…their constancy over time.”19 Doxa of power Enshrined in such a complex of categories and practices is a cosmic logic, a mythopoetic tradition that recognizes “notions of the obvious, of the taken for granted and of incontestable commonsense,” ultimately the “reality” within which people live.20 The unspecified presumptions by which people carry on their affairs, what Bourdieu calls the doxa,21 provide the “consensual validation which is the basis of collective belief”22 and operate as if they were the objective truth that structures all social space, “from the practices and perceptions of individuals to the practices and perceptions of the state and social groups.”23 Assumed without being specified, such presumptions delimit the bounds of reasoning, govern the arguable, and legitimize statuses and forms of leverage24 so that even challenges to the status quo can merely reinforce its own premises.25 Thus, intrinsic to this complex of efficacious practices are culturally defined forces of social domination. The presumptions that organize and develop representations of reality, endow legitimacy to the coercive relations in place, making the extant grounds of authority and influence seem self-evident.26 Indeed, their force is all the more coercive because they are embedded in the commonsense rationale of everyday affairs.27 Such unstipulated, unarticulated coercive forces are only exposed when critical views are expressed, threatening conventional practice and the status quo,28 in which cases the doxic conventionality of ordinary practice may be consciously specified as orthodoxy.29

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My task here To explain this relationship I offer here a provisional outline of a culture of efficacy, a complex of practices oriented toward coping with the misfortunes of life and the hierarchy of authority and influence entailed in it. My evidentiary material comes from material collected from two years of field work in Afghanistan in the 1960s. The outline is offered as a case in point, a particular instance of the complex of practices extant in one part of Greater Central Asia at a particular time, an outline against which notes on efficacious practice elsewhere may be compared. It is my own construction, an objectification for the benefit of scholarly discussion. As Bourdieu points out, it is outsiders who draw “road maps” like this one. Insiders in contrast acquire their knowledge circumstantially, incrementally, in the course of experience, and so take it for granted, as natural.30 For outsiders a “road map” that draws attention to places and relationships, even if in a stylized form, helps one navigate through unfamiliar territory. In the interest of brevity, I make extensive use of quotations from my field notes written in 1966–8. Unless otherwise indicated, all conversations were in Dari, the local dialect of Persian.31

The culture of efficacy as a categorical set In an earlier work on the distresses of people in Bamian in the 1960s I argued that “for the afflicted and poor, religion is not simply a matter of beliefs, customs, and rituals, but it is also essentially one of material efficacy.”32 Here I describe the culture of efficacy as a repertoire of categorically recognized conceptions by which misfortunes were identified (Ontology of Misfortune) and by which activities for obtaining relief, deliverance, and protection were identified (Ontology of Efficacy). An ontology of misfortune Omitting discussion of local categories of physical distress33 I here consider the invisible forces and spiritual entities that might cause misfortune, as well as the uncertainty that the misfortunes of life create. In this section I specifically refer to the influence of black charms, jinns, and other spirits, and the uncertainty about the causes of misfortunes that contributes to a sense that divine forces might bring misfortune. Jādu, Jādugarī Behind the material world of the senses there exists a world of forces and spirits, with which humans may relate through religion or magic (sihr).34 Magic is a material force that affects the world mechanically without the engagement of the mind or feelings of an animated being.35

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Robert L. Canfield [Sheikh Gholam Ali] If you strike the ground with a stick a balā will come out. That is a kind of trouble, not a person, but maybe it is like a ghost.

Balā literally means a calamity and so merely an event or a condition, but Sheikh Gholam Ali was not sure whether it was an animated being. Animated or not, a balā would appear in response to another condition that triggered it; it was a mechanical relationship. This appears to be how charms (ta’wīz) work. But charms could be used for wrongful purposes, in which case they were sorcery (jādu). A charm to make a person fall in love was used legitimately when it was intended to induce an estranged wife to love her husband or an estranged husband to love his wife, but it was illegitimate—and therefore sorcery—for it to be used to seduce a person with whom one had no sexual rights, such as another person’s spouse. A charm intended to cause animosity would be sorcery if it was applied to family members, but not sorcery if it was used to break up an affair. •

[Sheikh Gholam Ali] I have a charm that will make two people fight—a husband with another woman with whom he might be having an affair—any two people, brothers, mother and father, etc. I had a lot of women come to me for [such] charms. They came to me because I was supposed to be clean. They wouldn’t complain if the charm didn’t work because they came secretly and they didn’t want others to know. A jādugar [sorcerer] is not a good name among them, and if something bad would happen, people would blame them for asking him to write the charm.

A jādugar, then, was an immoral practitioner of magic.36 •

•

•

[Teacher in Bamian] People fear mullahs who have the power to make charms, that they might make one against them. They might bury a charm with the name of someone on it at their door, or they might throw it into their house. [They fear] that it might curse or hex the house. [Mir Hasan] The Shi’a fear that Sayyeds might pray against them, as they know about magical charms and sorcery [jādugari]. Their magical power and holy descent makes them close to God. [A Sunni malik in Bamian] In the early days people were afraid that these sayyeds might pray against them and hurt them in some way—they might die, or the animals would die or become sick, or the crops would not be good. This was the biggest reason people were afraid of the sayyeds.

One of the most widely feared jādus was a charm to cause impotence, especially in a marriage that was contested by a disappointed suitor. •

[A Hazara man in Bamian] In all Islamic areas and in Hindustan [India] people believe that in the Qur’an or in other religious books, there are prayers [incantations] which some mullahs or some Sayyeds know. If this is recited



to the groom [at the time of his marriage] it can be a charm on him. It can make him impotent. It used to be that there were a lot of people who could not have sex relations, but now only a few. As mentioned earlier, it was as a precaution against a jādu that grooms circumambulated shrines, and that a prayer was recited in the marriage ritual to preserve the marriage from a jādu. Nazar (the eye) The “evil eye,” nazar, was also believed to cause misfortune.37 •

[A Hazara man] When someone looks at something and likes it—maybe he wants it—then that is nazar [the look]. It brings bad luck. I owned a lot of animals, several cows and donkeys, and one day, a stranger came and stood out in the field and watched for a long time. After that, several of my animals died. You don’t have to want to bring bad luck to cast the look on someone; it just happens. If we think someone might come along and look at our cow—maybe to admire them—we might drive our cows over the hill the other way.

Two teenage boys who had no family and were working for their subsistence in a tea shop, one evening after everyone had eaten and left, told me about the misfortunes that fell upon people they knew because of “the look.” •

[My notes] There was a farmer [they said] who had two pieces of land…that produced exceedingly well, but the next year he had bad luck. He died soon after harvest, and the next year, when the son planted it, it produced nothing. They [the two boys] took this to be the result of someone’s looking—envying—the farmer’s yield. They also told me about a man in the valley of Saighan who had rented land on a half-and-half tenant contract and planted it heavily. Early on it seemed to be doing well and people admired it, but in the end it yielded minimally. Moreover, the following winter an earthquake destroyed the house, killed five or six people, several animals, and the man himself. Such bad luck came from “the look,” they said.

Ritual mistakes Just as performing certain rituals brings well-being the failure to perform them properly might the cause things to go wrong. •

[Sheikh Gholam Ali] It is dangerous to make a mistake in reciting the Qur’an. That is because God spoke it. It is a sin to make a mistake in reciting it. To do it right has merit…[I]n western Afghanistan the pronunciation of the Qur’an is an intense bone of contention between Sunnis and Shi’a. Dari [Afghan

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Persian] has no sound equivalent to the Arabic “dhahl.” Shi’a believe it should be pronounced “z”; Sunnis believe it should be pronounced “d.” This is no mere academic quarrel: it manifests the real concerns of a people who said that ritual makes a difference in their relationship with God and affects their affairs. •

[More from Sheikh Gholam Ali] To mispronounce the name of God is also a mistake and a sin. That is, you have to be careful. The kalima, or the word of witness [There is no God except God and Muhammad is the messenger of God”], is dangerous to say because if you don’t say “except God,” then you are saying “There is no God.” So you must never start to say it and not finish; it is especially dangerous for the dying, because they may not be able to finish.

Failure to perform a ritual precisely may cause harm. •

[Sheikh Gholam Ali, regarding the necessity to keep urine from dripping on the body] If a man is careless about purity his cow might give less milk, he might spill some of it, but it might really be a loss of material things. It wouldn’t last as long.

Certain other acts might be considered dangerous or deleterious: •

[Sheikh Gholam Ali] I know a pretty woman who was going to the bathroom, and while going there, because it was raining, she avoided some mud and stepped on ashes taken from an oven, and she heard a squeak, and ever since then the children she bore did not live more than two months. She came to my mother’s cousin and gave him a lot of money to cure it. She knew it was not a medical thing because she bore the children and they did not live. He said, “You must have done something you shouldn’t have!” And his eyes rolled when he talked and he acted mysterious. And finally she said that she had stepped on the ashes. That made it very grave.

Jinns (Jinn Sickness, Jinndi, Tars Khordan) Besides the processes that operated mechanically others worked through the agency of spirits, of which there were several kinds: jinns, fairies (parīs), and deos. Jinns had been seen by many people, an experience called “being frightened” (tars khordan) and was considered a cause of illness and misfortune.38 •

[Teacher in Bamian] When jinns enter the body, they make a person insane or cause fits. It is possible to be “frightened” in the daytime, but more often it happens at night. To avoid seeing jinns people liked to carry lanterns because jinns run from the light. There are two kinds of jinns. One is like a normal

Efficacy and hierarchy 205 person in his body, but when he sees a man he fights with him. This is known as mādaryāl and is dangerous. The other kind of jinn is like a child and is harmless. It merely causes petty irritations.


A Hazara leader from Panjaw said that his cousin was “hit” by jinns: •

His face was twisted and he had a temperature. He couldn’t eat anything and finally by the power of reciting holy things [charms and Qur’anic verses] he was cured without taking a particle of any type of medicine.

A man from Mazar-i-Sharif indicated that he had been affected by jinns. •

“I myself am not clean in my skin. Jinns have put a shadow on me.”39

A man from Laghman said that people who step on ashes at night and go to old grave yards alone get jinn sickness. •

Whenever a person is afraid of jinns, his heart trembles and that is the beginning of jinn sickness.

He also said that jinn disease came to people on Fridays or Wednesday nights. •

People go to dark unclean places where ashes and dirty things are thrown out. Graveyards are also places where people don’t like to go, especially after dark. Flour mills are also places for jinns and fairies, at night especially. Gardens and forests full of trees are full of jinns, especially forests full of bushes and trees and large gardens. Women are not permitted to go to such places much.

A man from Mazar-i-Sharif explained also that jinn sickness can be inherited. •

Some people get this jinn sickness by inheritance, such as my own self, because my mother was sick with this jinn sickness. The reason for getting this jinn sickness is walking on ashes on Friday nights. If the jinn is Muslim it will not harm anyone; otherwise the non-Muslim ones will hurt people if they walk on them [in the ashes] without saying “By the name of God.” [Sick persons] either stepped on children of jinns or killed them and they [the jinns] take revenge. If you say “By the name of God” then the jinns run away and are not stepped on. If you hurt any one of their children, the jinns will do the same thing to you.

Jinns can cause harm in other ways. •

[My notes] Gholam Ali said there is a man being oppressed by jinns in his village. Large rocks are being thrown at him. Some have broken his windows. Also, someone came and carried out a bag of wheat weighing 45 ser [almost


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Robert L. Canfield 700 pounds, too much for two people], and the people living in his house never heard it; they scattered a part of the wheat on the ground. The harassment has been going on for five months. The man moved out and moved to another place for a while, but it continued, so he moved back to his own house. He is being ruined by this jinn, Gholam Ali says. Men have come to make noise and chase jinns away to no avail. There are four families there, two landowners and two tenant farmers. The other three families are going to the government with a petition. They want the government to know about this, so that if the man is killed by the jinns, the government won’t blame them. The government, Gholam Ali says, will pay attention to talk about jinns.

Other spirits and preternatural beings In discussions about jinns, people inevitably referred to other spirits, such as fairies (parīs) and āls (also called mādaryāls, mentioned above) and deos. These seem to have originated from Persian, Turkish, and other central Asian cultures, but they were not always precisely separated from notions of jinns. All of such beings were considered malevolent influences. Fairies [parīs] were sometimes said to be benign but some people considered them dangerous. The Teacher in Bamian said that fairies are beautiful and can capture a man’s fantasy: •

He has to think about the fairies so he is out of his mind all the time.

Sheikh Gholam Ali said deos are large, powerful beings who control fairies. •

If a man sees a deo he will die within a few days; if he sees a fairy, he falls in love with a fairy and goes crazy. Deos are very dangerous, but they don’t come where people are, only once a year. A deo will travel around the earth once a year. He cannot come down to earth because their king has told them to stay away from men, though some of them do.40

In the context of talk about spirits people also mentioned preternatural beings. Āls, ālkhatus, mādaryāls, and jīgarkhors were creatures who had the power to steal some part of the body, usually the liver. A man from Laghman said that an āl likes to take the liver of a child as soon as it is born: •

When the mother puts the child in the water [to bathe it immediately after birth] the child dies.

Ālkhatus are old women who similarly eat a part of a new mother or a child. •

[A Hazara man] Mothers are afraid of being frightened by a spirit like this. A mother will never leave the child alone for fear an ālkhatu will come and injure the child while she is out.



Jīgarkhors [liver eaters] are women who eat the livers of newborn children. A Hazara man said that a jīgarkhor eats livers, especially those of women in childbirth. They also may eat the liver of the child. I was told that jīgarkhors reside in Kalu and Yak Awlang. The caprice of misfortune and the will of God Many misfortunes appeared to take place for no obvious reason and economic hardships seemed to be driven by invisible forces and spirits. As a result, there was uncertainty about the causes of stressful circumstances, leading to questions about God’s involvement in human affairs. In addition to the sense that the causes of illness were unknown there was the general sense that unknown forces could destroy one’s general well being. Fortuitous events could upset the delicate balance of resource and labor that enabled a peasant to subsist and prosper. An example is the case of Hosain Mamad, who had at one time been wealthy, for he was the son of a strong Mir. His land produced, it was said, as much as 20 kharwars41 of wheat, so he was one of the richest persons in his area. •

[My notes based on a conversation with him] He had lots of animals, which helped to fertilize his land. Able to entertain many notables, he once fed several hundred guests when a prominent Sayyed came to visit, an occasion that gave him much prestige. He spent his time supervising work on his land and in reading. Unfortunately he had no surviving sons who might have joined in the development and supervision of his resources, and only one daughter—a circumstance that eventually caused his good fortune to decline. He adopted a son from a family having 12 children, but the boy turned out to be deaf and could not do much work. Also, he lost two wives and when I met him had a third. Now in his old age, he had much less land because he had sold some to purchase his wives. He had fewer animals, and because they provided much less manure for his fields, his land produced only four or five kharwars. Too old to work it himself, he divided the yield in half with a tenant worker, who, it was said, cheated him because he could not supervise the work as he once did.

The productivity of one’s wives profoundly affected one’s social status and well being. My friend in Shibar, Mir Hasan, had three wives in succession and all of them died leaving him with no children. A fourth wife eventually gave birth to two children but they were only daughters. Everyone wanted sons, and he was a man of repute and was embarrassed by these misfortunes. The fourth wife herself said that a man of his prominence ought to have a son, so searched for another wife for him. She chose a girl who, after the marriage, was discovered to have tuberculosis. Gholam Hasan and his two wives and two daughters moved to Kabul to obtain treatment for the second wife, and after more than a year of treatment in Kabul she seemed well enough to return home. But three months later, when she had returned to Kabul for a check-up, she had made a turn for


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the worse; streptomycin was no longer effective. Within a year she died, leaving Hasan Ali no son. He had expended essentially all he had, first to pay her bride price and then to pay for medicines and the expenses of living in Kabul. He was in debt, though he still had land. He had suffered socially in his failure to have a son, suffered financially in the loss of most of his wealth, and emotionally through the death of his wife. At one point he said to me, “I have had more trouble than anyone in the whole world.” A possible explanation for misfortune, therefore, was the will of God. In one sense God’s will lies behind all prosperity and misfortune, as the words barakat (blessing, miracle power) and khayr (grace) imply. •

[Sheikh Gholam Ali] If you have barakat, your sugar or flour, everything, will last long. If you don’t have barakat, nothing will. Satan will eat it. That is why you say “By the name of God” when you begin to eat it. We believe that if a Muslim kills a sheep and an infidel kills a sheep, the one killed by the Muslim will feed more people. That is barakat. You can be filled up on less food.

God’ favor or disfavor is thus a material resource; His attitude, for good or for ill, works like a material entity. When things go badly, it was God’s will. No agents of misfortune, whether malicious spirits or magical forces can work except as God allows. They function within His sovereign purpose; in the final analysis they are only His agents. When a man gets jinn sickness or his child dies or his crops fail it is not merely because the spirits and magical forces have done it; God has willed it. Jinns, fairies, and “the look” are no other than devices God uses to work his purposes. When things go wrong, God apparently has withdrawn His favor, His barakat, as the farmer from the Markaz said. The claim that God is sovereign over all things coupled with the evident absence of prosperity implies that somehow people had lost God’s favor. For some reason God was not pleased. Could human failures have brought on their distress? This was the implication of the common reference to sāl-e tāwān, “the year of punishment,” which apparently took place in 1918 (the approximate date they referred to), the year of the influenza pandemic. “They believe that God was angry with them,” the young teacher’s college graduate from Tolwara told me. So it might be said that there could be yet another type of distress that people had to bear: Besides the diseases, the poverty, and the social tension, there was the question of God’s displeasure. Could God be angry with me? In Bamian tea houses the economic decline of the region was a frequent topic of conversation. Once, a tea shop keeper ruminated on how badly things were going. •

[My notes] He noted that Wardak and Mashriqi were doing better but Bamian was getting worse. In former times all the shops in the market were busy and the market was held two times a week. Now half the shops were closed most of the time. And they had a periodic market only once a week. Also, the young people from Bamian had missed out on school. Only one had been to the university. He wondered what was wrong. “Maybe,” he said, “that



idol has something to do with it,” referring to the ancient colossal statue of Buddah only 100 yards away. Just how the idol could have brought such bad luck he did not say. Other generations had tried to destroy the buddahs; the Taliban would accomplish it in the 1990s. That the decline of their economy might be taken as a mark of moral decline was explicit in a conversation with a Markaz farmer about the topic. •

[My notes on the conversation] He expressed the belief that the decline resulted from a loss of barakat, “blessing.” I asked if perhaps population growth was a cause for the decline,42 but he insisted that the loss of blessing was more significant. The price of wheat, he said, had gone up 500 percent in the previous four years, from 10 afghanis to 50 afghanis per ser. That could not be due to an increase in population, which obviously grows at a slower rate. A more plausible explanation, he thought, was the lack of blessing. A shopkeeper in the market nearby agreed with him. He pointed out that the western region of the Hazarajat used to produce large amounts of ghi (clarified butter) but it was hardly producing a surplus now. The prices used to be about eight times that of salt, he said, but now it is about 20 times as much.43 He felt the reason was the lack of blessing. Things got worse every year, he said.

One way or another, the most common explanation for the poor times was the moral failure of the people. It was not uncommon for people to propose that their sins had prompted God to withdraw his favor. A respected mature Sunni man, a hajji working as a clerk in the government, plainly laid the blame on the morals of the people. Several other people said as much in different ways: a Sunni man from the town, a Shi’a elder (“Look at us! Everyone is for himself,” he said), a truck driver, and an elderly woman who made an open show of talking to me in front of her neighbors, whom she accused of no longer being musulmân. A truck driver saw the moral decline of his age as a sign that Doomsday was imminent: “Now is the end of times.”44 An ontology of efficacy In this section I summarize (a) the kinds of power believed to influence human affairs, and (b) the ideal qualities considered to be grounds of authority that would enable one to be imputed with the ability to exercise efficacious means of delivering or protecting from misfortune. Kinds of power There are essentially two kinds of power at work in the world, magical and sacred. Magic. By magical power we mean those relationships in the world that operate mechanically.

210 •


•

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Robert L. Canfield [Sheikh Gholam Ali’s mother to J. Dudley Woodberry45] This is a world of means. God seems to accept means. [Sheikh Gholam Ali’s mother] The night of your marriage and your death cannot be changed by anyone, but these shrines help if it is God’s will and His permission. And if the death of the child is not assigned to that disease he won’t die. If it is God’s own will for someone to live, no disease can kill him. But there are two types of deaths. One, “induced death,” is one done on purpose— like if you go to places where death is inevitable, if you sit under a brick wall or walk into a flood. The other, “absolute death,” is death by the will of God, and that is when your life is meant to end in this world. That of course can’t be changed, no matter what medicines you take or which shrine you visit. [A pious Shi’a man from Panjao, just back from the pilgrimage to Karbala] Keeping a small Qur’an with you is good. The Qur’an will save you from real dangers. You, for example, will be saved from a falling wall. A Qur’an will save you from accidental deaths. It won’t save you from real death but it will save you from accidental death, improve health, and so on. Young people will be saved from accidental deaths but not from real God-willed deaths. The Qur’an can keep you from sicknesses when God wants but not against the will of God. It’s like a charm.

This is why charms worked: they were devices for influencing affairs that operated mechanically. In theory anyone could produce them, although some people knew better how to make them and some practitioners could have had special access to non-empirical beings and so could make more powerful charms. •

[Sheikh Gholam Ali] These things [charms] are tools, things to use, like a gun. But you should use them properly, not to do wrong.

The way a charm was made was critical to its effectiveness. •

[Sheikh Gholam Ali] A person who makes charms must be “clean” but he doesn’t have to be a Muslim. Even a Hindu or a Jew can make good charms.

Indeed the charms of non-Muslims, who were said to be unscrupulous, were more feared. But the purposes for which charms were made could be anything. They need not be especially noble.46 Sacredness. Sacred power, in contrast to magical power, operates through personal connections with God, who favors those close to him, his “friends,” and with the forces of the cosmos. It is axiomatic, constitutive and legitimative, bringing to objects, statuses and relations a sense of the cosmic, the ineffable.47 Walīs have sacred power. Even though Muslims teach that prophets ended with Muhammad, the notion that God has special “appointees, friends,” walīs, (Arabic “friend, protector, ruler”) who have the power to do miraculous works (karāmāt) (but not to do the evidentiary miracles of prophets, mu’jezāt), became a widely accepted concept; eventually (with much reluctance and disputation) even the ulamā accepted


Efficacy and hierarchy 211 the idea. The famous eleventh-century Sufi, Ali Ibn Uthman Hujwiri, whose home city was Ghazni (and whose tomb in Lahore is the most celebrated shrine in Pakistan) wrote the earliest statement in the Persian language about the mystical status of walīs: God has saints (walīs) whom He has specially distinguished by His friendship and whom He has chosen to be the governors of His kingdom…and has peculiarly favored with diverse kinds of miracles [karāmāt] and has purged of natural corruptions and has delivered from subjection to the lower soul and passion, so that all their thoughts are of Him and their intimacy is with Him alone…Through the blessing of their advent the rain falls from heaven, and through the purity of their lives the plants spring from the earth and through their spiritual influence the Moslems gain victories over unbelievers (Hujwiri 1911 [c. 1072]: 212–13).48 Pirs can be walīs. For the ordinary person the problem was how to recognize a real walī, for it was said (by Hujwiri and other authorities) that a person could be a walī without knowing it. His identity, in any case, could go unrecognized by those people around him. Moreover, the criteria for recognizing a walī varied according to the sect. The term pir designated an actual person considered a walī. I use the term “walī” when referring to the ideal concept and “pir” when referring to an actual personage or a social status. Roy (1990: 227) says the word ruhani, literally “a spiritual person,” referred among the Shi’a to a member of the clergy and among the Pashtun tribes to a Sufi pir who was not an ālim. Each of these terms enshrined a certain aspect of the concept of “sainthood” (the quotation marks here indicate a special cluster of meanings only loosely related to the usual meaning in English): the putative possession of extraordinary spiritual or sacred power (ruhaniyāt) deriving from close friendship (wulāyat) with God and a profound spiritual experience. A pir was a walī whose special powers were put to use in the service of his followers (murīd). For those who professed belief in walīs the crucial issue was how to recognize them. In real life the indications were vague and in any case the sacred status of a person was never certain. The terms used for a pir differed, however, among the sects. In the interest of brevity I foreground the Sunni perspective.49 A pir’s qualities and services were quite different from those of a mullah. •

•

[An educated young Sayyed in Kabul, in English] A pir is someone you fear, because he has supernatural power or connections [with spiritual powers]. By contrast, an ālem is someone you honor because of his knowledge of spiritual truths. You kiss the hand of a pir lest he be unhappy. If he is happy, you have barakat. [A government official, Sunni] A mullah is a servant. He is hired by the people to lead prayers in the mosque, teach the children and the like. But the pir is different. He teaches how to live, how to get merit. He is descended from one of the walīs. He has power.

But the services of a pir were not limited to the present life. Indeed, his mediation on behalf of his murīd after death, when their faith is to be examined by two fierce angels, was one of a pir’s most important functions.

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Robert L. Canfield [Young teacher in Bamian] People believe the pir will help in this time of troubling. The pir’s karāmāt will help them at this time. It will not keep them from this trouble, but it will make it less serious, so that the time will be easier, so that they [the deceased] can answer the questions [of the angels]. It doesn’t help to be a mullah. A mullah will need a pir for this too.

Everyone should have a pir. •

[Young teacher in Bamian] A Muslim must have a pir to be Muslim. Every Muslim must have a pir—but of course these Hazara boys probably don’t even know who their pir is.

A pir’s friendship with God and thus access to spiritual and sacred realms endowed him with a responsibility to minister to the needs of his murīd. His favor in any case could bring them well being. •

•

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[Sheikh Gholam Ali] The importance of the pir’s pleasure with me is that the pir has been given by God. He is God’s friend. God likes him. If God’s pir likes me then God will like me. It’s like this: the governor is appointed by the King; if the governor is happy with me, then the King will be happy with me. [Young teacher in Bamian] The pir of Paytakht has lots of barakat because he is near to God. His murīd get blessing too if they treat him well, because he is sent by God. He prays a lot and God hears his prayers. He is close to God. [Young teacher in Bamian] For the pir to be happy is good for them [his murīd]. His favor means blessing for them. [A young educated Sayyed in Kabul, in English] People usually come to a pir to get blessing, so that through the pir their troubles will be eased. So they try to make the pir happy, to win his favor and his prayers for their welfare. Although this looks like only a perfunctory prayer, it is the means of barakat.50

Grounds of authority There are three general sources of authority for those who would provide relief and protection from non-empirical sources of misfortune: scriptural knowledge, sacred descent, and mystical association. Edwards (1986: 273) explains it this way: [R]eligious authority derives from knowledge of God, and one comes to know God through knowledge of His word, through being an offspring of one of His chosen (His prophets and awliyā’, or friends) and/or through personal familiarity attained via mystical experience. [On these three foundations] individuals claim to represent Him and to have rightful authority over others and over social institutions.


Efficacy and hierarchy 213 The most eminent authorities combined all three.51 Knowledge. Knowledge, especially of the authoritative texts, the Qur’an and the Hadith (the corpus of material about the Prophet’s life and informal teachings) was a fundamental basis of authority.52 Those enjoying highest esteem had studied Islamic subjects elsewhere. India, at a Deobandi School, was the preferred place until the 1960s when Egypt became the preferred locus of Islamic education. Upon returning to Afghanistan graduates could claim, or were imputed by others, to have knowledge of Islamic subjects, including sihr, magic. Sihr was considered a necessary subject in an Islamic education. The ulamā officially disapproved of the use of magic, but they studied the subject so as to distinguish the jugglery of charlatans from the evidentiary miracles (mu’jezāt) of prophets and the miraculous works (karāmāt) of walīs or pirs.53 Knowledge of magic was in any case said to be an important competence, since it was said to be efficacious in controlling jinns and other malevolent forces, even though an ‘ālem might choose not to use it; Shi’a dogma was that the Sayyeds had such knowledge.54 The practical advantage of knowing sihr was the ability to make charms (ta’wīz) and divine the future (fāl).55 The following is Sheikh Gholam Ali’s formula for producing a charm that renders impotent: •

If you want to lock [render impotent] a person with black magic [jādu] you may prepare a tawband [string-tie]. You use thread or silk or the fresh guts of an animal. You knot the thread seven times, each time reciting the charm. Then you put it in something small or wrap it in a tiny cloth bag, and hide it in some place special such as the ground, especially near a stream. If you use silk, it is much more difficult to break open because silk, when you tie it, is hard to untie. If you use animal intestines, it is even more effective. When it dries, the man’s ability to procreate will dry and gradually he will become sick and die. This is really true. I know of at least two people who had to release their wives as virgins because they had become impotent. There was a black charm on them. The mullah who makes it will promise to return the money if the victim can have intercourse. Of course in this case it will be expensive, maybe even 7,000 afghanis.

He did not elaborate on what “reciting the charm” meant. Sacred descent. Another ground of authority was descent from a sacred family. Lineal claims are of two kinds, however—through biological descent from the Prophet or one of his close associates, or through a succession of teachers or instructors whose knowledge putatively goes back to Muhammad.56 The most widely recognized lineal claims are those of the Sayyeds, the direct descendants from Fatima (the Prophet’s daughter) and Ali (his cousin and one of his first converts), although, as is well known, Sunnis and Shi’as dispute the political importance of the Alid line. Theologians of both traditions have taught that esoteric knowledge, special guidance from God, miracle power, sinlessness and infallibility pass with lesser force through collateral lines of Muhammad’s descendants, and the pious of both sects pronounce blessings on the family in their prayers. For the Shi’a it is a sacred duty to love and venerate the Sayyeds; to mistreat them


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could bring misfortune.57 Sunnis also venerate the descendants of close associates of Muhammad, although many of those families claim as their special status their mystical connection to a line of notable Sufi saints (see below).58 Mystical experience: authorized. The ways that direct experience of sacred entities is obtained are various but only some of them are considered authentic, those recognized as Sufi. Proper Sufis are authorized mystics. The mystical way of reckoning descent, recognized by Sufis, is by lines of authorized ritual leaders putatively going back to the early pious leaders of the faith. The lineages are therefore “spiritual.”59 The most notable Sufi lineages in Afghanistan were the leaders of the Qadiri and Naqshbandi orders.60 The successors of the Sufi masters were said to have experienced gnosis, oneness with God through the recitation of the name(s) of God. Sufis seek experiential knowledge of God (mu’ârif) rather than rote knowledge (‘ilm) or deductive understanding (fiqh). By becoming enthralled with God, experiencing Him in an ecstatic union, they would gain purity and possibly unique powers.61 •

•

[A Sunni official in Mazar-i-Sharif] Grace and power comes through renouncing the world and becoming a faqir as well as through reciting the name of God in the dhikr [recitations of God’s names], giving offerings (khayrāt), and so on. A faqir is a man who renounces the world, gives himself to reciting God’s names, to prayer, and so on. He may beg for his food but he may not. He just lives on what others give him. [A retired official from Ghazni]62 There are two things in us as human beings: worldly wishes, like desires for food, and sexual pleasures; and the spirit. If we can conquer our actions and thinking, all the world would be under our power—even small microbes or particles as well as huge animals. Closeness to God comes from this improvement in our worldly desires, which often control all our actions and thoughts. If our spirit governs our body, then we are close to God and we can do all kinds of things which look impossible to ordinary men. It has to be done by practice. That’s what real Sufis do: they struggle against worldly desires. These bodily desires govern us and we can’t disobey them, and as a result we are weak. These holy men have conquered their bodily desires.

To dramatize the unity of their spirit with God, some pirs claimed (or their followers after their deaths claimed for them) that they had in their dreams vivid encounters with Muhammad and other sacred heroes, manifestations of their sacred status.63 Anyone could gain a reputation for divine access by the assiduous practice of Sufi rituals. In the words of an educated Sayyed in Kabul, “A man can become a walī by working at holiness.” In this sense someone could be said to be “very sufi.” A man in Mazar-i Sharif, speaking of a Sunni pir, said to me, “The pir is very faqir. He is very sufi.” Guidance and the pir-murīd relationship. A crucial element of the Sufi movement was the relationship between the pir and his murīd, in which the murīd


Efficacy and hierarchy 215 should be obedient to his master with “an absolutely unquestioning submission to [his] spiritual dictatorship.”64 As al Ghazali put it: “Let him know that the advantage he gains from the error of his sheikh, if he should err, is greater than the advantage he gains from his own rightness, if he should be right.”65 Once the murīd is qualified by his master, he is said to have “divine grace,” “transmitted by the chain” of authorities going back to Muhammad “who is not only the recipient of revelation and the expositor of the divine message but also—for the Sufi—the first link in the initiatic chain.”66 A man who acquired purity through gnostic union with God was said to have unique powers, able to write effective charms. •

[A man from Mazar-i-Sharif] The holy heads of different orders [tariqats] are called Hazrats. They have conquered [obtained power from?] some of the holy excerpts [of the Qur’an] by reciting them hundreds of times. They have been authorized to write charms that forgive sins and they have the power to authorize others to write the charms…They clean what’s called their eternal spirit—that is, they get rid of some of the bad habits, worldly habits and the like, and they get good habits. Bad habits are being jealous or revengeful, selfish in a great amount, telling lies, gossiping. These are all bad habits that belong to normal, worldly people. Getting rid of these things is called cleaning the spirit. People with the Sufi orders [tariqat] try to do this. They recite some holy phrases during the day as well as during the night. They do this under the direction of someone who is mature in these things. It is like this in worldly things; you always need a teacher.

But the term murīd has a dual meaning in practice.67 •

[An educated Sayyed, son of a Sunni pir from Koh Daman] There are two kinds of murīd. The people who learn tariqat [the sufi way of worship] from my father, for instance, are murīd. Tariqat means ‘way’ and it means the way to live, to follow earnestly after spiritual things. The other kind of murīd are those who do not learn from a pir or a teacher but who come to him for charms and blessing and bring him gifts. They often live too far away to study under him and are full-time farmers anyway. They come only to get spiritual help, and to give him something for his services. They are murīd in the sense that they turn to him for help and pay him respect, but they do not learn tariqat. Tariqat is not taught so much anymore. Few learn tariqat anymore.

The relationship between pir and murīd in the second type described here has been called “maraboutic sufism” by some authors, after the French term for similar practice in North Africa.68 While the formal practice of sufism has received the most attention in the orientalist literature, it is likely that the “maraboutic” form of venerating a pir has always been more common than the more formal and idealized relationship.69

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Robert L. Canfield [Young teacher in Bamian] The followers of a pir are his disciples [murīd]. Most of his disciples have only occasional contact with him, although they regard him as their pir. They come and visit the pir every three or six months, or every year.

Mystical experience: unauthorized. There are also unauthorized mystics. Sufism is regarded as the authorized tradition of obtaining mystical experience, but some mystical specialists claim to have an ecstatic experience separate from a Sufi circle. •

[Sheikh Gholam Ali] I used to go see Pir Khalifa, who died. He was very dirty and he would curse people. He was a Sunni. He wanted to talk differently, so he used different words than we usually use. He would talk to invisible persons who were supposed to be his servants. He would tell them to go and tell the Sultan—using an old word for the king—to go and do such and such. People called him majzub [“attracted” i.e. to God, “ecstatic,” “crazy”]. These people love God so much that they seem to be crazy.

And there were other methods of seeking contact with spiritual realms—such as by having a vision. •

•

[Sheikh Gholam Ali] There was a man in my village who made carpets out of felt—he came to be known as Sheikh Abdullah. He was almost the lowest rank in the society. But then suddenly talk spread among the women that in a dream Hazrat Ali had put his hand on this man’s shoulder when he was sleeping and said, “Wake up. You are a nazar karda.” That is, “You are someone that a prophet or walī has looked upon. You’re going to be someone important.” In three months he was so important that the people said, and still some people say, that he was seen in Baghdad at the same time that he was here, so he was in two places at once. He understood the language of the animals. They also said that you could see the marks of Ali’s fingers on the shoulder of his shirt. But after his prominence rose for about three years, it decreased, and after seven or eight years he is almost unknown. He used to go barefoot. He was a Sunni, and was called Sheikh Abdullah. He was skeptical of me when I went to see him. He said, “I know that some people come here to test me, but a man of God cannot be tested.” [Sheikh Gholam Ali] I used to know a man in Herat who along with me used to give charms [perhaps his uncle]. He later became a sheikh. He did this by having a vision in the night, in which he saw Ali. He is Shi’a. The next day his wife went to the bath and told her lady friends that this had happened and the news flew around fast. He sat at home, alone, growing a beard, wearing a cloak and a turban. He was in a daze or a trance. And he said rather incomprehensible things about his talk with Ali. Eventually he gained a wide reputation for having spiritual powers. And many people came to see him, and especially women. His charms became very popular. Eventually he was



caught sleeping with one of the women, which spoiled his popularity somewhat. So his murīd have faded now somewhat. But he still operates. He is called a sheikh, not a sayyed. A way that was generally admired, if seldom practiced, was to renounce the world; in which case one became a faqir. An educated Sayyed woman from Kunar said that one of her relatives had become a faqir. •

My father’s brother’s son was a general in the army under Habibullah Khan. He had not done qasīda pukhta kardan [a ritual method of controlling jinns, see below], but one night in his sleep he dreamed that he was in a large meeting of people dressed in white clothing. He wanted to come in to them and join them but they refused, saying that he could come in, that he had the right to come in [because he was Sayyed?], but he could not wear the clothes he was wearing, which was his military uniform. The next morning he took all of his clothes, military dress and everything, and gave them to Habibullah Khan and told them he would no longer serve as an officer in his army. He gave away all of his wealth to the poor, put on a begger’s bowl and a long simple shirt, and he wore that until he died. He no longer worked, and he simply played the part of a faqir. He gained many murīd because he prayed for them. They often gave him gifts, but rather than keep them, he gave them away to other poor people, so he was never wealthy himself.

Several terms were used for irregular sacred figures but the distinctions among them were sometimes blurred. •

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[Sheikh Gholam Ali] A faqir is a man who controls his human desires completely. He doesn’t care for money, even laks [hundreds of thousands] of it. He doesn’t care for food or a wife or a house. It commonly means a poor man but it really means a man who cares about nothing but God. [A Sunni man in Mazar-i-Sharif] A faqir and a malang are alike in many ways, but a person is only a malang as long as others see no spiritual power in him. He can be faqir if he is seen to have spiritual dedication and power.70

A hermit living in a hovel near Bulola in Bamian was called a malang. •

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[Young teacher in Bamian] A malang is a kind of sufi. He lives like a sufi. He has forsaken the world and all affairs, and he busies himself only with the name of God. But some malangs are irregular [ghair-i mustaqin]. They have no [formal sufi] order [tariqat]…A malang such as the Malang of Bulola will be seen as crazy until he does something great. If he does that he will be seen as a walī. [Another man in Bamian said of the same malang] These people are very important. The world is held up by such people.71

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Sheikh Gholam Ali used similar language for darwishes.


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[Sheikh Gholam Ali] Darwishes are very powerful as sacred people. Shah Abbas is said to have been a darwish. He acts like a malang but he isn’t one. A darwish is either a religious man who doesn’t care about money or he is a King who doesn’t know how to be poor [and he is trying to be poor]. I have never seen one. I have seen malangs, but it is difficult to know whether he has power.72

The teacher in Bamian, in the statement above distinguished between walīs who are mustaqīm (“direct,” “legitimate”) and walīs who are ghair-i mustaqīm (“indirect’, “outside the main line”). The latter were said to have had a direct experience of the supernatural without certification in a sufi order, or perhaps they have acquired power through special ritual ordeals. Such people were of course rejected by Sufis as well as the jurists, who denounced them as practicing mere “jugglery.”73 The ordinary public, however, tended to impute “divine grace” and sacred power to such people. Jewett early in the twentieth century says that people said “that God has taken their minds and God speaks through them.”74 Among the Shi’a the term sheikh was used for a person who had acquired power by the use of magical techniques.75 For this reason a sheikh could be a marginal person, but because of his supposed esoteric knowledge he could have powers like those of a true faqir. •

[Sheikh Gholam Ali] A sheikh makes [“gives”] charms. He has supernatural power. A mullah can only preach in the mosques and people can ask him some questions. A sheikh may never pray. He may say something that is contrary to religion. And he may say, “I’m not in such good mental health,” to show he is preoccupied with God. And he may say something about Muhammad. Like the one I met in Jabul-us-Saraj. Many people thought he was a powerful man. He slobbered on his shirt—he was the dirtiest man I know. So a sheikh has supernatural powers. He might be upset or he might do wrong things to your way of thinking but you shouldn’t believe what you see.

Such people were said to have power over jinns. According to Sheikh Gholam Ali’s mother,76 a woman affected with jinn sickness could become a sheikh by making use of her special relationship to the jinn. •

Sometimes these women that are loved by jinns end up becoming sheikhs themselves. They ask their jinn friends, for example, to bring them things and to answer questions and finally to find things which have been lost or at least to guide a person that has lost them. In this case the woman that is the sheikh doesn’t have to be pious—she doesn’t have to have clean clothes and a clean body and heart and life, like an ideal Muslim. But sheikhs that do things written in Arabic rather than with figures and numbers and can get things done for them because of the holiness of the method they apply, particularly



because of their own clean mouth, they usually don’t do things which are against Islamic faith. For example, they don’t make bad charms, they don’t try to make two people fight or dislike each other. Or they don’t try to make a man divorce his wife, or make a woman fall in love with another man. Sheikh Gholam Ali described the ritual ordeal that one must endure in order to get control of jinns and fairies. •

If you want the king of fairies under your control, you have to get completely clean. Your clothes have to be clean. You have to do wudhū, (the minor ablutions before prayer). If you want to take a bath, you must do wudhū first. But then you go to a room that is joined to a shrine. You go there because in that place the fairies are free to come to you. They won’t come in front of all the people. You must be very brave, and your bravery is based on your belief in what you recite. This is important. If you don’t believe that it will save you, then anything might scare you and you might try to run away. Then you would be hurt, blinded or paralyzed or have palsy, etc. You recite for 40 or 45 nights. You sit down facing Mecca. Sometimes the room turns white like an egg. In the room there is no lamp, so you have to know what to say by heart, and usually you are afraid and may close your eyes. You start at 10 or 11 at night, but for 40 days and nights you have to eat only one date every day. You have to say these incantations hundreds or thousands of times a day. This is why mullahs have large rosaries—many sufis have them. They are very long. A man cannot sleep during these 20 days. He becomes very skinny and pale. Even in the daytime, if he goes out to the bathroom, he must have a new wudhū. The jinns come and beg the man by the name of God to stop reciting this, and to go home. Then the man knows that he is doing something worthwhile. The fairies change themselves into a snake with fire in their nostrils. If the man is afraid, then the fairies will hit him, so he must be brave—he could lose his mind or something. Then some beautiful girls come and beckon him. If he falls for the trick and reaches out for them, his hand could be cut off, and he would be finished…If he doesn’t give in to the girls and the threats, suddenly he sees a white snake on top of the head of another snake and there are many other snakes with him. This is the king of the fairies—or one of the kings of the fairies, for there are many kings in different places. Sometimes they say a king comes in gold, like a human sitting on a throne of gold, and he has all the wild animals like tigers and lions, etc. with him. And he says, “I want you to stop it. I’ll give you three minutes,” etc. and suddenly the man hears crashes behind his head, as if a whole house would fall down, etc. but he must not turn his head. Then the king makes a deal with him: “What do you want?” The man should answer, “I want to have power over you.” Then the king says. “I’ll give you such number of fairies,” and sometimes he himself agrees to be his slave. This depends on how powerful the phrase the man recites is, and how clean he is in his heart. The man gets the power and he can use it on the women who are sick.

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Sheikh Gholam Ali actually tried to perform the ordeal. The incantation that he used was called the “Chihil Kāf” [“The Forty Kāfs”; kāf is the twenty-sixth letter of the Persian alphabet].


•

On each of the 40 nights you say the Chihil Kāf millions of times. You repeat it and repeat it and shake your head. And as you recite, the whole room seems to you to take the shape of an egg. I recited it for six nights, and it had such a bad effect on me that my father stopped me. I learned it from my cousin who could cure people with his power over fairies. This was his masterpiece. He could just barely read and write, but he wrote it for me. That is all he knew.

Sheikh Gholam Ali had recited the incantation so many times without comprehension that he was unable to remember it syllable by syllable or phrase by phrase. He could only recite the whole incantation as one burst of syllables. The ordeal that Sheikh Gholam Ali described may have been the same as what a Sayyed woman from Kunar called qasīda pukhta kardan, for it was supposed to enable a person to get control of jinns.77 •

When Pādshah Sāheb-i Jāde- Maywand [a famous pir] first came to Afghanistan there was the story that he had done qasīda pukhta kardan. He had been some years in India and he said that he had done it there, and so he obtained many murīd. He was young. At first the murīds were often the more learned people, doctors, students, and so forth. But later his murīd dropped off in number, because it was rumored that he sometimes did sorcery [jādu], which is widely considered wrong. Nevertheless some people, particularly the uneducated people, continued to come to him.

She described the ordeal and the danger it entailed. •

Qasīda pukhta kardan is the ritual one goes through in order to get control of the spirits. It involves spending 40 days alone in the desert, or perhaps near a shrine, primarily in an isolated place, reciting portions of the Qur’an and lengthy portions of other books in an effort to get control of the spirits. A person draws a circle around the area where he is reciting, and he is not supposed to leave this circle until he has completed the qasīda pukhta kardan.

My father’s brother’s son,78 who was himself a Sayyed, in an effort to gain control of the spirits, attempted to do qasīda pukhta kardan but he could continue only 20 or 25 days. After that time he began to see only blood in all directions around him, and he finally had to give up, because he felt he was losing control of himself. After this time he had much trouble. Twelve of his children died. And after seeking medical help he went to many different pirs in Kabul and finally found one pir who was able to overcome this tragic, calamitous series of bad luck. The pir explained to him after he learned of the Sayyed’s attempt to do qasīda pukhta kardan that this trouble had come to him because the jinns whom he had


Efficacy and hierarchy 221 attempted to control were now after him. Only by the power of someone who controls them could they be held off. This pir told him to do the following things: to get seven pieces of cloth, large enough to be made into trousers [pantaloons] from seven different Hindu shops, to bring the ashes from seven fireplaces from seven households and to weigh his thirteenth child on a balance scale…and to do this everyday for seven days. By doing this he succeeded in turning events in his favor. His thirteenth child and several succeeding children lived. He now has two sons and two daughters, although he is himself quite old. It is important for anyone who wants to do qasīda pukhta kardan to have the help of their ancestors. An ordinary man couldn’t possibly undertake this ritual or complete this ritual…The Sayyed himself, the pir, told him he would have been killed, except for the good ancestry which he had, for his father had apparently done, or at least reputedly had done, the qasīda pukhta kardan.

The culture of efficacy in practice As a set of categories naming a certain “ontology,” this culture of efficacy was a resource for engaging with the problems of life. It was a set of categorically recognized entities, forces, and relationships that could be deployed (or ignored) according to individual interests in particular situations. One set among a plethora of cultural resources, these categories, along with the assumptions and expectations that they entailed, could be accessed when actions were to be taken, decisions made, or situations interpreted. The cultural resource at risk But when deployed in practice, the suppositions and expectations they represented were put at risk, tested against an empirical world. And they could fail in the event.79 Charms might not work; prayers might not be answered; incantatory ordeals could exceed human possibility. Sheikh Gholam Ali once said to me, “There is a special charm that you can recite and you will see Muhammad, but it didn’t work for me.” Indeed, people could take this ontology generally for granted and at the same time entertain doubts. A blind man who recited the Qur’an for a living said the following:80 •

The jinns try to make humans be afraid of them and show themselves to us, but I haven’t felt any, although I have been in many dark places alone in deserts to see whether people tell the truth. I tried to find out whether anything is there, and I walked along in the graveyards but felt nothing whatsoever. I personally believe that if people are afraid, or if they step on a jinn and cause injury to the jinn, they will get this jinn sickness for as long as they live, unless they are taken to holy places or to men such as good sheikhs.

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In another context he said:


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A person who becomes bakhshi can tell the future, but I don’t believe in it anyway. There are lots of fortunetellers in Mazar. Some look inside a drum. Others inside a mirror, etc. The one they took me to is a woman who hit me and hit the drum on top of my skull—just laughable actions trying to get the jinns out of me and make them go away. Many of these people who try to get rid of jinns for the sick speak Urdu. They don’t say anything holy, maybe a few words of Arabic, but mostly it is Urdu. It looks like all the jinns speak Urdu, but I can’t believe in it.

He had no doubt that jinns existed or that they could cause sickness or that holy places and “good sheikhs” could cure, but, try as he might, he had encountered no jinns where they were supposed to be. And he dismissed the powers of fortune tellers or the popular curers and their incantations. Among the general population the uncertainty about who might be an actual walī, indeed about the difficulty of recognizing a real walī—such uncertainty generated discussions about specific individuals, and in such conversations people expressed doubt. •

[A Shi’a man from Shibar] Usually these common men who give charms are not holy—that is, they are not Sayyed—and they don’t avoid eating religiously unclean things. Among the Sayyeds of B—some of them are not clean, and they are very sly, and even try to have connections with people’s wives if they can, and they steal people’s money just like robbers. Yet they consider themselves holy and ask for gifts.

I heard people scoff at the hagiagraphic stories told about the power of certain pirs. Most such people were educated and clearly had a secular bias. I briefly met a young urbanized Hazara, a communist, in his home village. •

[My notes] Sultan is clearly urbanized. Criticized pirs and mullahs for robbing the people. Only the ignorant really follow them, he said. I think he embarrassed Hashem because Hashem later said that this man was too progressive. The young man also asked me if I knew Kishtmand; he felt sure I would know him. [I didn’t.]81

A Government official, a graduate of Kabul University, a subgovernor in Bamian, even challenged the idea that pirs were Islamic. •

[My notes] They are in fact bad for Muslims, he said. The only pir he acknowledged was the Qur’an and “Imam Azam” [Abu Hanifa, the eighthcentury Islamic jurist].

Efficacy and hierarchy 223 He disparaged even the concept of walī, and rudely interrupted the malik who was trying to say that people do believe in pirs. Some educated Afghans did respect pirs, however, as indicated by the statements of educated people quoted above.


Sacred sources of help in practice But the doubts about specific situations and individuals did not deter many from acting on the idealized conceptions of authority and competence entailed in the ontology of efficacy described above, especially when faced with serious concerns. Certain notable religious figures, some of them already mentioned in the previous discussion, were said to have power and they were cultivated and at times of distress sought out for help.82 Here I refer to two kinds of sacred sources of help—the great pirs and shrines—which were, of course, the tombs of deceased sacred authorities who even in death were said to be capable of giving “divine grace.” The great pirs Some pirs combined sacred descent, Islamic learning, and mystical experience and so enjoyed broad respect. These are from notable sacred families and have acquired a reputation for learning and mystical experience. Seldom did a pir gain much of a following, no matter how great his education, without also belonging to a sacred (“noble”) lineage. Also, the great pirs were credited—sometimes despite their denials—with having obtained “divine grace” through mystical means, which implied the achievement of inner purity and thus of sacred power.83 The great pirs, therefore, were both pirs and ulamā. Such individuals were popularly said to have miraculous powers—an imputation they generally denied. Elphinstone provides an example from the nineteenth century: Some of these must have been engaged in voluntary imposture, but the three most eminent in Peshawar, when I was there, disavowed all pretensions to supernatural powers. They were treated the highest respect, even the King refusing to be seated before them till he was pressed; but they did not seem to solicit these honours, and they discussed the conduct of government, and reprehended its vices and those of the nation with great freedom: the only art they seem to resort to for maintaining their high reputation, is great austerity of life; they are seldom very learned, and the two eminent saints that I saw were free from every kind of affectation and grimace, and only distinguished from other people by the superior mildness of their manners.84 The most influential family of pirs among the Sunnis of Afghanistan were the Mujaddidis, known as “Hazrats of Shor Bazaar,” who claimed descent from Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi. Pirs of the Naqshbandi sufi order, they were the focus of a wide network of murīd, especially among the eastern Pashtun tribes. Also notable

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were the Gailani family, pirs of the Qadiriyya order, venerated by members of some eastern tribes. Another famous pir was Sayyed Nadir Khan of Kayan, pir of the Ismailis.85


The services of pirs to their followers The great pirs were able to provide many kinds of services to their murīd by virtue of their extraordinary social and material advantages. Relatively wealthy and widely connected with persons of influence, the great pirs and their families could provide connections and support that would otherwise be unavailable to their murīd.86 The great pirs enjoyed an extraordinary degree of influence because of their social connections. They were linkages among their murīd, and their organizational structures, through which they arranged for their murīd to receive instruction and through which they collected gifts that gave them important means of political and economic leverage. Here, however, I focus on the curing and delivering services that pirs provided to their murīd, and indeed to anyone who came to them. •

[An educated Sayyed woman, Sunni, from Kunar] Women are dependent on pirs and believe in them more than men because they have no one to listen to them. Very few situations are appropriate for women to expose their feelings, their griefs and hardships. Pirs are able to listen to them and provide some relief for their emotional tension…They have no one to talk to and so they have to go outside the household, outside the family, to find someone who will listen. A woman who can find a pir that will listen and help her will secretly hoard and hide away small amounts of food and money from her family so that she can take it all to the pir and get help.

There is a pir in Kabul, Sayyed Hasan, who is related to me. He is very fat, and talks like a child, but he prays for people. In fact, he prayed for me. He does not do sorcery [jādugarī]. I went to him because I was having many problems in my marriage. I explained my trouble, and he told me to come for three Thursday nights [the evening before Friday is considered especially auspicious] and he would pray for me. I came and each Thursday night he and his father and five other of his disciples prayed for me at the same time. I watched the ceremony. They all said the evening prayer together and at the end they offered a prayer [du’ā] for me. And at the end the pir reached into his pocket and gave me a handful of nuts and raisins. In a short time my troubles ceased. •

[Another statement by the same woman] We were living in a village outside of Kabul when my daughter was young, quite small. One night in the night time when it was dark, she suddenly screamed, frightened as if she had seen something. She was difficult to console. She kept looking in fright as if she had seen something terrible. A month later when I had wanted to wash her, she had a terrible spasm. I wrapped the child in a cloth and


Efficacy and hierarchy 225 ran outside with her. A few moments later she was better. Nevertheless, almost every week she continued to have these frightening spasms. I took her to many different doctors. Then my father’s brother’s daughter told me that I should take her to a pir who would pray for us. When I went to see him in Shor Bâzâr we were taken to a very clean, beautiful room and when I brought the child into the room, the pir saw her and asked what was wrong. When I explained the problem of the child, he laughed and said that the child would be alright. He did a dam [incantation that is blown] over the child and then he prepared a dūtī [a piece of paper with a Qur’anic verse on it to be burned and the smoke inhaled by the child; dūt = smoke]. Also we were given a shuyest [a piece of paper with a Qur’anic verse on it to be washed in a glass of water; shuy = wash] which my daughter was to drink. Of course, certain spiritually effective verses were written on them. The pir also told me to bring the child back on Thursday night when he would puncture the ear lobes of the child. As this was Wednesday he could not do anything, he said, because Wednesday is not an auspicious time to do anything. However, because my husband did not accept the pir’s authority he did not allow me to bring our daughter back to the pir on that night. Nevertheless, she never had a spasm again. Certain pirs were notable for the putative efficacy of their charms.87 •

[A Shi’a man from Chindawul, a neighborhood in Kabul] In Chindawul there is a Sayyed named Mir Ali Ahmad Aghā whose charms are very good for all kinds of sicknesses, but he doesn’t give charms for bad purposes [sorcery]. There are many Sayyeds who are very holy in my place, but people who have jinns come to Mir Ali Ahmad Aghā and he gives them a charm and they are cured instantly. There are many people sitting along the street with their books, who give charms, but everyone is different. Many of them ask for money and say they are the descendants of Muhammad, but you can’t believe everyone.

Patricia F. Wakeham88 has pointed out (in a personal communication) that certain names are common among the ordinary Shi’a, such as Khudādād, [God given], Khudā Bakhsh, [Gift of God], Mowlādād, [Given by the master] or Pirdād [Given by the pir], but they are not given to the children of Sayyeds. Each of these names suggests that a supernatural intervention by a sacred person has occurred. The names do not necessarily indicate, as some Sunnis have told me with great seriousness, that a pir has directly procreated the child, but they do suggest that, in the minds of those who named the child, a blessing or miracle owing to the interventions of a sacred personage has made the birth of the child possible. Behavior of followers to pirs Murīds demonstrated their respect for their pir by overt expressions of deference and giving gifts (never payments) to their pirs.

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Deference. Because of the uncertainty as to who might be a walī, people tended to be solicitous of pirs. They displayed their respect for pirs in formal ways, such as kissing the hand of a pir.


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[Sheikh Gholam Ali] Mullahs say you should kiss the hand of your parents and of Sayyed, and the like, as a sign of honor. I have heard mullahs say that you should kiss only the hand of parents and Sayyeds.

This deference was also manifest in other courtesies: •

•

[From notes on a trip to Kahmard] There was a Sheikhzāda [a member of a famous sacred family] on the truck with us going up to the valley of Kahmard. He is from Koh Daman. They say he has murīd in a few houses in Kahmard. Not very many. The driver was not a murīd of this man but he treated him with great respect. He kissed his hand and refused to charge him anything. [From notes on a trip to Kamard] The driver stopped along the road at the shrine of Sultan Saheb, which they said is very famous. [It was late at night.] There is a malang there whom they tried to wake up and give money to, but they couldn’t wake him up. Even though they shined lights on his little hut and pounded on his door and shouted at him he did not come out.

Elphinstone reported that early in the nineteenth century the veneration of people regarded as walīs was common. Many such saints are now flourishing, and the ignorance of their countrymen ascribes to them the gift of prophetic dreams and visions, and the power of working miracles. Even the higher classes have faith in their predictions, and the King often consults them on the most momentous affairs of his government.89 Jewett describes the veneration of a retarded man by an educated man in the time of Habibullah: Some of the wealthier Afghans support and keep these holy beggars in their homes, with the idea that they thereby acquire merit and that it will bring them good luck. The mustofi [state accountant or adjudicator] kept one of these lunatics in his home in Kabul. The old idiot used to wear a skullcap all studded with Bukhara coins. He was given the best of food and everything he asked for and was treated with ceremonious respect. If he were tired, some of the household would massage his legs, while he reclined on cushions and babbled rubbish. Even the great mustofi himself would defer to him and make him presents.90 Remuneration. Murīds did not pay their pirs for services; they gave them gifts. Gifts to pirs expressed friendship, never payment for services, in contrast to mullahs, who were always paid.



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[Young teacher in Bamian] A pir may give charms, but he does not ask for payment. He may also refuse to give charms. Anyway, he gets no direct pay for this, because it is not good for a pir to request pay. But a mullah will write a charm for pay. He is paid directly. It is not a gift in return, as is given to a pir. It would be inappropriate for the pir to ask for money. He is descended from Imam Rabāni [referring to his own pir]. People give him 200 afghanis each, even 500 afghanis each, or more if they are rich. [Young teacher in Bamian] The followers of Sahib Khan go to see him and they give him a thousand afghanis or five thousand afghanis and so on, depending on the wealth they have, or they give him a sheep, but mostly it is money. [Mir Hasan, regarding relations with his Ismailī pir] When people come to visit a pir they bring him a gift, a sheep or goat, a carpet or money. The point is that he should be happy. They call this du’ā-y pir (“supplicating the pir”), that is, they make him happy. The point is that for him to be happy is good for them. His favor means blessing for them. When we are in trouble we go to our pir and ask him to pray. For example, if the child is sick, the pir prays.

Besides giving gifts when visiting a pir, his disciples also gave him presents when he visited them. •

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[Notes on a trip to Kahmard and Saighan] The Akhundzâda from Qarabâgh came to Saighan and picked up his money. They gave him 600 afghanis from the village [I was told by a fellow traveler]. Altogether there were about 60–70 households, so they gave about 10 afghanis apiece. He got more money from other places, they said. [Teacher from Bamian] The pir of Paghman comes to Tagaw [Bamian] once every year. He never asks for money, but his murīd always give liberally to him.

The actual amount to be given to a pir was never stipulated. People distinguished the required payments of zakāt (by Sunnis) or khums (by Shi’a) from the gifts they made to their pirs. •

[Teacher in Bamian] The people don’t pay zakāt [alms] or khums [one-fifth of the profits assessed among the Shi’a] to their pirs. They just give whatever they want to.

Gifts of a daughter and sacrifices to a pir are mentioned by Einzmann: As for the gifts themselves, it is said to this very day that for Allah’s help in a particular crisis or as an expression of highest reverence towards a holy man, one made a gift of one’s own daughter, in addition to material assets. The holy man collects thereby the sole right to dispose of the girl; he either married her himself or gave her to one of his supporters as a wife…Worship and devotion towards a leader, and the other members of the Kayhan family


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Robert L. Canfield are said to show extreme forms. The leader is said to have had the ius primae noctis; defloration gives the girl barakat; there is said to have been mass slaughter of cattle so that the blood could clean the path for the saint, and his support could be demonstrated, and so on…Another way of showing one’s deep reverence is unpaid labour on the landed property of the holy man, which tends to be of considerable size not least.91

Of course the deference given to a pir could give opportunity for exploitation; not everything a pir did was necessarily approved. •

[A Sunni official from Kabul working in a provincial district] There is a pir in Kabul who wanted two brides for his son. He went to Paghman and talked with several people and he heard of a man who had a daughter who was pretty and he asked if he could have her. The man agreed. The pir also talked to another man, saying that he had heard that he had a pretty daughter, and the man said, “Yes,” and agreed to give her away [in marriage]. The pir put the two girls on his horse and took them home to his son. There was no wedding, no sweets [shirini, formally given to seal the marriage agreement], no mullah, no nothing. He did that only recently. It was only two years ago [i.e. c. 1965].

Shrines Shrines—places venerated as locations of special sacred power, where healing or deliverance might be obtained—could be various objects: the remains of a martyr in war, as we have seen;92 the grave of a great conqueror, such as Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni;93 places where pirs had performed miracles;94 and sacred relics, such as Muhammad’s “blessed cloak” (firqa-e mubarak) in Kandahar, and his “blessed hair” (muy-e mubarak) in Jalalabad, both of which received stipends from the government. Shrines as walīs. But most shrines were the tombs of deceased saints, persons reputed to have been walīs. Pirs, individuals said to be walīs in their lifetime, were venerated as walīs after their deaths.95 Their graves became objects of veneration and pilgrimage. •

[A Shi’a elder in Shibar] Sayyed Shahid did “pir work” for his murīd. He had murīd in Sheikh Ali and all around in neighboring areas. He made charms both for good and bad purposes and now his grave is a shrine. He was a Shi’a and was followed by Shi’as.96

The connection between sacred figures of the past and those of the present was expressed by a retired official from Ghazni97 describing the shrine where the great Persian poet Sanâ’i is buried. Note that he does not distinguish the living from the dead.



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After Sanā’i and Bahalul there are their followers [i.e., murīd buried in the vicinity], who also are holy. People go to their graves seeking help and they do get help. Even up to the present there are fairly holy men who have followed these walīs. They follow their ritual procedures and ways of worshipping very strictly. People admire Sanâ’i because he was a Muslim the way one should be…He was a real man of God, living for the next world, not this one.98

This shift from the topic of living pirs to shrines was made by the educated woman who went to a shrine to weep, mentioned above: “Women are dependent on pirs… Once during a time of difficulty, I went to the shrine of Shah Shahid to cry.” The connection between living and dead pirs was explicit in some Sufi teachings. Algar says that an adept might have received instruction and initiation from a deceased sheikh because “after death and separation from the corporeal being, the ruhānīya [the sheikh in the tomb] will be able to operate more freely, ‘by God’s leave,’ and to dispense initiation in certain cases.”99 Louis Dupree describes a situation in which a deceased saint in Aq Kupruk continued to serve his community. Khoja Boland, a saintly soldier in life, always warns Aq Kupruk when danger approaches by firing his rifle. When a cholera epidemic occurred in northern Afghanistan in 1965, the people of Aq Kupruk held a ritual feast (khayrat) to ward off the evil spirits causing the disease…The mullahs at the feast asked God to keep the cholera away: only four people died when the epidemic reached Aq Kupruk, and many local residents swore on the Koran that they heard Khoja Boland fire his rifle in the early afternoon before the first death.100 Family shrines. The sense of continuity between the dead and the living was perpetuated by the descendants who took responsibility for care of a pir’s tomb.101 •

[Mir Hasan] Sayyeds can be in charge of the shrine of their forefathers, and people who come there to worship and to get dirt for healing will undoubtedly, if they believe in this, give something, perhaps an offering, to the Sayyeds.

In such a case a shrine can become a source of income for the descendants. The interest of descendants in the tomb of an ancestor may have contributed to the rise of hagiographic literature about the powers of deceased saints.102 The pirs of the past are described by their successors as the walīs of their time,103 claims that are substantiated by accounts of their miraculous feats.104 The right of a pir’s descendents to receive gifts on behalf of the shrine was formally recognized by the government of Afghanistan in 1969, when a special commission drew up The Charter of the Awqaf Administration. Previous to that time, Louis Dupree says:

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all the shrines functioned under the caretakership of either a family and/or brotherhood, some of which had ferman (royal decrees) dating from Moghul times…The ferman usually permitted the caretakers to operate the shrines and exempted all revenue…from taxation.105 Of course the importance of a shrine as an object of veneration was the claim that it could be the source of curing or deliverance.106 •

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[Sheikh Gholam Ali] There is a shrine at my mother’s grandfather’s grave. At the shrine there is a tree and there is water dripping down from it. People take it for medicine. It is called the Shrine of Sayyed-i-Sājedar. My mother’s cousin, who has delivered some women from fairies, is the grandson of that Sayyed and he used to use the name of this shrine to cast out the spells on the women. “By the authority of the Sayyed-i-Sājedar,” he would say. [A retired official from a Ghazni107] In the old days Sayyeds in my village would write holy things on white stones around the grave [of an eminent pir]. They wrote these on charms and gave them to people bitten by wild dogs, and they would recover. Otherwise, it is believed that the [infected] person would have puppies come up inside his wind pipe and kill him. The man in charge of the shrine is called “Abdal.” People who go there first kiss the grave of the real pir and then the hand of Abdal, who used to be his servant.108

A hierarchy of power The empirical problems of the human condition coupled with the recognition that certain individuals had means of influencing unseen forces constituted a categorically recognized “reality” that established a hierarchical system of authority and influence. The categorically recognized unfortunate were dependent on categorically recognized authorities such as the ulamā and pirs, who putatively had the means to control, or at least influence, the non-empirical entities and forces that created unfortunate conditions. In “a world of means” whoever had methods that worked had cultural capital. But in practice there were two grounds of superiority, knowledge and sacredness, each of them originating in the earliest period of Islam. With respect to knowledge, a series of superior figures gave instruction to inferior individuals whose obligation was to regard them with deference and respect. God (the source of all knowledge) revealed sacred information to Muhammad who communicated it to his umma. This relationship established the grounds on which the scholars of religious knowledge (fuqahā) within the umma became the sources of knowledge (ilm) for the unlearned. The ulamā, scholars of ilm, were sources of knowledge to the unlearned [‘āmm], just as in educational contexts mowlawīs were sources of knowledge for their tālibs. God was to Muhammad as Muhammad was to the umma, as the faqih and the ulamā were to the unlearned, as mowlawīs were to their tālibs. And a dependent spirit and respectful decorum were required of those who were inferior in the relationship.


Efficacy and hierarchy 231 The other ground of authority, sacredness, was acquired through descent from a sacred ancestor or through mystical experience, usually achieved through the tutelage of a qualified master. The Shi’a claimed that sacredness passed through the family of Ali, who were biologically descendant from Muhammad, but also passed in the form of certain esoteric secrets from him to Ali and the Imams, the sacredness of the main line passing in a lesser degree to all Sayyeds.109 Sunni authorities claimed sacredness also, but on the basis of special ties of training and initiation in the Sufi orders, which claimed authority going back to Muhammad. As one author put it, Muhammad was “not only the recipient of revelation and the expositor of the divine message but also—for the Sufi—the first link in the initiatic chain.”110 Sacredness, in any case, trumped knowledge. “An ālem is someone you honor,” but “a pir is someone you fear.” “The importance of the pir’s pleasure with me is that the pir has been given by God”; “his murīd get blessing too if they treat him well”; “through the pir their troubles [in the grave] will be eased”; the great pirs “have been authorized to write charms that forgive sins”; in the name of the dead pir “he used the name of the shrine to cast out the spells.” “Every Muslim must have a pir.” Even in death a true pir, a walī, still “had power” and so his grave could be a source of protection and healing. Commonly, the preeminent religious authorities claimed not only to be learned but to have sacred power. The great Sunni authorities, the “great pirs,” for instance, joined initiation in a Sufi order (even several orders) with extensive study of ilm, thus combining in themselves both grounds of authority. In them “the mowlawītālib relationship was complemented by the pir-murīd relationship.”111 Such were the relations among those who claimed authority in the set of practices we have called the culture of efficacy, but the hierarchical system entered into the social world of ordinary people as well. The categorically recognized elements of a culture of efficacy, deployed in the habitus of ordinary social life, established the grounds for a hierarchy of authority and respect that permeated all of social life. As Tapper (1990: 238) expressed it with regard to a society in southwestern Turkey, respect was “of key importance in the ordering of all social relations…[R]espect for God should guide the actions and belief of all Muslims” and respect for authority earned “religious merit (sevab), God’s blessing and reward for piety and meritorious action.” This kind of relation, respect that was repaid in the form of religious merit, was “derived by analogy from the respect due from man to God.” “[B]uttressed by a comprehensive social etiquette and complex symbolic idiom,” the obligation of respect created “hierarchies of authority in all areas of social life,” the relation of citizens to the state, young to old, women to men, “the ill-informed” to the educated. Indeed, in the popular imagination the relation of superiority/inferiority entailed not only respect for those who were imputed with authority but even fear. Authorities who “had power” could be the source of misfortune as well as good, for magic could be used “like a gun” and those who were sacred had all the more ability to inflict harm as well as to do good.112 Shi’a and Sunni alike expressed the fear that sacred authorities could “pray against” them; they could cause people “to die or become sick, or their crops to fail.” Learning and sacredness could thus be turned into not only influence but power and domination.113


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This system of authority and deference was effected through the ordinary practices of everyday life. It was evoked in material settings such as the architecture of the mosque and the shrine; it was evoked in the call to prayer, in the Friday sermon followed by collective prayers; it was evoked in the pilgrimages of individuals and groups to shrines, in the appeals of individuals for charms and blessings, in the personal services granted by ulamā or pirs, in the payments of cash and goods to those who made charms and gave advice, in the gifts presented to pirs; evoked in the rags worn by malangs and faqirs, the fine turbans and wool cloaks of pirs, the black turbans of Sayyeds—these and many other features of ordinary social life in Afghanistan constituted what Foucault called a “technology of representation.” Cultural forms of many sorts objectified a system of submission and dominance that was nevertheless “conceal[ed]…beneath the gentle force of nature.”114 The “pre-verbal taking-for-granted of the world that flows from practical sense”115 imprinted this hierarchy in “deep-rooted linguistic and muscular patterns of behavior”;116 established “by the chains of their own ideas,” whose adhesive strength was “all the stronger in that we do not know of what it is made and we believe it to be our own work.”117 It is tempting to see this hierarchy as a veiled mechanism of class domination. But in fact it cuts across class. One’s place in the hierarchy is always relative to others. With respect to these grounds of authority even a sovereign could be inferior to a notable religious personage: there was a day when he, like everyone else, would kneel when a suitably credentialed scholar recited a hadith. So the mechanisms of influence based on the set of categories and practices we have called the culture of efficacy could become means of domination only if they were linked with other mechanisms of power. This is why, of course, some rulers, notably Abdul Rahman, claimed the mantle of religious authority to legitimize their regimes.118

The pattern in Afghanistan and the wider region By outlining a culture of efficacy as I found it in Afghanistan in the 1960s I have suggested that a similar complex of practices and a similar moral imagination is still vital among the people of Greater Central Asia. In fact, this is a modest claim, for it would not be difficult to show that such practices have informed and animated the lives of people in various parts of Greater Central Asia for many generations—as the quotations above from Elphinstone, Jewett, and Einzmann indicate. Many more observers could have been cited for that purpose, but since I began with the practice of shrine veneration in recent times, to remind ourselves that that practice was already well established much earlier, I conclude with a description of the moral geography of Sind that could easily apply to places in Greater Central Asia today. By the end of the eighteenth century, it had become virtually impossible to travel more than a few miles in Sind without coming across the shrine of one


Efficacy and hierarchy 233 saint or another…Sufi saints…[were] the very embodiment of the Islamic message…[Local tribes accepted] the need for others to intercede on their behalf…Their shrines became symbolic outposts of Muslim culture and Islamic spiritual authority. Their nearness to God enabled pirs to intercede with Him on behalf of others. As they had direct access to God’s blessing and were in charge of seeing that the world was maintained in its proper order, followers appealed to them when things went wrong.119

Notes 1 I acknowledge with gratitude the helpful comments of Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek and Lois Beck on this article. 2 The term is already in use among educators but with a different meaning: the empowerment of students (Goddard et al. 2000). 3 Subtelny 1989: 595, 597, 599, 601, 602. 4 Dalrymple 2005: 14–18. 5 Centlivres (1988: 55 ff.) discusses the cult of martyrs in the Soviet-Afghan war. 6 Griffin 2003: 352. 7 Griffin 2003: 277. 8 Ibn Taymiya strongly opposed the veneration of shrines—but almost immediately after he died his tomb became a shrine. Shah Waliullah of Delhi “was against the custom of worship at saints’ tombs and other idolatrous practices” (Olesen 1995: 249). Iqbal Ali Shah (1928: 99) says of the practice in Afghanistan in the early twentieth century, “in the face of strong denunciation by the priestly class, the faith in the supernatural power of the saints’ graves remains unshaken and men and women alike cling freely to it.” 9 Subtelny 1989. 10 Tapper (1990: 237) says of the situation in Turkey in the 1990s that “the religious and political establishment, and indeed virtually all men, scorn shrine visits and consider that faith in the power of the saints is unnecessary and inappropriate.” Shrine veneration is nevertheless practiced by “traditional” women there. 11 Tapper (1990: 236–7) treats the veneration of shrines in southwestern Turkey as an activity that “organize[s]” many sorts of associated activities. 12 The term used here was jādū, a topic I discuss later. 13 Attewell 2003 has a discussion of Islamic medicine in his historical context. Csordas 2002 has a more general discussion of healing devices as means of coping. 14 Amossy 2002. 15 Kaplan (2003) accepts Mouffe’s contention (1992: 376) that because “each person articulates an ensemble of contingent ‘subject positions’ that correspond to the multiple, historically specific network of power relations and diverse discourses in which a citizen is immersed” no general theory is possible. 16 My wording follows Comaroff and Comaroff (2001: 152–3), and Schirato and Webb 2003. 17 Barth 1993: 286 ff.; Wikan 1993. 18 Bourdieu 1990: 52. 19 Bourdieu 1990: 54. 20 Kapferer 1988: 79–80; Bourdieu 1977: 167. This discussion could be rephrased in Gramscian terms, as a kind of hegemonic system: “the whole lived social process [that is] practically organized by specific and dominant meanings and values.” In the words of Raymond Williams a hegemony saturates “the whole process of living… the whole substance of identities and relationships to such a depth that the pressures and limits of what can ultimately be seen as a specific economic, political, and


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Robert L. Canfield cultural system seem to most of us the pressures and limits of simple experience and common sense.” Hegemony “thus constitutes a sense of reality…a sense of absolute because experienced reality beyond which it is very difficult for most members of the society to move, in most areas of their lives” (Williams 1994: 597–8). Williams also notes that there are multiple hegemonies in a society and some of them can be “counter-hegemonic.” Bourdieu 1977: 164. Bourdieu 1990: 66. The wording is from Chopra 2003. Angenot 2002. Bourdieu 2001; Verdery 1990; Sider 1994. Sarfati 2002. Foucault 1978: 86: “[P]ower is tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms.” Bourdieru 1977: 168. Bourdieu 1977: 165, 169. In Bourdieu’s mind this is an objectification of what is otherwise not objective; for him the systematic relations were constituted in the analytical categories of the outsider but in the memories of events piled one upon another: “To give a complete account of the slightest rite, to rescue it completely from the absurdity of an unmotivated sequence of unmotivated acts and symbols, one would thus have to reinsert each of the acts and symbols which it bring into play into the system of differences which determines it most directly, and eventually into the whole mythico-ritual system; and also, simultaneously, into the syntagmatic sequence which defines it in its singularity which, as the intersection of all the sets of differences…limits the arbitrariness of its own elements” (Bourdieu 1990: 7–8). A brief note on the contexts and circumstances of the statements quoted here. In the 21 months between the fall of 1966 to the summer of 1968 I was doing field work in Afghanistan, mainly in the Bamian valley. The quotations here come from notes taken from conversations in four types of social settings: (1) In Kabul, with friends and visitors, most of whom spoke English, who helped me better understand things I was hearing in my field trips to Bamian. The most notable of these was the person identified as “Sheikh Gholam Ali,” a highly educated man from a mixed Shi’a–Sunni town in the west, who was employed in a government office. Although Shi’a himself, and in fact a Sayyed on his mother’s side, he claimed to understand Sunnism well, having studied religion in government schools and spent several years in dormitories with Sunnis; he was about to marry a Sunni woman. As a young man, because he was able to read, he made use of the books of a deceased Sayyed uncle to write charms, mostly for women in distress. By the time I knew him he was no longer much of a believer. He was liberal with information on his own experiences and practices at earlier times, providing detail unmatched by any other source. (2) In Shibar (eastern Bamian) where I spent most of my first year of field work, in the homes of many gracious Hazaras. The most helpful was “Mir Hasan,” who hosted my initial stays in Shibar and who introduced me to many other Hazaras who took me into their homes as well. “Mir Hasan” was a mir, a representative of his Isma’ili community to the government, and because of his long experience as a leader in the community and his wide contacts in the region he was a treasure trove of stories about local affairs. His time, hospitality, and loyal friendship were much appreciated. After several months of traveling and living among Isma’ilis, I established a pied-à-terre in a “Twelver” (Ithnā ‘asharia) Shi’a community in order to meet more members of that sect. All conversations in Shibar were in Dari.



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(3) In the market town of Bamian with a young graduate of Kabul Teacher’s College. I paid him to help collect information in Dari on the town of Tolwara, a Sunni community in the Markaz of Bamian. (4) On buses or trucks or in a tea houses where many kinds of people, friendly fellow travelers, were generous with information on their life and affairs. After spending a year walking around Shibar and Kalu, in the eastern highlands of Bamian, I began traveling more widely in Bamian, usually on whatever means of transport was available, staying in various tea houses (otals, chāykhānas) in the area. Most of the time was spent in the Markaz of Bamian but I also visited communities in tributary valleys such as Foladi, Saighan, and Kāmard. Although I stayed in some places several times I never stayed in any one place more than two weeks at a time. In the Markaz most of my fellow travelers had come there to deal with the provincial government, to resolve a dispute or fulfill a formally of some kind. Conversations with them were entirely informal, conducted in Dari; I never took notes in their presence (although I did use mnemonic devices to aid recall) but wrote up my recollections shortly afterwards. In these notes I did my best to reproduce what I heard and saw, word for word when I could manage it, in paraphrase when I could not. The conversations I wrote up took place in many settings: a host’s guest room, on a bus or truck, in an otal while sitting around a samovar during the day, in an otal dormitory in the evening. The field work, that is, was conducted well before jargonized names for what I did had been invented (“doing participant observation,” “snowball sampling,” etc.) and before funding sources demanded formal consent from one’s sources. As it happens, no one has defended this informal, unstructured, uncontrolled “method” of gathering information with more élan than the noted historian, Jules Michelet, professor of the École Normale at the Sorbonne, chief historical curator of the National Archives, the leading professional historian in France in the mid-nineteenth century, author of the monumental History of the French Revolution (1847–53). He drew upon his own memory, having lived through the period; but notably for ten years he interviewed people informally outside Paris with the conscious intention of counterbalancing the biases of official documents. He wrote the following about his methods and sources: “When I say oral tradition, I mean national tradition, which remained generally scattered in the mouths of the people, which everybody said and repeated, peasants, townsfolk, old men, women, even children, which you can hear if you enter of an evening into a village tavern; which you may gather if, finding on the road a passer-by at rest, you begin to converse with him about the rain, the season, then the high price of victuals, then the times of the Emperor, then the times of the Revolution” (Quoted in Paul Thompson 1988: 22.) I propose to regard the statements of my Afghan associates, friends, and teachers, quoted here, as particular and personal expressions of what Michelet would have called an Afghanistan “national tradition” as it existed in the late 1960s. Canfield 1976: 120. Sheikh Gholam Ali, who had practiced healing and curing for a time, said that he could distinguish problems created by invisible forces from those that were merely physical: “We know what kind of sickness it is, whether it is supernatural or one that doctors can heal. For example, a person may be frightened in his sleep, and the next morning he cannot talk—the fairies tell not to tell anyone. It happens to women; I’ve never seen a man like that.” Encyclopedia of Islam, “Sihr.” Frejos 1963: 227; cf. Dollott 1937: 237. Qur’an Sura 2:102. The evil eye appears elsewhere in communities where resentments were suppressed, the sanctions against open hostility were strong, or the dangers against breaking fellowship were great. Malice, having to be curbed, breaks out as sorcery or the evil eye (Wolf 1955, 1957; Nadel 1952; Spooner 1970).


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38 On jinns see Shalinsky 1980, 1986, 1989; Qur’an 15:27; 55:15, 6:131, 32:13, 46:29, 72:14–15, 6:113, 129, 27:17; 34:12. 39 Naqshe-Haqâni (Abdur Rashid n.d.) says that if a person gets sick on a Sunday night, it is because of a fairy’s or jinn’s shadow. The symptom is that his body will be weak, he will be afraid in sleep, won’t talk to people, etc. 40 A famous shrine in the Bamian Markaz is that of Mir Hashem Deoband. His title literally means “the deo binder.” The term could refer to a putative power or to his connection with the Deobandi school in India. The name of that school enshrines a certain ambiguity, for the name of the place where the school was established implies that something about the place or someone buried there has the power to control deos. 41 Estimates of land size are commonly expressed in terms of the amount of seed that can be profitably be sown on it. A kharwar is 80 ser (Samin and Nielson 1967). 42 For some reason I failed to bring up the best reason: The main road between Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif had been diverted away from Bamian by the recent construction of the Salang pass. Bamian had formerly lain astride the most trafficked route over the Hindu Kush, but its fortunes steadily declined as the modern Afghan government constructed roads through more direct routes over the Hindu Kush, first through Shikari Gorge then through Salang. 43 Shipped by truck, salt is generally cheaper now than it used to be; before it was shipped by camel caravan. Because no natural sources exist in the Hazarajat, it has always been highly valued there, and was once used as a medium of exchange and pricing. 44 Bourdieu 1962: 187 notes that the Kabyles used to say during the Algerian War, “We are now in the fourteenth century,” meaning that we are approaching the end of the world. This sentiment was expressed by Sheikh Gholam Ali, who said he had read somewhere that Gabriel told Muhammad that he would come to Earth only three more times. “Once when Muhammad dies. Once when he takes all the barakat from the world—because people will be so bad that God will take His blessing from the world. And the last time will be to take the blessing of the Qur’an from the world. It used to be that when someone swore [falsely or without absolute purity] on the Qur’an they died on the spot, or exploded or something happened to them—their animals died and so forth. No one dies anymore if they swear on the Qur’an. Everyone does it now. I heard a mullah say—this was even the other day— he said he believes Gabriel has already come to take the blessing from the earth. He must have come to take the power from the earth, because he has taken it from the Qur’an.” 45 This is but one of a number of statements that J. Dudley Woodberry collected in the early 1970s, most of them on what shrines meant to people; it is hoped that more of his work will be published. I hereby express appreciation to him for permission to publish selections from his materials. 46 The BBC (2005) reports that a certain ta’wīz writer in Kabul every day receives orders for ta’wīzs from about 500 people in Kabul and 30 from neighboring areas. Most of the orders are from women. 47 Das 1976: 247. 48 This viewpoint was echoed in many similar statements of Muslims, the eleventh century Seljuq minister, Nizam-ul mulk, for example (Shekhulislami 1986: 231). Brinner (1987: 46–7) says, “The karamat of the saints correspond to the mucjizat of the prophets insofar as they imply deviation from the ordinary course of events, but they are not meant to silence opponents. Rather, they are a sign of the grace of God toward the saint through whom they are manifested…[B]araka [is] a word meaning literally ‘blessing,’ but connoting divine grace and the power of sanctity, or, as one scholar [Trimingham] has put it, ‘virtue as inherent spiritual power.’” 49 On Sufism in Afghanistan see Wieland-Karimi 1998.


Efficacy and hierarchy 237 50 In his discussion of the underlying socio-cultural conditions of the notion of “saint” Gellner (1969: 42–43) presents the authority of saints as a construction of the society in such a way as to mask their actual belief. The saints [igurramen] are said to possess baraka, which he translates as “enough” and “plentitude, and above all blessedness manifested amongst other things in prosperity and the power to cause prosperity in others by supernatural means.” Gellner, however, takes this teaching to be a mere ideological mask of reality. “The reality of the situation is, however, that the igurramen are in fact selected by the surrounding ordinary tribesmen who use their services…What appears to be vox Dei is in reality vox populi.” (43–4) This treatment of the Berber concept of “saint” reflects little appreciation for an Islamic ontology. See Asad (1986) for a useful critique. 51 The three bases of Islamic authority are formally recognized by the three Islamic sects, Sunni, Ithnā ‘asharia Shi’i, and Isma’ili Shi’i, but in different ways, according to the stipulations of their respective dogmatic positions. 52 Scholars enhanced their reputations by writing books on Islamic subjects. This was a basis pride among the Isma’ilis of the accomplishments of their pir, Sayyed Nadir Khan of Kayan.

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[Mir Hasan] Our pir is the only religious leader who has written commentaries on the Qur’an. The leaders of the other sects don’t because they can’t. Our pir is very intelligent and he is respected for his ability to lead people. [A Shià Hazara from Bamian] The Sayyed has written 48 or 49 books. They are written in Arabic, I think. I have not read them myself. It is much work to read these books…People study for 20, 25 years on these books…They have memorized some of the verses. Four or five of the books have been published but most are in script. These are very hard books, if you can read them and understand them. [Mir Hasan] The real growth in Isma’ilism in this country has come since the present pir took office. He has written many books and we memorize his poetry. Also, his son has written a lot of poetry. The ability to recognize jugglery from true karāmat was considered important by all sects but for the Shi’a it was an article of faith that one must know the true Imam of one’s time to be saved (Encyclopedia of Islam, “Sihr”). A recent study of jinns and related spirits and the harm they do and the methods of curing or controlling them is Farhat (1996). She indicates that in the Makran of Balochistan, Pakistan, the word gwat is used for a certain kind of evil spirit (distinguished locally from jinns) and the healer of these spirits is called gwat-i-mat. See Encyclopedia of Islam, “Sihr,” “Fāl.” Sargent 1969; On Sayyeds as “safeguards” see Hodgson 1974:I, 259 ff. On the acceptance of the claims of the Alids by both Shi’ites and Sunnis see Mottahedeh 1980: 7 ff. Enayat 1982: 193; Encyclopaedia of Islam “Imam”; Barthol’d 1968 [1900]: 375). For a discussion of noble descent see Encyclopaedia of Islam, “Sharif.” For a discussion of closeness to God see Eickelman (1974, 1976). For a discussion of genealogy (nasab) and earned repute by upright behavior (hasab) see Mottahedeh (1980: 98). Edwards (1986: 278) has noted that “there are many cases of sayyids and other members of religious lineages who choose to follow Sufi pirs and become their khalifas [assistants]. In this way, the status of biological descent [in a sacred line] is combined with that of spiritual descent [certified membership in a line of sufi masters], giving the individual and his family the special status of being not only of sacred ancestry but also a pir khana, literally, a ‘house of masters.’ It also happens that non-hereditary pirs institutionalize the position of khalifa within their own families and thereby graft the lines of spiritual and biological descent together.”


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60 The Qadiris were led by Naqib Saheb family, descendants of the founder of the Qadiri sufi order, Abdul Qadir Gailani, who were known as Naqib ul-Ashraf. Sayyed Hasan Effendi, the brother of the acting Naqib in Baghdad at the time, came to Afghanistan after a 1904 interview with Amir Habibullah, who provided him a number of amenities (Olesen 1995: 97; Edwards 2002: 255). He died in 1943. After the early demise of the first son, the second, Sayyed Ahmad Gailani, became pir of the Qadiri order in the 1960s. After 1979 he took the leadership of the Mahaz-i Milli-ye Islami resistance party in the anti-communist movement. The leading family of the Naqshbandis were the Mujaddidis, known as “Hazrats,” who have headed the order since early in the twentieth century (Olesen 1995: 44 ff., 162–3; Lizzio 2003). Grϕnhaug (1978: 99) describes the Sufi circles of Herat in the 1960s as relatively small and transitory: Sufism as an inventory of idioms and Sufi practice is a widely spread tradition, a symbolic language known by millions. But at the level of active groups, tariqat units in Herat are “small and short lived.” Earlier in the century Sufi circles were apparently more commonplace. 61 Extentive treatments of Sufism are in Rahman (1979: esp101–3); Hodgson (1974 II: esp. 228 ff.); Schleifer (1983); Schimmel (1975); Gibb (1953). Relevant entries in the Encyclopedia of Islam are “Dhikr,” “Hallajj,” “Hizb,” “Kahin,” “Tarīka”, “Tassawuf,” “wird.” Lings (1993) introduces novel perspectives; a distinctive and richly nuanced treatment of the recitations of the names of God in Muslim worship is Padwick (1961); Enayat (1982: 18) provides a Shi’ite view. On sufi practice in Afghanistan see Einzman (1977); Grϕnhaug (1978); Utas (1980, 1988); Edwards (1986); Olesen (1995). Dupree (1976: 18) says that “To be called ‘Sufi Sahib a man must read the Koran 113 times and maintain 40 days of silence.’” Aq Kupruk had one Sufi Sahib, he said. 62 Courtesy of J. Dudley Woodberry. 63 Metcalf 1982: 79. 64 Rahman 1979: 137. 65 Quoted in Gibb 1953: 151. 66 Algar 1976: 127. 67 See Metcalf (1982: 29, note 28) on other terms in use in eighteenth-century Muslim society in South Asia. Wilbur (1962: 68) uses the term murshid (also rahnamâ, or “guide”) to refer to a “spiritual advisor” who “has no official status but advises on spiritual problems at the family level”; Einzman (1977: 31; see also 23 ff.) speaks of lesser known pirs as murshids, who lead local sufi circles, write amulets and possibly mediate disputes. 68 Roy 1990, Olesen 1995. The most familiar examples of “maraboutic Sufism” in Afghanistan was the relation of the eastern and southern Pashtun tribes, some of them pastoral nomads, to the leaders of the Qadiria and Naqshbandi orders. They paid occasional visits and regular gifts to their pirs, which may have been an important basis for the influence of several notable pirs in the past, such as Hadda-i Sahib and Mullah Mushk-i Alam in the nineteenth century (Olesen 1995:81 ff.; Edwards 1996). The Hazrat Saheb of Kabul, a Mujaddidi, has headed the Naqshbandi tribes since early in this century, and the a member of the “Naqib Saheb” lineage has led the Qâdirî tribes since the was invited to come to Afghanistan by Amir Habibullah in 1904 (Olesen 1995:44 ff., 162–3). 69 I here treat the “maraboutic” form of the pir-murid relationship as the common phenomenon among all three of the Afghan Islamic sects rather than the form emphasized in the orientalist literature. My opinion is that treating the pirship as merely an aspect of sufism tends to mask its general importance in popular practice. This was, I think, Wilbur’s error (1962: 72) when he overlooked the importance of pirs in the lives of ordinary people. He mistakenly regarded the sufism practiced in Afghanistan as unusual: “While the dervish orders have largely died out in Islam [!],



at least they survive in Afghanistan—the Chishtis, followers of the murshid Muìn Chishti...the Naqshbandis, who are concentrated in Mazar i Sharif, and the Jilanis.” 70 Edwards (1986: 277, cf. 279) describes faqirs as people who “generally live off alms and, if they reside in any single place, it is usually in the precincts of a saint’s tomb”. 71 In fact, however, the malang of Bulola was not generally respected.

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[From my notes on a bus trip to Bamian] The Malawi got on the bus and was given the preferential seat. The malang of Bulola came up to the window and asked for his khayr [“grace”, i.e. a gift]. The malawi stared at him, did not speak to him. Everyone treated the malawi with deference and the malang with contempt. But many people did give the malang his khayr, although they showed no fear or respect for him. Of the situation early in the nineteenth century Elphinstone (1972 [1839] vol. 1: 288) says the following about irregular sacred figures: Besides the regular clergy [“ulama”], there are many persons who are revered for their own sanctity, or that of their ancestors. Among the latter, the most famous are the syuds [sayyeds], or descendants of Muhammed; and the former are called by the different names of Derweshes (Dervishes), Fakeer, etc., either arbitrarily, or from some little difference in their observances; one set called Kulunder [Calenders, Qalandârs], for instance, are remarkable for going almost naked; others wander from place to place, and visit all resorts of pilgrims; while some live abstemious and religious lives in the midst of towns, and some retire to practice their austerities in solitary places. See Rahman (1979: 145 ff.), for instance. Bell 1948: 304. The basic sense of the usage was for a person who had acquired knowledge. When Islamists trained in Iran began to come into Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s they were also known as “sheikh.” Their influence would be of a very different sort: see Harpviken 1996. Courtesy of J. Dudley Woodberry. The word qasida is defined by Steingass (1975) as “a poem, or elegy, being a kind of longer ghazal which seldom exceeds thirteen but not more than eighteen Distiches: an ode” See Shah 1928: 87–9; Dollot 1937: 240, 290–291. On shamanistic practices see Baldauf 1989; Centlivres et al. 1971; Centlivres and Centrlivres-Demont 1988. On the rituals of controlling jinns in the Muslim world generally see MacDonald 1965: 153 ff. Hachin and Kohzad (1953) recount a story about Ali performing a ritual like qasida pukhta kardan. This was presumably the same person described above as giving up his rank as a general and becoming a faqir. This usage comes from Sahlins (1981) who stressed that to deploy any conventional understanding in practical situations is to create the possibility that that the understanding will fail to comprehend the situation and so introduce unforeseen social possibilities. Courtesy of J. Dudley Woodberry. Sultan Ali Kishtmand, a Hazara from Bamian, became active in the Parchami communist faction. He held many posts in government in the Communist period, eventually serving as Prime Minister. He resigned from the party in 1991 (Rubin 1995: 152). As is well known, people who otherwise would avoid some devices of efficacy— such as prayer at a shrine, for instance—can be driven to making use of them in extremis. Fernia (1970) reports that in desperation, because of the urgent illness of her daughter, she accepted and used an amulet. The eighteenth-century Sunni scholar in Delhi, India, Shah Wali Ullah, “exemplified the ideal pattern of religious leader being both saint and âlim. As âlim he produced a prodigious body of scholarship…But as his title Waliyu’llah

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Robert L. Canfield (“the friend of God”) reveals, he was also a saint…the qutbu’l-aqtab, the Saint of the age, the pivot around whom the world revolves” (Metcalf 1982: 42). Thus, in Sunni practice the institutionalized distinction between âlim and sufi has in real individuals been substantially blurred (Metcalf 1982: 32; cf. Mottahedeh 1980: 148). Elphinstone 1972 [1839]: Vol. I, 289. Rahman (1979: 159) says that “In most cases the fact is that the disciples tended to father miracles on the Sheikhs who disowned them” (cf. Canfield 1991). See Olesen 1995 for good discussions of the great pir families among the Sunnis, such as the Mujdaddidis and the Gailanis. On the exercise of influence and power in connection with Sufism seem WielandKarimi 1999. The pir of the Isma’ilis, however, banned the writing of charms. Ms. Wakeham worked as a nurse in a hospital in the Hazarajat for several years. Elphinstone 1972 [1839]: vol. 1 p. 288. Bell 1948: 22. Jewett also says (Bell 1948: 304) that the Amir [Habibullah] had “a special sarai which he has set aside for their [sacred persons’] care…the majority of these beggars are faqirs or holy men.” Einzman 1977: 26–7, translation from German by courtesy of Hugh Beattie. The sacred qualities attributed to persons unjustly killed were implied in a statement made by a Shi’a elder from Shibar: “Bobby Kennedy is now a faqir because he was martyred.” Einzmann (1977: 294) notes that a shahīd [martyr] can be a source of blessing. Shah (1928: 97) says that dust from Mahmud’s grave was sold by weight for a good price in Shrinagar. Einzmann 1977: 296. Both Shah and Einzmann say that the spirits of walis confer among themselves every night. Shah (1928: 97) says “Saint’s souls flow up [from the tomb] during the night and return during the day.” Einzmann (1977: 300) says that on Wednesdays “all saints [i.e. walis] gather at all ziyarats [shrines] at the same time.” Elphinstone says that the graves of notable religious figures could become sanctuaries from revenge in the blood feud: “These ascetics have been esteemed in Afghaunistaun in all ages, and half the histories of that country are filled with the legends of the numerous male and female saints whom it has produced. The places where such devotees are interred, or which have been distinguished by remarkable actions of their lives, are still considered as sacred, and each of the most celebrated is a safe asylum even from revenge for blood. The reverence in which these sanctuaries are held is shown by the practice of the Eusofzyes, the most lawless of all the tribes, where a clan going out to battle, places its women in one of them, and relies on their security in case of a defeat” (Elphinstone 1972: vol. 1, 288). Courtesy of J. Dudley Woodberry. Einzmann (1977: 294 ff.) distinguishes between “international” saints (the great heroes of Islam venerated by all Muslims everywhere) and “regional” saints who are known and venerated by the local inhabitants of a region; all of the saints he discusses are deceased. Sanâì, referred to above, would be an “international” saint, for he is recognized as the first great sufi poet of the Persian language. His tomb is in Ghazni. “Bahlul,” referred to above, was Baha al Din Naqshband, the fourteenthcentury Bukharan who is credited with founding the Naqshbandi Sufi order. Algar 1976: 131; cf. DeWeese 1993. Dupree 1970: 350. The most notable cases of this were in the establishment of waqfs (McChesney 1991, 1996), but even if there was no endowment a descendent might take responsibility for an ancestor’s tomb. McChesney’s is the most extensive work on shrines in Greater Central Asia.


Efficacy and hierarchy 241 102 Cf, for example DeWeese (1988, 1993); Ernst (1992); Gross (1990); Keddi (1972); Mazzaoui (1972) and other works cited here. 103 To keep my discussion clear I have used the term wali for the ideal concept and pir for a living person. As should be evident, the hagiographic literature makes no such distinction, as its purpose is to show how a certain pir manifested the decorum and powers of a wali. 104 Elphinstone (1972 [1839] vol. I: 289) wrote, “I have in my possession a book of miracles wrought by the famous saint of Chumkunnee, the spiritual director of Ahmed Shauh. It contains accounts of many miracles performed within these fifty years. It was given me by the son of the saint, and as it was written in his lifetime and attested by many of his scholars it is difficult to acquit him of fraud or falsehood. 105 L. Dupree (1976: 4); see McChesney (1991) on Mazar-i Sharif; Einzmann (1977: 299) on shrines in Kabul. 106 The ritual practices at shrines and the objects left at shrines are described by Einsmann (1977: 299, 301, 302). Dupree (1976: 1) mentions the kinds of cures that are sought at shrines. Utas (1980: 61) points out that the complaints for which relief is sought from living saints and from shrines (i.e. deceased saints) are similar. 107 Courtesy of J. Dudley Woodberry. 108 Einzmann (1977: 295) says that even “enlightened” individuals resorted to shrines “for the help of a saint.” But Einzmann (1977: 303) also suggests that, at least in the early 1970s the veneration of shrines had declined. 109 On the hierarchy of sayyeds among Shi’a and Sunnis in Afghanistan, besides other works cited here, see also Snoy (1972: 175); on Isma’ili teaching see Nanji 1978. 110 Algar (1976: 127). Gibb (1953: 154) points out that Sufis and the Shi’a share the claim that an original secret knowledge was passed from Muhammad to Ali and became the basis for the chain of succession that followed. 111 Olesen 1995: 50 112 In response to Franz Rosenthal’s assertion that “ilm is Islam” Brinkley Messick (1993: 154) makes the remark that knowledge established “exclusive and divisive hierarchical implications in a society where knowledge was neither universally accessible nor evenly distributed,” referring to knowledge of authoritative texts, the Qur’an and the Hadith. In our case we have noted that in addition to knowledge of these subjects the ālem is trained in sihr, magic. Knowldege of sihr enhanced the superior status of the ālem even more, owing to the supposition that he had learned how to influence the unseen forces that affect human affairs. On modern practice of Islamic education see Eickelman (1985). On the authority of Islamic knowledge generally see Encyclopedia of Islam, “Ilm,” “fiqh,” “ilm-i kalām,” ‘sharica.” On knowledge of Qur’an and Hadith in social practice in medieval times see Barthol’d (1968 [1900]: esp. 373, 232); Mottahedeh (1980: esp.141–2). 113 Wieland-Karimi 1999. 114 Foucault 1977: 104, 106. 115 Bourdieu 1990: 68. 116 Bourdieu 1990: 69. 117 The wording is from J. M. Servan, quoted in Foucault (1977: 102–3). Servan is contrasting the devices of the despot with those of the politician: “A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas.” See also Giddens 1977, Chapter 3. 118 Halbach (1989) refers to the “muridism” surrounding sufi orders as the source of uprisings against the czars as well as the Soviets. He cites as examples not only the rebellions in North Caucasus and Turkistan, and by Volga Tatars in the nineteenth century, but also a 1986 uprising in Tajikistan. He links these uprisings to sufi circles in which students [murids] oriented toward mystical Islam swear to follow


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their teacher and master [murshid], “who treats them in an almost totalitarian manner.” No doubt many such movements could have been organized by sufi orders but in so far as they enjoyed the support of the wider community, most of whom were not Sufis, the conceptions of authority would have had a broader relevance, such as that generated by the set of relations we have called a culture of efficacy. 119 Ansari (1992: 22–3). Compare this statement, for instance, with comment by Tapper (1990: 237) that a place in southwestern Turkey was “felt to be permeated with a sanctity that derived from the shrines (ziyaret) of the many saints (evliya) who were buried there.”

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Index

Abdur Rahman (Khan) 80, 95, 129, 131 Afghanistan 1 ff., 3, 61 ff., 77 ff., 95 ff., 125 n21, 129 ff., 181, 196 Akaev, Askar 20, 21, 30 Al Qaeda 6, 33, 198 alliances/alignments 7, 65, 77 ff., 95, 102–3, 105–6, 108, 117, 129–30, 138 ff., 168 ff. authoritarianism 19 ff., 115 Azerbaijan 5, 12 n14, 178

176, 183 ff., 187, 197 Kazakhstan 4 ff., 19, 21–2, 24, 26–8, 30, 33, 68–9, 71, 99–100, 176–7, 180, 183–5, 187 Kyrgyz/kyrgyz 40, 63, 69, 99, 102, 166 Kyrgyzstan 19–21, 24, 26–7, 29–30, 33–4, 61, 99, 101, 175, 176, 180

China 1 ff., 4–6, 39 ff., 178, 191 n29

Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) 99, 145, 155–6, 159 n35

mahalla 29, 168, 172, 176, 182 Masud, Ahmad Shah 65, 103

Dostum, Abdul Rashid 65, 81, 104, 108 factions/factionalism 21, 28, 30–1, 33–4, 40, 42, 77 ff. 102, 105 ff., 110, 112 ff., 129–30, 138 ff., 167 ff. female religious practice 42, 54 n11, 51, 110, 121, 174, 198–9, 202, 216, 218, 224–5, 228–9, 240 n96 Hazarajat 104, 129 ff. Hazaras 63, 65, 77–8, 86, 103–4, 106–7, 129 ff., 203 ff. Hizb-ut Tahrir 33, 181 Islamicists/Islamism 30–3, 64–6, 72, 138–9, 157, 174, 180–1, 183, 187, 189, 191 n38 India 5–6, 103, 111, 115, 145 ff., 201, 213 Iran 1–2, 4–5, 7, 25, 64, 70, 103–4, 106, 129, 134, 136, 138, 175, 239 n75 Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) 33, 65, 181 Karimov, Islam (President of Uzbekistan) 2, 30, 32–3, 62, 65–6, 102, 166–7, 170 Kazakhs/kazakhs 64, 69, 100, 102, 166,

Pakistan 1–2, 5–6, 10, 64, 86, 97, 99, 103–4, 106, 110 ff., 131, 136, 138, 141, 145 ff., 147, 197–9, 211, 237 n54 Pashtun/Pukhtun (see also Pathan) 7, 63, 78, 80–6, 88 n1, n11, 89 n16, 90 n38, n51, 99, 103–5, 108, 110 ff., 134 ff., 144 ff., 211, 223, 238 n68 Pashtunwali 86, 103 Pathan (see also Pashtun/Pukhtun) 148–51, 153, 159 n39 patron–client relations 82, 90 n40, 84–5, 129–30, 131, 157, 168 ff. qawm 78, 82–3, 87, 88 n9, 103, 132, 136–7, 140 Rohillas, Rohilkhand 145, 147–50, 153–4 Russia/Russians 1–4, 8, 12 n13, n28, 22, 26, 28, 30, 32, 61–2, 66–7, 69–72, 99, 101, 154, 166, 171, 176, 185–7 sharia law 33, 183, 199 Shia, Shiism 104, 108, 129, 134, 136, 138, 141, 142 n9, 176, 178, 185, 190 n12, 202, 203, 209–18, 222, 225, 227, 231–2


Index Soviet Union 2, 4, 7–11, 11 n2, 20–1, 24–30, 32, 41, 61–5, 85, 98–104, 129, 131, 138, 140, 166–8, 171, 197–9 sufi/sufism 42, 51, 104, 118–23, 125 n19, 177–8, 182, 185–6, 188, 190 n16, 191 n26, 192 n42, n44, n45, 197, 211, 214–20, 223, 228, 231, 233, 237 n59, 238 n60, n61, 241 n110 Sunni/Sunnism 33, 63, 103, 129, 176, 190 n12, 185, 198, 202, 204, 209, 211–17, 223, 225, 231–2, 234 n31, 237 n51, n56, 239 n83, n85, 240 n109 Swat 110 ff., 145 Tajikistan 1, 5, 9, 13 n29, 24–30, 33, 61, 63, 65, 67, 73 n8, 77, 99, 100–2, 105, 174–81, 190 n12, 196 n38, 242 n118 Tajiks/tajiks 7–9, 13 n29, 63–70, 72 n7, 73 n8, 78–9, 81, 83–4, 86–7, 88 n11, 89 n34, 100, 102–5, 108, 166–7, 173 n2, 176, 178, 185, 192 n42 Taliban 6–7, 12 n24, 33, 61, 65–6, 78, 85, 95, 103–5, 129, 135, 138, 140–2, 142 n8, n11, n12, n13

249

totalitarianism 19, 34 Turkmenistan 1, 2–3, 5–6, 8, 21–2, 24–6, 31, 99, 104, 174, 176 Turkmen/turkmen 63, 68–70, 88 n11, 99, 102–4, 108, 131, 166, 197 umma 45, 62, 69–70, 230 United States/America 4, 10, 12 n21, 32–3, 46, 61, 65–6, 105, 110 ff., 141, 175, 109 Uyghurs 39 ff. Uzbekistan 1–2, 4–5, 8–10, 21, 24–6, 29–31, 33, 61 ff., 99–102, 104, 106, 165 ff., 176–7 ff. Uzbeks/uzbeks 6–8, 33, 62 ff., 72 n2, 77 ff., 100–4, 108, 165 ff., 173 n2, 176, 177 ff. women religious leaders see female religious practice Xinjiang 1, 4, 39 ff.

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