2011

T. Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics), Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. 2010, 400 pp., ISBN 9780691145686

Thomas Barfield's Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History is a work heavily burdened by the weight of expectations. To take up Barfield's own penchant for analogy: Afghanistan was heralded like a newly elected Barack Obama - portending change and promising wise and well-considered solutions, oracle-like, to finding an alternative path in what is now almost universally regarded as a state-building debacle. Approached from that angle readers would have been sorely disappointed, for Barfield is far too sensitive to maintaining his legitimacy as a historian to suggest he's got the answers to what are inherently political questions.

In fact, it is the notion of legitimacy - specifically, how political legitimacy has been constructed over time - that Barfield offers as the most important frame for rendering legible the long arc of political and cultural change in Afghanistan. Although he resists stepping beyond his remit as historian, the careful reader will note occasional ruptures in his equanimity: Barfield's respect for his subject matter alongside his strenuous attention to detail seem to fuel his bafflement and frustration with contemporary state-building efforts. While his work is a tremendous boon to students and scholars (of Afghanistan, Central Asia, anthropology, history or political dynamics), it is Afghan and international policy makers to whom he is speaking, and at times, admonishing. "The amazing thing is that to this day," he laments, "it would appear that those who remember the past too uncritically are doomed to repeat it regularly." (163).

In balancing the impetuses of urgency and constraint, however, Barfield provides the building blocks of answers, or at least more informed answers, to the current dilemmas of state-building in Afghanistan. Though these have not been reduced to a page of bullet points for the busy politician or advisor, the lessons Barfield extracts from his contextual reading of Afghan history are embedded throughout the text like the rich layer of gems hiding beneath Afghanistan's soil (an area he urges we must also prioritize). Yet, as measured as he is confident in his analysis, Barfield suggests that in a place where the past isn't even the past yet, it is perhaps folly to attempt to draw hard conclusions as much as to understand the key themes and patterns that continue to inform Afghan politics and society.

Barfield's overall mission in this book is to reverse the conventional field of vision - to shift Afghanistan and its people from being an instrumentalized backdrop in the proxy wars that have dominated its history to center stage. Likewise, to reveal as false the myths that hang over the country like Kabul's famous haze: that it is ungovernable, its people inherently barbaric, and that it is doomed to fracture under endless ethnic tension. Rather, Barfield forces the reader to consider elements of Afghanistan's history that do not factor into currently dominant narratives: its long stretches of stability, consistent patterns of governance, and the rich tradition of adaptive socio-legal mechanisms that have precluded anarchy even in times of crisis.

Prevailing interpretations of the country's history and culture and the policy decisions these are seen to necessitate are thus revealed as limited in scope and rooted in the political and cultural biases of those who espouse them. Anyone in doubt on this point can turn to Barfield's section on why Afghanistan is not the Balkans. Although a deep reading of history and regional politics explains why a unified Afghanistan best serves its many tribal and ethnic groups, Afghan elites' desire for power and their international counterparts' aspiration to create an ideal-type Kantian state facilitated the adoption of an ethno-nationalist counter narrative that, in reality, is irrelevant to the environment. The result was a categorically ill-fitting, hyper-centralized model of the state, espoused by policy actors unwilling or unable to discuss the possibility of regularizing the de facto (regional) federalist model that has brought stability to the country since before it was even a glimmer of a state. If your counterargument to this example is Amir Abdur Rahman and his much-hailed success in bringing a centralized government to the lawless heart of Central Asia (or Turko-Persia, as Barfield insists), Barfield is prepared with one of his "caveats and fair warnings." Using the Iron Amir as your model for a stable, centralized state only works if you disregard the amount of internally directed violence, intentional underdevelopment and cultivated xenophobia it took him to maintain power throughout his reign.

Barfield presents a deeper and broader reading of Afghan history through the use of two heuristic tools: Pierre Bourdieu's notion of "habitus" and Fernand Braudel's "longue dureé." Habitus encompasses an examination of the implicit assumptions and understandings that frame all elements of daily life, while the longue dureé reveals continuities of material, social and political life by collapsing the unit of temporal analysis from decades to centuries. Such an approach draws out contextually valid lessons where more limited or time-bound overviews can produce potentially harmful inaccuracies.

An important example of this technique comes early on, relative to the role of Islam in Afghan society. Examined as part of a rapid reaction to the Taliban's role in 9/11, Islam in Afghanistan was diagnosed as an ideologically-driven, fundamentalist and virulent strain of the religion warranting an invasion and the side-lining of religious actors in piecing the state back together. Viewed through the lenses of habitus and longue dureé, however, Islam in Afghanistan emerges as an "all-encompassing" way of life rather than an ideology, a cultural ethos that frames every interaction and relationship, from the most personal to the highest levels of public life. In this sense, while Islam cannot be separated from Afghan politics, the relationship is much more descriptive than prescriptive. If the Communist movement failed due to an ideology that sought to eradicate Islam, the Taliban were just as unpopular for trying to force their own ideologically-driven view of Islam on Afghan society. Understanding that may have affected plans for the invasion, just as deeper comprehension of how Afghan religiosity, culture and custom are intertwined could be applied to the development and implementation of more acceptable and effective social reforms in Afghanistan today.

Barfield applies this wider, deeper lens to several other key themes throughout the paper, which deserve mentioning here. The persistence and re-emergence of Afghanistan's regions do not portend national fracture as much as they reflect the degree of stability achieved through a "Swiss cheese" model of the state, in which a hierarchical political organization rooted in the centre was checked and balanced against more egalitarian, local governance structures in the periphery. Concomitantly, popular emphasis on ethnicity as a chronic source of tension belies the extent to which opportunism rules in Afghanistan, both socially and politically. By misconstruing this fact, policy-makers have crafted for themselves a predetermined set of acceptable answers to questions that are inherently more complex, from how Afghanistan's political system must be structured to how Afghan citizens' reactions to political and legislative reform should be interpreted.

Likewise, misunderstandings of how political legitimacy is achieved and maintained alongside a misreading of historical reactions to foreign intervention, has had a considerable and unfortunate effect on policy-making over the last decade. In the eyes of both ordinary and elite Afghans, political legitimacy is something fought for and sustained by a combination of force, dynastic filiations, and effective re-distribution of resources. It is established not when it is won, but when the leader proves himself effective and resilient. At the same time, foreign intervention has never been categorically unwelcome in Afghanistan as long as it remains more of benefit than a cost to the Afghan people. It is no secret that foreign exchange is, and historically has been, the lifeblood of the Afghan economy; the trick lies in how the discourse surrounding these relationships is managed. More successful Afghan leaders have deployed a dual approach, expressing their undying friendship to foreign intervenors behind closed doors, while to its citizens, debasing any interference with national sovereignty. Intimately familiar with this shadow play, the Afghan people follow along - up to the point when circumstances require the real king-makers to step forward, when expectations and the need for external guidance are at their highest pitch. (A particularly adept illustration of this lies in the catalyst of the second Anglo-Afghan War: British forces' refusal to provide back pay to Afghan soldiers neglected by national leaders.)

The world looks very different through American eyes, however. Because political legitimacy is established through elections, the proof is in the winning. Fearing their status was more precarious with the Afghan people than it was, and out of respect for the form of democracy they had worked to establish, U.S. and other international power-brokers were unwilling to appear to have influenced the election in any way. Barfield's description of the impact of this gap in legibility is brilliant and harrowing:

"[The United States' hesitance] puzzled the Afghans. By having an army in the country the United States was already up to its eyeballs in Afghanistan's domestic affairs. But because bringing democracy to Afghanistan was one of the benchmarks of success that the U.S. government had set for itself, it would be up to the Afghan electorate to show Karzai the door. The Afghans, however, convinced that it was the United States that would choose their next president, saw no reason to risk opposing the existing regime until the United States made its own intentions clear by implicitly anointing another candidate or making it apparent that it would welcome alternative leadership.

In this gap of mutual incomprehensibility, Karzai saw an open path to reelection in spite of the high levels of domestic and international opposition to his government, which in most other countries would have doomed his prospects. In the absence of American opposition, the Afghans would presume Karzai remained the U.S. choice and blame it for the failings of his regime. The United States would resign itself to defending the principle of 'people's choice' and blame the Afghans for failing to appreciate the responsibilities that came with a democracy." (330-1).

Although Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History is incredibly well researched and composed, Barfield is perhaps overly reliant on the distinctions he uses to frame his arguments. These include, among others, Ibn Khaldoun's desert versus sedentary civilizations, hierarchical/egalitarian social models, centre/periphery, urban/rural, and the effects of education/illiteracy. Although it is easy to miss, Barfield asserts that these binaries are not sealed off from one another, but are semi-autonomous - consistently interacting and influencing one another over time. Further, Barfield is insistent that although the cultural and political patterns he identifies remain strong in the national consciousness, they are far from set in stone. War, extensive displacement, natural disasters, educational developments, regional and global politics and the rise of telecommunications, have all worked to inextricably transform Afghanistan as a people and a nation. Regional federalism today would not resemble that which came before it, yet this does not mean that such patterns do not hold valuable lessons for the development of modern solutions.

Overall, Barfield is successful in his attempts to render the history of Afghanistan legible to the trained or casual reader. His clear and approachable writing style, use of narrative, metaphor and personal stories to illustrate his arguments, thoroughness and quickness of pace, and his clear personal joy, investment and fascination with the country make this a highly readable - and more - digestible, historical account. He offers an analysis that intimately connects the march of history to what gives it its meaning - social, cultural, and political context. As a bonus, if one goes looking for answers to some of the most pressing policy decisions of the day, they are there. (The one glaring exception to this reader was thoughts on how to help the Afghan people overcome the autoimmune disorder of ungovernability.) But these are the answers of an anthropologist and historian with his own biases and commitment to the longue dureé - something which may not appeal to everyone, or more to the point, to their constituents. It is, in the end, a fascinating read and a tremendous resource, but like Afghanistan itself - only if we see it for what it is, as opposed to what we demand it to be.

Rebecca Gang