learning from swat pathans

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Learning from the Swat Pathans: Political Leadership in Afghanistan, 1978-97

Author(s): David B. EdwardsSource: American Ethnologist, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Nov., 1998), pp. 712-728Published by: Wileyon behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/645862.

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learningfromthe Swat Pathans:politicalleadershipin Afghanistan,1978-97

DAVID B. EDWARDS-Williams College

FredrikBarth's Political Leadership among Swat Pathans (1959) stands out as one of theclassics of political anthropology. Intended partiallyas a corrective to E. E. Evans-Pritchard'semphasis on social structureas the keyto understandingpolitical relationships intribalsocieties,Barth emphasized the role of individual initiative and choice in the creation of politicalauthority. In shiftingattention from social structure o the individual, Barth's work is a criticalmilestone in the development of anthropological theory, presaging the rise of rational choiceand practice theory. Barth'sstudy of the Swat Pathans (now more commonly referredto asPakhtuns) n Pakistan also generated one of the more interestingdebates within anthropology.Indeed, debates over Barth'swork (1959, 1981, 1985), Evans-Pritchard'study of the Nuer ofthe Sudan (1940) and Edmund Leach's of the Kachin in Burma(1970[1954]) are at the centerof anthropology's contributionto political theory.'All this being said, it is mystifying and troubling that this rich vein of ethnographicallygrounded theory has been almost entirely ignored in explanations of the now almost twenty-year-old civil war in Afghanistan.The Afghan border is justa few hundred miles from Swat, asthe crow flies. The Afghan border region is inhabited predominantly by Pakhtunswho speakthe same dialect and share the same genealogical and mythic charter, the same forms ofeconomic livelihood, religious beliefs, and ethos and understandingof life and death as thepeople of Swat. Most importantfor the purposes of this discussion, Afghan Pakhtuns'politicaltraditionsconsist of the same rangeof diverse formsas inthe northwestfrontierregionof Pakistanthat includes Swat.

The fact that the Swat literaturehas been so widely ignored would certainly seem to implythat-for all the sound and fury within the discipline-sociocultural anthropologists actuallypractice their profession in something of a soundproof room. Physical anthropologists studyinghominid origins and archaeologists who discover some significant new site will see theircontributionsdiscussed in the news, but social and culturalanthropologistsare primarilygoodfornovelty value, forproducing human interest storiesrather han serious analyses of social andpolitical issues, as anyone who has monitored the newspaper stories written each year at thetime of the AmericanAnthropological Association convention is aware. Intryingto explain whyBarth'sanalysis of Pakhtun political leadership has been overlooked in explanations of the

The conflict in Afghanistan, now two decades old, has generated considerableattention from ournalists,policy analysts, and political scientists, but the literatureon the conflict includes few references to the work of FredrikBarthon politicalleadership among the Swat Pakhtunsof neighboring Pakistan. Here I explore therelevance of Barth'swork to an analysis of the war in Afghanistan.Inparticular, Iexamine Barth's methodological individualism and compare his approach withalternativeapproaches advanced by three of hisprincipalcritics:TalalAsad, AkbarS. Ahmed, and Michael Meeker. [Afghanistan,Pakistan,political authority,Islam]American Ethnologist25(4):712-728. Copyright ? 1998, AmericanAnthropological Association.

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Afghancivil war, other factors come to mind beyond the relative invisibilityof anthropology inthe outside world. The first,and perhapsmostobvious, reason is that the Afghancivil war mightreasonably appear to represent a very differentphenomenon than what Barth and his criticswere talking about. Afghanistanis embroiled in a conflict that began with a Marxist revolution(1978), which spawned a popular insurrection,which, in turn, led to invasion by the SovietUnion (1979). In the years that followed, a hydra-headed Islamic guerrilla movement devel-oped, resistingand eventually dislodging the Soviets, before turningon itself in an internecinecivil war that continues today.In this article, I argue that our understandingof the Afghan conflict can be considerablyimproved by considering it in lightof Barth'swork and the critical debate around it. Iexaminechanging patternsof political leadership among Afghan Pakhtuns in light of what Barthandothers have written about political leadership in Swat. Before moving onto Afghanistanand thecomparative discussion, however, Iwill summarize Barth'sstudy and the critiques put forwardby TalalAsad, AkbarS. Ahmed, and Michael Meeker.2The central problem of Barth's study was to explore the kinds of relationships that areestablished between persons in Swat, the way in which these may be systematically manipulatedto build up positions of authority,and the varietyof politically corporate groups which result(1959:2). Barth'sproject among the Swat Pakhtun has focused primarilyon the contractualrelationshipsestablished by Pakhtun khans (landowners)with tenants and followers. In Barth'swords, Each chief establishes, as it were, a central island of authority, in the form of a men'shouse group, in a politically amorphous sea of villagers. Fromthis centre his authorityextendsoutwards with decreasing intensity (1959:91). Traditionally,a chief's area of authority wastemporary, in large part because of the custom of periodic land redistribution,but even withthe end of land redistribution,Barth ndicated that there was considerable flux in the composi-tion of differentfactions because of the changing fortunes of individualchiefs and the continuingability of followers to shift their allegiance to a different leader.The second focus of Barth's concern was with leaders he referred to as Saints whoseauthority is premised on their association with Islam. In contrast to khans, whose successrequiresa reputationfor self-assertivenessand ruthless defense of their interests,well-regardedsaints will have established a reputation for moderation, piety, indifference to physicalpleasure, as well as wisdom, knowledge, and control of mystical forces (Barth 1959:101).Cultivationof these qualities, along with a dignified, pacific mannerand disciplined observanceof Islamic rituals,confirms villagers' respect for saints; in some cases, saints inspire awe andveneration. In Barth'swords, a reputationfor holiness

gives heiropinionsgreatweight,particularlymong he morepiousorgullible ectionsof thepopulation,and thus contributeso theirpolitical nfluence.Utilizing uch a reputation, verbally acile Saintcanvery profoundlynfluencecommunity pinion,bothamongthe bodyof villagers,by setting hemupagainsthedominantandlords, ndamong he landlordshemselves,by changing heirpointof vieworthreateninghemwithaccusations f heterodoxy.1959:102]The perspective employed by Barthin Political Leadership among Swat Pathans does notallow any shorthandlanguage whereby patterns, ineage-systems, exploitation and class, or anyother macro-feature is described as 'reproducing itself' (1981:129). The various forms of

political relationship Barth documented in Swat all emerge from process in which peopleexercise judgment and act with intent under the circumstances in which they find them-selves-whether the aggregate consequences of their separate and collective acts are indeedwhat they wished and sought, or are unwanted (perhaps even unperceived) by themselves(1981:130). Society in Swat thus emerges as an aggregate of all these choices, wherebypersons in a wide range of dissimilar opportunitysituations purposely and inadvertently shapetheirown life histories and those of others (1981:131).

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Inhis critiqueof Barth,published in Man in 1972, Talal Asad criticized Barth's ocus on freechoice as the central operating principle of Swat society. InAsad's view it was not free choicebut the presence of a sovereign landowning class that was the key to political leadership inSwat. This meant thatthesystemdoes notregulatetselfas itwere after heconsentof all participantsas been obtained. t sregulated y a dominant lass of landownerswhoexploit he landless.Once theagrarianlassstructureisrecognized s the basicpoliticalact... it becomesno longerpossible o representhepolitical ystemasessentiallymadeupof opposingblocsindynamic quilibrium, systemwhich issimply he result fa multitude f choices. [Asad1972:82]

Pakhtun khans acquire their political authority through their control of scarce land and theirmembership in a dominant class, not by persuading freely consenting individuals to becometheir political followers. The key to Swat political life, then, is not, as Barth has argued, thetransactions of individual leaders and followers and the dyadic contracts that emerge out ofthose transactions. Barth's ndividualistic, contractual market model masks the fact that land iscontrolled by a relatively small number of men who are in a position to dominate and exploitthose without land. This is not a free market,in Asad's view; rather,it is class domination.AkbarS. Ahmed's critique of Barth'sportraitof the Swat Pakhtunappears in Millennium andCharismaamong Pathans,published in 1976. Ahmed's main criticism is that Barth'swork failedto come to grips with the rise of a state system within the boundaries of Swat, a state systemcentered on the charismatic figureof the Wali(ruler)who, in contradiction to the self-interestedkhans,did much to improve the lives of his subjects. Ahmed arguesthat this omission stems inlarge part from the fact that Barth did not make several important distinctions crucial tounderstandingpolitical developments in Swat. The first of these, according to Ahmed, distin-guishes between nang (honor-bound) Pakhtuns and qalang (rent-paying) Pakhtuns. NangPakhtunsgenerally inhabit the mountainous fringe of the Pakhtun universe where the land ispoor and life is harsh;nang societies are acephalous and segmentary in structure,and codes ofconduct are bound by traditional codes of honor. Qalang Pakhtuns, on the other hand, arehierarchical;they inhabit tracts of fertile land that produce large marketable surpluses; theirpatternsof social interaction are asymmetricaland structuredless by Pakhtunwali(the Pakhtuncode of honor)than by the economics of patron-client relations. According to Ahmed,

Barth'snalysisreatsSwat argely s if it werein theacephalous, egmentary nang ribal ategory..[but]heWali's mergencewaspossibleonlyinthe qalang reasbecauseof the stratifiedndpyramidalnatureof society.... The stratified atureof Swat qalang ocietyenableda homologousbutvastlyenlargedpaternalistictate o be imposedon it withoutmuchfriction. 1976:81]Ahmed also criticizes Barth or his treatmentof religious leaderswhich, according to Ahmed,fails to differentiate between the relatively debased occupational and lineage groups who

represent everyday forms of Islamic observance and extraordinary,charismatic leaders con-nected to various Sufi traditionsof mystical Islamicbelief and practice:Whereashe orthodox mullah andalso Barthianaints ) orkwithin hevillagesocialorganization,and in practicewith the good will of the Khan, he Sufi worksoutside the villageorganization ndestablished ormative atternsf socialbehaviour.Ahmed1976:55]

In contrastto Marxistand Barthianman (as 'maximizing entrepreneur') who confront[s] hematerialworld, comprehend[s] it and wish[es] to possess it, the Sufi s in the world but not ofit... he confronts it, comprehends and then rejects it (Ahmed 1976:88).Most charismatic Sufi leaders, Ahmed admits, appear at times of crisis to galvanize popularsentiments and then disappear when the crisis is over. But some charismatic leaders succeedin routinizing their authority, and this is possible because people recognize the leader as an

example of some larger, transcendent phenomenon. In the case of the Swat, the Akhund ofSwat, the spiritual founder of the Swat dynasty, was able to rise above the fray of everydaypolitics because he was viewed by the people of Swat as exemplary of a model of ascetic piety




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associated with the prophetMuhammad and other great Sufi figureswho have followed in hiswake. In failing to see the qualitative differences between local saintly lineages and thoseconnected to the wider Sufic traditionsof Islam,Barthprecluded any possibilityof understandingthe origins of the Swatstate,which began with the saintly person of the Akhund,passed througha stage of intense millenarianferment at the end of the 19th century, and ended up with theestablishment of the Swat stateby one of the Akhund'sgrandsons inthe firstdecades of the 20thcentury.The thirdcritic I will discuss here is Michael Meeker, whose article TheTwilightof a SouthAsian Heroic Age: A Rereadingof Barth'sStudyof Swat appeared in Man in 1980. Inresponseto the arguments of Asad and Ahmed to the effect that Barthplaced too much stress on thelandlordsand overemphasized conflict, Meeker bluntly disagrees, arguingthat Barth orrectlyinsists on the role of pragmaticand rational strategies in connexion with the use of force and aresortto coercion (1980:685). Ifanything, Meeker contends, Barth underplays he disruptive-ness of a quest for personal advantage in the political history of Swat, by seeing perduringconflict as partof a workingsystem of leaders and groupings rather han as a calamity that leftits markon Swat political experience (1980:685).In Meeker's view, political leadership in Swat is shaped by the historical experience of aheroic people -the YusufzaiPakhtun-whose cultural idioms were shaped by aprogressiverationalisationof popular political traditions around the organised exercise of force. Heroicidentity, according to Meeker, turns upon personal strategies and personal instrumentsdevoted to force and coercion (1980:682-683). As such, the hero has no place in a highlydeveloped agrarian society. He is a disruptive element in a situation where wealth is derivedfromdiligence and cooperation (Meeker 1980:687). Meeker's position, itshould be noted, hassome kinship with Ahmed's ideal-type dichotomy between nang and qalang Pakhtuns,but hedisagrees with Ahmed's argumentthat Barth has inaccurately characterized Swat Pakhtunsasrepresentativeof the nang category and thereby confused the issue of how it was possible fora state system to develop in this context.Heroic or nang values were superimposed upon agrarianorqalang society, Meekerargues,which is the reason Swat is proneto violence. And, in contrast to Ahmed's portraitof charismaticSufis in the world but not of it, Meeker views saints as themselves entangled in the logic ofpower in Swat: As leaders of followings, as competitors with other saints with followings, andas men whose role as peace-makers require [sic] them to exercise authorityover chiefs, theytoo are tainted by a quest for influence and prestige (1980:697). ForMeeker, Barth'sprincipalmistake is not in having conflated ideal-type categories but in having resorted to establishedparadigmsof social integrationwhen the evidence would supportthe opposite conclusion-thatthe processes he was describing were characteristic of a society out of balance with itself. Forall his efforts to differentiate himself from structural-functionalistslike Radcliffe-Brown andEvans-Pritchard,Barthwas limited by a vision of society as a self-balancing structure withinter-locking functions (Meeker 1980:683). Unable to perceive degenerative processes inpolitical experience that are out of control, [Barthhas] not fully appreciated the darker side ofinstitutionsas a temporary tabilisationof injusticein the form of organisedviolence (1980:684).

political leadership in AfghanistanIwill change venues now, fromSwat to Afghanistan,while keeping one eye focused on Barthand his critics. Inorder to simplify and streamline this discussion of the evolution of political

leadership in Afghanistan,Iwill break down the now 19-year-old conflict intoa series of stages,which suggest themselves to this analysis not only because they involve discernibly differentpatterns of political leadership but also because each illuminates something pertinent to theperspective and concerns of one of Barth's critics. In my discussion of these perspectives and




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concerns in the context of particularhistoricalevents, I will elucidate what happened and whyand assess the applicabilityof Barth'sand his critics' approaches to the world beyond Swat.The firststage of the conflict extended from April 1978, when the MarxistKhalqpartytookpower in Afghanistan,throughDecember 1979, when the Soviet Union abandoned all pretenseof being an interestedally and took control of the government in Kabul.Inexamining this period,Talal Asad's analysis of the class underpinnings of political domination is clearly the mostpertinent, since it was in this period that the Marxistgovernment tried to manipulate classanimosities in order to mobilize a popular movement in supportof its revolution.The second stage was much longer, lasting most of the decade from 1980 until the Sovietwithdrawal in 1989. This was the period in which seven Islamic political partiesheadquarteredacross the border in Peshawar, Pakistan,came to control the resistance movement against theSoviet-backed regime in Kabul. In analyzing this protracted period of the war, I will focusprimarilyon the applicability of Akbar S. Ahmed's contention that, in Swat, Islam provided abinding force against the corrosive competition of khans, thereby fundamentallytransformingthe conditions of political action and social life.

The thirdstage, lasting roughlyfrom 1989 until the rise to preeminence of the Taliban militiain 1995, was a period in which the power of the Peshawar-based leaders began to wane. Intheir place, local warlords and commanders became increasingly autonomous and predatoryin their relationshipwith local people. Given the antagonistic relationshipbetween leaders andfollowers, which I believe was at the heart of political relationships during this period, I willrefer primarilyto Michael Meeker's work, which is potentially the most useful in explicatingthis stage of the conflict.Finally, I will discuss the fourthand currentstage of the conflict, which extends from 1995to the present, during which the Taliban militia has gradually exerted control over all but ahandful of provinces in the northern part of Afghanistan. This is in many respects the most

difficult stage to characterize, in partbecause it is ongoing and least fully studied, and in partbecause it seems in many respects anomalous, especially in relation to the positions outlinedby Barthand his critics.

first stage: class mobilization and popular dissent, 1978-79The Marxist KhalqPartytook power in Afghanistanon April 27, 1978, via a military coupd'etat. At the time of the coup, the party's support was limited almost entirely to cadres in the

government, university,and militaryofficer corps. This situation requiredthat the partyexpandits base of supportto other sectors of society. To accomplish this end, the party promulgated aseries of reforms intended to appeal to those whom they viewed as their naturalconstituency,such as tenant farmersand landless agriculturallaborers.Among the reformswere measures toredistribute argelandholdingsand eliminate mortgagesand other instrumentsbywhich peasantfarmers had traditionallylost their land to creditors.In addition, the party began an intensive propaganda campaign designed to cast traditionalkhans and religious leadersas feudal ordsresponsible forkeeping the Afghanmasses enslavedand impoverished. Using radio,television, and rallies in every town of any size throughoutthecountry, the Khalqbroadcast its message that a new era of class strugglehad begun, that theparty for the firsttime had given the poor and disenfranchised the upper hand, and that inpartnership he partyand the people would revolutionize Afghan society. Insteadof joining thispartnership,however, the vast majorityof Afghans-poor and wealthy alike-took up armstooverthrow the regime in Kabul. Despite offers of free land and the government's promise tocancel outstanding debts, village after village initiated attacks against government offices,schools, and military posts, so that one year later by the spring of 1979, the government had




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essentially lost control of the countryside and, with it, all hopes of instituting its promisedrevolution.3On the surface, it would appear that the political program promulgated by the Khalqiswas

premised on an understandingof Afghan society congruent with Asad's analysis of Swat, andethnographic descriptions frombefore the war indicate that wealth differentialsof the sort foundin Swat are similar to those found in many, if not most, areas of Afghanistan.4The questionarises, then, why, when given the opportunity,those who had most to gain by a class-basedrevolution promising a fairerdistributionof resources did not side with the Marxists. There isnot a simple answer to this question. Women's education, government interference indomesticaffairs,the disrepute of many of those who flocked to the partyafter the revolution-all of thesehave been cited as reasons for the revolution'sfailure. Inmy own research, however, the reasonthat I have most often encountered centers on the regime's disparaging treatment of elites andtheir unwanted glorification of peasant suffering.One of the principaltactics of the revolution from the firstwas to brand landowners, of evenmodest means, as feudals in order to separate them from the larger number of landlesspeasants, tenant farmers,and agriculturalworkers.Thiswas to be the primarymeans by whichthe partywould jump-startthe revolution, the assumption being that there was a widespreadunderlying antagonism against the wealthy thatfew were willing to express openly. Revolution-ary strategy focused on ways of harnessing this antagonism, primarily by committing thegovernment to supporting the poor against the rich. The failure of this plan was dramaticevidence of how blinded the Khalqishad become by socialist dogma and how out of touchthey were with their own people. As Barfieldhas noted,

Since. . . absentee andlordswerefew, [theKhalqi overnment]ook landfrom ocalowner-operators.Thisgenerated reat, ometimes iolentopposition,ora man's and s his livelihood. nsmallkin-basedcommunities,akingand romone segment fthevillageandgiving ttoanother, rbringingnoutsidersrunsafoulof thecomplexweb of social relationshatbindthepeople.[1981:46]Barth has writtenof Swat that leadershipwas premised on securingthe respect of all majorsectors of... society, and this in turn engendered on the partof politically active khans a

comprehensive sensitivityto a host of culturallydefined limits and standardsfor the exercise ofpower and prestige (1985:1 79). The same could be said of khans in Afghanistanwho were tiedto their communities by a varietyof reciprocal expectations that obliged them to recycle muchof theirwealth back to their followers and farmers n the form of hospitality, ritualexpenditures,and salaries. Inmost partsof Afghanistaninthe 1970s, the economy was not heavily monetized,and though Jon Anderson and others have written that the practice of big landowners takingtheir profitsout of the community for investment elsewhere was beginning to appear inthe early1970s, it was common for the wealthy-in Afghanistanas in Swat-to reinvest their profitsinkeeping up a men's house and maintaininga cohort of allies and followers (see Anderson 1978).The other half of the ideological equation-glorifying peasants as heroic in their povertyand exploitation-was equally misconceived. One of the Khalqitactics for encouraging thisperception was to hold rallies in villages throughout the country during the course of whichformerly landless peasants would be broughtforward to receive deeds to recently confiscatedland. Inmost cases this tactic backfired,as manyof the peasantswho were placed inthis positionfound it humiliatingto be recognized publicly for their economic misfortunes. The categoriesintoned time and again by the Khalqisin reference to the ruralpoor-terms such as exploitedmasses, strugglingpeasantry, long sufferingtoilers -carried an ignominious connotationfor most Afghans, for whom the status of victim was insulting.5 Likewise, there was littlesympathy for the notion that large landowners were to be condemned for their fortuneor thatit was justifiedto refer to them as cruelfeudals, bloodthirstyexploiters, or any of the otherextreme terminology used to describe those with sizable landholdings. Landownersreceivedtheir bounty because of the deeds of their ancestors in the past and their own actions in the




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present, and so long as they fulfilled societal expectations by returninga portionof their wealthback to the community through the guesthouse and various ritual acts of redistribution,fewbegrudged them their good fortune. Likewise, it was also understood that those who tilled theland and worked for others received their due, and few expected more from society or soughtglory in this world for the sufferingsthey had encountered.

In applying Asad's argumentsto the Afghan context, I found that while the events of 1978and 1979 do not necessarily refute his contention as to the importance of class structure inPakhtunsociety (formsof class stratificationcertainlydid exist), they would appearto contradicthis argumentas to the absence of free will among those subject to the authorityof the Pakhtunlandowning class, unless one wanted to argue that the poor suffered from an extreme form offalse consciousness that blinded them to their own exploitation even when offered theopportunity by the Khalqis of freeing themselves from their shackles. In my own view,Afghanistan simply had not traveled farenough down the road of stratification,monetization,and disenfranchisementfor its people to be seriously attractedby Marxistrhetoric.Inthis sense,it might be argued that the failure of the revolution was that it came too early, and in a tribaland peasant society in which class divisions had not hardened and in which wealthy and poorwere still bound by ties of common descent and reciprocal obligation that faroutweighed theclass divisions crucial to Khalqipartyrhetoric.To the extent that Asad's critique of Barthhinges on the notion (1) that class is the centralpolitical realityand (2) that the differential control of economic resources so severely distortspeople's options that the poor are not in fact able to exercise free choice, it must be said thatthis position is not relevant in the Afghancontext, especially in comparison to Barth'semphasison individual initiative for landowners and tenants alike, which seems farmore readilyto squarewith the facts. But Asad's critique has a second aspect as well, which has to do with theappropriateness of employing a synchronic analysis. Thus, Asad ends his article on Swat byarguingthat Barth's ynchronic analysis precludes accounting eitherfor the increasing disparityin economic and political power in Swat or for the fact that the landowning class wasaccumulating ever more effective means for dominating and exploiting the landless. Whetheremergent patternsof class division mighthave become more evident and decisive inAfghanistanis a question overtaken by subsequent events; however, I agree with Asad's reservations as tothe limits of a synchronic analysis such as that employed in Barth'soriginal monograph forgrappling with realities that are as complexly interrelated and historically contingent as thosewe encounter in Afghanistanand in Swat.

second stage: the ascendancy of Islamic political parties, 1980-89Following the Soviet invasion in December 1979, the antigovernmentresistance movement

changed in fundamentalways, especially with regardto the importanceof Islam. The ideologi-cal dimension of thischange became apparentto me when Istartedexamining poetry composedby local tribal poets and recorded on cassette tapes at various stages of the war.6 Poetry fromthe firstperiod of the war tended to be hortatory, centering around symbols of honor, descent,and heroic action. Bythe early 1980s, however, the poetry had changed, most obviously in thenew centralityof Islamic symbols and the absence of honor-based imagery. The organizationof the conflict changed as well. Earlyon, groups banded together in traditional forms ofassociation to make decisions on tactics and operations. Forexample, attacksagainst govern-ment bases were generally preceded by tribaljirgas (councils) at which the elder and middle-aged men of the community did most of the speaking and made all of the decisions. Militaryaction would then be organized throughtraditionalorganizational structures,such as the triballashkar (army),which generally mirroredthe social organization of the group as a whole inbeing nonhierarchicaland segmentary n structure.Overtime, these formsof militaryorganization




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proved maladapted to the demands of the war, and they were also superseded, in this case bysmaller, more mobile units answering to resistance parties in Peshawar rather than localcouncils.

Inmaking sense of these developments, Ahmed's analysis of Islamic transformations n Swatwould seem to be an appropriateresource. Ahmed noted a Weberian and vectorial qualityin thedevelopment of types of authority n Swat (1976:140), from he patriarchal raditionalauthorityof the . . . Khans to the emergence of charismatic leadership . . . and the institution-alization of charisma in the State (1976:17). In the Afghan context, too, transformation ofpolitical leadership had a Weberian and vectorial quality, in the sense that traditionalpatriarchal authority gave way to charismatic authority that was later institutionalized insomething resembling a state bureaucracy. Thus the political parties emerged in Peshawar inpart because traditional local forms of resistance, steeped in local rivalries, had proveninadequate to meet a well-armed and organized externalenemy. Recognizing these limitations,people looked for unity and leadership among charismatic individuals and religiously basedpolitical formations.These formsof leadershiptranscended local contexts, connecting commu-nities to largerpatternsand institutionalarrangementsin the Islamic world at large. Over time,charisma was institutionalizedthroughthe administrativeorgans of the political partieswhich,in addition to their military functions, took on many of the civil, economic, and politicalresponsibilities of a government in exile.A cursoryexamination of the situationwould thus seem to indicate that Ahmed's analysis hasconsiderable relevance to the conflict in Afghanistan;however, its relevance is limited in waysthat Barth'sis not. My argument is based on several ethnographic points. First, he ideologicaltransformationfrom tribal honor to Islamoccurred differently in Afghanistanthan in Swat (asperceived by Ahmed). InAfghanistan,the most immediate precipitant of change was not-asAhmed's analysis might lead us to expect-the stirringof an atavistic renewal of Islamicspiritbroughtabout by the presence on Afghansoil of a foreign, atheistic invader. According to manyinformantswith whom I spoke, the most profound impact of the Soviet invasion was, rather,adeep sense of dread and uncertainty generated by the sudden appearance of helicopters, MiGjets, and artillery barrages. The modern machinery of war thus created a crisis of confidencethat dampened the euphoria accompanying early victories against the Khalq government andcaused people to reconsider the larger significance of the conflict and how it had to be fought.Poems composed duringthe firststage of the war include lines intended to spur men of thepresentday to acts of heroism reminiscentof ancestral feats (see Edwards1993). The disparity,however, between poetic images of ancient battlesfoughtwith swords and rifles and the realitiesof high-tech modern warfare was dramatic.Perhapseven more destabilizing was the indiscrimi-nate manner and scale with which the new style of combat annihilated people. References toheroic combat were no longer appropriateor resonant in this setting. Islam helped to fill thisvoid, but the Islam that came to the fore was not that of charismatic saints who turned enemybullets to water as in an earlier era in Swat. Miracles and saints were no more plausible orrelevant in the context of modern warfare than heroic ancestors. What did resonate was thepromise of immortalityand eternal paradise.Poems of honor also promised that those who died in battle would earn the immortalityoftribal remembrance, but Islam offered the more comprehensive pledge of eternal paradise,which was especially potent in a situation in which the continued existence of any individualcommunity-the unit within which memory and honor were preserved-was uncertain. Itwasthus not the promise of charismathat was at the center of Islam'sattraction,but the nihilismofimpersonalconflict as experienced inthe late 20th century, a fact well understood bythe Islamicpolitical partiesthat began publishing magazines and newspapers fully given over to the subjectof martyrdom.Originating in the early 1980s, these publications featured various theologicaland historicalessays on martyrdom,but most of their pages were devoted to pictures and short




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obituaries of partymembers killed in battle. Throughthese publications, the memorializationof individual casualties also strengthenedthe authorityof the partyas moral arbiterof value andmeaning in the conflict.7

Turningto organizational aspects of the transition from tribal and village organizations tomore centralized partyorganization in Afghanistan, it is apparent that charismatic leadershipin itself was again not a significant factor. Inthe competitive climate of Peshawar in the early1980s, with seven political parties all tryingto get an edge up on their rivals,the decision as towhich leader to follow was generally determined by (in Barthian ashion) a rational calculationof which partycould produce more goods. Thus,the typical situation around 1980 was that themen of any given tribe found themselves in desperate need of weapons, ammunition, andsupplies. Insteadof ending in a few months, as generally happened in the past and as mighthave happened once again hadthe Soviets not intervened,this conflict continued for more thana year after the first skirmishes. The existing organization had no dedicated apparatus forprocuring supplies of any sort;to the contrary,the tribal ethos explicitly militated against thecreation of such an apparatusbecause of the difficultyof convincing a tribesman to accept anonbattlefield assignment that would preclude his participation as a full equal of his tribalcousins. Additionally,the egalitarian nature of Pakhtuntribes stood in the way of any centrali-zation of command, as members from collateral branches rarelyacquiesced to the authorityofany one of their number.While the need forweapons, ammunition, and supplies persisted,tribesmen in the mountainsheard radio reportsover the BBC about the political partiesthen forming in Peshawar. Rumorsreached the frontsthat the partieswere distributingweapons to those who joined. Atfirst,manytribesmen-particularly those with established influence-resisted this path, being unwilling toaccept the leadership of a mulla (low-level religious leader). But not everyone felt this way. Inparticular,rivals of those with established influence saw the parties in Peshawar as a means forincreasing their own political authority, and accepting a membership card from one of theparties seemed a small price to pay. In this manner, hundreds of tribesmen eventually madetheir way to Peshawar, made contact with one of the parties, and returned a few months laterwith a camel-load of Lee-Enfield rifles. Before long, tribes that had once formed united frontswere riven by factions and an overarching armsracethatchanged the emphasis in many placesfromfightingthe Soviets to gaining an advantageover old rivals. Tribalunitywas thus disrupted,and the endemic factionalism that characterized the partiesin Peshawarwas transferred o thefronts inside Afghanistan.

Contrary, hen, to Ahmed's depiction of Islam's role in Swat, Islam in the Afghan setting hasbeen as divisive as it has been unifying.Also, contrary o Ahmed's sense of the vectors of change,the ultimate direction of change during the period when the Islamic parties first asserted theirdomination over the Afghan resistance was not toward the progressive development andcentralization of social and political institutions but rather toward increasingly brutal andauthoritarian ontrol. Authority n this context centered around gaining tactical advantage overrivalsin the movement and securing the obedience of partymembers. Inthis sense, centraliza-tion of power inthe Afghancontext had most of the negative features of state centralization andvery few of the positive features that both Ahmed and Barthascribe to the Wali's rule in Swat.8While accepting that Ahmed's depiction of the unifying role of charismatic Islamic leaders in19th-century Swat may indeed be accurate, it nevertheless is the case that Islamic leaders inthe Afghan resistance throughthe 1980s had the opposite impact-factionalizing and demor-alizing the population with their incessant scheming and self-interested pursuit of personaladvantage. The world these leaders created thus bears a much closer resemblance to Barth'smodel of rationalpolitical actorscarving out blocs of supportersand savaging rivalsthan itdoesto Ahmed's more idealized image of charismatic visionaries imbuing their followers with anexalted vision of a more perfect society.9




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third stage: warlords and commanders, 1989-95When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, there was a widespread expectationwithin Afghanistan and abroad that the Marxistregime would collapse within weeks. Whilethat collapse did not occur for another three years, the impact of the withdrawal was still

dramatic, in partbecause the regime managed to survive.The regime'sdurabilitydemonstratedthat it was neither so dependent nor so unpopular as most people had assumed. Similarly,withthe Soviet departure,the ideological opposition between Islam and Marxismgrew increasinglyindeterminate. Once again, it was Afghan facing off against Afghan, without any outsidersinterposingthemselves, and thatfact, along with the continued bitterrivalrybetween the Islamicparties, made it altogether unclear what the long conflict had been about or who was in theright. Another critical and related development after the Soviet withdrawal was the gradualdetachment of local commanders from the Peshawar nerve center. With less fighting on theground and far fewer enemy aircraft o contend with, local fronts were no longer so dependenton weapons and supplies as they had been previously. Local frontcommanders were able tooperate more freely, and some used this freedom to develop opportunisticties with governmentrepresentativesin the provincial capitals.When the government collapsed in 1989, the transition was altogetheranticlimactic. Predic-tions of a bloodbath once the Islamic resistance took over the cities never came to pass. To thecontrary,the transitionbetween old and new regimeswas smoother than in many democracies,as Idiscovered when Iwas in Jalalabad,the capital of eastern Ningrahar province, in 1995. Indiscussions with officials of the then-new Islamic government, I was told that many of theofficials of the previous Marxist regime had sold their homes to higher-ups in the newadministrationbefore moving their families and possessions to Peshawar. There they took upresidence, sometimes in the homes of vacating refugees who were moving back to Afghanistan.While there was less outright violence between the old and new regimes than had beenexpected, and the threat of attackby aircraftand artilleryessentially ceased, security in the ruralareas probably worsened as local commanders and tribal khans started preying on their ownpeople to maintain their influence and revenues (both of which had dried up substantiallyasthe Peshawarpartieslost their clout following the departureof the Soviets).On the roadbetweenKabul and Jalalabad,which traditionallyhas been the principal arterylinkingAfghanistanwiththe outside world, there were at least five roadblocks controlled by differenttribes, parties,andwarlords. At each of these roadblocks, every truck, bus, and automobile was subject to searchand seizure, and a sizable road tax was levied. On smaller side roads, similarpractices werefollowed, although once one got off the main thoroughfares,the roadblocks tended to be moreimpromptuaffairs:piles of stones, forexample, or simply a group of men holding kalashnikovs(machine guns) at the ready.

NingraharProvince, where Ispent most of my time during my visit in 1995, was nominallyrun by a provincial shura, or council, but the main function of the shura appeared to be lessrunningthe government than divvying up the spoils of war, with the more powerful officialsand commanders assuming control over those partsof the government that produced the mostrevenue. Chief among the revenue producers were the main customs house, the tollhouse atthe KhyberPass, and Jalalabadairport,where five jetliners reportedly arrivedevery day fromDubai loaded with appliances, VCRs,and other consumer productsthat would eventually maketheir way across the border into Pakistan. While a handful of dominant political leadersassociated with the provincial shuragoverned these most lucrative posts, there was a hierarchyof commanders just below them, some of whom exercised control over greater or lessergovernmental posts and some of whom operated independently as local strongmen in theirvillage or district.




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Statusdifferences between warlords and commanders were reflected most dramatically intheir vehicles, with those at the top end driving Mercedes Benzes and Mitsubishi Pajeros,mid-level commanders moving about in new, air-conditioned Toyota pickup trucks, andlower-rankingcommanders making do with cast-off Soviet jeeps. Another markof a leader'sstatus was the number of bodyguards who accompanied him on his rounds. At various points,Ihad the opportunityto speak with some of these bodyguardsand discovered that few had anyinterest in or knowledge of the larger politics of the Afghanconflict. They simply followed thelead of their commander, and they told me that if at any point their patron decided to join adifferentpolitical party hey would do likewise without any hesitation.While the willingness ofthese men to switch parties might appear to be evidence of their loyalty to their leaders, itappeared to me more the result of necessity in that a strongcommander provided security andopportunities that would otherwise be hard to come by.In making sense of this stage of the conflict, Meeker's thesis concerning the role of heroicpeoples provides an interesting angle of approach. ForMeeker, heroic identity turns uponpersonal strategiesand personal instruments devoted to force and coercion. As such, there is

an individualisticimension othe herowho is oftenspecifically ssociatedwiththedisruptionf polity,societyandevenfamily.As an idealoffolkepics,he was a member fasmallbandof adventurers hoseverywayof life involved xtortion,kidnapping, aiding ndpillaging.And,infact,suchcompanionsnadventurewere oftento be foundon themargins f polityandsociety,uprootedrom heirhomelandsandseparatedrom heir amilies. Meeker 980:682-683]In many respects, this description applies to the organized pillage that went on between 1989and 1995 and that continues on a somewhat reduced scale today under the Taliban. WhileMeeker undoubtedly had camel-riding, sword- and rifle-toting nomads in mind when heemphasized the importanceof personalinstrumentsof force and coercion inthe constructionof heroic identity, the image that comes to my mind when I read these lines is that of thecommander whom Iaccompanied in his shiny new Toyota pickup, five bodyguards squattingin the back, each one with a treasuredAK-47 or a rocket-propelled grenade launcher cradledin his lap.Inhis critiqueof Political Leadershipamong Swat Pathans,Meeker is particularlyharshin hiscriticism of Barth's reatmentof religious leaders as complementing tribal leaders and therebyprovidingfor the foundation of a synchronic political system that is aesthetically balanced andhistorically legitimate Meeker 1980:698). While accepting that theexercise of force by chiefsopens the way for Saintsto play the role of peace-makers, Meeker also recognizes more clearlythan Barth that religious leaders are equally potential agents of disruption and injustice(1980:696). This insight is relevant to Afghanistan. In Afghanistan,the religious parties usedreligious sentiment, especially the constellation of rituals, images, and meanings centered onmartyrdom, o solidifytheirown authority;in the process they not only plunged Afghan societyinto an ever deeper abyss of violence, but also effectively negated the possibility that religioncould act as a force of moderation and peace in the conflict. Barthunderstood the importanceof strategicruthlessnessto the success of the Badshah of Swat, the founder of the Swat dynasty,but the Badshah'sruthlessness as it is depicted by Barth s ultimatelydirected toward a positiveand benevolent project. What is absent in Barth's analysis but more readily identifiable inMeeker's is the irrationalmalevolence that can pervade a heroic culture and the corruptandcynical uses to which religious commitments and initiatives can be directed.

The new technologies of warfare make Meeker's analysis even more pertinentthan in 1980since the proliferationof light automatic weapons and four-wheel-drive vehicles capable ofnegotiatingunmaintainedroadshas fractured he monopoly that states and state-aligned armieshave held-at least in recent centuries-over the use of force and coercion. Inharkeningbackto an earlier,prestateera of disruptiveviolence, Meeker thus foreshadows the advent of an evenmore pernicious form of violence: namely, that involving small, mobile bands of young men,




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disconnected fromany restraining ies of kinshipor social obligation other than their loyalty toindividual commanders. Meeker's article provides a useful supplement and partialcorrectiveto Barth'swork, especially in the way that itopens Barth'sanalysis to largerhistorical patterns,especially patternsof disruptiveforces.10As much as any contemporary anthropologist,Meekeris sensible to the role of violence in culture and to thedarker side of institutions that stabilizeinjustice by organised violence (1980:682). Meeker'sanalysis challenges Barth'sassumptionsby stressingthe importanceof irrationalaspects of political experience thatare relatively mutedin Barth'swork.

Evenso, Iwonder if Meeker, writing in 1980, pushes his point farenough, at least so far aspre-Taliban Afghanistan is concerned. Afghan politics were then beset by predatory violencethat undermines the assumption of rationalagency associated with khans and heroes. Thus, inrelation to commanders-those who mightbe said to representheroic agency inAfghanistan-areputation for unpredictable violence came to matter as much as the traditional skills of apolitical leader. Insuch a climate, even the type of ruthlessness Barthattributesto successfulleaders like Badshah Sahib of Swat is inadequate to capture the quality of violence somenotorious commanders wielded in pursuitof their interests.InAfghanistan, ruthlessness some-times gave way to violence that could be at turns sadistic, capricious, or simply malevolent.Not all commanders were like this, of course, but even a few men with a reputation forunpredictable and disproportionate violence can overturn the rational assumptions of themajorityand render political negotiation and compromise exceedingly precarious.

fourth stage: the rise of the Taliban militia, 1995-present

The Taliban militia first came to international attention in the fall of 1994 when they scoredthe firstof a series of victories against tribal militias and local partycommanders who had longheld sway in southeastern Afghanistan.The Taliban won furthervictories in Ghazni, Wardak,and Kabulprovince, untilthey reached the outskirtsof Kabulcity in 1995. The forces of AhmadShah Massoud held onto the capital tenaciously, finally giving way before the Taliban assaultin the fall of 1996. Since that time, the Taliban have consolidated their authorityover most ofthe southern half of the country, extending their rule to western Herat province and intonorthwestern Badghis province. They have taken control of the Salang Pass, which is theprincipal route linking Kabulwith the north,and at the time of this writingwere laying siege tothe northerncity of Mazar-i Sharif.Ina matter of days, they also overran eastern NingraharandKunarProvince, sending the commanders and shura members Ihad interviewed in 1995 fleeingonce again for Peshawar. Thisremarkableseries of victories has been accomplished by a militaryforce that did not exist before 1993, a force comprised largely of Afghan religious students(taliban derives from the term for religious student: talib ul-elm) recruited from madrasas(religiousschools) in Baluchistan and the northwest frontierprovince of Pakistan. The fact thatthis force has managed to do what no other armycould accomplish over the last 20 years hasoccasioned little interest in the internationalpress. To the extent that anyone has paid muchattention to the events in Afghanistan, it has focused on the Taliban's insistence on womenwearing the veil, its decrees against movies and mixed-sex gatherings, its ritual destruction ofbeer cans and liquor bottles, and its demand that men keep their beards untrimmed. What hasbeen ignored in available reports is information about the movement itself: its origins, itsleadershipand structure,and any sense or even speculation on how this recently obscure forcehas managed to accomplish so much in so little time. The available informationon the Talibanis inadequate to answer all of these questions, but some preliminary suggestions can be offeredon the background of the movement and the reasons for its success, as well as what themovement signifies in relation to the other forms of political leadership examined here.




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In analyzing the success of the Taliban, it is important to recognize first that despite theapparent novelty of the movement, this is not the first time that religious students have playedan importantrole in politicalevents in Afghanistan.To the contrary,madrasastudents have longsupplied one of the principal sources for various political movements since at least the 19thcentury, and they were viewed as especially dangerous by the British colonial authoritiesbecause they were so difficult to identify, much less hold accountable (cf. McMahon andRamsay1981:2-3). Forall the problemsthe tribes occasionally broughtdown on the Raj, theynevertheless could be located on a map; they had villages that could be razed if need be; theyhad leaders with whom to negotiate and from whom to extract promises;and they had practicaland material intereststhatprovided a basis forgetting along, once the enthusiasms of any givenmoment had passed. Madrasastudents,on the other hand, were fromeverywhere and nowhere,often destitute, and generally had much more to gain by keeping political upheaval alive thanby letting it fade away. Inthe context of the frontier at the turn of the last century, it was alsothe case that becoming a talib ul-elm was one of the few ways that a man could improve hislife fortunes,gain social respect, and escape the-for some-claustrophobic world of the tribeand the village (see Edwards1996:135).The contemporary situation is very different,of course, but one point of commonality is thatreligious education remains an avenue of social mobility, especially for young male Afghanrefugees. In Afghanistanbefore the war, the government sponsored tribal boarding schools.Many of the brightestand most ambitious young men from the border areas attended theseschools with the hope of securing employment with the government or with one of theinternationalagencies then operating in Afghanistan.When the war began, between three andfourmillion people fled to Pakistan.The vast majoritysettled in refugee camps scattered up anddown the frontier. Most of these camps had primary schools, and there were even a fewsecondary schools set up especially forAfghanrefugees. Butthese schools had more to do withsocial control than with education.11

Thesame was not the case, however, forthose who attended madrasas.As inthe 19th century,a religious education was probably the surest avenue to social advancement, other thanobtaining a visa to work abroad. Before the war, madrasa graduates generally ended up inmenial positions teaching children and taking care of village mosques. In Pakistan,with all ofthe resistance parties in the hands of religious leaders, madrasagraduateshad more numerousand lucrativeoptions than before. Madrasaswere also much more vibrantand lively than secularschools, which was again undoubtedly due to the fact that Islam was so much more prominenta partof everyday life in the refugee population than it had been in prewar Afghanistan.

Forall the power of the parties,madrasas were by no means simple indoctrination centers.Although party-supportedmadrasas tended to adhere to party dictates, many madrasas re-mained outside the orbit of partypolitics, found their own financial sponsors,and took radicallyindependent positions. Consequently, throughthe 1980s and early 1990s, as the reputationsofthe Islamic political partiesand their leaders steadily declined, madrasaskept alive the notionthatAfghanistancould still become an ideal Islamicpolity. Thismessage held a special potencyto veterans of the fighting, who had become disillusioned with the way the jihad was beingconducted by the parties,as well as to young refugees who had grown up in camps where theywitnessed firsthandhecorrupt dministration ndmoralmalaise evidentinrefugeesociety generally.

Many observers have labeled the Taliban movement as a Pakistanicreation, and it undoubt-edly is to some degree, butthey fail to consider as well that most of the Afghansassociated withthe Taliban grew up in Pakistan and are themselves to a large extent hybrids who haveassimilated aspects of Pakistanicultureand values. Unlike earliergenerations who were tied tovillage and tribe, the Taliban generation grew up in camps with people from a variety ofbackgrounds. Insuch a context, loyalties to place, descent group, tribalancestor, and particularsaints have losttheir formersaliency. Madrasasreflected and built on this fact, bringing together




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in one place young men from a varietyof backgrounds, many of whom had never set foot inAfghanistanand had only vague preconceptions as to what Afghanistan might have been likebefore the war. Most of the madrasa students were disillusioned with the infighting andcorruption of the parties but were still idealistic in outlook. Having spent months and years inthe quasi-monastic communities of the madrasas, the potential recruits were relatively limitedin their understandingof the world and relatively alien to the tribal, regional, ethnic, and partyloyalties that, in their view, had compromised so many outside their own group. Based on myinterviews with madrasa students who later became members of the Taliban,Iwould also inferthat many Taliban recruits were eager to put into practice what they had been discussing intheory, and the emergence of the movement offered that opportunity.One of the most remarkable features of the Taliban's drive to power has been how littleresistancethey encountered until the siege of Kabul tself. Fornearly20 years,efforts o establisha unified movement had failed, and the question thatarises is why the Taliban succeeded whereothers did not. Inanswering the firstpartof this question, one must take into consideration thefact thatthe early, easy Talibansuccesses were all in Pakhtunareas;the Taliban have not madesignificant inroads in non-Pakhtun regions without considerable effort and bloodshed. Evenwith this caveat, however, the Taliban accomplishment is still considerable. While Pakhtunsmade up something under 50 percent of the prewar population of Afghanistan and aretraditionallythe most powerful ethnic group in Afghanistan, they are also famously fractious,and no partyor movement had previously managed to bringso much of this largeand disparatepopulation under one political umbrella.

Although the Taliban are recognizably Pakhtun and most of the leadership comes fromsouthern Qandahar Province, their success in moving from a madrasa to a militarymovementstems in the first instance fromtheir tendency to downplay tribal or regional identities in favorof what might be called village identity. As a Taliban spokesman statedto a Reutersreporter,Our culture has been greatly changed over the past 40 or 50 years, particularly n Kabul. Inthe villages the culture has not changed much .... The Taliban are tryingto purifyour culture.We are tryingto re-establisha puristIslamiccultureand tradition. 12 nidentifying puristcultureand tradition with the Islamof the village, the Talibanindirectlycondemn the Islamof the parties,since most of the party leaders are products of Kabul University and other state-sponsoredinstitutions.They also putthemselves on a parwith the people who mustsupportthe movementif it is to be successful. Over 20 years of war, Islamic parties almost as much as the Kabulgovernment have gained the reputation for imposing themselves on the people. The Talibanbelieve they are building the popular base that has eluded politicians since the Khalqistookpower in 1978.A second reason forthe Taliban success has been simple exhaustion. A 20-year-long conflictis something Iassociate more with premodernwarfare than with the present.The lethal efficacyof modern technology would seem to preclude such long-runningengagements, yet the fightingcontinues. The Taliban have not ended the fighting, but the roads are relatively safe inTaliban-controlled areas. Forthe firsttime in two decades, people in Talibanareas have beenable to ride buses with far less fearof being searched at roadblocks, and trucks can carry goodswithout drivershavingto pay exorbitant road taxes. As the Talibanmovement began to escalatein 1995, an importantreason was that their reputationfor keeping security preceded them intoeach new area. Thus, for example, when they launched their attack on eastern NingraharProvince, where roadblocks had become a fixtureof everyday life, local people failed to supportlocal commanders, even when they were from the same tribe or ethnic group, reportedlybecause they were tired of the statusquo. Informants ndicated to me thatthey were willing toaccept new leadership (even if itcame with certain austerities and puristdoctrines that deviatedfromestablished custom) because the new leadership promised a degree of stabilityabsent fora generation.




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A third factor in explaining the Taliban success has been the invisibility of its leadership.Nominally headed by a rarelyseen and seldom heard Mulla Umar, most decisions emanatefrom a council of Islamic clerics headquartered in Qandahar. The public knows little aboutthese men, and they appearto have made their low profilea point of policy. Ican only speculateon the motivation behind this strategy,but I inferthat their preference forquasi-seclusion is alesson learned from people's disillusionment with-and even hatred for-the leaders of theestablished religious partieswho have done so much to divide the country. Inthis sense, theTalibanseem to representsomething like an anticharismaticmovement, in which the emphasisis not on leaders and theirpromises but on the movement itself. The movement claims roots inan idealized sort of ordinaryvillage existence that has been absent for 20 yearsandthat is longedfor all the more for that reason.13

In trying to make some largersense of the present situation, none of the paradigms underreview provides an easy fit.Althoughfuture research might provide additional facts and pointsof comparison, for the present it would appearthat Asad's (1972) class analysis does not reallyhelp to explain contemporary Afghan politics, and Meeker's (1980) would be relevant only if Iwere to cast the emergence of the Taliban as peasant revenge against the predatoryabusesof heroic commanders, which seems to stretchMeeker'svision a good bitbeyond the breakingpoint. Barth's(1959, 1981, 1985) work, too, appearsto be of value only in a very general sensein that it is not clear whether the Taliban have popular supportor whether people are refusingto become involved. Ahmed's (1976) conception of charismatic leadership is closest in someways, but as indicated, the Taliban movement is radically different from the classic Weberiancharismatic movement that Ahmed identified in Swat. The problem here is not simply theabsence of a charismatic leader, or miracles, or millennial claims. More profound, it is the lackof enthusiasm with which the movement has been greeted by its constituents. The Taliban area productof exhaustion more than excitation, of nostalgia for an uncomplicated past more thanhope for a glorious future.

conclusionDespite theirapparentlylimited relevance to the most recent stage of Afghan political history,Barthand his critics have provided a useful basis for understandingthe formativestages of the

Afghan conflict, and that fact brings us back to the concern I express at the beginning of thisarticle over the lack of attention paid to anthropological studies outside of the discipline. Thisis surely not the only situationin which anthropologists have found their work neglected, andI want to conclude with the speculation that perhapswe may have broughtthe condition of ourgeneral irrelevance on ourselves through our own disciplinary self-absorption.The 20 years of civil war in Afghanistan-20 years that have also seen an Islamicrevolutionin Iran,the collapse of the Soviet Union, and myriadtribal and ethnic conflicts-have been atime in which cultural anthropology has immersed itself in a series of insulardebates over thenatureand validity of the anthropological enterprise. And while the discipline as a whole hasgained by being more self-conscious about modes of representation and how it ascribesauthority,the debates about how anthropologistscreate texts have had the pernicious effects,first,of isolating anthropology from other disciplines and larger internationalconcerns and,second, of constricting research within anthropology by making some researchers leery ofdeclaring anything in too authoritativea manner for fear of representingthose among whomthey have lived and about whom they write in a way that others might deem culturallyinsensitive, politically suspect, or simply naive.The debates I have been discussing in this article predate the postmodern turnin anthropol-ogy, and Imust admitthatIhave found itbracingto rereadthese works thatIlast readingraduateschool in the early 1980s. There is a seriousness about anthropology's abilityto analyze events




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in the world, as well as a quality of nonironic engagement-with the people being studied andthe potential largersignificance of the debate itself-that Ifind missing in much anthropologytoday. Inrevisitingthis debate and applying its lessons to the civil war in Afghanistan, my goalhas been not only to elucidate some of the underlying dynamics of that tragic conflict, but alsoto remind myself and others that anthropology's way of knowing the world is as valuable nowas it has ever been.

notesAcknowledgments.wishtothankMichaelHerzfeld,Mary teedly, ndothermembers ftheDepartmentofAnthropologytHarvardUniversitywho commented n thepreliminaryraft f thisarticlewhen it waspresented ta departmentalolloquium nApril1997. Ialsowishto acknowledgehe financialassistanceprovidedby Fulbright-Haysnd NationalScience Foundation octoraldissertationellowships,as well aslatergrantsand fellowshipsfrom the NationalEndowment or the Humanities, he Andrew MellonFoundation,nd WilliamsCollege.1. Myexamination f the workof Barth nd his critics s basedon ethnographicesearch nd interviewsconductedon the conflict nAfghanistanince 1982. Mostofmyresearch asbeenamongAfghan efugeesliving n Pakistan, ut it has also included wotrips nsideAfghanistann 1984 and 1995.2. Barth aspublishedhreebooksdealingwithSwat.Thefirst s hisethnography, oliticalLeadershipamong Swat Pathans (1959); the second is a collection of essays, Features of Person and Society in Swat(1981);and the third s TheLastWaliofSwat 1985), heautobiographyf Miangul ahanzeb,whichBartheditedand forwhich he wroteanextendedepilogue.Itshouldbe noted hat n this articleIhave reliedonimportantesearch n theSwatPakhtun roducedbyCharlesLindholm.Lindholm'sthnographyf Swat(1982),whichisarguablyhe beststudyof aPakistanirAfghanocialgroup nrecentyears,and his severalessayson political eadership1980, 1981, 1986)represent substantialodyof independent esearch hatstandson its own apartromBarth ndhis critics.3. Ontheorigins f theanti-Marxistebellionee Edwards987,Roy1986,andShahranindCanfield 984.4. Foranoverviewof thesocioeconomicconditionsnseveralPakhtun reasof easternAfghanistan,eeAnderson 975, Barfield 981, Christensen980, and Shahrani ndCanfield1984.5. ForAfghan ttitudesoward evolutionaryortrayalsfpeasant uffering,ee Edwards987and 1993.6. On poetsandpoetry n theAfghan onflict, ee Edwards993.7. Fora discussionof the use of Islamicmartyrdomy Afghanpoliticalparties, ee Edwards 995.8. Amongthe negativefeaturesof state centralizationhat are found in the Peshawarpartiesaremechanismsormaintainingnternalecurity ndsuppressingissent,keeping hepartyaithful mployedthroughhe creationof numberlessbureaucratictructures,ndoctrinatinghe young,and using hemtoensurepiousobservance f Islamic itualsnthegeneralpopulation.9. On the machinations f Afghan esistanceeaders, ee Roy1986.10. Iquestion heappropriatenessf Meeker's se of the termhero(1980).Some of the characteristicsthatMeekerassociateswith the hero eem moreusefullyandaccurately ttributableo the category fmercenary,heformer eingonewho stillmaintains strong ultural ndmoral onnection osociety orallthedisruptionse bringsdownuponit,thelatter eingonewho operatesndependentlyf societyanditsmoral tricturesnthepursuit f self-interest. nlike hemercenary ho isunderstoodo be outforhimself,the hero scapableof caring oo muchandtakinghe moralprecepts f societybeyond he tolerable imits

of othermen orsocietyitself.See Edwards 996:ch.2 foradiscussionof the role of the hero nPakhtunsociety.Fora comprehensiveritiqueof Meeker's rticle, ee Lindholm 981.11. Formore informationn conditions ntherefugee amps,see Edwards 986 and1990.12. [email protected] 9, 1997.13. WhileWestern ressreports ave ocusedon theTaliban'suppressionfwomen,mostofthewomenwho have been affectedbyTaliban dicts livein Kabul ndotherurbanareas.Tribal ndvillagewomen,especially nthe majority f Pakhtun rovincesunderTaliban ontrol,havelonglived under hekindsofconstraintshe Talibaneadershipstryingo impose n-what are to them-the impure itycenters.

references citedAhmed,Akbar .1976 Millennium nd CharismamongPathans.London:Routledge ndKeganPaul.Anderson,on1975 TribeandCommunity mongGhilzaiPashtun.Anthropos 0:576-600.1978 ThereAre No KhansAnymore.MiddleEast ournal 2:167-183.Asad,Talal1972 MarketModel,Class Structure ndConsent:A Reconsiderationf SwatPoliticalOrganization.Man n.s.)7(1):74-94.

learningfromthe Swat Pathans 727



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submittedJuly3, 1997accepted October 8, 1997


learning from swat pathans

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