Abstract
Notwithstanding their profound historical and demographic differences, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan share characteristic internal ethnic diversities and national borders which cut across local ethnic groups in all directions. As elsewhere, these legacies of the past in current practice make ethnicity a security problem. The problem is usually conceived of as one of artificial frontiers. But ethnic identities pose issues which transcend frontiers here not only because ethnic groups transcend those boundaries; specific continuities between internal and external relations make ethnicity an issue, at its most vexed, of loyalties. To unravel what is at issue, it is necessary to relate what ethnicity means in Southwest Asia and how the states there have dealt with it as a problem for their security to a specific structure of relations whose most familiar but by no means only manifestation is the Great Game.1
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‘The concept of the “ethnic” group, which dissolves if we define our terms exactly, corresponds in this regard to one of the most vexing, since emotionally charged concepts: the nation.’—Max Weber
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Notes
The primordialist view of ethnicity, and its application to the third world, is developed by Clifford Geertz in ‘The integrative revolution: primordial sentiments and civil polities in new states’ in Clifford Geertz, ed. Old Societies and New States (New York: Free Press, 1963) from Edward Shils’s formulation in ‘Primordial, personal, civil and sacred ties’ British Journal of Sociology 8: 130–145, 1957. The complementary situationalist view of ethnic identities as responses arises out of more socially-oriented anthropological perspectives.
For example, Elizabeth Colson’s ‘Contemporary tribes and the development of nationalism’ in J. Helm, ed. Essays on the Problem of Tribe Proceedings of the 1967 Annual Meeting of the American Ethnological Society (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968) and
Abner Cohen’s Custom and Politics in Urban Africa. A Study of Hausa Migrants to Yourba Towns (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969); for a recent summary
see Anya Peterson Royce, Ethnic Identity: Strategies of Diversity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982).
Karen I. Blu, The Lumbee Problem: The Making of an American Indian People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) p. 219.
Max Weber, (Guenther Roth & Klaus Wittich, eds) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978) p. 394.
Fredrik Barth, ‘Introduction’ in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969).
Lawrence Rosen, ‘The social and conceptual framework of Arab-Berber relations in central Morocco’ in Ernest Gellner and Charles Michaud, (eds) Arabs and Berbers (London: Duckworth, 1973) p. 177.
Amal Rassam Vinogradov, ‘Ethnicity, cultural discontinuity and power brokers in northern Iraq: the case of the Shabak’ American Ethnologist 1: 207–218. 1974, p. 216.
See Fredrik Barth, Nomads of South Persia (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961);
Daniel Bradburd, ‘Never give a shepherd an even break: class and labor among the Komachi’ American Ethnologist 7: 603–620, 1980 and ‘National conditions and local-level political relations: patron-client relations in Iran’ American Ethnologist 10: 23–40, 1983;
Lois G. Beck, ‘The Qashqai confederacy’ in R. Tapper, (ed.) The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan (London: Croom Helm, 1983).
Gene Garthwaite, ‘Tribes, confederation and the state: an historical overview of the Bakhtiari and Iran’ in The Conflict of Tribe & State in Iran & Afghanistan (London: Croom Helm, 1983.)
Robert L. Canfield, Faction & Conversion in a Plural Society: Religious Alignments in the Hindu Kush (Anthropological Papers No. 50. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1973); cf. ‘Religious myth as ethnic boundary’ in J. W. Anderson & R. F. Strand, (eds) Ethnic Processes & Intergroup Relations in Contemporary Afghanistan, (Occasional Paper No. 15 of the Afghanistan Council. New York: The Asia Society, 1977); another side is developed in Richard F. Strand’s ‘Ethnic competition and tribal schism in eastern Nuristan’, ibid.
Two case studies which deal with what ‘ethnic’ identities and cultural traditions mean in complex Middle Eastern social settings are Fredrik Barth’s, Sohar: Culture and Society in an Omani Town (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983) and
Thomas J. Barfield’s The Central Asian Arabs of Afghanistan: Pastoral Nomadism in Transition (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981). Dale Eickelman develops the implications of such data in broader perspective for more general understanding of Middle Eastern societies in The Middle East: An Anthropological Approach (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1981) esp. pp. 175–199.
For instance in the generalized notion of gawm, see Jon W. Anderson, ‘Introduction and overview’ in Jon W. Anderson and Richard F. Strand (eds) Ethnic Processes and Intergroup Relations in Contemporary Afghanistan (New York: The Asia Society, 1978).
Ainslie Embree, ‘Pakistan’s Imperial Legacy’ in A. T. Embree, ed. Pakistan’s Western Borderlands (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1977) p. 25.
Anecdotal references suggest parallels by conveying monochromatic impressions of hostility, but more nuanced accounts emerging from actual case studies show how different these cases are, and how diversely each locates and valorizes cultural differences. E.g., for Iran see Lois Beck, ‘Nomads and urbanites: involuntary hosts and uninvited guests’ Middle Eastern Studies 18: 426–444, 1982; for Afghanistan,
G. Whitney Azoy, Buzkashi: Game & Power in Afghanistan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982) and Thomas J. Barfield Central Asian Arabs; for the NWFP,
Akbar S. Ahmed, Religion and Politics in Muslim Society: Order and Conflict in Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). For comparative of the cultural and structural components of intergroup relations, see R. Tapper ‘Introduction’ in The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan, ‘Ethnicity and class: dimensions of intergroup conflict in North-Central Afghanistan’ in M. N. Shahrani & R. L. Canfield, (eds) Revolutions & Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1984), and Jon W. Anderson, ‘Introduction and overview’ in Ethnic Processes and Intergroup Relations in Afghanistan.
Martin M. van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State: On the Social and Political Organization of Kurdistan (Utrecht: Doctoral Dissertation, 1978) pp. 371–3. This is the most comprehensive study of Kurdish organization as it relates to national revolts within the Iranian, Iraqi, and Turkish contexts. See also van Bruinessen, ‘Kurdish tribes and the state of Iran: the case of Simko’s revolt’ in The Conflict of Tribe & State in Iran & Afghanistan.
Selig S. Harrison, In Afghanistan’s Shadow: Baluch Nationalism and Soviet Temptations (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1981) p. 21.
Ibid. The structure of the Baluch chieftains in Persia is analysed in Philip C. Salzman’s ‘Why tribes have chiefs: a case from Baluchistan’ in The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan; for Pakistan Baluch, see Robert N. Pherson’s The Social Organization of the Marri Baluch (Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology Number 43. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation, 1966) and Nina Swidler’s ‘Brahui political organization and the national state’ in Pakistan’s Western Borderlands.
The only study of Baluch in Afghanistan is Erwin Orywal’s Die Baluch in Afghanisch-Sistan: Wirtschaft und socio-politische Organisation in Nimruz, SW-Afghanistan, (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1982).
See Fredrik Barth, Political Leadership among Swat Pathan (London: Athlone Press, 1959) and
Akbar S. Ahmed, Millennium and Charisma among Pathans: A Critical Essay in Social Anthropology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976).
Richard Tapper Pasture and Politics: Economics, Conflict and Ritual among the Shasevan Nomads of Northwestern Iran (New York: Academic Press, 1979).
Robert L. Canfield, Faction & Conversion in a Plural Society: Religious Alignments in the Hindu Kush (Anthropological Papers No. 50. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1973).
Thomas J. Barfield, The Central Asian Arabs of Afghanistan (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1981)
cf. M. Nazif Shahrani, ‘Ethnic relations and access to resources in Northeast Badakhshan’ in Ethnic Processes and Intergroup Relations in Contemporary Afghanistan. (New York: The Asia Society, 1978) Jon W. Anderson and Richard F. Strand, Eds., pp. 15–25.
The best documented analysis is Asta Olesen’s Soldiers, Peasants & Revolution: Political Strategies and an Analysis of the 7 Saur Revolution (Project Re-Construction Saighanchi, Aarhus: Australian Scientific Mission to Afghanistan, 1980).
See Leon B. Poullada, ‘Pushtunistan: Afghan domestic politics and relations with Pakistan’ in Pakistan’s Western Borderlands, 1977.
The counterpart to the Pushtunistan controversy on the other side of the border was the ‘scientific (i.e., ethnic) frontier’ advocated by some British officials: e.g., Sir W. K. Fraser-Tytler, Afghanistan: A Study of Political Developments in Central and Southern Asia (3rd edition, London: Macmillan, 1967), esp. pp. 48–54.
See M. Hassan Kakar, Afghanistan: A Study in International Political Developments, 1880–1896 (Lahore: Panjab Educational Press, 1971).
See Leon B. Poullada, Reform & Rebellion in Afghanistan, 1919–1929 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973).
For this period, I draw both on informants’ statements and on reports by political agents on the then-Indian side of the border to Delhi and to the India Office, deposited in the IOL (L/P&S/12 nos. 1738, 1739, 1740, 1568 and R/12/126). Some of this material is summarized in Military Reports on Afghanistan, Part 1-History (Simla: General Staff of India, 1941). Historical studies covering this restoration period lack detail on the eastern tribal region, but see Vartan Gregorian’s The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan: Politics of Reform & Modernization, 1880–1946 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), esp. Ch. 11.
Comparable material for the earlier restoration period under Amir Abdur-Rahman is provided in M. Hassan Kakar’s Government & Society in Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Abd al-Rahman Khan (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979); for the end of the first Anglo-Afghan (1838–1842),
see Malcolm Yapp, ‘The revolutions of 1841–2 in Afghanistan’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XXVII: 333–381, 1964.
See Jon W. Anderson, ‘Tribe and community among Ghilzai Pashtun’ Anthropos 70: 575–601, 1975; ‘Khan and khel: dialectics of Pakhtun tribalism’ in The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan.
Comparable material from the lower Kunar is reported by Asger Christensen, ‘The Pashtun of Kunar: tribe, class and community organization’ Afghanistan Journal 7(3): 1980. For the neighboring Mohmand in the NWFP see Akbar S. Ahmed, Pukhtun Economy and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); cf. Asger Christensen, ‘Organization, variation and transformation in Pukhtun Society’ Ethnos 1–2: 96–108, 1981.
See C. Collin Davies, The Problem of the North-West Frontier, 1890–1908, with a Survey of Policy since 1849 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1932); cf. Ahmed Millennium & Charisma, 1976.
Ashraf Ghani, ‘Islam and state-building in a tribal society: Afghanistan, 1880–1901’ Modern Asian Studies 12: 269–284, 1978.
More precisely, it drained the investment of rural landowners away from the countryside and into cities and towns; see Jon W. Anderson, ‘There are no khans any more: economic development and social change in tribal Afghanistan,’ The Middle East Journal 32: 167–183, 1978.
For evidence that such displacement had been going on since the 18th century, see D. M. Balland ‘Vieux sedentaires Tadjik et immigrants Pachtoun dans le sillon de Ghazni (Afghanistan Oriental),’ Bulletin de l’Association des Geographes 417/418: 171–180, 1974.
See Klaus Ferdinand “Nomad expansion and commerce in central Afghanistan,” Folk 4: 123–159, 1962.
See Thomas J. Barfield, ‘The impact of Pashtun immigration on nomadic pastoralism in Northeastern Afghanistan’ in Ethnic Processes and Intergroup Relations in Contemporary Afghanistan; Nancy Tapper, ‘Abd al-Rahman’s North-West Frontier: the Pashtun colonisation of Afghan Turkestan’ in The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan; Hugh M. Beattie, Afghan Studies 3/4: 39–51, 1982.
See Jon W. Anderson, ‘How Afghans define themselves in relation to Islam’ in M. Nazif Shahrani and Robert L. Canfield, (eds) Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1984).
The social characteristics of PDPA members adduced in Anthony Arnold’s Afghanistan’s Two-Party Communism (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1983), esp. pp. 26–31 and Ch. 9, appear similar in some respects to those second sons and younger brothers, and other sorts of marginal tribesmen, who were also attracted by religious alternatives.
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© 1987 Hafeez Malik
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Anderson, J.W. (1987). Ethnic Dilemmas in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan as Security Problems. In: Malik, H. (eds) Soviet-American Relations with Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08553-8_5
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