M. I. Rahman :
The term Afghanistan Simply means the “land of the Afghans”. It was applied to the country for the first time during the reign of Ahmad Shah Durrani (1747-73), the founder of the Afghan Empire in the eighteenth century. Soviet historian, Yuri Gankovsky asserts, “the Afghan state which was founded in 1747 was a feudal state and (it) was not the fist Afghan state formation; there had been the principalities of Akora and Teri in the 16th century and of Kandahar and Herat in the eighteenth. Only Ahmad Shah’s empire, however, covered the whole area inhabited by Afghans”. Previously Afghanistan was khown by the names of Aryana. Paktia, Khurasan, Pakhtunkhwah and even Roh.
Similarly the term “Afghan” which originally referred only to a particular ethnic group- the Pakhtun, now legally and constitutionally encompasses all ethnic groups living in Afghanistan. The Pakhtuns are the principal ethnic group in the country, comprising estimated fifty five per cent of the population. The rest are Tajiks, Hazara, Qizilbashs, Aimaq, Uzbaks, Turkmen, Kirghiz, Pamiris, Nuristanis, Gujars, Arabs, Farsiwans (Parsiwan or Parsiban), Hindus, Sikhs and Jews.
Afghanistan is not a self-contained ethnic unit. Few of its ethnic groups are indigenous. All Pakhtuns, Balochs, Nurristanis, Konistanis and Gujar are not Afghan citizens. Almost an equal number of these ethnic group live in Pakistan, Iran and Turkoman S.S.R. (Now Turkomenistan) An estimated 2,898,000 Tajiks, 12456,000 Uzbeks and 2,028000 Turkoman live in the soviet Union.
Afghanistan is the meeting place and centre of four ecological, cultural and strategic areas: the Middle-East, Central Asia, the Indian sub-continent and the Far East, for the Pamir mountains intrude into Chinese Sinkiang. At the beginning of the 18th centry, Afghanistan’s frontiers extended from Heart to Kashmir and from the Oxus to the Arabian sea. However, the present frontiers of Afghanistan were not established until the last decade of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The border with Soviet Union (former Russian) was settled in 1896, (with minor adjustments in the 1920’s, the 30’s and 1948),41 the frontiers with Pakistan (former Indian sub-continent) was determined in 1893, the border with peoples Republic of China was demarcated in 1964 and the final corrections along the Irano-Afghan frontier, originally defined in 1930-5, were made in 1935. The American Prof: Louis Dupree divided Afghanistan into eleven georaphic zones. The first six zones (the Wakhan Corridor – Pamir Knot, Central Mountains, Eastern Mountains, Northern Mountains and foot-hills; Southern Mountains and foot-hills), relate to the Hindu Kush Mountain system, young rugged ranges (like the rocky mountains) with sharp peaks, deep valleys and many almost impenetrable barriers. The remaining five zones (Turkestan plain, Herat-Farah low lands, Sistan Basin-Hilmand Valley, Western stony deserts, South-Western sandy desert) embrace th deserts and plains which sorround the mountains in the north, west and south-west.
Islam in Afghanistan encompasses virtually all the population. About eighty per cent of the Afghans are Hanafi Sunni, the rest primarily Ithna-Ashriya (Jafria) and Ismailia Shia. The advent of Islam in Afghanistan “Was not a catastrophe but rather a great Revolution”. Afghan historian Mir Ghulam Muhammad Ghubar asserts”… for the Afghans Islam was a Din-i-Milli (national religion)”. Therefor the Afghans were Muslims as a qawm (nation). To an ethnically heterogeneous, politically divied region, Islam brought cosmopolitanism. Islam brought a concept of Ummah (community) that was based on universal brotherhood. It provides powerful motives and a central discourse for mobilising political action in Afghanistan which often remains opaque in more strictly Political analysis. Political issues, self-interests, tribal interests are always interpreted in the light of riligious terminology. The ultimate aim of both the Afghan monarchy (19th and 20th centuries) and the Afghan nationalists was to make a major force in the uniffcation of the country.
The Islam practised in Afghan society (ninety-five percent illiterate in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century) was a religion of rituals with a beautiful body structure sans soul and spirit and unrecognisable to sophisticated Muslim scholars. Locally oriented religious beliefs serve not only as a rationale for existence, but justificaticated for the perpetuation of a predetermined status quo. Some of the ideals of Afghan society run counter to Islamic principles. The Pakhtunwali (Pakhtun code or the second nature of the Pakhtuns) for example demands badal vengeance) even on fellow Muslims contradicting the Quranic injuncation. ” It is not for a beliver to kill a believer unless it be by mistake”.
Rewaj is more in use than shari’at and is generally preferred. It varies from tribe to rtibe and from region to region. Contrary to Shariat in Rewaj a daughter does not inherit anything. The contradicadiction between Pakhtunwali, Rewaj and Shari’at take the form of conflicting allegiances to tribe, law and personalism and the confict dissolves if those are kept apart, as in separate contexts.
Despite their mutual contradiction Islam and Pakhtunwali had to coexist in Afghan society. The unity of Paktunwali and Islam are symbolised and expressed in village social life by physical juxtaposition of the mosque and the Hujra (village guest house). These two institutions are the focus of life in every stettlement and village.
Anglo-Russian rivalry for supremacy in the area, their intrigues and advances at the turn of the 20th century, the ties between religion, natinalism and centralised state power took strong roots, so much so that by 1916 Mahmud Tarzi (1866-1935), restated the “organic analogy” among them in a series of articles in his biweekly Sirajul Akhbari-Afghania (the lamp of the news of Afghanistan) to explain the unity of the conceps of Din (religion), Dawlat (State), Watan (country) and Millat (nation). He referred to these four concepts as sacred terms and explained how their existence and survival were mutually determined.
(To be continued)
