Anthony's Senior Thesis

This is a historical, political and sociological study of honor and codes of conduct in a contemporarily significant sub-section of Muslim society, the Sunni Pashtun of Afghanistan. The Pashtun have been deeply influenced by Islamic ideology, by pre-existing tribal laws, Pushtunwali in particular, and by recent encounters with modern civil law. These three socio-political influences sometimes complement each other and also contradict each other. In this long process of ideological fusion within Afghanistan, certain aspects of Islam, tribal codes like Pushtunwali, and more recently, civil law have been highlighted or obscured. This is especially the case with rules that apply to personal and family honor, which can include anything from appropriate behavior towards one’s elders, towards cultural outsiders, and towards one’s close confidantes. My aim is to explore how Islam, tribal codes of conduct, and civil law shape the social structure of the Pashtun and how this three way dialectic has influenced this culture’s developmental path. Every Muslim society has had to respond to its own version of these changes in certain ways, and these paths have not been identical. The Pashtun tribes originated in a unique geography, were introduced to Islamic ideology at a distinct time period, evolved next to and amongst specific different cultural neighbors, encountered modern civil law only recently and had particularly hostile experiences in relation to foreign powers, particularly colonial and neocolonial ones.
I will first define the concept of honor as it pertains to Muslim familial, social and political life, and then explain the histories of the Pashtun as it pertains to the interaction between their Islamic traditions, tribal traditions and civil law. In the course of this investigation, important questions will arise: In what ways has Islam erased or marginalized previous traditions pertaining to honorable conduct? Conversely, in what ways have tribal traditions assimilated Islamic teachings, using the faith as an additional justification of previous tribal practices? How has this Muslim sub-culture justified the continued survival of tribal-based practices that either ignore or blatantly contradict Islamic teachings, especially in terms of honor? Lastly, how has this culture responded to the influx of colonialism and the governmental forms that colonialism helped to introduce?
This paper advocates that the social primacy of honor is by no means a strictly Muslim phenomenon; rather, it is rooted in the tribal traditions of particular societies that have maintained their continuity for centuries. Nevertheless, it is of particular import to understand honor in Muslim societies with the intent of enhancing cross-cultural dialogue. Given that Western nations and the United States in particular are economically, politically and militarily enmeshed in Afghanistan, it is no small necessity to understand the honor-based practices of this society. Practices that Westerners and the majority of Muslims find abhorrent, honor killings for example, cannot be confronted without knowing how and from where they originate. The final segment of this essay will be an analysis of the current political situation of Afghanistan and several suggestions for how American forces there can play a constructive role in stabilizing the country.
A particular society’s appropriate code of conduct is heavily influenced by salient ideological concepts that differ from age to age. Plato defined three basic motivations in human life: passion, honor and wisdom. In his ontology, wisdom was clearly the most preferable, as he viewed knowledge as the only legitimate means of ascertaining the truths of existence. But Plato wrote over 2000 years ago, and had never met a Muslim (as they did not yet exist) and inevitably had a historically conditioned view of what honor was. Thus his conception of honor was principally based on the interactions that he saw take place within the Greek polity and to a lesser extent, Alexander the Great’s imperial court. In this study of the Pashtun Muslim population, I will frame honor as what constitutes “living well,” not as something inherently subordinate to Plato’s view of “the Good Life.” Since most Muslim societies have tended to be tribally based, rural, and communitarian, honor in this case means ensuring that not just the individual, but the family and tribe also live well.
So what constitutes behaving honorably so as to ensure the collective welfare for both family and tribe? First, the collective welfare of any extended network means ensuring that one’s own actions do not humiliate or destroy the livelihood of this network in the present tense. That condition applies as much to a pre-Islamic Arabian Bedouin tribe as it does to a modern day corporation. Second, behaving honorably means ensuring that ones familial genealogy survives to the next generation and beyond, both as living people and as transmittable traditions. It will be shown that this holds huge importance in the case of the Pashtun khans of Afghanistan. Tribal power and influence in Afghanistan revolves around an intense focus of genealogy. The leaders of Pashtun tribes must be able to prove that their lineage extends back many generations in the same general region they currently inhabit and that their ancestors were well regarded by their peers. In other words, it must be known that their ancestors were not dishonorable. The last condition of what it means to behave honorably for the sake of one’s family and tribe is to subordinate ones individual wishes for the sake of the extended network. This condition plays itself out all over the world, regardless of socio-economic structure, primarily in the realm of marriage. Marriage between tribes is essential to forming advantageous alliances that ensure the survival of those tribes. These alliances imply mutual physical protection from hostile forces, as well as ensure that the allied tribes will support each other in the political arena. So honor will be analyzed as a concept that affects all aspects of Muslim life: familial, social, and political. Thus all three of these interpersonal categories will be explored in relation to the Pashtun of Afghanistan, and how honor and appropriate conduct has influenced their development.
The Pashtun of Afghanistan probably existed as a fully contiguous ethnicity and social group long before the arrival of Sunni Islam from Arabia in 637 CE (Adamec, 1). The designations “Pashtun” and “Afghan” were synonymous for the people of the land as far back as the 3rd century CE. There is even mention of the Pashtun, or “Paktua,” in the Indian Vedas, which date back to 6000 BCE (Ewans, 3-5). The primary languages of Afghanistan are Dari and Pashto, the tongue of the Pashtun. Both languages are of Indo-European descent and are variants of Farsi, the language of Iran (Ewans, 5). Whatever the real amount of time the Pashtuns lived in Afghanistan prior to the Arabian invasion, they had had plenty of time to develop their own religion, laws and traditions apart from the socio-religious system that they would eventually accept (or be coerced into). After all, the Sunni Islamic Arabian invaders did not fully control the region until the 10th century CE, when archaeological records of most pre-Islamic communities that did not embrace Islam vanished (Adamec, 1). Archaeological evidence from the region suggests that not only were there polytheistic religions abound, but also that Buddhism had taken a foothold. Fortunately for the Pashtun, they were flexible enough to accept the new religion without completely eradicating their previous customs.
The Pashtun, especially those along the Durand Line (the modern day border of Afghanistan and Pakistan) have been fiercely nomadic and ill-disposed towards the vagaries of invaders. The region of Afghanistan has historically been the site of countless invasions from foreign powers, from Alexander the Great to the British Empire, and the route of migration from people as close as Iran and as far as the northern steppes of Central Asia (Ewans, 12). The region’s geography is formidable; about 90% of the land is basically uninhabitable and ill-suited to agriculture. It possesses numerous mountain chains, narrow valleys, and vast deserts and semi deserts (McCauley, 3). The sub-regions that the Pashtun have traditionally inhabited are in the south west of the country and along the mountainous northwest frontier (the Durand Line). Neither of these regions is very suitable to intensive agriculture, which is one of the predominant regions why the Pashtun have remained nomadic. The only region in the country that possesses great quantities of arable land is in the north plains, where the more sedentary Tajiks and Uzbeks reside (McCauley, 3).
Given that they are an estimated 40% of the population of the country, the Pashtun have been the historically dominant ethnic group. The three other main groups are the Sunni Muslim Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmen, as well as the Hazaras, who as Shia Muslims have experienced brutal and long-term persecution from their Sunni Muslim neighbors. None of the other main ethnic groups have ever come close to hegemony or even achieved a reasonable balance of power with the Pashtun. Since Afghanistan first became a contiguous political entity in 1747 under Ahmad Shah of the Pashtun Durani tribe, there has never been a ruler from a non-Pashtun ethnic group (Adamec, 1). McCauley mentions on page five of Afghanistan and Central Asia that this utter lack of power sharing has greatly contributed to modern day difficulties in forming an authentic Afghan national identity. The Pashtun have always been accustomed to viewing themselves as the rightful rulers (and thus excluding other ethnicities from political participation). Consequently, the other ethnic groups have been suspicious or even hostile towards the idea of “Afghanistan,” fearing that such an entity simply translated to further Pashtun domination.
The importance of the geography, history and ethnic makeup of the region cannot be underplayed. All three factors have played a huge part in determining the respective life ways of Afghanistan’s people, how they interact with foreigners, and how they interact with each other. As mentioned, the Pashtun live in mountainous and/or arid regions and have tended to be both nomadic and aggressive towards outsiders. Their geographical isolation from outsiders and from each other, along with the agricultural paucity of the land, have instilled in them potentially violent tendencies. Travel accounts from British explorers and soldiers stand (rather biased) testament to the ferocity of the Pashtun in war, conquest and social interaction in general (Fletcher, 13-14). These tendencies are certainly not unique to the Pashtun; any group of people that are faced with such geographical hardships will probably take a calloused view towards the property and lives of others who cannot defend themselves (McCauley, 1). It is either plunder your weaker neighbor or perish from starvation.
Pashtun social organization has traditionally been family and tribe oriented. The first degree of loyalty a Pashtun has is towards his immediate and extended family (Kor), followed by clan (Khel), then tribe (Ulus), and lastly, nation, provided one actually exists (Magnussen, 18). It should be noted that Islam does not neatly fit into this order, as it a superstructure that encompasses all social divisions in Pashtun life and cannot easily be placed in hierarchical comparison with other social structures. In that the smallest unit of primary loyalty is not the individual but the family, this social structure ties in directly to the extended network concept of honor described earlier. The three main Pashtun tribes still in existence are the Durranis, the Yuzufzais, and the Ghilzais, of which the Durranis are the most powerful and most genealogically continuous (Fletcher, 23).
The traditional political leaders of the tribes are khans (chiefs), who are hereditarily appointed by the jirga (council) of elders in the tribe. They are usually chosen based on the honor and authenticity of their ancestry, but can occasionally be appointed simply because of their personal merits (Fletcher, 23). The khan is not an authoritarian ruler or even necessarily the most powerful member of a tribe. Among males at least, Pashtun culture is quite egalitarian and the khan must be able and willing to negotiate with both his own jirga and with neighboring tribes in order to accomplish anything of merit.
The Pashtun extended family is usually run by a male, though women can occasionally be dominant or at least equal with the principal male. Since Pashtun society is heavily patriarchal, gender roles are expectedly traditional. Women tend to children, make clothing, do basic field work, cook and clean, while males engage in commerce, do construction, plow and engage in most public and/or political activities (Magnus, 19). Families generally live in isolated, fortified and almost self-sufficient compounds (qalas) where primary families have their own sleeping quarters, but share kitchens, toilets, food storage and guest quarters with everyone else (Magnus, 19). Such close living is both a cause and result of the importance of family in Pashtun society. An individual is raised amongst and thus loyal to up to four generations of family at once. Multigenerational living helps to ensure that the children will be exposed to the traditions and stories of their grandparents, the edicts and habits of their parents, and the company of their same-age peers. All these factors are designed to ensure the physical survival of the family’s genes and the social survival of that particular family’s ancestral traditions. In as a harsh landscape and as fractured a society as Afghanistan is, the extended family is an individual’s only means of survival.
The embodiment of the traditional Pashtun attitude towards life is the Pashtunwali, the Pashtun code of conduct. Pashtunwali establishes the fundamental precepts of an individual’s ideal behavior towards family, friends, neighbors and outsiders. It is not a written code, but rather the product of countless generations of oracular transmission. The three tenants of Pashtunwali that are nearly universal among the many Pashtun tribes are retribution (badal), hospitality (melmastia), and sanctuary (nanawatai).
Badal is perhaps the most well-known (and much maligned) aspect of Pashtunwali. It is essentially a code of conduct that is designed to safeguard the honor of a family or tribe if it is perceived to have been violated (Fletcher, 25). Infractions that invoke badal can be a major as murder or adultery or as slight as personal insults. Oftentimes this process unveils the darker side of multi-generational living: multi-generational vendettas. As it is usually the Pashtun youth that are the targets of vendettas, badal has had a destructive impact on the development of Pashtun society. Much like the effects of the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa (though probably less severe), badal eliminates the most productive members of Pashtun society and puts an undue burden upon women, children and the elderly for the maintenance of their extended family units and the advancement of Afghan society in general. It should also be stressed that the application of badal applies as much to members of the same Pashtun tribe as it does to non-Pashtun. All that matters is that a perceived slight upon a family or tribe’s honor has been committed and it must be dealt with. This phenomenon is often known as “honor killing” and is not exclusively present only in Pashtun or Muslim societies.
There are differences in the application of badal though and they differ from tribe to tribe. The variations emerge in terms of repayment for the insult and in who constitutes a legitimate target for badal. Fletcher notes:
“the variation…is not proportionate to the sophistication of the tribesmen. The Waziris and Mahsuds, probably the fiercest of Pashtun tribesmen, are often willing to accept a money payment [or intercession by a respected tribal elder], and in any event will direct their anger at the specific offender. The far more sophisticated Afridis, on the other hand, usually insist on personal revenge, and regard all members of the offender’s family as equally involved (25)

As one can imagine, the variation in repayment and choice of targets heavily impacts how destructive badal has been on each particular tribe or family. The phenomenon of badal in Pashtun society is not incomprehensible. Rather, it has evolved as part and parcel of the tenuous environment that the Pashtun inhabit. If a family or tribe allows itself to be insulted (physically or verbally) by another and does nothing in return, then they are assumed to be too weak to protect their honor. If they are weak and without honor, then they can be taken of advantage again and again until they are destroyed. Given the fact that there has almost never been a strong central authority to mediate disputes in Pashtun territory, the burden necessarily falls upon the individuals, families and tribes to resolve their disputes and protect their interests (Magnus, 78). Thus badal can possibly be viewed as an extremely severe form of material and personal property rights.
The second tenant of Pahtunwali is melmastia, or hospitality. Melmastia is simply the notion of near-unconditional hospitality towards guests, whether they are strangers or neighbors, provided they are not already your enemy. It dictates that “the person and property of a guest are inviolable, and his comfort and pleasure are the host’s chief concern” (Fletcher, 25). A related concept is the treatment of non-tribal neighbors (hamsayah) who reside with the tribe but are of inferior social status (Fletcher, 24). They are effectively powerless in the tribe but “are under the protection of their hosts and any offense to them would be avenged no less stringently, or in some cases, even more so, than if they had been tribesmen”(Fletcher, 24).
Melmastia is strongly connected with the concept of honor; a household leader does himself or herself great honor by being a gracious host towards a guest and does themselves great shame by being cold or stingy. The advantages of such a reciprocal ethos are numerous. For one, by showing hospitality to a guest, the host has likely secured the good will of not only that guest and their extended family, but their entire tribe. Melmastia thus fulfills two of conditions of an honorable code of conduct. The good host has prevented humiliation of his family and tribe in the present tense, and refrained from making enemies for his relatives in the future, so as to preserve his ancestral lineage.
The last major tenant of Pashtunwali is that of nanawatai, or sanctuary. Quite contrary to the violent ethos of badal, nanawatai dictates that protection shall be given to anyone who requests it, even an enemy, and that all efforts should be made to help the requestor mediate their dispute with those they flee (Fletcher, 24). Nanawatai seems at first to contradict the directives of badal. After all, if someone is an enemy, they have committed an insult, and if they have committed an insult, then they are fair targets for vengeance. But the distinction that enables badal and nanawatai to coexist is the fact that the enemy has directly approached one’s family or tribe and specifically requested sanctuary. Once the person the person has made themselves dependent on another parties’ kindness, then they are no longer legitimate targets for any parties’ badal and it is the sanctuary givers’ responsibility to help them resolve their dispute with whatever party they have grievance with.
Similarly to melmastia, a host’s good treatment of the petitioner fulfills almost all the conditions of honorable conduct. Showing mercy upon a stranger or an enemy (after they have submitted to your arbitration) ensures that the petitioner’s own family or tribe will not harm your extended relatives in the short term and the long term. Additionally, nanawatai fulfills the last condition of honorable conduct; subsuming ones own desires for the greater good of the extended family and tribe. The person who is petitioned may actively despise the petitioner and refuse to help him or her. But if they committed this improper act, that individual would be dishonoring all he or she is associated with and would likely be shamed by those same associates.
Now that the primary Pashtun tribal code of conduct has been defined and analyzed, it is time to confront the influence of Sunni Islam on this code. Much like Pashtunwali itself, the development of Sunni Islam in Pashtun culture has been primarily oral rather than written. This is in large part due to lack of material for written transmission (as Afghanistan is not well forested), the fragility of written text considering the nomadic and confrontational Pashtun lifestyle, and because the Koran, Islam’s holy text, is written in Arabic and any translations are not regarded as having legitimate holy authority. Widespread education and literacy did not occur in Afghanistan until the late 19th century at earliest (Adamec, 4), further compounding the non-textual nature of Pashtun Islam.
There are four schools of Sunni Islamic teaching, all of which were established during the Abbasid Empire (750 CE-1258 CE): Shafii, Hanbali, Maliki and Hanafi. The Hanafi school is considered the most open to individual interpretation (ijtihad) in its teachings and has more adherents than any other branch. It has also been the historically dominant Islamic school in Afghanistan, and has only faced competition from Wahhabi teachings (a harsher variant of the Hanbali school) since the 1970’s or so. Sunni Islam in general and the Hanafi branch in particular are very egalitarian in terms of the relationships between clergy and layperson. Sunni Islam does not have an ordained hierarchy of clergy like Shiism or Catholicism, and the clergy itself generally has little pure political power over Muslim societies.
That is not at all to say that Sunni Muslims do not revere and respect their clergy. Afghan mullahs (local clergy) usually have a privileged place in their communities and are often called upon to arbitrate disputes, particularly in the case of diffusing violent badal feuds. They also possess significant ritual and medical power within their community and are guaranteed safe landholdings (Martin, 6). The degree of influence a mullah holds within his community is highly dependent on his age, experience, and piety, yet that influence can be stripped away if he conducts himself dishonorably or impurely. (Magnus, 75) The relationship between clergy and community is therefore highly reciprocal; the mullah confers ritual grace upon the community, serves as a mediator for dispute, and as a teacher of the Koran. Yet it is not unheard of for mullahs themselves to be illiterate in both Pasto and Arabic, and they are thus more transmitters of oral Islamic tradition than true scholars of the Islamic holy text. In return for his faithful services, the community keeps the cleric safe from harm, well-fed, sheltered and pays respect to his counsel. Other prominent religious figures in a Pashtun community are the sayyids, people who genealogically prove themselves be distant ancestors of Muhammad, and the ulema, or religious scholars (Magnus, 75)
This reciprocal relationship between Islam and Pashtunwali has not always been a comfortable one. Islamic law is known as sharia and it has its own extensive rules and regulations for appropriate personal, familial and political conduct. Islam has sometimes been called an “organic religion”, for it makes almost no distinction between the secular and religious spheres of life. Rather, the religious sphere is considered absolutely eminent and is perfectly capable of providing both personal guidance and political order. Pashtunwali is a secular code of conduct, and its secular nature is one area where sharia law and Pashtunwali have clashed.
One of the most prominent examples of this confrontation is in the practice of badal. Vendetta killings are decidedly un-Islamic, as shown by the very origins of Islam itself. The founder of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, was born in tribal Arabia and vendetta killings were widely practiced there by the polytheistic inhabitants of the region (Rodinson, 155). Once Mohammed gained enough political power from his conquests of Mecca and Medina to create genuine social change amongst tribal converts, one of his first targets were these vendettas. He viewed this practice as not only irrational and destructive, but as abhorrent to God, especially when it was Muslim killing Muslim. He believed that Muslims should always live in peace with each other, for allegiance to Islam (and by extension fellow Muslims) was more important than loyalty to tribes and their worldly quarrels. Related to badal, the Pashtun practice of warfare stipulates that the killer or conqueror is allowed to usurp or destroy the property of and even the personal freedom of the vanquished (Magnus, 78). This also flies in the face of sharia law, as such thefts are considered to be outside the bounds of appropriate conduct in wartime. Muslims, especially when fighting other Muslims, are expected to show mercy towards, to leave intact the property of and to respect the dignity of the vanquished, albeit this was and is imperfectly followed even by the Prophet himself (Rodinson, 173).
Since vendetta killings and the violent usurpation of land continues in Afghanistan and other Muslims societies, it is clear that these particular aspects of tribal codes of conduct have not been subsumed by the influence of Islam. Rather, sharia law has had to play an auxiliary role amongst Pashtun society. Historical and geographical factors were heavily stacked against the prospect of total Pashtun assimilation to sharia. The fragmented geography of the country once again stymied the prospect of any uniform Islamic code being established and also helped to prevent other Muslims from forcibly imposing pure sharia law upon the Pashtun. The historical factors railing against total sharia assimilation are aptly described:
Since Afghanistan had been ruled during its history as a country by Pushtuns, back by tribal-military levies, the code of the Pushtun prevailed widely in their confrontations with other ethnic groups, especially Hazara, as well as among Pushtuns themselves; coexistence of Pushtunwali with Sharia occurred through ulema intervention (Magnus, 78)

This intervention usually takes the form of active mediation between aggrieved parties. The mullah or ulema’s task is not to try to convince the aggrieved party that they should forget the offense. Rather, he works jointly with the two parties to find a suitable (and preferably non-violent) manner for the offender to amend the offense, such as monetary compensation, a public apology, and/or an act of service to the aggrieved party.
Though Pushtunwali is still paramount in the lives of many Pashtun, it too has made exceptions where Islamic law can override it. Pushtunwali explicitly allows an Islamic expert to override the tenants of the code in special circumstances. These circumstances could be when tribes or the Pashtun as a whole have to band together to face an outside threat, and need a religious authority figure to sanction their actions (Magnus, 78). Such occurrences probably happened during the Soviet Invasion from 1980 to 1989 when a large part of the Afghan population became mujahideen (holy warriors) and waged a jihad against the Soviets. Only an influential cleric has the power to wage legitimate jihad, so the Pashtun had to defer to religious authority in order have their struggle be perceived as legitimate to the outside Muslim world
Earlier in this essay it was mentioned that the Pashtun absorbed Islam while at the same time keeping hold of many of their previous traditions. Due to its non-hierarchical nature, the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam melded together with Pashtun society rather well, despite ideological conflicts over warfare and vendetta killings. One of the main appeals of Sunni Islam to the Pashtun is that it is not centrally controlled by either a state authority or a religious body. With the exception of the Taliban’s brief rule over Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, there has never been a true Sunni theocracy, i.e. a state ruled directly by ordained clergy.
However, such attempts at non-theocratic centralized control over the tenants and adherents of Sunni Islam do occur, especially in modern times. Governments often try to reign in the power of local clerics by making them answerable to a state appointed body of Islamic experts and back their edicts up through economic coercion and force. States like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have appointed certain pliable clerics into the position of Grand Mufti, whose responsibility it is to be the voice of the state’s interpretation of Islamic law and behavior. However, these figures are often mistrusted by segments of the population who view them as puppets of the authorities, and not without reason. Their teachings invariably focus on the parts of the Koran that emphasize submission towards worldly rulers and to resist rebellion even if the ruler seems unjust and/or un-Islamic.
The only Afghan ruler who ever came even close to imposing both state and religious authority over the Pashtun was Abdul Rahman, who ruled from 1880 to 1901 (Adamec, 4). Known as the “Iron Amir,” Rahman tried to change the entire landscape of Afghan politics and social life through will, coercion and brute force. As the Pashtun have historically resisted any form of state or religious authority that has tried to tether their freedom of movement and their freedom of conduct, they did not accept his rule easily. Rahman moved against the power of local mullahs by forcing them to report to a state body of Islamic experts and stripping them of their land and titles if they failed to comply (Adamec, 4). He also discontinued the old practice of appointing local Afghan princes as the governors of their region and instead installed his loyal followers in their place. Along with actively crushing rebellion amongst the tribes, assassinating notable opponents and beginning the creation of a regular federal army, he also claimed that the king was the legitimate defender of secular and religious authority in the country (Ewans, 89). This meant that he was the sole interpreter of Islamic law and he alone had the authority to wage combative jihad in the face of external threat or internal rebellion (Ewans, 89).
This state of affairs did not last long after his death. Even though other kings after him attempted to further his policies, they lacked both the strength and ability to make Afghanistan into a centrally controlled polity like Rahman intended. The current condition of Afghan politics and society displays the fact clearly. The Pashtunwali code is still alive and well amongst the Pashtun tribes, strong central authority is a distant dream and the power of local clerics has not diminished. If anything, all of the conditions that made Afghanistan a fractured state throughout its 250 year history have been exacerbated. The prime cause of this phenomenon is the perpetual state of conflict the country has been in since 1980, the year the Soviet Union invaded. The war itself shattered whatever central government remained and turned the country into countless small polities based on location, ethnicity and political affiliation (Magnus, 77).
The lead-up to the war was a time of massive social upheaval in the country. The last Pashtun monarch, Zahir Shah, was overthrown in 1973 by his cousin Mohammed Daud Khan (Magnus, 79). Daud spent the next five years trying to create a viable republican government but was ultimately overthrown in a coup in 1978 (Magnus, 79). His successors were communists and communist sympathizers with deep ties to the Soviet Union and attempted, like Rahman before them, to change the entire economic, social and political face of the country. Some of their bolder moves during their rule by decree were to initiate comprehensive land reforms, widespread literacy programs, and a push towards relative gender equality. These attempts thoroughly failed, not necessarily because of intrinsic hostility towards the programs, but because of their hasty and inept implementation (Magnus, 80). The communist reformers blithely ignored the cultural sensitivities of the population they were trying to influence, as shown by the manner in which the literacy programs were implemented. Magnus states that it:
“was derailed because it was imposed without regard to custom (mixing of the sexes in one classroom, forcing the elderly into classrooms, bringing into the community strangers to administer and teach, rather than recruiting local people), and without local input” (80).

The end result of the communist’s mismanagement of the country was further radicalization of the Afghan population against them and their Soviet patrons, the rise of radical Islamic parties with warlords at their heads, and a continued fragmentation of the country under ethnic and religious grounds (Magnus, 80). Faced with the potential collapse of their puppet regime, the Soviet Union invaded, and got itself tangled in an extremely vicious war that would accelerate its eventual downfall.
The invasion, a frail central government and Afghanistan’s historical lack of adequate transportation infrastructure gave rise to regional warlords (Magnus, 81). They became the de facto governors of these areas and were of many different persuasions and tempers. They in turn enforced their own rule and ideology upon the population in their region. Educational programs were introduced in these small polities, but this education became increasingly political and radicalized (Magnus, 77). If a region was governed by radical Islamists, as was often the case, children would be educated in the harshest variant of Islamic law possible. Many of these radical Islamists were inspired by Wahhabist ideology from Saudi Arabia, who had effectively bankrolled their rise to power. The regions that the Islamists controlled were primarily Pashtun regions and thus an entire generation of Pashtun youth became ardent Islamists. And unlike the attempts at central control of Abdul Rahman and the post-Daud communist government, the radical Islamicization of Pashtun youth produced (for better or worse) genuine social and psychological change in the country. By appealing to the Islamic sentiments of the Pashtun population, the radical Islamists actually managed, for perhaps the first time in Afghan history, to instill an almost singular and exclusive ideology within the minds of many Pashtun youth. And far from curtailing the more draconian traditions of the Pashtunwali code, Wahhabist Islam emphasized violent struggle as the best path of conduct in life. Their conception of honorable behavior was through violent confrontation with the “enemies of Islam” and the hope for martyrdom in combat with these enemies. Though at the time this phenomenon was not universal, it set the stage for the rise of the Taliban in the early 1990’s.
The Taliban, literally “students”, were in many ways the product of Saudi Arabian oil money and Pakistani military training. There was no such thing as the Taliban prior to 1994; it was founded by a charismatic cleric named Mullah Omar from Kandahar in the desert south of Afghanistan (McCauley, 79). Still in the grips of the horrific civil war that followed the end of the Soviet invasion in 1989, the Taliban seemed to be a godsend for the country’s population. They promised to defeat the violent and quarrelsome warlords who had brought so much destruction after the invasion. They also promised to bring in an age of true Islamic justice to Afghanistan and make the country a pious paradise. Their military campaign was an immense success; they brought almost 90% of the country under their rule, save for a small section of the Tajik and Uzbek north (McCauley, 81). Of particular significance is the fact that almost 90% of the Taliban are Pashtun, including Mullah Omar himself (McCauley, 89). This is no coincidence. The Pashtun youth who served in the movement had already been imbued with radical Islamic values during the civil war, had received significant military training from Pakistan and America, and were extremely battle hardened. This made them the perfect vanguard for the movement.
The Taliban ruled from 1996 to 2001, and were overthrown by American coalition forces in late September of that year. During their reign, the Taliban propagated the strictest and most Spartan form of Islam imaginable. Women were forbidden to work or appear in public, men were forced to wear full length beards, diplomatic ties to every nation on earth (save for their benefactors, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) were abolished, and nearly every crime could be punishable by death (McCauley, 89). Though they have since been usurped from power, the Taliban is by no means a dead movement. The immense popularity that they achieved prior to their conquest of the country has certainly declined, especially amongst the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmen and the Hazaras, all groups that were subjected to intense persecution by the Taliban. But their influence amongst the Pashtun, especially the uneducated tribal youth, is still strong, and they continue to fight guerrilla warfare against the American coalition forces up to this day. In so many ways this is the inevitable result of the perpetual conflict that Afghanistan has endured for the past 27 years.
History shows that in times of extreme crisis and governmental instability, it is the extremists who are most well-equipped to take the reigns of power. For example, the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) saw hosts of warlords of numerous political persuasions emerge from the carnage and secure their own regional polities, some as small as neighborhoods. Most of those militia groups were disarmed after the Taif Accords of 1990, with the exception of Hezbollah in South Lebanon. Though not comparable to the Taliban in terms of violence towards their own people, Hezbollah is also a radical Islamist group. During the civil war, almost all of South Lebanon was effectively a Hezbollah mini-state, and this condition has persisted into peace time.
Their effectiveness in gaining and maintaining power is the result of several conditions; first, their Shia Islamic credentials appealed to the majority of Shias in the region, who saw them as a welcome change from the endemic corruption of the Lebanese government. Additionally, their indigenous Islamic convictions enabled them to work within Lebanese Shia culture, rather than from the outside, thus reassuring their co-religionists that they would not try to forcibly change the foundations of that culture. Second, South Lebanon itself was (and still is) impoverished in comparison to the rest of the country. Thus Hezbollah counteracted this by establishing charitable foundations and free medical centers for anyone who couldn’t afford basic care (Shanahan, 83). Third, the traditional leaders of Lebanon’s Shia, the zuama (clan leaders), could no longer secure jobs and other privileges for their constituencies (Shanahan, 72). Hezbollah emerged as the strongest alternative to the political status quo of zuama dominance and promised to rebuild the infrastructure of South Lebanon.
The Taliban achieved prominence for many of the same reasons; Islamic credentials and a promise of cultural continuity, assistance to the most impoverished areas of the country (save for any non-Sunni Muslims), and the acumen to make their power grab at a time of widespread dissatisfaction with the political situation in Afghanistan. Additionally, the Taliban could never have been as successful in their rise had their belief structure not incorporated or at least accepted the pre-existing tribal loyalties of their base. The most austere elements of the Pashtunwali code of conduct were left intact, such as Pashtun warfare regulations, and new ways of gaining honor were propagated (see page 19).
The future of Afghanistan and the Pashtun tribes is far from certain. Compared to the past 27 years, there is less violence and internal oppression than ever before. Efforts are being made to build and rebuild the shattered Afghan infrastructure, to educate the population on modern civil law and democratic principles, and to ensure that the average Afghan is included in the political process. But given that this impetus occurred because of blatantly external stimuli (the American invasion), genuine social and psychological change will be hard-won. Throughout this essay, focus has been given to the difficulties that other reformers have had in fomenting real change in Afghan society. The long-term failures of Abdul Rahman and his centralized rule, to the communist government’s widespread reforms pay testament to near-insurmountable challenge of changing Afghan society without first gaining legitimacy from the population, especially the Pashtun. The Taliban achieved this through a combination of indigenous legitimacy and expert timing, welded together by draconian rule. It would be a sad fact indeed if that type of governance were the only means of stabilizing the country and bringing it out of the desolation of the past three decades.
Such change is not impossible, even amongst the most radical Islamist elements of the Pashtun population. It should be remembered that for the majority of its history, the dominant form of Islam in the country was the Hanafi branch, the most liberal of all mainstream Sunni theological schools. Additionally, the indoctrination of the Pashtun youth to Wahhabism was not universal, and there exists a large segment of Pashtun who reviled the totalitarianism of the Taliban but were powerless to stop their rise. Because of the Taliban’s exclusivist religiosity, these Pashtun saw the Taliban as a major threat to tribal independence and contrary to the ideological plurality of their ancestors. That segment has not gone away, and the more empathic aspects of the Pashtunwali code have not evaporated either. Despite the destructiveness of badal, there also exist the principles of hospitality and sanctuary. Despite the fetishization of martyrdom that the Taliban introduced, there still exists the tolerance and scholarly inquiry of the Hanafi branch. Many modern-minded Afghans have taken pains to point out that the intolerance of the Taliban was in many ways a foreign introduction from Saudi Arabia, and does not reflect the historically dominant ethos of Afghan Islam.
Knowledge of Afghanistan’s past is indispensable for understanding and negotiating its future. American policy makers who are unaware of Pashtunwali and its tenants of honorable conduct will be hamstrung when trying to convince Pashtun tribal leaders to resist the influx of Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters. Diplomatic efforts amongst the tribes must appeal to their concepts of honor. First, any deal where tribes are obliged to resist the Taliban and Al-Qaeda must ensure their short-term safety from reprisal. A tribal khan and the jirga could never expect compliance from their constituents if their safety were not first ensured, as it would be both an irrational and a dishonorable decision. Consequently, that means that more troops and civilian workers with military expertise must be deployed to give the compliant tribes a reason to feel secure. Second, the genealogical continuity of the Pashtun tribes must also be respected. That means ensuring their long-term safety and prosperity, which by extension means funneling more money and human resources into the country. Third, if Afghanistan is ever to be stabilized, it has to be expected that the presence of one strong leader (like Abdul Rahman) will not be sufficient to enact real change. As the Pashtun are collectivistic in social orientation and expect individual subordination to group needs, they rarely accept the legitimacy of top-down rule from Kabul. Thus American initiatives should be geared towards securing the support of every tribal khan who will listen and convening a grand jirga of these men, provided this is not already in development.
Finally, a hands-on approach to education is desperately needed in order combat the Taliban’s indoctrination of Pashtun youth. The Taliban already proved that grassroots education works very effectively when applied at a young age. American forces and the current Afghan government can counteract the radicalization of Pashtun youth through this same mechanism. The foundations of humane Afghan Islam are already there, as are the more decent aspects of the Pashtunwali code. A stable Afghanistan is not a mere fantasy, but it must take real patience and commitment from American policy makers to turn such a dream into empirical reality.



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