1920-2001: Afghanistan - A Potted Social History - Melancholic Troglodytes

AFGHANISTAN:
A Potted Social History

I.

If the history of Afghanistan
is about any one thing, it is about playing hard to get when capital
turns on the charm: a mainly small-holding peasantry and artisanal population
that spurns the joys of wage-slavery; saturated carpet bombings by external
foes (sometimes in conjunction with the Afghani government) that fail
to crush the smuggling operations of the mountain people; civil wars
and the restricted nature of export crops making (non-drug related)
industrial agriculture untenable; mountain bandits collecting taxes
from all sides in return for protection, making the state's tax collectors
green with envy; meticulous social engineering plans to divide the country
into northern (oil, gas, and minerals) and southern (cheap labour) spheres
of influence, overwhelmed by ethnic/tribal/religious complications.

Like the Columbian communeros
(common land), minga (festive labour and reciprocal labour exchange)
and the Russian obshchina, the self-subsistence Afghani local
jirga (now devoid of its communitarian village structures) proves
a formidable obstacle to 'progress'. The small amount of surplus
secured by the state makes the seizure of power a dubious victory. Capital
has almost given up creating modern structures of domination in Afghanistan,
instead it tries to implant itself onto communitarian traditions.

II

If the history of Afghanistan
is about any one thing, it is about the nauseating counter-revolutionary
stitch up that is known as the 'Congress of the Peoples of the East'
(September 1920, Baku). Through the Congress, the subordination of proletarian
interest to the capitalist Bolshevik state became entrenched. Essentially
the circus intended to muster support (nutritional as well as military),
amongst the region's proletariat, for the fledging Russian state.

The Bolsheviks plummeted abysmal
depths of opportunism during the Congress by calling for a holy jihad
to save the USSR, whilst adopting the Koran as a political platform.
The Shariat (Islamic law) was credited with promoting the common ownership
of land and waqf (charitable endowments and at best an intra-classist
mechanism of wealth distribution between the mosque and the state) hailed
as a real gain for the poor.

The few dissenting voices from
this policy of class collaboration were fighting a losing battle. Narbutabekov
stopped short of calling Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Radek imbeciles,
and John Reed criticised Bolshevik demagogy. But perhaps M. N. Roy's
attitude was the most clear-sighted. He saw the stitch up for what it
was and simply refused to attend.

III

If the history of Afghanistan
is about any one thing, it is about Ibn Khaldun's distinction between
asabiyya (tribal solidarity) and umma (the false Muslim community).
From time to time an integrationist wave of rural Muslims storm the
citadels of urban power, which has become 'weak' through corruption,
laxity, and the loss of warrior spirit. Once the state's booty is
divided amongst the victors, the city's rulers undergo a fresh cycle
of decay until they in turn are overthrown by the next wave of puritanical
'incorruptibles'.

As soon as victory over a common
enemy (be it the USSR bourgeoisie or the Kabul elite) is in sight, all
the tribal, ethnic and religious divisions resurface. Fragmentation
ensues and the equilibrium re-establishes itself. The Taleban are today
in precisely this phase of disintegration (Editors' note: the text
was written in 2001).

IV

If the history of Afghanistan
is about any one thing, it is about the dream of Sultan Galiev, a Muslim
Tatar who joined the Bolsheviks in November 1917 and worked under Stalin's
'People's Commissariat for the Nationalities'. Galiev saw 'Muslim
societies' as collectively oppressed (with the exception of a few
big landlords and bourgeois elements). He, therefore, argued against
fanning the flames of class war inside such societies.

He envisioned a petty-bourgeois
cadre leading his new Muslim Communist Party. He believed the Comintern's
emphasis on the West as the engine of the world revolution was misplaced.
Later he advocated a Communist Colonial International for non-industrial
countries to counteract both the 'West' and Russian Chauvinism.
Many of today's Mojahedin are more reactionary versions of Sultan
Galiev. Once the Bolsheviks were finished using him against Koltchak,
his unorthodox views became burdensome. He was probably killed around
1940 on Stalin's orders.

V

If the history of Afghanistan
is about any one thing, it is about the fact that in the 80's Afghani
mullahs could have come to an accommodation with the USSR bourgeoisie
at any time (in fact many of them did just that!).

In so far as some engaged in
the 'anti-colonial' struggle, the ploy accomplished three aims:
Firstly, the war had devastated craftsmen, textile makers, weavers and
peasants. The mullah's traditional power base was both shrinking and
spinning out of control. New cross-sectional alliances had to be forged
to ensure the mullah's class privileges. The war was an opportunity
to forge this new alliance. Secondly, the anti-imperialist movement
provided the perfect cover for liquidating competitors. Sufi pirs (elderly
sages) with their masonic matrix of patronage and favours mediating
between devoted murids (disciples), landlords, village leaders, and
government officials became the silent victims of various waves of Islamic
integrationism. The Pashtun aristocracy had begun to lose its hegemony
to the new elite of 'Islamic intellectuals, mullahs, and small warlords
inside Afghanistan', and in the 90's this group in turn was marginalized
by (mostly Pashtun) neo-fundamentalist intellectuals amongst the emigrants
to Pakistan. The Taleban movement signified the victory of the US-Pakistan
axis of emigrants over the US-Saudi-(and perhaps Iran) axis of urban
Islamic graduates. Ahmad Shah Masood's recent assassination completes
this phase. And, thirdly, the anti-colonial jihad was waged to nip the
risk of agrarian reform in the bud and to divert proletarian dissatisfaction
into safer alternatives. The clergy emerged from the victory over USSR
in a stronger position than before and were able to frustrate proletarian/peasants
demands.

VI

If the history of Afghanistan
is about any one thing, it is about capital's preference for field-mines
to fence off enclosures over the more traditional barbed wire (20-25
Afghani are killed/injured by land-mines daily).

Oil producing Middle Eastern
countries used their massive riches for rapid urbanisation. Soon they
engineered two modes of capital domination- formal domination in rural
areas and real domination in the cities. Deprived of easy 'petro-dollars'
and faced with stiffer resistance to the development of productive forces,
the Afghan state could only manage a precarious formal domination in
some urban areas, whilst the inaccessible rural environment retained
'pre-capitalist' social relations.

However, the war against the
USSR forged a new entrepreneurial elite in the countryside, which ironically
is more 'advanced' than its city counterpart (Osama Bin Laden is
one such example). These 'old men of the mountain' are plugged into
the international capital circuit overseeing the distribution of arms,
subsidies, humanitarian aid and drugs. Moreover, during peacetime they
turn their attention to real estate speculation (similar to the warlords'
activities during the reconstruction of Beirut).

VII

If the history of Afghanistan
is about any one thing, it is about contending models of warfare: Tribal
war, Jihad, and Modern warfare and now 'post-modern' warfare.

Tribal war is typified by a
unity (admittedly hierarchical at times), which is directed against
the formation of the state (political society). Troops are presented
and paraded, confrontation and retreat are conducted within limits;
most of the time battles are avoided altogether and if unavoidable then
conducted at a specific time and with a minimum of casualties.

The Jihad, on the other hand,
is the expression of a civil society (camouflaged by a false religious
unity) in pursuit of political power. Asabiyya (tribal solidarity) is
broken up in favour of umma (Islamic false community). The tribal obsession
with symmetry and balance no longer applies. Shariat and discipline
are imposed through jihad.

In Modern warfare civil society
is temporarily suppressed (e.g., AFL-CIO have decided to postpone their
demonstration in the USA and Bush has launched an attack on Non-Governmental
Organizations accusing them of being terrorist fronts), in favour of
a total mobilisation of political society. Total war recognises no boundary,
either in space, time, or between categories of the population. Afghanistan
has proved itself a quagmire for such professional, disciplined armies,
as the Russian and British states would attest. Pentagon strategists
know this, which is why they are groping towards a new mode of warfare:
'post-modern' warfare, which combines policing and commando raids
with hi-tech intelligence and PR. The modern facet of the US military
response found expression against the Taleban, whilst its post-modern
facets were directed against the rest of us in a cyber-war involving
the latest tools of propaganda.

(Afghan Series, Number 1)
20.9.2001

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Melancholic Troglodytes, c/o 56a Infoshop, 56 Crampton Street, Walworth,
London SE17 3AE, United Kingdom.

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