Workshop Abstracts
Panel 1 - Unpacking Interventionism and State-Building
Knowledge production, fieldwork practice and ethical research on Afghanistan post-August 2021
Diane Tippett (University of Sydney)
Within the academe, a premium has been placed on ‘understanding’ what happened on and since August 2021 in Afghanistan. However, this demand for urgent knowledge and analysis has frequently relied on anaemic, Orientalist tropes – a phenomenon previously identified by Manchanda (2020) as the ‘emergency episteme.’ The ethics of knowledge production within this framework must be questioned, especially where currently both residents and diaspora of Afghanistan are suffering from humiliating and traumatic conditions, with the very existence of the Afghan people, and potentially the state itself, under threat. How does one reconcile pursuing academic research, even that which posits to be critical or decolonial in nature, in such circumstances? Where the ‘field’ has become unavailable, can a culturally interpretative project, orientated towards understanding a ‘high-context’ socio-political system be performed without misrepresentation, or is the ability to theorise so dulled as to render the research non-viable? This paper will examine approaches to ethical doctoral research and epistemology in the context of a geographically dispersed physical ‘field’ consisting of diaspora communities in Australia, the United States, Russia, Iran, Tajikistan, Pakistan and India, and the implications of Afghanistan itself being available only as a ‘digital’ field. The relationship between constructivist grounded theory methodology and decolonization of current episteme in relation to Afghanistan will also be explored, including the challenges of reconciling the dynamics of the diaspora(s) with the dynamics of those still residing within Afghanistan in data analysis.
How Liberalism Failed in Afghanistan
Omar Sadr (University of Pittsburgh)
This paper comprehensively examines the relevancy of three divergent critiques of liberalism in relation to the plainly manifest failure of liberalism in the context of Afghanistan. Specifically, it considers the core premises of classical liberalism, post-liberalism, and modus vivendi liberalism to assess their validity for Afghanistan. From a purely philosophical point of view, internal ideological conditions make a state of liberalism harder to achieve in a conflictual and heterogenous context like Afghanistan, where religious beliefs and cultural norms are incompatible with liberal thought. In this regard, this study suggests that modus vivendi liberalism offers a solution for overcoming the challenge of plurality and incommensurability of values.
Institutional roots of the failure of liberal interventions in Afghanistan
Mirwais Parsa (South Asian University)
Political and economic liberalization were the defining features of Afghanistan from 2004 until the collapse of the republic in 2021. The architects of the post-Bonn norm in Afghanistan considered liberal institutions a panacea for the economic backwardness and expected they would help Afghanistan’s transformation into a modern nation-state. Others thought Afghanistan was not an institutional vacuum; thus, introducing liberal values too soon triggered institutional disequilibrium that was doomed to failure at the outset. In this paper, I argue that the liberal interventions failed not because they were incompatible with the local values in spirit but because they were flawed in design and implementation mechanisms. There is a bulk of evidence that Islam and the traditional norms of Afghanistan societies encourage participatory processes and the protection of private property. Installing a highly centralized governance structure, contrary to how Afghanistan communities organize and govern themselves, concentrated political power and fiscal and policy-making authority in Kabul. The comprehensive constitutional power of the President and a centralized system of resource allocation, in the absence of a strong constraining entity, left the abuse of power by ruling elites unchecked and jeopardized the whole system of private property as a mechanism for broadening economic incentives and opportunities. Besides, the implementation mechanisms underpinning liberal interventions have been a disaster. During the 20 years of the liberal project, at least three parallel structures with conflicting interests have been operating in Afghanistan’s development market: the government, the international community, and a dense network of NGOs. In theory, they were comprehended as complementary mechanisms, but in practice, they duplicated, delegitimized, and crowded out each other in most cases. The centralized order and parallel aid delivery mechanisms left people’s expectations unmet and caused unfettered corruption and development failure that furthered the distance between the people and the government, eventually leading to the tragic failure of the liberal state institution-building agenda in Afghanistan.
Unpacking the collapse of the Republic in Afghanistan: What brought us here?
Sarajuddin Isar (SOAS University of London)
Drawing from a political economy framework and evidence from 120 key informant interviews in Afghanistan, I argue that the collapse of the Afghan Republic in August 2021 was attributed to several intertwined factors. First, the 2020 US-Taliban agreement, which failed to extract meaningful concessions from the Taliban and emboldened Taliban forces. President Biden’s subsequent announcement of the departure of U.S. troops in August 2021 gave the Taliban more political and military leverage. This led to capture of large swathes of territory by Taliban forces, culminating in the rapid collapse of multiple Afghan cities.
Second, as the insurgency picked up post 2005, the Taliban increased their capacity to mobilise domestic resources. They created a parallel shadow taxation system which was more effective than the formal one run by the Republic. They gradually strengthened their fiscal base as they expanded their territorial control, including border crossings and key trade routes. This provided the Taliban with reliable funds for insurgent activities and cut off government revenue streams, which further undermined the Republic.
Finally, while the collapse was precipitated by the above factors, President Ghani created structural vulnerabilities that contributed to the Republic’s fall. In particular, Ghani’s over-centralisation of power and systematic exclusion of political elites undermined the state’s ability to withstand an emboldened Taliban. In the absence of strong state-aligned peripheral elites, resistance to the Taliban’s advance was fatally undermined.
Panel 2 - Indigenous Institutions
Shattered Paradigms of Civility – Islam, Sufism and what counts as Civil Society in Afghanistan
Annika Schmeding (Harvard University)
Civil society in Afghanistan has been mainly understood as a project championed by the English speaking, NGO-connected strata of society. Framed as central to the post-2001 state-building process, these organizations were at times discounted for being a “rentier civil society” because of their dependency on international aid. Funders believed they were introducing something new to the country. Afghanistan, however, has much older traditions of resourceful civic engagement in which people came together in their communities on a volunteer basis to improve local infrastructure (ashar), support people in need (khairat) or mediate disputes through councils (shuras and jirgas). These forms of collective organization, which long predated foreign NGOs, only come into view when the definition of “civil society” is expanded to include both informally organized and religion-based civil groups. In this contribution, I propose approaching Sufism as a lens for seeing Afghanistan’s civil society, building on work by anthropologists who have questioned the narrow usage of the term “civil society,” and opted instead for an expanded definition of civility. Extending our view onto informal interpersonal groups, we can perceive these groups as creating social networks of trust that in turn define identities and belonging. I argue they fulfill important functions for socialization and social cohesion, public communication of ideas, social security and resource distribution, as well as mediation and conflict resolution. The paper sheds light on how traditional Sufi civilities navigated the past decades and how they have fared post-2021.
Education and State-Building in Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: An Ill-Fated Relationship
Zeynep Tuba Sungur (SOAS University of London)
August 2021, a tumultuous month in the recent history of Afghanistan, saw the catastrophic US withdrawal; the immediate collapse of the Islamic Republic; and the return of the Taliban government. One year ahead, scholars are left with too many questions about the Western-led state-building efforts in this country in the past two decades. In the front line of criticisms is the viability, if any at all, of the state of Afghanistan which was established and sustained under Western auspices for almost two decades from 2004 to 2021. As part of this questioning, this study focuses particularly on the relationship between state-building and education which is supposed to be an important tool in enhancing state power by generating citizens. More specifically, this paper aims at making a holistic assessment of state-sponsored basic education in Islamic Republic of Afghanistan along with its various parties including the Ministry of Education; schools; teachers; curriculum and textbooks; and students. The goal of this multi-level examination is to show how each of these parties in basic education mostly failed to operationalise the state-building function of education. Based on the author’s own field research at the Ministry of Education in Kabul (2018) as well as some secondary resources on education, this study is set to make a humble contribution to our current understanding of the capacity of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as a state.
Girls’ Secondary Education And Education Crises in Afghanistan: Challenges and Way Out
Yahia Baiza (Institute of Ismaili Studies)
Modern education in Afghanistan has been subject to various and often contradictory political developments throughout history. These developments have sometimes been in favour, but most of the time to the detriment, of education. Over the last forty years (1978–2021), political turmoil, foreign invasions, international and regional proxy wars, internecine conflicts, internal displacements and the emigration of millions of people have inflicted unprecedented blows on Afghanistan’s education system. The Taliban’s return to power on 15 August 2021 marks a new phase of political and education crisis with a long-term impact on all aspects of education, especially for girls.
This paper’s thesis is that education in Afghanistan operates in a perpetual state of crisis. Frequent regime changes and changes pave the way for successive crises, one after the other. Consequently, education neither receives due attention nor does it recover from one crisis before it enters a new one. More importantly, crises remain unacknowledged. In exploring this perpetual state of the education crisis in Afghanistan, this paper exclusively focuses on the current crisis of girls’ education at the secondary level and explores its root causes within the Taliban religious ideology; and what measures could address the crisis and reduce its effects on girls’ but generally the education system.
Beyond a ‘Lightning Rod’—Complicating Histories of Afghan Women’s Schooling
Marya Hannun (University of Exeter)
Paralleling the first decades of the twenty-first century, in the 1920s Afghan women were an object of debate and state-led as well as foreign intervention. Much like the present moment, the historiography, with its intense focus on the political significance and patriarchal contestations over women’s education, has neglected the experiences of women themselves. We find a flattening tendency in two directions: women’s experiences are written off as exceptional elites, or they are held up as representative of Afghan women writ large. This paper explores the substance of schooling through the fragmented archives that speak to the schoolroom in the 1920s, particularly the textbooks that were used in the first “public” schools for girls in Afghanistan. The textbooks pioneered for this school reflect a construction of a more legally autonomous and active Muslim female subject who was part of a broader Muslim women’s sphere. They illustrate the importance and unexpected afterlives of women’s mobility in this period and how elite Afghan women, connected to the state, engaged with knowledge transregionally and were exposed to new gendered formations that spoke back to the dominant frames with which their education was contested. At the same this was undoubtedly elite project in terms of the social mobilities made possible by education as well as who had access to schooling. Presenting this paper will also provide an opportunity to invite reflection on and discussion of methods for researching class and marginality in writing (gendered) histories of Afghanistan, particularly given the limitations on researchers today.
Aural (Re)Awakenings in Modern Afghanistan: The Music and Poetry of Resistance
Munazza Ebtikar (University of Oxford) & Mejgan Massoumi (Stanford University)
Over the past two decades, diverse musical forms saw a remarkable revival after the destruction of Afghanistan’s musical heritage during the 1990s. Once again, since the Taliban’s second takeover in August 2021, music and musicians face serious threats. Musicians have been forced to relocate abroad and keep their musical heritage and identity alive beyond the country’s borders. In light of tumultuous political developments, there has been a proliferation of songs that have become wartime anthems for resistance against the Taliban. Resistance music and poetry has gained mass appeal as it is being disseminated across online social media platforms and shared by pages of prominent Afghans in exile. They have also become popularized as anthems sung by soldiers who are currently on the battleground fi ghting against the Taliban. This talk will be an investigation of the emerging music and poetry produced in the Persian-speaking regions of northern and northeastern Afghanistan by musicians within and outside the country. Bringing these songs as texts to the foreground allows for more complex understandings of various identities in Afghanistan as well their relationship to history, politics, and sense of belonging to their land. It also foregrounds the urgency of cultural preservation despite attempts to erase or diminish the existence of musical sound and performance. Combining anthropological and historical perspectives, this project attempts to expand existing literature on the peoples and cultures of Afghanistan by further nuancing the making and place of music and its relationship to war, memory, and political dissent.
Panel 3 - Identity and Society
Othering as Genocide, Genocide as Othering: Hazaras in the Late Nineteenth Century
Rahman Mohammadi (University of Oxford)
To be or not to be, that is the question dominating many discussions on genocide that are often unhealthily obsessed with definition. This paper seeks to relocate analyses of genocide away from such a focus and towards a ‘framework of othering’ as a critical method of approaching genocide studies. Through an analysis of the Hazara Genocide (1891-93), this paper will argue that it is ideas, thoughts, values, imagery, and symbols that form the bedrock of the genocidal process, occurring foundationally in the development of collective social psyche. Adopting a framework of othering approach in the study of genocide can contribute to comprehending the Hazara Genocide from an alternative and analytical perspective, one grounded in internalised and authentic processes of identity formation and othering, one that considers the immaterial transgressions of the genocidal process as central and constitutive rather than peripheral. The framework of othering makes it accessible to take culture, symbolism, and difference during the Hazara Genocide seriously, unearthing the multitude of ways genocide functions.
The life and times of Sarwar Joya, 20th century Afghan radical
Barry Sadid (SOAS University of London)
A biographical essay on the life of Ghulam Sarwar Joya (1899 - 1960), a radical Afghan journalist and politician from the Shia Qizilbash minority. A journalist, poet, publisher, editor, prisoner, elected politician, and party activist, Joya was a leading figure of the generation of progressives raised under and inspired by the ten year reign of Afghanistan’s ill-fated reformer King, Amanullah Khan, overthrown in a popular uprising 1929. His activism for expanded freedoms in a sovereign and democratic Afghanistan led to severe repression by succeeding reactionary governments, who imprisoned Joya for over twenty non-consecutive years and finally executed him secretly in prison. Sarwar Joya remains highly regarded as a martyr figure among Afghan progressives, but little has been written on his life - in great part due to Afghanistan’s historical turmoil, and the scattering of Joya’s own wider family due to the war. This thesis aims to unearth a fuller narrative of Sarwar Joya’s life using private family documents and oral accounts, and in the process flesh out several historical discussions about the origins of Afghan progressivism, the place of the Qizilbash Shia in Afghanistan, and the historiographical challenges of capturing an Afghan life.
The Plight of the Sikh Community in Afghanistan
Anchita Borthakur & Angana Kotokey (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
The territories making up modern-day Afghanistan were not only multi-ethnic but also one in which different religious traditions co-existed until the middle of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, decades of conflict in Afghanistan, and the increasing ascendancy of different Islamist movements often hostile to non-Muslim minorities including the Afghanistan's Sikh community over the past few decades, have led to the mass exodus of majority of the Afghanistan's Sikhs from their country of origin. Like Afghanistan's Muslim and other non-Muslim population, the migratory process of the Sikh community, which had played a key role in the social and economic fabric of the country until the end of the twentieth century, started as early as the 1980s which has not stopped since then, thereby reducing their number to less than a hundred today. An attempt will be made in this paper to understand the historical as well as the current trajectory of Afghanistan's Sikh community and the reasons behind their dwindling numbers. Along with the complex geopolitics surrounding the region, the hostility toward the Sikh minority is also the result of an exclusive form of nationalism that existed in Afghanistan probably due to a lack of knowledge among sections of the local population about their country's pluralistic religious past and the absence of proper institutionalization of religious minority rights in the state till date. The paper will also deal with the status of Afghanistan's Sikhs who have moved to India, their everyday struggle for survival in the new place, and how they manage or negotiate various identities to cope with the changing environment— but still feel the pain of leaving their homeland.
In the Shadows of Asamai: Afghan Hindu Navigations of Belonging and Unbelonging From Kabul to the Diaspora
Neha Lund (Brown University)
Afghanistan has long been home to Hindu & Sikh communities. Despite the historical importance of Hindus and Sikhs to the Afghan state since its conceptualization, scholars have paid little attention to these communities. In this paper, based on 19 in-depth interviews with Afghan Hindu refugees in the United States and Germany, I investigate how Afghan Hindus from Kabul conceptualize national, religious, and community “identity” both in the homeland of the Islamic republic, and in the diaspora after facing exile. I introduce the concept of “conditional accommodation,” which I argue, allowed for the development of notions of belonging and community amongst Afghan Hindus in Kabul despite experiences of religious discrimination within and war-induced displacement from the homeland.
I argue that conditional accommodation functioned as a semi-protective status which allowed for many of my interlocutors to maintain livelihoods and construct a tight-knit “community” for generations on end, despite facing structural violence. I find that the Asamai Temple in Kabul, a Hindu temple most frequently cited by my respondents, served as a crucial site under the status of conditional accommodation for identity-formation and the strengthening of community ties in the lives of my respondents. However, starting in the 1970s, events of political instability and geopolitical violence eroded this protective status, ultimately catalyzing exile. In the face of exile, the social significance and sacred geography associated with Asamai remained so important, that it underwent replication across several transnational diasporas. As Afghan Hindus & Sikhs now exist almost entirely as diasporic subjects, this work contributes to understandings of transnationalism in the tradition of critical refugee studies.
Panel 4 - Migration, Dislocation and Resettlement
Encountering the hostile environment: recently arrived Afghan migrants In London
Louise Ryan, Maria Lopez and Alessia Dalceggio (London Metropolitan University)
Following the dramatic evacuation from Kabul airport in August 2021, the UK government proclaimed its commitment to a ‘warm welcome’ for Afghans. In this paper we draw on original qualitative research to explore the emerging experiences of evacuees during the first year since their arrival in London. Using the narratives of our Afghans participants, as well as insights from key stakeholders, we show the slow and opaque bureaucratic processes and lack of communication between Home Office officials and local authorities which resulted in many thousands of evacuees remaining in temporary hotel accommodation for over one year.
Our findings suggest that the Afghan resettlement policies fall short of their objectives ultimately because these policies were birthed within a punitive immigration system, which is designed to ‘wear down’ migrants in the UK, regardless of their reason for migration.
Moreover, we argue that the ad hoc response of the Home Office and the Foreign Office, has created ‘false distinctions’ between categories of Afghan refugees reinforcing categories of ‘deserving’ versus ‘underserving’ migrants. This distinction allows the government to present itself as humanitarian, ‘rescuing’ people from Afghanistan, while simultaneously maintaining its commitment to the ‘hostile immigration environment’. While the government presents the Afghan situation as unprecedented, history tells a different story. There are clear similarities in migration flows out of Syria and Afghanistan and now from Ukraine. Presenting these events as isolated exceptions means that the core policy of hostile environment remains unchanged – despite evidence it does not work and is not fit for purpose.
Protection-seeking without asylum-seeking: reflections on the limits to complementary pathways to protection for Afghans
Ceri Oeppen (University of Sussex)
The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants (2016) and the Global Compact on Refugees (2018) demonstrate increased international policy interest in complementary pathways to protection (education visas, labour-permits, and family reunification). However, the last twelve months have clearly demonstrated the limitations of both complementary pathways, and traditional resettlement, as a route to protection for Afghans. Given increasing policy interest, it is important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of non-asylum routes to protection; particularly when governments position them as a replacement to proactive asylum-seeking migration, as seen in the UK Nationality and Borders Bill (2022).
With a focus on the UK, I will reflect on two such routes available to Afghans: higher education and resettlement. The inadequately planned-for Op Pitting evacuations have led to scholarships being converted to protection routes, and the creation of an ad hoc Afghan Citizen Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) running alongside the pre-existing Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP). I argue that whilst any protection opportunities are better than none, there are significant issues with the way both scholarships and resettlement programmes have been managed. Issues include the difficult and traumatic experiences of evacuated Afghans trying to navigate an ad hoc system of settlement; practical and logistical challenges for local authorities who have been left to manage resettlement with minimal resources from central government; and the political questions these schemes raise about the future of Afghan refugee protection in the UK, particularly for those outside the small minority who have access to scholarships, ACRS and ARAP.
Security from the bottom-up: Afghans’ lived experiences in the Netherlands
Hameed Hakimi (University of Cambridge)
Understandings of security and how it relates to migration are often conflicting and fragmentary. This article draws attention to disparate, siloed perspectives to gain deeper insight into what security in the context of migration means ‘from the bottom-up’. I focus on the experiences of Afghan migrants in the Netherlands with a particular focus on the methodological approaches needed to capture their lived experiences. In examining apt methodological tools, I also reflect on a variety of theoretical approaches from different disciplines – including sociology, international relations, anthropology and geography. The purpose is to uncover a crucial missing link in understandings of security: how Afghan migrants in the Netherlands who either hold Dutch citizenship or the right to remain in the country construct their subjective security in Dutch society against both the formal and informal demands to integrate. This is against the ostensible claims of inclusivity in the Netherlands and that integration ultimately aims to provide migrants inclusion in both the socioeconomic life and broader Dutch society.
Connections and disconnections in August 2021 in Afghanistan: the role of technologies from below
Nina Khamsy (Geneva Graduate Institute)
This paper focuses on the significance of technologies in the events in Afghanistan in August 2021. It focuses on the evacuation and humanitarian efforts based on the concepts of connections and disconnections.
After U.S. troops left Afghanistan, President Biden repeatedly defended ending the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and the way the evacuation was carried out. Yet criticisms have pointed to the abrupt character of the US withdrawal that led to the collapse of the Afghan security forces, and to the mismanagement of evacuation operations that led many without support. Scholars had foreseen these challenges, but their voices had remained unheard. Consequently, a high number of people in need to leave - public servants from the former government, interpreters working with foreign troops, women and human right defenders trained by the American troops and their allies, scholars, and artists - found themselves “disconnected”. Yet, they also found ways to remain “connected” with their partners to overcome this disconnection based on their own transnational networks, for instance by using WhatsApp groups and smartphones.
European governments also came under criticism for the lack of support they offered to Afghan civilians. In Switzerland, a country known for its humanitarian tradition, the government only evacuated a total of 218 Afghans. The diaspora and civil society demanded a higher number of evacuations and family reunifications to re-establish links between the diaspora and their family, in particular minority and vulnerable groups, and as a way forward they put in place technological options, such as online assistance for humanitarian visa applications. Technology becomes a lens to understand past and present issues around August 2021.