Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity, and the State in Afghanistan

251 Pages·2008·1.13 MB·English

by  Rasul Rais

Recovering the
Frontier State

Recovering the
Frontier State
War, Ethnicity, and
State in Afghanistan
Rasul Bakhsh Rais
LEXINGTON BOOKS
A division of
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
LEXINGTON BOOKS
A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200
Lanham, MD 20706
Estover Road
Plymouth PL6 7PY
United Kingdom
Copyright ©2008 by Lexington Books
First paperback edition 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rais, Rasul Bakhsh.
Recovering the frontier state : war, ethnicity, and state in Afghanistan / Rasul
Bakhsh Rais.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Afghanistan—Politics and government—2001– 2. Ethnicity—Afghanistan. 3.
Afghanistan—Ethnic relations. I. Title.
DS371.4.R34 2008
958.104'7 —dc22 2007046975
ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-0956-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-3701-7 (pbk : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-3702-4 (electronic)
Printed in the United States of America
(cid:2)™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
This book is dedicated to the peoples of
Afghanistan, who have struggled endlessly
with all the power they had and the sacrifices
they could make to establish peace,
rebuild their homeland, and make it
worth living and dreaming for.

Contents
Preface ix
1 Introduction 1
2 Ethnicity, Political Power, and Fragmentation 27
3 Rise of the Taliban and Civil War 57
4 The United States and the War on Terrorism 87
5 Restructuring a New Afghan State 121
6 Political Economy of Drugs and Warlordism 153
7 Afghanistan and the Neighboring States 177
8 Conclusion 205
Bibliography 217
Index 229
About the Author 237
vii

Preface
Ravaged by wars over the last three decades, Afghanistan has struggled to
find peace and stability in the face of serious internal and external chal-
lenges, including its history, demography, geography, and global power pol-
itics. This book examines the effect of a continuous state of war on
Afghanistan from various angles. Placing particular emphasis on how mul-
tiple conflicts shaped the question of ethnic identity, quest for empower-
ment, and political fragmentation, the book seeks to explain the structural
impediments in reviving the Afghan state.
It is argued that the state of war has added to the complexity of problems
in the context of rebuilding state and nationhood in a fractured multieth-
nic society of Afghanistan. The increased polarity between various ethnici-
ties and power groups has also reduced the likelihood of restoring the old
social balance that provided stability to the country for generations. More-
over, one cannot be too sanguine about the prospects of a fresh social con-
tract among Afghanistan’s diverse, and often competitive, social groups on
the fundamental questions of power, legitimacy, state and institution build-
ing, without long-term positive engagement of international community.
This book places Afghanistan’s political and security issues in a global
and historical framework, analyzing its position as a “frontier state” and
how that position has determined its tragic path from an isolated kingdom
to a battleground of the deadliest conflicts of our time. Although many di-
verse forces—internal groups and external actors—have contributed to this
dismal transformation, we should not forget that the last and the most dis-
astrous episode of the cold war took place in the deserts and mountains of
Afghanistan.
ix