Summary of Thomas Barfield's Afghanistan

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Afghanistan is a landlocked country that lies in the heart of Asia. It has been invaded by numerous armies over the course of history, and has been a center of many different empires ruled by outsiders.

#2 The anthropological approach of this book gives prominence to both culture and history, which is why it is important to discuss political order in the abstract without forgetting about them.

#3 The most fruitful way to approach these questions is to examine the changing notions of power and political legitimacy in Afghanistan over a long period. When the political structure was least open to competition, rulers found it easiest to maintain their legitimacy and authority.

#4 The emergence of a class of professional rulers was the result of a hierarchical political culture in which only men from certain elite descent groups were believed to have the right to rule or even compete for power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822503779

IRB Media

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Insights on Thomas Barfield's Afghanistan

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Afghanistan is a landlocked country that lies in the heart of Asia. It has been invaded by numerous armies over the course of history, and has been a center of many different empires ruled by outsiders.

#2

The anthropological approach of this book gives prominence to both culture and history, which is why it is important to discuss political order in the abstract without forgetting about them.

#3

The most fruitful way to approach these questions is to examine the changing notions of power and political legitimacy in Afghanistan over a long period. When the political structure was least open to competition, rulers found it easiest to maintain their legitimacy and authority.

#4

The emergence of a class of professional rulers was the result of a hierarchical political culture in which only men from certain elite descent groups were believed to have the right to rule or even compete for power.

#5

The situation in Afghanistan changed after the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1880. The new amir, Abdur Rahman, abolished the decentralized governmental system in which tribes and regions maintained a high degree of autonomy in exchange for submitting to the legal authority of the Kabul government.

#6

The stalemated mujahideen civil war opened the door to interference in Afghan affairs by neighboring states, which strengthened regional ethnic power brokers, and facilitated the exploitation of Afghanistan’s weakness by foreign Islamist groups.

#7

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many international actors feared that Afghanistan would break apart along ethnic and regional lines if not controlled by a central authority. But Afghans have long found the existence of a single state more advantageous than the alternatives.

#8

Afghanistan is a country that is medieval in the sense that religion still plays a significant role in culture and politics, just like it did in Europe before the Enlightenment. It is also biblical in the sense that it retains a non-mechanized rural subsistence economy and caravans of nomads.

#9

Ibn Khaldun’s model of Middle Eastern political organization is applied to Afghanistan in the final section of chapter 1. He proposed two different types of societies: a desert civilization based on subsistence agriculture and pastoralism in marginal zones, and a sedentary civilization based on the surplus agricultural production of the irrigated river valleys or plains that supported the cities.

#10

The Afghan state has been underplayed in a modern Afghan history that gives primacy to the Pashtuns as the country’s rulers. In reality, the Pashtuns were never rulers in Afghanistan before the mid-eighteenth century. Only at that time, after serving as military auxiliaries to the Safavid and Afsharid empires in Iran, did the Durrani Pashtuns come to power.

#11

The last two decades of the twentieth century were bookmarked by the imposition of two extreme ideologies on Afghanistan. The first was a failed attempt to implement revolutionary social and economic policies by a Communist regime. It led to the Soviet invasion and occupation of the country in the 1980s.

#12

The first decade of the twenty-first century in Afghanistan was marked by political and military struggles that swept through the country. The country’s problems can be understood by examining where they fit past patterns and where they break from them.

#13

The past of Afghanistan is not just past, but still present in the form of its history. It is difficult to write authoritatively about the twentieth century as history, but it is not difficult to see how Afghanistan’s politics have been shaped by its past.

#14

The underlying structure of analysis seeks to test theoretical models against events and events against theoretical models to shed light on both. At the same time, the material is presented with a story line, so those readers who have little interest in the models may still find the book engaging.

#15

Political scientists often give primacy to individuals, political parties, and ideologies in their studies. However, anthropologists believe that group interest regularly trumps individual interest. In Afghan society, for example, individuals support decisions made by their group even if such support has negative consequences for them.

#16

The outstanding social feature of life in Afghanistan is its local tribal or ethnic divisions. People’s primary loyalty is, respectively, to their own kin, village, tribe, or ethnic group.

#17

ethnic groups in Afghanistan are