by Thomas Barfield (Author)
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Afghanistan traces the historic struggles and the changing nature of political authority in this volatile region of the world, from the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century to the Taliban resurgence today. Thomas Barfield introduces readers to the bewildering diversity of tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, explaining what unites them as Afghans despite the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them. He shows how governing these peoples was relatively easy when power was concentrated in a small dynastic elite, but how this delicate political order broke down in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when Afghanistan's rulers mobilized rural militias to expel first the British and later the Soviets. Armed insurgency proved remarkably successful against the foreign occupiers, but it also undermined the Afghan government's authority and rendered the country ever more difficult to govern as time passed. Barfield vividly describes how Afghanistan's armed factions plunged the country into a civil war, giving rise to clerical rule by the Taliban and Afghanistan's isolation from the world. He examines why the American invasion in the wake of September 11 toppled the Taliban so quickly, and how this easy victory lulled the United States into falsely believing that a viable state could be built just as easily. Afghanistan is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how a land conquered and ruled by foreign dynasties for more than a thousand years became the "graveyard of empires" for the British and Soviets, and what the United States must do to avoid a similar fate.
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Print length
408 pages
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Review
""Barfield's book is an excellent general introduction to the country and will be a source of wider debate within and beyond the scholarly community. I am not aware of a history of this kind that explores governance and state legitimacy as its organizing themes.""'Magnus Marsden, author of Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan's North-West Frontier
From the Back Cover
"This fascinating survey of Afghanistan is an excellent book for those wanting to go beyond headlines. Written by an expert, with the stylistic flair to be savored by the nonexpert, Afghanistan also has judgments worthy of scholarly reflection. Barfield has captured political, social, and cultural insights of extraordinary importance to the policy arguments of today and tomorrow. Deploying diplomats, soldiers, and aid workers in particular should pay attention."--Ronald E. Neumann, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, 2005-2007
"Barfield's book will become the single best source on Afghan history and politics virtually overnight. His deep knowledge of Afghanistan enables him to range widely and knit together a very coherent narrative with a conceptual clarity that is pretty rare. A great deal of learning is evident here, but Barfield wears it lightly."--James C. Scott, author of Seeing Like a State
"Barfield's book is an excellent general introduction to the country and will be a source of wider debate within and beyond the scholarly community. I am not aware of a history of this kind that explores governance and state legitimacy as its organizing themes."--Magnus Marsden, author of Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan's North-West Frontier
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Publisher : Princeton University Press; 1st edition (5 June 2012)
Language : English
Paperback : 408 pages
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Customer reviews
4.5 out of 5 stars
Top reviews from Australia
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gem
5.0 out of 5 stars anazing historical read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 June 2016
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Amazing historical read. Explains the history and political changes to Afghanistan. Helped with my research paper a lot and the pictures help to envisage parts of the different cultures within Afghanistan.
3 people found this helpful
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Kamran
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent service
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 November 2018
Verified Purchase
Delivery was on time & a good book to read
One person found this helpful
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Sam
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book
Reviewed in Canada on 18 August 2020
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This book has a special place in my personal library. It is an excellent socio-political study of Afghanistan. Thomas Barfield brings a great insight of the cultural background of the very complex afghan tribes. The historical study as well as the political analysis brings a great explanation for the current situation in Afghanistan. It is rare to find books covering this much Afghan history. Usually, we can only find documentation covering everything after the Soviet invasion.
One person found this helpful
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J.Raju
4.0 out of 5 stars Gives wholesome idea
Reviewed in India on 25 August 2021
Verified Purchase
Not a run-on-the mill History book and so-called- compelling writing. This book telling the Afghan's history in an Anthropologcial and socialogical perspective, which makes this quite outstanding. Even though So many repeated things... sometimes boring... But, not missed a single thing in the history of Afghanistan! Great Read.
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asaad
5.0 out of 5 stars Very well written highly informative
Reviewed in Canada on 8 October 2020
Verified Purchase
Mr. Barfield does an excellent job with this book. As an afghan myself, I learned so much about my country's past that I never knew about.
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Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History
(Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics)
by Thomas Barfield
4.04 · Rating details · 1,004 ratings · 91 reviews
Afghanistan traces the historic struggles and the changing nature of political authority in this volatile region of the world, from the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century to the Taliban resurgence today. Thomas Barfield introduces readers to the bewildering diversity of tribal and ethnic
groups in Afghanistan, explaining what unites them as Afghans despite the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them. He shows how governing these peoples was relatively easy when power was concentrated in a small dynastic elite, but how this delicate political order broke down
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when Afghanistan's rulers mobilized rural militias to expel first the British and later the Soviets. Armed insurgency proved remarkably successful against the foreign occupiers, but it also undermined the Afghan government's authority and rendered the
country ever more difficult to govern as time passed. Barfield vividly describes how Afghanistan's armed factions plunged the country into a civil war, giving rise to clerical rule by the Taliban and Afghanistan's isolation from the world. He examines why the American invasion in the wake of
September 11 toppled the Taliban so quickly, and how this easy victory lulled the United States into falsely believing that a viable state could be built just as easily. Afghanistan is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how a land conquered and ruled by foreign dynasties for more
than a thousand years became the graveyard of empires for the British and Soviets, and what the United States must do to avoid a similar fate.
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Brett C
Aug 31, 2021Brett C rated it it was amazing
This is a great reference tool and overview of Afghanistan. The author presented the information clearly and concisely. The information was not detail-overkill and was given in a non-biased manner. Everything was mentioned to help someone who has little to no knowledge about this rough and tough country. The author opened with the culture: languages, ethnic groups, tribal organization was very helpful as a starter. The history and political portion was great in my opinion. I would recommend this to anyone interested in the recent Afghanistan debacle. Thanks! (less)
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Russ
Nov 13, 2020Russ rated it liked it
I read one book about Afghanistan annually, and found this one to be among the most informative. I'd long understood that Afghanistan never quite fit into other categories--too far east to be in the Middle East, too southern to be in Central Asia, too northern to be part of South Asia--but it had not fully sunk into me the extent to which Afghanistan has served as a buffer state between neighboring powers. Persians, India, and Russia being the main but not the only ones over the centuries.
Relatedly, I did not appreciate how the old Afghan heads of state, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, tended to partner with one of the neighboring powers (most often the British via India) and fall under their foreign policy umbrella in exchange for copious aid money. These arrangements also helped the Afghan leaders domestically because it meant a lighter tax burden on the population and increased the subjects' political acceptance of the king.
I also learned about the Swiss cheese model of nationhood/governance. Imagine a map of a country governed by a king. Then imagine that there are bands of isolated people in the mountains or other remote places that basically keep to themselves and do not live along major routes. These are like the holes in Swiss cheese. The old Afghan chiefs and kings recognized that, and were content not to have 100 percent overlordship of each little pocket of territory. They understood that that's what Swiss cheese looks like.
The book also debunks the myth that the country has always been in a state of war. That has been true since the 1970s but before that there were long stretches of decades when the country was at peace. The real problems started when Afghan Communists took over and then the Soviets invaded to prop them up, destroying opposition political parties and setting the stage (once the Soviet Union could no longer aid Afghanistan) for a power vacuum to be filled in the 1990s by Pakistan-backed jihadists.
The early sections of the book helped show that the concept of splitting the country apart into smaller countries along ethnic lines is as unlikely as it is inadvisable. There's a lot of demographic overlap and blurring throughout the country, and that's never really been the driving force behind the "ungovernability" of Afghanistan. The issue seems to be more that people in the countryside resent it when some muckety muck in Kabul tries to tell them how to live their lives.
The format and tone of the book could have stood some improvement. A lot of instruction about journalism and nonfiction writing tells authors to assume that their audience is intelligent but uninformed. But in this book the writer seems to assume historical knowledge about Afghanistan that I simply did not have. Sometimes I wished it would have started out a chapter with a straightforward, linear description of how a particular king rose and fell from power. But there tended to be some jumping around and explanations of trends over dynasties, so it could be a little annoying to follow.
The book was pretty much stuck to the facts when describing the foreign policy of Disraeli and Brezhnev. But once we get to the 2000s there was a lot of negative opinion and ascribing of motives to Bush. At that point the book became more assertion-based than fact-based. (less)
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Kate
May 03, 2011Kate rated it it was amazing
Recommends it for: Ed
Shelves: afghanistan, library, new-in-2010, new-history, title-gangers
Thomas Barfield is an anthropologist and professor of anthropology at Princeton whose experiences in Afghanistan stretch back to the 1960s, when he travelled overland through the country as a student. He began ethnographic field studies there in the 1970s and witnessed the overthrow of the Afghan King Zahir Shah in 1973.
In his own words "Critics of the university tenure system undoubtedly put me among those useless faculty who purveyed esoteric and irrelevant knowledge to the young wihtout fear of termination. Wise policymakers had already determined that such remote places and people could be safely excluded from America's New World Order. . . . On September 11, 2001, Afghanistan suddenly became relevant" and Barfield became one of the few Americans who had the intimate knowledge of the country, its people and its history that we so desperately needed.
Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History is a broad overview of the history of Afghanistan and its culture. For a reader like myself, who reads the New York Times daily and a couple of other works on the country, namely Rory Stewart's The Places In Between and thinks they know everything, this book was a much needed corrective to my cultural biases, misunderstandings and creative ignorance of the country that we went to war with almost ten years ago. Afghanistan is blessedly well organized, with a clear goal set out in the introduction: to answer for the reader the following questions:
1. How did Afghanistan, which was overrun and ruled by a series of foreign dynasties for more than a thousand years, become renowned as the "graveyard of empires" in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries after forcing the withdrawal of both the British and Russians in a series of wars?
2. Why did the U.S. invasion of 2001 that toppled the Taliban not immediately set off a similar national insurgency (as it did in Iraq), and despite that, still fail to bring stability to the country?
3. Why have foreign attempts to change Afghanistan's politics, social structures, and government proved so ineffective?
4. How did a ruling dynasty established in 1747 manage to hold power over such a fractious people until 1978, and why has the afghan state since them experienced such difficulties in reestablishing a legitimate political order?
5. Why did a country for which the term"Balkanized" appeared ideally suited show so few signs of disintegration as a national state in spite of its many divisions?
6. How and why have splits in Afghan society since the 1920s over the structure of government and its policies led to so many periods of state collapse?
The chapter on the American-led invasion of Afghanistan was particularly enlightening. There are so many cliches about Afghanistan - that it can't be governed effectively because of its warring tribal factions won't allow it, the belief that it would become a new Yugoslavia, fracturing along ethnic lines that its history is one of constant insurgency and the belief that the country is mired in a medieval mindset are all simply untrue. Barfield demonstrates for the reader that Afghanistans long political history gives the lie to these suppositions and shows how a Western mindset regarding political intstitutions might lead us to believe them anyway.
I have two small gripes:1. There are typos. I feel like an academic press shouldn't have any 'teh's in their text. 2. There isn't much cultural history here. While I disagree with other reviewers who say that this is a dry read, I will add that it is an extremely dense one, packed with a lot of information in a relatively small number of pages. With that said, however, I highly highly recommend this book for anyone looking to educate themselves on Afghanistan's history and its current political climate. As Barfield says in his closing, Afghanistan is becoming more than just a backwater where the US fought the Taliban; with its rich mineral deposits and border with Pakistan (a soon-to-be-failed state with nuclear capabilities. Aside: I am scared shitless by Pakistan.) and other central Asian powers like Iran, Afghanistan will continue to be a focus of international interest for generations to come. I have, through reading this book, gained a tremendous amount of respect for Afghanistan and its people. I wish the country the best and hope that the US, Russia, China, India and whoever else can behave themselves there and work with the Afghan people to achieve the rich future that they deserve. (less)
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Lis
May 23, 2018Lis rated it it was amazing
Shelves: nonfiction, 2018, reviewed
I was assigned this book for a class I took, Development and Change in Iraq and Afghanistan with a great professor, and I could not recommend this book ENOUGH for how much it taught me about recent Afghan history, the impact of the U.S. intervention, and the nuances of Afghan identity and cultural history.
It's a seriously comprehensive, thoroughly researched and very readable book, and definitely a must-read for people who are interested in learning more about Afghanistan. (less)
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Amy
Jul 27, 2010Amy rated it really liked it
Ever since The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Three Cups of Tea, I’ve found Afghanistan to be a strangely compelling region. In those books, there was a different sense of the humanity of the people compared to what is seen on the nightly news, and it was difficult to align the two in my mind. Mention Afghanistan to someone and all they usually come up with is the notorious Taliban or the crumbling ruins that appear on the news. How accurate is that image?
When I first received Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History, I hoped to find that answer and at the same time, that the book wouldn’t be too dry or heavy on political rhetoric. I was pleased to find that it’s an incredibly readable history book that makes the subject understandable and reveals the complicated lives of the people of Afghanistan. The author manages to compile the history without a political agenda or motive.
First off is recognizing that culturally, Afghanistan is made up of both tribal and nontribal ethnic groups. These groups mean everything to the people, and unlike some cultures, “tribal and ethnic groups take primacy over the individual.” In other words, “individuals support decisions made by their group even when such support has negative consequences for themselves.” This is a somewhat unique trait, and contributes to the devotion many have for their leaders. They also have an intense oral history that is repeated through the ages that also creates a sense of cohesiveness between past and present. These people live in a land crisscrossed by history, from Genghis Khan to Alexander the Great (see the photo of his castle above right). It was conflict between tribal regions, a civil war, that made the ordinary Afghan people eager to have the US come in to intervene with the Taliban, as “a drowning person is not too picky about who throws him a line….Afghanistan had either been ignored or abused by the outside world as it descended into chaos.”
The Taliban, known for their desire to spread extremely conservative Islam, had riddled the nation with violence towards women and other religions. They’ve managed to alienate even those countries that were providing needed humanitarian aid. They do not have the support of the ‘ordinary’ citizen, as at times the Taliban members have numbered below 150 members. A good portion of the book deals with how and why the Taliban gained such power. Another portion discusses the occupation by Britain and Soviet Russia prior to more recent actions with the US.
The historical details are interesting, but it was the smaller things that were more revealing. For example, why is it that on the news you usually see only children or old people? Their hardscrabble lives, tending outdoors to agriculture and focused on manual labor, shows up on their faces and they appear prematurely aged. Are the devastated streets of broken concrete typical? Actually no, as the majority of citizens live in small villages far from urban areas such as Kabul. Is it just a land of dust and opium poppies? No again, as stone fruit, grapes, nuts, citrus fruits, melons, and rice are grown in different parts of the country, depending on what areas are irrigated. The famous mountainous region, known to have been a hiding place for bin Laden, is in the center of Afghanistan. Its steepness creates dynamic changes in climate in just a few hours of travel, and creates a diverse variety of crops.
The current situation in Afghanistan is covered in the sixth chapter, where Barfield addresses the complicated social concerns that continually plague the country. The resurgence of the Taliban and their religious ideology reverses social progress, while modern policies want to focus on reducing the religious power of clerics. Additional goals include establishing rights for women, tolerance of non-Muslim faiths, implementing educational policies, and modernizing archaic laws to better represent the desires of the majority.
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Joseph
May 13, 2012Joseph rated it really liked it
Shelves: asian-history-thought
Excellent study by an scholar who actually lived in Afghanistan for a long time. Love his use of Medieval scholars like Ibn Khaldun. His work is detailed, but his writing is very readable. His discussion of ethnic groupings is excellent as is his analysis of the situation there now. Wish our politicos would read this book.
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K.M. Weiland
Sep 22, 2019K.M. Weiland rated it really liked it
Overall, an excellent and insightful glimpse through some of the misconceptions surrounding this country of unlikely significance.
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Dolf Haven
Sep 24, 2019Dolf Haven rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: history
This was my first experiment listening to an audio book on my commute to work, and I am happy to say I survived without problems! Robin Bloodworth is a fantastic narrator, who manages to navigate through complex Afghan names (some patchwork due to corrections is audible) and manages to make a relatively dry book an interesting listen.
As a history of Afghanistan, this book is solid. That said, the balance between the cultural and political sides of history is heavily on the political side, which is a pity, for culturally (apart from history being dominated by religious concerns) there is much more to say about Afghanistan. Also, oddly, the role of foreign influences in Afghanistan, such as the CIA support in the rise of the Taliban, is mysteriously missing or only touched on in a general sense.
I actually became mesmerised with Afghanistan by the 2001 movie Kandahar by Mohsen Makhmalbaf and have been waiting for an opportunity to visit ever since. The current situation in the country has sadly made that impossible. I'll take this book as some consolation for not being able to go there. (less)
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Wendy
Feb 08, 2020Wendy rated it really liked it
Wholly appreciate the different perspective of this book, written by an anthropologist with extensive experience in Afghanistan. It's easy to get bogged down in millennia of history, constant invasions or occupations, internal intrigue, and wind up with an impression that Afghanistan is a place to which military things happen, the end. Yeah, there's plenty of war and intrigue to go around still, but this book does a wonderful job of zooming out to understand the social, cultural, ethnic dynamics that generate and influence the politics (and fighting). If you're diving into Afghan history, I think this really is a great primer to start with; it will breathe much more sense and understanding into your read of more unruly histories down the road. (less)
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Zulu Fox
Sep 05, 2021Zulu Fox rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
"Afghanistan is one of those places in the world in which people who know the least make the most definitive statements about it." (p.274) - In this book Thomas Barfield successfully explodes quite a few vaguely-held preconceptions I had about Afghanistan. As someone who isn't especially well-read on Afghanistan, I felt this book did an excellent job of combining a narrative history with unusually insightful and penetrating analysis. And what with the (re-)fall of Kabul to the Taliban, now seemed like a good time to brush up on the subject.
Published in 2010, this book has aged exceptionally well and Barfield's analysis totally holds up. In many respects this book anticipates and shed's some historical perspective on the present moment. For example: "Leaders and regimes in Afghanistan never declined gradually but fell almost instantaneously when their ability to maintain themselves in power became uncertain." (p.332) - Barfield goes on to describe the Afghan government of the day thusly: "a regime that would not survive a week if left to the mercies of such allies without international support" - recent events would seem to corroborate Barfield's reading of Afghan history, to put it mildly.
For me, Barfield successfully argues against the common wisdom regarding Afghanistan on the following points:
1. Contrary to popular belief, Afghanistan has hardly been either ungovernable or continually insurrection-plagued for most of the past millennium - or even the last century.
2. Afghanistan was never on the verge of a Yugoslavia-style break-up along ethnic lines which would have argued for the strong centralized government which Afghanistan ultimately got after 2001.
3. Insurrection and resistance against US/NATO was not only not inevitable, but in fact conspicuously didn't materialize in the years immediately after 2001.
4. Now largely forgotten and underappreciated (at least by me), after the USSR withdrawal, their client regime the PDPA managed to re-brand itself as a less Communist, more Nationalist movement and in fact managed to quite effectively hold on to power for the next four years after the withdrawal, it was the collapse of the USSR and the cessation of the aid it provided that lead to the end of the regime.
5. Not really an argument, but just something very interesting: some of members of the more radical wing of the Afghan Communists ultimately joined up with the Taliban - talk about ideological flexibility!
All that aside, Barfield convincingly argues that a more decentralized federal system would have better suited Afghanistan than the highly centralized one which they ultimately got - which I found to be an interesting argument that I hadn't heard before in the Afghan context. He also explains the significance of clan-relations to Afghan governance in a fairly comprehensible way.
In the final analysis, aside from really illuminating some of the deeper, slower historical forces which have been at work in Afghanistan, Barfield pretty convincingly suggests the existence of a much more successful path-not-taken immediately after the 2001 ousting of the Taliban - which might seem like a bit of a moot point now, but which I think holds some valuable lessons for humanitarian/state-building efforts elsewhere.
While I did feel like the sections covering the causes of the British engagements in Afghanistan were a little rushed and perfunctory - they had nowhere near the clarity and depth-of-analysis which the earlier and latter parts of the book had, in my opinion - all in all I would say this book is excellent and I highly recommend it to anyone hoping to learn about Afghanistan and how it came to be the way it is. (less)
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Andrew Jose
Jun 26, 2021Andrew Jose rated it it was amazing
A must read for anyone seeking an introduction into the distant and recent past of the country to better comprehend present events and the trajectories Afghanistan's future heads along (less)
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James S
Aug 08, 2018James S rated it it was amazing
I approached this book with a near to non-existent knowledge of Afghanistan and it’s history. I chose the book based on several recommendations due to Barfield’s renown in the field of Afghanistan’s anthropology and politics. His credibility also takes another big boost due to the fact he actually worked there for several years in the 70’s. The man knows what he’s talking about!
I’d recommend the book to anyone wanting an in-depth introduction to Afghanistan, even if you already have some background knowledge. It is absolutely fascinating and Barfield manages to make a subject that I was expecting to be quite dry a very accessible and enjoyable read. He describes the multitude of tribes, ethnic groups and their politics at great lengths before even delving into the countries history of nearly continual wars. Which really provides you with the context required to understand something so alien to Westerners.
After reading this book I can really see why American (like so many others) has failed so spectacularly in Afghanistan. Just like in Iraq after the war (during the creation of the CPA), they have put so little importance on understanding the culture, and the tribal politics of Afghanistan. Through this blindness to tribal politics they helped create the Taliban, as they did with ISIS. The U.S. government would have done well to make this book mandatory to any personnel on the ground there. (less)
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Tim
Aug 14, 2011Tim rated it it was amazing
Recommends it for: Anyone with an interest in Afghanistan
Shelves: afghanistan
I pre-ordered this book before it was published specifically because Barfield is one of the most legit Afghan experts in the west. I read this after having done substantial research on Afghanistan, but nonetheless found this to be an engaging read that would also be accessible for someone who is just beginning to learn about Afghanistan.
The book begins with a thorough overview of the ethnic groups, settlement patterns, religion, and geography. It then discusses the social structures of the dominant Pashtun tribes and traces their rise as the power brokers of Afghanistan from the 1700s onward. He then narrates enough history, in sufficient detail, to help the reader understand current events in context. He offers plausible explanations for the failure in state building that has occurred since 2001, spreading blame around liberally but fairly. In my opinion, the only weakness in the book concerns military specific criticisms. For about 4 pages, he strays outside of his area of expertise and offers assertions regarding military operations, but offers no references to support those assertions. That is really the only criticism that I can muster - 4 pages out of nearly 400.
This is a very insightful book. It is a good first start in beginning further research on the country. But, even people well acquainted with Afghanistan will find this to be a very good read. (less)
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Chris
Sep 05, 2021Chris marked it as to-read
A great lecture by the author: https://youtu.be/WF3Rkt42wPY (less)
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Nathan
Feb 19, 2019Nathan rated it it was amazing
Excellent book covering the mysterious landlocked region known as Afghanistan. Little is known about this region, despite the West being at war with it for the past 19 years. This is controversial (not really - it might sting a little bit)...Afghanistan has defeated some of the greatest empires in history. They beat the British (twice), the Soviets, and the Americans. The Americans have lost this this war. They have.
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Mallory
Apr 20, 2012Mallory rated it it was amazing
Shelves: current-affairs, history, afghanistan
A fairly concise and interesting overview of Afghan history. If you're looking for an antidote to the argument that Afghanistan has always been some kind of war-riddled, postapocalyptic hellscape, then read this book. (less)
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Øivind
Feb 22, 2015Øivind rated it it was amazing
An excellent book. Makes one proud to be a social scientist.
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Josh Friedlander
Feb 26, 2020Josh Friedlander rated it it was ok
Shelves: middle-east, anthropology-sociology, economic-history, modern-history
Went in hoping to have my heart won by Afghanistan's ancient cuisine, customs, music, etc etc...but contra the title this book is mostly politics and not much culture, and the politics is, as expected, pretty bleak! Among lots of names and details the broad strokes are well known. Afghanistan is the "graveyard of empires" not because it's very desirable territory - it's a harsh land, sparsely populated by primitive villagers eking out a living - but superpowers have invaded only for incidental reasons (Britain sought a buffer against Russian influence, Russia to prop up a Communists ally, the US to drive out al-Qaeda) and regretted it.
Barfield is is an anthropologist* (another reason I'd hoped for more about religion, poetry, customs, rather than war and politics) and talks about Ibn Khaldoun's model of nomadic vs sedentary peoples, and the four-generational model of societies - starting with energetic desert tribes attacking sedentary urbanites, success and prosperity, the descent into decadence and eventual renewal of the cycle. This is a better way of dividing Afghanistan's various rulers than as different empires (Ottoman/Safavid/Moghul, or Russian sphere/British sphere/Arab sphere) or by ethnicity. The country has a potpourri of ethnicities (Turk, Persian, Arab, Indian, Tajik, Uzbek), but a plurality is Pashtun. No one has any real idea how large the population is.
Some terms: tanistry, feudatory, segmented lineage.
A word often used about the country is "mediaeval". Barfield acknowledges that there is some truth to it, both in terms of the premodern economy and lifestyles prevalent in much of the country, and in how identity is defined primarily by religion. Afghanistan's religious identity runs deep (legend has it that the father of the Pashtuns, Qais Abdul Rasheed, went to Mecca and met Mohammed). Afghans see their country as the defender of the faith, and assume that even their more heterodox practices must automatically be Islamic by definition.
The end of the book is a long, dreary chronicle of America's bloody and expensive failures. In conclusion Barfield argues that Afghan ungovernability is a myth: most of its history has worked well, just with a "Swiss cheese" model (decentralized rule with gaps, control the economically productive bits and do what you can about the remote areas that don't listen), not the homogeneous, centralised "American cheese" of post-2001 (or the Communist regime). On hot issues like social change, it's better to start in cities, and not try force things onto the rural areas.
This book was a good guide, though it did feel more like a CIA briefing and less like National Geographic. But in its wake I'm now rereading The Road to Oxiana - now here is a book enchanted by the culture of Persia and Central Asia, rapt by Timurids and Uzbeks! - so all is good.
*A historiographic note from Barfield I enjoyed but couldn't fit into the body of this review: generally people describe things in terms of what they're used to. So they'll recount "the famine was so bad that grain cost twenty zigs for a flurkel!" but WITHOUT SAYING THE REGULAR PRICE OF GRAIN! (By the same token, I guess, that they don't explain what "grain" is.) That's why chronicles by outsiders like de Tocqueville are useful, because they notice things that seem obvious to insiders. (less)
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Liam
Nov 14, 2020Liam rated it it was amazing
"[F]or most of the past two and a half millennia the lands of the Hindu Kush were component part of larger empires, and constituted a frontier zone of conflict between neighboring states. These had their centers in Iran (Achaemenid, Parthian, Sassanian, Seljukid, Il khanate, Safavid, and Afsharid), India (Mayuran and Mughal), or central Asia (Mongol, Timurid, and Uzebek). When Afghanistan itself was the center of an empire (Kushan, Ghazavid, Ghorid, and Durrani), it served primarily as a base of operations for states that drew most of their revenue from India or Khorasan. What might strike contemporary Afghans as surprising was that only the Durrani Empire was ruled by Pashtuns. From the mid-tenth century to the mid-eighteenth century, every dynasty that ruled in this region was either of Turko-Mongolian origin or had a military that was dominated by Turko-Mongolian peoples." (66-7)
"Martyrdom in battle might be a noble sacrifice that granted entry into paradise, but becoming a ghazi, the living victor of a jihad, was better. Afghans therefore rejected the tactic of suicide bombings so popular among Arab jihadists, and did not employ them even during the Soviet war. They also disapproved of terrorist acts that deliberately targeted noncombatants because they were dishonorable and not justified by Islamic law. In Afghanistan, where today's enemy might be tomorrow's ally and blood feuds created rifts that were hard to mend, indiscriminate slaughter was ultimately counterproductive. Of course, groups like al Qaeda had their own reasons for not seeking Afghan recruits: they were too independent and failed to follow orders when they disagreed with them." (268)
"The Durrani Pashtuns of southern Afghanistan lived under very different conditions. Their territories generally lay within the zone of state control, and they had access to dependable sources of wealth based on irrigated agriculture, with access to trade and cities. This helps explain why they developed a much more hierarchical social and political structure. Benefiting from the large tax-free land grands first given to them by Ahmad Shah Durrani in the eighteenth century, they had developed a ruling class whose inherited power lasted centuries. As a result, their leaders were generally better educated and more sophisticated than their rural Ghilzai counterparts. Durrani leaders also had the ability to command their tribal followers because they had long ago reduced many of them to the status of clients whose support they could count on." (286-7) (less)
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Dan Nuxoll
Jul 04, 2020Dan Nuxoll rated it really liked it
The subtitle is a good summary. This book explores the past couple of hundred years of the history of Afghanistan, focusing on the cultural tendencies that have affected politics. I appreciated that the book did not jump immediately into the current situation; only about a third of the book deals with the era after the Soviet invasion. The book examines the persistent characteristics of Afghanistan, not current events which means that the book is relevant even a decade after publication.
The book emphasizes the Afghanistan has a number of regions that serve as the building blocks of the nation. Because much of the economy is subsistence farming, these regions have been economically independent, and the ethnic composition differs signficantly across regions. The author pays a good deal of attention to the tribes and sub-tribes.
Although the regions are quite distinct and although the people are fractious, the author is convinced that there is a commonality which will ensure the survival of the country. The existence of these different regions raises the question of how the leaders of Afghanistan rose to power and how they maintained their power. The author stresses that elections do not legitimate a leader; rather the people look to results, notably the ability to maintain order. Afghanistan has been at war for almost forty years now, so the question of how to establish a stable government is obviously vital. (less)
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Carol Palmer
Sep 06, 2019Carol Palmer rated it liked it
I originally bought this book because I wanted to understand Afghanistan and it's history. This book only made me more confused. Alas, it is also a very dry read
What I did learn:
"Graveyard of Empires" is more myth than fact
The nation is made up of many ethnic regions that choose to stick together under one country
Rulers of Afghanistan have no problem taking another's country's side as long as they are paid well.
The Taliban came from Pakistan.
Pakistanis do make a lot of trouble in modern Afghanistan
The Taliban's strict rules are a combination of Islam and Pashtoon ethnic traditions
The Afghanis think that no other people are as Muslim as they are. They are the Southern Baptists of Islam. Why should they listen to a cleric from Egypt because they are way more Muslim than the Egyptians (despite the country being incredibly illiterate and can't read the Koran)
Despite having the money and the power, Afghanistan's rulers did nothing to build up the country's infrastructure during the 20th century.
Many Afghanis were against educating women long before the Taliban came along.
It was a big mistake for the US to change focus from Afghanistan to Iraq. (less)
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Roy McCullough
Sep 17, 2020Roy McCullough rated it it was amazing
Although I am a bit removed from the subject nowadays and therefore probably ignorant of more recent contributions to the literature, I would be willing to bet that this still ranks up there as one of the best, if not the best, 1-volume treatment of Afghanistan's political and cultural history. In this ambitious work, Barfield examines the long and typically unhappy history of foreign intervention in Afghanistan, the evolution of internal political structures and shifting political dynamics that have often, and at great cost, been misunderstood by outsiders, and the complicated patchwork of ethnic tribal groups (and their rivalries) comprising this fractious country. Still a useful read today. (less)
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Urie Kline
Jan 31, 2021Urie Kline rated it really liked it
A wonderfully compact overview of an otherwise enigmatic country. Impressively, it manages to both cover the deep span of history for the region while presenting said history in a compact and readable way. An anthropologist, Barfield also does a nice job of injecting his history with a good deal of social science, so that readers can come away with a much better and more nuanced view of Afghan culture and the people themselves. I will say that he repeats himself often, and as you get closer to the end, this becomes more grating. Perhaps he wasn't confident that his audience would "get it", or that may be his genuine presentation style. In the long run it did not detract from my enjoyment and engagement with the subject. (less)
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Thomas Kingston
Aug 22, 2021Thomas Kingston rated it it was amazing
An enjoyable and timely read that combines the author's personal love of the nation and its people with a excellent scholarly approach to sources.
At the subtitle suggests this book deals with the cultural and political history to try to tackle some pretty big questions about the country's past and future. An anthropologist by training his knowledge of the social structures really shines through and is then excellently paired with a political history that debunks many myths.
Given the recent developments the conclusion is especially poignant as the issues raised by the author - ignorance of local conditions, the decision to pursue centralisation etc can be clearly linked to the failure we've witnessed. (less)
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"Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History" - Thomas Barfield
64,881 viewsMar 11, 2011
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Boston University
139K subscribers
Thomas Barfield introduced the audience to the bewildering diversity of tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, explaining what unites them as Afghans despite the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them. He showed how governing these peoples was relatively easy when power was concentrated in small dynastic elite, but how this delicate political order broke down in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when Afghanistan's rulers mobilized rural militias to expel first the British and later the Soviets. Armed insurgency proved remarkably successful against the foreign occupiers, but it also undermined the Afghan government's authority and rendered the country ever more difficult to govern as time passed. Barfield vividly described how Afghanistan's armed factions plunged the country into a civil war, giving rise to clerical rule by the Taliban and Afghanistan's isolation from the world. He examines why the American invasion in the wake of September 11 toppled the Taliban so quickly, and how this easy victory lulled the United States into falsely believing that a viable state could be built just as easily.
Thomas Barfield is professor of anthropology at Boston University. His books include The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757; The Cen
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ventsyv2 months ago
48:26 "In Afghanistan, the perception of power is power itself... We do not perceive regimes rising and falling slowly, we see almost instantaneously; and also if we look at Afghan history, we never see a decisive battle. Why? Because the night before the decisive battle, people decide who is going to win and they sneak over to the winning side and in the morning the loser wakes up and he is the loser. He doesn't know how it happened but he knows how to read the tea leafs." Wish someone at the WH has talked to Dr BarfieldShow less
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Bjørn Røyrvik2 months ago
37.27 "It was more complicated than that." History in a nutshell.
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TARIQ REHMAN3 months ago
Thomas Barfield has amazing command on this subject and his humorous way of presentation keeps you enthralled.
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Richard G. Ellis2 months ago
When he speaks of development, much of what's happening now makes sense; it's like the Great Game, played out between India and Iran vs. China and Pakistan. 56:00
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night of the world2 months ago
6:16 Pufferfish of empires “After 1840 […] the country gets a reputation as the graveyard of empires you know which the Afghans polish up. Because the Afghans have used this graveyard of empires trope in what I call a pufferfish strategy, it’s actually a poor weak nation, so how do you convince people to not attack you.”
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Tomas Valent2 months ago (edited)
watching this in September 2021 to better understand what the hell happened in Afghanistan after USA withdrawal. This video helps to explain it to some degree. 48:25
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nyhammer12 months ago
48:15 This guy stood there 10 years ago and told what would happen today
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LeotheOrangeCat2 months ago
this explains a bit about the speed of recent events 48:27
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Ul Dos2 months ago
Brilliant. Actually whole of central asia and stans are very specific and unique in tbeir perception.
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krassos2 months ago
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