Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad

Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad, by David B. Edwards. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002. xxii + 354 pages. Notes to p. 332. Gloss, to p. 337. Bibl. to p. 345. Index to 354. $48 cloth; $17.95 paper. Reviewed by Shah Mahmoud Hanifi This book deals with Afghanistan primarily from the 1978 revolution to the rise of the Taliban in 1996. To "uncover the origins of the jihad" during this period, the author invokes a "genealogical approach to Afghan history (premised) on the belief that we can learn much that would otherwise be obscure by looking at individual lives and trying to understand their connection to larger historical and cultural processes" (pp. xvii-xix). Edwards uses the life histories of three individuals who occupied positions of political leadership to address the potentials and limitations of the state, the tribes, and Islam during the recent period of their development and interaction in the country. In what is billed as "culturally informed biography," Edwards declares that he is not focusing on the lives of "ordinary people" (p. xviii). This declared avoidance of leaders' followers is puzzling, because the author proceeds to make generalized claims about how those very followers - an undifferentiated mass of Afghans writ large - feel and think about the leaders representing state politics, tribal society, and Islam. The body of the book begins with an unfavorable, if not outright hostile, biography of Nur Muhammad Taraki, the first President of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA). Taraki assumed national leadership as a result of the April 1978 revolution that vanquished the Durrani dynasty, and his murder in December 1979 in many respects launched the Soviet military action in Afghanistan. Working from the tenuous premise that the "inherited nature of nobility is (a) traditional pillar of Afghan political culture" (p. 34), Edwards attempts to discredit Taraki ("a most unsuitable figure," p. 45) and Hafizullah Amin as revolutionary leaders of state. He contends that Amin, Taraki, and the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) relied on a "Marxist lexicon that had no roots in Afghan culture and that struck no resonant chord in the hearts and minds of the Afghan people" (p. 69), which in turn left them "radically estranged" (p. 81) from their own culture and potential constituents, and ultimately resulted in their regime being "hobbled by its own terminology" (ibid.). The argument here revolves around terminology, but to critique successfully the vocabulary of rule in a country, one must rigorously and substantively engage the languages used in that setting. A further problem with this section that ramifies throughout the book is Edwards' depiction of 'Abd al-Rahman, who ruled in Kabul from 1880 to 1901 (pp. 44, 51-53, 57, passim). 'Abd al-Rahman's legacy includes the instigation and perpetuation of tensions between ethnic groups in Afghanistan, and these state-generated animosities continue to scar the country today. This cruelly calculating ruler is also responsible for initiating the country's rapid descent into extreme impoverishment, and for nearly severing the country's links with surrounding regional markets and the global economy. The author skirts 'Abd al-Rahman's pernicious legacy in Afghanistan's economy and society, instead portraying his tenure upon his "rightful throne" (p. 37) as a model for subsequent Durrani dynasts to emulate and as a standard against which to gauge Taraki's term at the pinnacle of state power. The second life history presented is that of Samiullah (Wakil) Safi. The son of a prosperous khan in Pech valley in the Kunar province of eastern Afghanistan, Safi spent much of his early life in exile from his tribal homeland. As an adult, he attended Kabul University, worked as a journalist and editor, served as Pech's national parliamentary representative, and participated in the armed resistance to the DRA. …