Introduction: on wilayat al-faqih

There is little doubt that the theory of wilayat al-faqih, as developed in Khumaini's lectures of Najaf, was most influential in the creation of the constitution passed in Iran in the wake of the Revolution. In these Najaf lectures, delivered in 1970, Khumaini developed the idea of the ‘ulama's responsibility in the state, in the form of an institutionalised structure which should be entrusted with the country's leadership.

The general thrust of the theory is not completely original. One can find the idea of the mujtahids' responsibility in the state developed much earlier in the century, for example when a dispute over Parliament and the new State of Iraq broke out in 1922–3. After the great revolt of Najaf against the British, which was led by the 'ulama, the continuation of this leadership through some representation in the state could not fail to be advocated in circles close to the Shi'i jurists:

Jordan and Lebanon

The repercussions of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and of the US intervention and premature withdrawal, were deeply worrying to Jordan. In its view, peace between Israel and Lebanon should have been addressed after Israeli and Syrian forces had withdrawn from the country, as part of a comprehensive peace between Israel and its neighbours and not before. It also thought that the US Marines and the MNF should have stayed until Syrian and Israeli forces were withdrawn and national reconciliation among the warring domestic factions was under way.

The American failure in Lebanon harmed Jordan, in the sense that the ensuing confrontation between Syria and Israel brought about a radical shift in the balance of power which was of vital consequence for the political middle ground in the region. Their respective desires to dominate the area were seen as leading Israel formally to annex the West Bank, and to leave the territorial integrity of Lebanon permanently compromised. This trial of strength, it was feared, would expose Jordan to mounting pressures from the west as well as the north, accompanied by a further influx of refugees as a result of the social and economic dislocation inflicted on the Palestinians both at home and in exile abroad. Social disruption in Jordan would follow, as American-backed Israelis and Soviet-backed Syrians battled it out for dominance in the region as a whole. Furthermore, it was feared then that superpower support would encourage both Israel and Syria to establish strategic links between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea-Gulf theatres.

The war has brought about profound changes in society. But before studying the economic and demographic problems, we should first consider the ideological and social developments. The three important aspects of this change are the emergence of the young Islamists, the way in which the ʿulama have managed to reassert their control of civil society, and the diminishing power of the influential families. These aspects correspond to the distinction between an ideal centred around the concept of the state (the Islamists), a universal authority which did not allow any place for the state (the ʿulama) and an amorphous civil society (the network of the qawm) (see chapter I).

Unlike most Third World countries, the advent of modernism is a recent phenomenon in Afghanistan. There has been no uprooting of the population and no sudden loss of traditional culture. Peasant society still retains its memory of the past and its identity. The fact that there has been no crisis of identity explains the absence of fanaticism. The Islamist intellectuals are part of the first generation to be confronted by the problem of cultural alienation. They all have close links with traditional society, such as a family in the countryside or parents for whom tradition is important, and they have all been taught the Qurʾan in their childhood. The Islamists are much more in tune with society than the communists, and they have retained the adab (which is not only the traditional politeness but also the culture of the past).

What interests us in an account of the Afghanistan resistance movement? Has this movement already receded into the past, its history to be written as an obituary? Such resignation in the face of a defeat which has not yet occurred presupposes a specific view of history: that nothing can stand in the way of the Soviet system and that when it has steamrollered its way across a country steeped in the age-old traditions of Islam, something fundamentally new will be born, obliterating the past. This is the posthumous triumph of Marxism over those very people who oppose it, yet accept that its ultimate victory is assured.

Even though the resistance movement cannot hope for a clear-cut military victory, no-one can deny that guerilla wars are political wars and that in the end the slow wearing away of a colonial power may still be decisive. Whatever the outcome of this war, the Soviet system is evolving, as is the contemporary world of Islam. The Afghan resistance movement lies at the intersection of these two histories. Far from being a mere spontaneous revolt, it has its roots in the popular Muslim uprisings of the past and also in the current of Islamic reformism, which runs from Shah Waliullah to the contemporary so-called fundamentalists. This story, as yet untold, will increase our understanding of the link between Islam and the popular movements.

The Hazara represent the core of the Shiʿa movement in Afghanistan. As they are concentrated in the central mountains, they play a very important strategic role for the resistance movement, for Hazarajat is both an important junction in the communications network and an area of refuge untroubled by the battles being waged elsewhere. Since 1981 the Russians have abandoned any pretence of controlling this region. Deprived of the opportunity of waging war against them, Hazarajat has been plunged into a simmering civil war, punctuated by sudden outbreaks of violence. The Shiʿa are very clearly distinguished from the Sunni majority by their bearing, their political allegiance and the structure of their organisations. Only one Shiʿa party is really active against the Russians: the Harakat-i islami, which originated in the town (thus qizilbash, but is now well established along the borders of Hazarajat.

Hazarajat

The situation before the war

The origin of the Hazara and their social organisation prior to the twentieth century is obscure. It seems that the tribal system, dominated by the mir, was the rule – a system that was much more hierarchical and rigid than Pashtun tribalism. Even today, the Hazara are marked by an absence of egalitarianism and by the harshness of their social relations, in which respect they are strikingly different from the other ethnic groups.

When the coup of 27 April 1978 occurred, the new regime was not regarded as being communist either by political observers or by the ordinary citizens of the country. On 20 May, a specialist in Afghan affairs, Louis Dupree, published a letter in the New York Times under the heading: “A communist label is unjustified”. Nevertheless, the rhetoric of the regime left little room for doubt: it called for unity between workers, poor peasants and enlightened intellectuals to bring about the downfall of feudalism, talked of solidarity with socialist countries in their fight against imperialism, and published telegrams of support sent by international para-communist organisations. But long experience of Third World “revolutions” has led Western observers to expect a gap between revolutionary rhetoric and a more moderate approach to the exercise of power. Both the Afghan communist movement and the degree of Soviet penetration were largely underestimated. Babrak, Taraki and Amin, who were all well known as individuals, were regarded as political amateurs. It was thought that the USSR already had sufficient influence in Afghanistan and would therefore not wish to run the risk of a major political crisis by openly taking over a country already under its control.

Daoud was not popular in the country. The coup was generally seen as yet another example of padshahgardi, “political in-fighting within ruling circles”, which meant that power changed hands at the top without bringing about any fundamental change in society. Nevertheless, there were certain elements which were totally new.

The complexity of the Afghan war is created by the intricacy of all the factors we have discussed in the previous chapters: qawm, tribes and ethnic affiliations, combined with ideological and political divisions and exacerbated by the influence of the three neighbouring countries (Pakistan, USSR, Iran), each of them playing both ideological and ethnic cards, in the context of a decade of East-West competition through the numerous “regional conflicts”, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua.

From the international point of view, the Afghan war has embodied different levels of conflicts which are inextricably intertwined: an East- West issue, a regional conflict and an ideological confrontation between Islam and Marxism.

The East-West issue

It is the Soviet invasion which turned a local civil war into an East-West issue. For the first time since 1946, Soviet troops invaded a country which was not a member of the Warsaw Pact. Whatever the main reason for the invasion, it was perceived by Washington as a drastic change in the balance of power between East and West, coming after a general setback of the West in the seventies (Ethiopia, Iran, Vietnam, Cambodia etc.). Hence Carter's firmness, followed by Reagan's will to obtain some success in the “roll-back” policy, which consisted of helping “freedom fighters” to topple the recently established pro-Soviet regimes. But in fact, until 1987, most of the American analysts were pessimistic about a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and thus reluctant to feed a military escalation that could trigger a spill-over into Pakistan.

The party spectrum in 1980

The distribution of support for the parties is not the result of chance but may be correlated with fairly precise social networks. The map showing the level of support for the parties in the different areas and their relative strength has yet to be drawn. Naturally, studies carried out at the time were almost non-existent, and the situation has to be reconstructed. At the beginning, only the Hizb and Jamiat militants made mention of the idea of the party; they established themselves through their networks of militants, without exercising any overall control over the population. People in general followed their local leaders, who made up their minds according to their belief in one of the four networks described above. For this reason there was a great diversity of opinion, combined with frequent shifts in loyalties. Sharp divisions in people's political loyalties owing to a great number of parties being represented at the same time in the same place characterised much of the country at the outbreak of war. Nevertheless, it seems that in the south the sharp divisions were less marked at the beginning but remained a factor to be reckoned with, while in the north, which was more divided in 1980, the political situation became clearer and a certain amount of regrouping went on.

asabiyya: Arabic term which means communal spirit, that is to say allegiance to a communal group

ʿadat: custom, customary rights, habits

akhundzade: descendant of an important religious figure, very often of a pir

ʿalim (plural: ʿulama): Doctor of the Law. The term usually refers to someone who has successfully completed a higher degree in a madrasa

amir: leader. In the Resistance, someone who has civil and military power

arbab: in the centre and the north, equivalent of malik

ashʿari: someone who follows Ash'ari, theologian born in 874, who tried to reconcile traditional faith and rational theology

Aymaq: Persian-speaking Sunni groups, often semi-nomadic, living in the centre of Afghanistan (Ghor province)

ʿayyar: swashbuckling brigands in the Persian tradition. The word originally meant “knights”, the “Paladins”. Here it has the same connotation as Robin Hood

badal: vengeance in the pashtumvali

Baluchi: ethnic group living on the frontier between Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They speak an Iranian dialect of the north-west, but include brahui groups (Dravidians)

barakat: a sanctity which brings blessing to others and which emanates from certain people or certain objects.

1747: victoryof the Durrani tribal federation led by Ahmad Shah of the Saddozay clan of the Popalzay tribe. He founded a Durrani empire which stretched as far as India

1761: victory of Panipat against the Marathes

1773–1793: reign of Timur Shah

1793–1799: reign of Zaman Shah

1803–1809: reign of Shah Shujaʿ

1809: British delegation to Peshawar led by Mountstuart Elphinstone

1809–1818: reign of Mahmud

1818–1835: civil war

1835–1863: reign of Dost Muhammad

1839–1842: first Anglo-Afghan war, the interregnum of Shah Shujaʿ

1856: the Persians take Heart

1863–1879: the reign of Shir ʿAli

1878: the second Anglo-Afghan war

1879: Treaty of Gandamak signed by Yaqub Khan, which included the agreement that a British representative should be installed at Kabul

1880: the British recognise Abdurrahman as Amir

1880: British defeat at Maywand

1885: occupation of the Panjdih oasis by the Russians

1887: Russo-Afghan agreement on the northern frontier of Afghanistan

1893: Durand agreement on the eastern frontier of Afghanistan

1901: death of Abdurrahman. His son Habibullah becomes Amir

1911: the founding of the modernist journal Siraj ul-Akhbar by Mahmud Tarzi

Apart from a few thousand Hindus and Sikhs and a few hundred Jews, all Afghans are Muslims. Eighty per cent of these are Sunni of the Hanafite rite, and the rest are Shiʿa of the Jaffarite rite, with a small Ismaʿili minority of one to two hundred thousand people. In a country like Afghanistan, where the concept of the nation has developed but recently, where the state is seen as external to society and where people's allegiance is directed primarily towards their local community, the only thing which all Afghans have in common is Islam.

Afghan peasant life is permeated by religion. It provides the intellectual horizon, the system of values and the code of behaviour, even though occasionally this may involve a clash with other codes of conduct, such as the tribal system; it provides the only source of legitimation based upon universal values. Nevertheless, the social basis of this religion varies according to whether the context within which it exists is tribal or non-tribal, rural or urban, and in the same way the link between ideology and religion varies according to whether a group is secularised or fundamentalist, traditionalist or reformist. Thus one finds different forms of religious expression, each with its own dynamic and symbolism.

The Afghan war reached a turning point in 1988, when Moscow decided to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan whatever the future course of the events. From that point, the Afghan war ceased to embody the conflict between East and West or between Islam and Communism. The ideological dimension of the war faded away, and the traditional domestic factors, mainly communal and ethnic, prevailed. Both the Mujahidin and the Kabul regime reverted to the traditional rules of the power game, although the changes brought by the war, mainly accumulation of modern weapons, emergence of a new leadership, politicisation of the society, massive emigration and urbanisation, undermined the traditional ways of regulating the conflicts which opposed communal groups to each other or to the state. Instead of providing an alternative model of modern state power, these changes plunged Afghanistan, just after the Soviet departure, into anarchy. On the same time, this creeping “lebanonisation ” of Afghanistan became a stake in the regional game, where Pakistan, Iran, India, Saudi Arabia, but also the Soviet Union, are playing their regional cards, enhancing what they see as their national interests through what they see as their Afghan proxies. But, as usual, every foreign player who tries to impose his strategy on any Afghan player finds himself bogged down by the Afghan domestic factors.