International Society for Iranian Studies

Guest Editor's Preface

Author(s): M. Jamil Hanifi
Source: Iranian Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2, Afghanistan (Jun., 2004), pp. 197-198
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of International Society for Iranian Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4311620 .
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 IranianStudies,volume 37, number2, June 2004

M. Jamil Hanifi

Guest Editor's Preface

The idea of a special issue of IranianStudiesdevoted to Afghanistan was first

mentioned by Ahmad Ashraf and Robert D. McChesneyat the Fourth Biennial
Conference of the International society for Iranian Studies, May 24-26, 2002
where an anthropology panel on Afghanistan was offered. Two papers, those
by Thomas J. Barfield, and Robert L. Canfield from that panel, are included in
this volume. The general anthropological framework of the articles in this collec-
tion is sustained by Alessandro Monsutti, M. Jamil Hanifi, and Shah Mahmoud
Hanifi. The latter, although an historian, is well versed in the application of
anthropological concepts to the historical canvas of Afghanistan. In addition to
their geographic focus, what holds these papers together is their treatment of pro-
found ongoing transformations experienced by societies and cultures that are now
subsumed under the rubric of Afghanistan.
The social, economic, and political dynamics of nineteenth-century Afghani-
stan are the template of present day Afghan society. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi's
article offers persuasive explanations for, and organic linkages between, the econ-
omic poverty and isolation of the country today and the role of British Indian
capital, the coinage policies of Amir 'Abd al-Rahman (r. 1880-1901), and the
latter's attempts at undermining the important place of Indian bankers in the
Afghan economy during the late nineteenth century. The Amir's tyrannical poli-
cies towards, and military incursions in, the Hazarajat have left a lasting imprint
on ethnic relations and political life in Afghanistan.
Alessandro Monsutti captures the economic strategies utilized by the Hazaras
as an adaptive response to their historic location in the Afghan periphery and in
the context of the disintegration of the Afghan center over the last twenty-five
years. The crucial roles of bawalaand hawaladarin the local and regional economic
networks involving the Hazaras are the inheritance of the prominence of Indian
bankers in the trade networks that once connected Afghanistan with the outside
world.
The scale and intensity of revitalized political consciousness among the
Hazaras over the last twenty-five years is unique among the ethnic or sectarian
groups in Afghanistan. How the Hazara community has coped politically with
the collapse of the Afghan state is the subject of Robert L. Canfield's paper.
The multifaceted struggle of the Hazaras to coordinate their historical conscious-
ness with the newly realized political opportunities in the context of dramatically
changed local and regional conditions, and the uncertainty of what Afghanistan
might become, is cogently addressed by the author.
ISSN 0021-0862print/lSSN 1475-4819online/04/020197-2 Carfax
Publishing
C)2004 The InternationalSociety for IranianStudies TaYIr&FrWX%GMW
DOI tO.1080/0021086042000268165

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198 Preface

There has been a longstanding academic discourse about theories dealing with
the comparative merit and practical advantage of coercion and consensus as
sources of political legitimacy. Generally, consensus is viewed as grounded in
civil society and associated with stability while coercion is located in the political
machinery of the state and identified with instability. Thomas J. Barfield, posi-
tioning himself in this discourse, offers a discussion about the prominence of
organized force-warfare in the political landscape from which Afghanistan
has been carved out. Offering a review of the various wars and military campaigns
in the region going back to the eleventh century, he concludes that force
has rarely, if ever, produced viable and stable political arrangements and he
points to a shift of emphasis to consensus for the political and economic develop-
ment of Afghanistan.
Starting with the reign of Amir Amanullah (1919-1929), the Afghan govern-
ment formally attempted to construct a modicum of consensus through the
agency of the Loya Jerga. M. Jamil Hanifi addresses the colonial foundations
of the production of this important hegemonic-and consent-extorting--appar-
atus in Afghanistan. It is argued that through the agency of the Loya Jerga, rulers
penetrated the nascent Afghan civil society and, through deceit and manipulation,
produced the appearance of consensus. The neocolonial presence in Afghanistan
has invigorated the application of this hegemonic mechanism.
The papers in this collection profile transformational processes in specific
locations of the social, political, and economic complexity of Afghanistan. Every
article contains hitherto un-mined archival, ethnographic, and historical data.
Moreover, the collection highlights the austerity of scholarship on Afghanistan
and the enormous gaps and tenuous assumptions that characterize this corpus
of knowledge.

May 2004

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