The United States and its allies are pulling their military forces out of Afghanistan. Naturally this raises concerns for the future of this country and its people. In this post I will analyze the past and future developments of Afghanistan and related cases.
THEORETICAL BASIS
Afghanistan is part of the Oriental civilization. This civilization roughly covered and still covers the Middle East and North Africa. It was clearly traceable from around 500 BC and had its dynamic period from around 0 to AD 1500. It encompassed many peoples and religions like Jews, early Christians, Persians, Zoroastrians, Manichaeans, partly the hybrid Byzantine empire, Armenians, Moslems and Arabs.
I have earlier analyzed the interaction between this civilization and the Western civilization (including Russia and China) from different angles
- Remnants’ defense.
- Westernization.
- Last barbarians.
- Re-awoken modernities.
- Enclave-nations and transformation to western type territorial nations.
In this post I will use a limited set of these angles to gain a deeper but manageable understanding of present developments, not least in Afghanistan.
Much of the following is written in past tense, but is still largely relevant today.
Civilizations have commonalities in their course of development. But all civilizations have their own characteristics. This also concerns their concept of a nation. The Oriental civilization has nations which are quite unlike those of the Western civilization. We in the West have nations with coherent areas and people with certain common traits like allegiance, religion, language or political system.
In the Oriental world nations were spread among each other in a patchwork of bigger and smaller enclaves. The ghetto is a such enclave of small size. A nation of this type lived over large areas within such enclaves without direct territorial connection. Of course nations constituting a large majority did often live in coherent territories with the enclaves of the minorities spread among them. Here a porfyric rock would be a better picture than a patchwork. But the idea was the same. A territorial barrier did not matter. Each nation was kept together by often religious leaders administrating all members no matter their place of living. Emissaries and written messages played a big role. Often a nation had its own script. Paulus is an early example of a such leader in the Christian nation. A nation had members which shared religion, ethnicity and /or political opinion.
Often there was a structure of superordinate political entities or superstates with coherent territories ruling over a collection of such enclaves of numerous nations. These superstates were only held together by power. Early we saw the Parthian and Sassanid Persian Empires containing Zoroastrians, Jews, Greek heathens, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians. The later Moslem dynasties like Umayyads or Samanids or Fatimids continued this principle. The Ottoman Empire was a late very good example of a such superordinate structure. Note that different contemporary superstates could house the same collection of nations.
Such nations continue to live in enclaves also when they immigrate to other civilizations. The Jews as part of the Oriental civilization lived like this in old Europe. Even today the so called parallel societies of Moslem immigrants in Western cities are an example of this.
As written in earlier posts, today the Oriental civilization becomes westernized, and its nations adopt the Western idea of territorial nations. They want territorial coherent nations. This has led to the terrible ethnic cleansings we have seen over the last century.
GENERALIZATION
The concept of the Oriental nation may be generalized. As seen, in the Western cities Jews and Moslems lived or still live in enclaves even though the society around them is another civilization. More broadly we can generalize the relation between different Oriental nations to
- The relation between Oriental nations and other civilizations,
- The relation between people with different degrees of westernization,
- The relation between people with different political opinion, and
- Ultimately to peoples with different degrees of civilization as such.
In all these cases, if only one of the involved groups is an Oriental nation, then from the viewpoint of this group, the different group can be seen as another nation. And if the other groups are also wholly or partly Oriental nations, they all view the difference as one between nations. This can potentially have disastrous consequences as these nations become westernized in the sense that they now want ethnically clean coherent territories like the ones Western nations have. This is crucial for the understanding of developments in Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East.
Also peoples which live culturally outside, but geographically inside the Oriental civilization can in the context of this civilization be seen as constituting nations of their own. They can then gradually be assimilated and some may later again become dis-assimilated in different degrees. In this way the Oriental civilization in its Moslem version has swallowed both civilized peoples and less civilized “barbarians”. Especially the latter could become at first civilized and later in different degrees revert to their original condition.
This way of relating to different peoples aided the rapid expansion over large areas of this civilization, especially under the Arabs . Enormous territories in North Africa and Central Asia could be conquered without it being necessary to control them all culturally. Instead the invading nations installed themselves in enclaves in strongholds at different locations spread over the conquered areas. The surrounding areas were kept under control in the superstate, and were treated as constituting Oriental nations even though they culturally seen were outside the civilization. Often they were what the Greek and Chinese would term barbarians, i.e. people outside all civilizations, perhaps semi-nomadic peoples.
This pattern of settlements may be compared to Old China in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties and later. Here too the civilized people lived in isolated cities among barbarians. But in this case the areas controlled were not as large. Therefore the barbarians gradually became fully and permanently assimilated.
Compared to this the very quick expansion by the Greeks under Alexander the Great into the Middle East and parts of India and Central Asia looks more like the Oriental pattern. Also here isolated Greek enclaves “Alexandrias” were placed all around with large not hellenized areas between them. This process may have been aided by the fact that the invaded territories were parts of the early Oriental civilization. The peoples here were already prepared to the Oriental type of patchwork nations. The Greeks were another civilization, but they were perceived and received as just another nation. Much like the Persians had earlier received the Jews to let them live in small enclaves spread in their empire.
Later the Arabs and allied peoples repeated the deed of Alexander. In this case the effect was more lasting, but despite this not all of the conquered areas were fully and permanently culturally assimilated. Therefore some would return to more or less barbaric forms.
To sum up: The Oriental type of nation consisted and partly still consists of a people spread among other such nations in geographically separate, but culturally and politically united enclaves. This pattern can be generalized to also concern the relation to peoples from other civilization. Either in the form of Oriental nations having enclaves in other civilizations or in the form of people from other civilizations living in enclaves in the Oriental world, enclaves which in the Oriental context are perceived as parts of Oriental nations.
But it can also be generalized in a similar way to not civilized peoples which can live in enclaves or have enclaves of civilized Oriental peoples inn their areas.
AFGHANISTAN
As the Oriental civilization flourished under the Abbasid Caliphate 750-1258, the peoples in the vast conquered areas could become more or less incorporated into the higher culture. And later again some of them could fall back into barbaric conditions.
The latter destiny befell numerous areas during the history of this civilization, also as early as during its flourishing times. Even the original heartland of Islam, the Arab Peninsula fell partly into barbaric conditions very soon after the Arab expansion. This semi-barbaric condition has continued to exist up to the present time, where it manifests itself in the directly anti-cultural attitudes of unofficial and official Wahhabism. It is even more clear in groups like al-Qaeda and the so called Islamic State.
Parts of Syria and Iraq have gone out of and again into barbaric conditions, conditions which has given rise to not least the Islamic State. Parts of North Africa, notably Libya have also become re-barbarized.
Afghanistan is another example. A thousand years ago Afghanistan was one of the higher centers of Islamic culture. Science, art and literature flourished not least under the Samanid dynasty. The modern condition of the country in these times also manifested itself in other ways. For example the area was filled with leftwing social revolutionaries.
The high level of culture continued for a couple of centuries, but later the area fell partly back into barbaric conditions. This is what we still see represented today in the form of often Pashtun groups like the Taliban.
Of course Afghanistan did not return to totally barbaric pre-civilization conditions. Also elsewhere in the Oriental world the process was only partial except for areas in parts of Africa that were very distant. “Barbaric” is not an ideal word. It has too many negative connotations, and it may give ideas of nomadic peoples in the deep forests or the steppe, peoples which have never seen civilization or culture. Of course this is not the case for the peoples I am talking about here. Rather, they are in a condition where they to some extent have reverted to traditions and styles of life and behavior dating back to times before they were civilized. And very often they consciously resist and oppose civilizing influences, both from their own original and other civilizations. They may also destroy cultural artifacts from civilized times. This can be seen in the destruction of mausoleums for Islamic saints in Saudi Arabia and Sahara. The bombing of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan and the destruction by IS of museums and historical ruins in Iraq and Syria are other examples.
Not all parts of Afghanistan are affected to the same extent by the anti-civilization trend. It seems to mostly concern the Pashtun areas in the south and also parts of Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan. Other parts of Afghanistan have been and are more open to the World. And as a result of the modernization and the westernization introduced by the Russians and the West, not least the cities have become quite like modern cities elsewhere in the Middle East and the World.
Seen in the Oriental cultural context these cities are perceived as enclaves of a more modern partly Westernized nation located as islands in a different and semi-barbaric nation.
As said, in the original Oriental world a coexistence between different nations in a patchwork was natural. But with a partial adaption to Western forms, the Oriental nations want to transform into territorially coherent nations. This is also the case for the anti-civilized parts of Afghanistan even though they are partly outside the Oriental civilization.
For this reason the Taliban wants to conquer and eradicate the enclaves of the more modern nation in not least the cities, but also elsewhere. Of course this is amplified as they are now also seen as elements of an alien civilization. The Shias as a third nation are threatened for the same reasons.
Obviously the fulfillment of this wish to eradicate the modern enclaves is becoming much easier now when America and its allies have decided to remove their military forces. In the light of the present analysis this American decision will go down into history as a major moral and strategic mistake.
Is a solution for Afghanistan possible? The country contains two big nations (if we include the Shias in the non-Taliban one). There are opponents of Taliban both in the cities and elsewhere, not least in the North. Therefore civil war will continue also after the victory of Taliban. The best solution may be a division of the country with a more modern northern nation and a semi-barbaric nation in the south. If necessary a certain amount of mutual ethnic cleansings must be accepted in order to clarify the borderline.
But right now we in the Western civilization have a moral obligation to save or evacuate the modernized people in the enclaves we have planted or promoted and not betray them! And we should certainly not let petty racism hinder us from helping people who have helped us!
