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The September 11 Tragedy


Anthropological Commentaries

Sponsored by the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association

last updated 11/7/02 This page archives commentaries relevant to the September 11 Tragedy and its aftermath by anthropologists. Please respond to the individual author, if you have questions or comments. If you would like to post a commentary, please contact Dan Varisco. For links to commentaries posted elsewhere on the web, click here.

• Jon Anderson, President, MES
• Dan Varisco, President-Elect, MES

Contents

• Anthropology, the Web and the War on Terror (Daniel Martin Varisco)

• The Bombs of October (David B. Edwards)

• DISTORTING THEORY AND MISREADING SOCIETY IN AFGHANISTAN

(M. Jamil Hanfi)

• Enlisting Afghan Aid (David B. Edwards & Shahmahmood Miakhel)

• Fast, Feast, and Famine (David B. Edwards)

• Lessons from the Antimafia Struggle in Sicily (Jane and Peter Schneider)

• Outwitting Osama (David B. Edwards)

• September 11: Contexts and Consequences (edited by Misha Klein and Adrian McIntyre) [announcement]

• Taleban: The Word (M. Jamil Hanifi)

• Thinking beyond the Taliban (David B. Edwards)

The Bombs of October

David B. Edwards, Williams College

October 13, 2001

After three weeks of effectively confounding Osama bin Laden by not doing what he expected us to do, the bombs of October appear to have squandered the sympathy and advantage we briefly enjoyed following the terrorist attacks. One vital question now is how do we regain the propaganda advantage we will need to prevent the conflict in Afghanistan from spreading to other parts of the Muslim world.

For bin Laden, the terrorist attacks of September 11 were the first salvo of a global holy war between Islam and the West, but the early U.S. actions defied bin Laden's plans. Through our multi-pronged strategy of international coalition-building, financial strangulation of terrorist networks, and facilitation of a moderate Afghan political solution, the U.S. appeared to be taking momentum away from bin Laden.

Reports from inside Afghanistan indicated fragmentation in the Taliban regime. Traditional clerics loosely aligned with the government, and even some Taliban officials, were said to be unhappy with the Wahhabi drift of Mulla Umar and his Arab allies, and were contemplating joining the coalition building around former king Zahir Shah. Their assistance would be crucial to any political settlement in Afghanistan, and it appeared that they might begin a migration away from Mulla Umar that would bring with it further defections from the rank and file.

All talk of internal dissension promptly stopped after the bombs started falling on October 7, however. Afghanistan was now under attack, and Afghans did what they have always done in times of national crisis, which is to rally together in opposition to the aggressor. The United States naturally does not view itself in this light, but it is difficult for a nation to sustain the impression of paternal benevolence when it is dropping bombs on those it claims to care about, no matter how many packets of dehydrated soy products accompany those bombs.

When Defense Secretary Rumsfeld spoke at the first news conference on October 7 announcing the commencement of air strikes, he emphasized the humanitarian side of the new campaign, but few people take those efforts seriously at this stage. What had appeared a week earlier as a creative way to drive a wedge between the Afghan people and their rulers now seemed cynical and cruelly inadequate to the enormity of the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.

The growing momentum to form a national assembly (loya jirga) of moderate Afghan political leaders likewise now seems of secondary importance, as it has became clear through the smoke and slogans of anti-U.S. demonstrations that the Pakistan government would be hard-pressed to provide adequate security, and any loya jirga would probably have to be convened in Rome or some equally improbable location far from the people it would purport to represent.

In order to reclaim the propaganda advantage we have lost, the United States must recommit to its pledge of providing humanitarian assistance to the three million Afghans in danger of immediate starvation this winter. U.S. aircraft have dismantled the meager air defense systems the Taliban possessed, and we are now in a position to take forcible control of Afghan airfields at Bagram, Shindand, and other parts of the country, making possible the introduction by air of significant quantities of humanitarian aid. Airdrops from 30,000 feet were never going to meet the needs of Afghanistan's starving populations, but we could make a substantial dent in the problem if we established fixed points from which we could distribute food and send out helicopter relief sorties to more isolated villages.

Once distribution points were established, our original decision to commence air strikes could be credibly represented as an effort to gain control of the air needed to set up an effective relief operation in Afghanistan. Taliban forces would very likely strike back in an effort to expel us from their bases, and we would have to deploy ground forces to keep the Taliban at bay. But, those would be battles worth fighting, especially if it is remembered that the Afghan conflict is ultimately about winning the hearts and minds of Muslims outside Afghanistan.

Dispatching troops to deliver food would thus be seen in a very different light from sending in troops to topple the Taliban, and would increase the likelihood of us accomplishing both objectives. With us ensconced and offering food, the Taliban would be forced either to move onto the plains surrounding their former airbases, where our aircraft would be ready to pounce. Or they would have to try to stop their own people from receiving the food aid they needed to survive. Either way, the regime is placed at a disadvantage, and we are the ones calling the shots.

Osama bin Laden intends for the war in Afghanistan to be the first battle in a global clash of civilizations. His statements following the commencement of air strikes on October 7 clearly demonstrated his strategic goals, and we must do everything in our power to prevent those goals from being achieved. Having committed to a military strategy, it would be counter-productive to disengage at this stage, but we can still exert considerable control over the significance given to our strikes through our next series of steps.

The creation of food distribution centers would recast our actions to date in a very different light than they are seen at present, and would demonstrate to the people of the Muslim world generally that our declarations of support and concern for the Afghan people have been genuine from the start and that we are prepared to put American lives at risk to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan this winter.

David B. Edwards is Professor of Anthropology, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts and director of the Williams Afghan Media Project. He is the author of Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad (U. of California Press, February 2002).

Contact Information:

• For David Edwards: dedwards@williams.edu.

Enlisting Afghan Aid

David B. Edwards & Shahmahmood Miakhel

September 16, 2001

Osama bin Laden is waiting for George Bush to attack Afghanistan. It is the response he expects, and he can't wait. For him, this is a holy war, a clash of civilizations, and he has no compunction about using Afghans as kindling to start a conflagration that would involve the entire Muslim world. One hopes the policymakers in Washington realize where bin Laden's strategy leads and will think carefully about how to avoid his trap.

To develop a strategy that confounds bin Laden's plans, we must begin by thinking of Afghans not as enemies but as potential allies. It is no coincidence that none of the names so far identified in the list of hijackers are Afghans. Bin Laden and his Arab followers live in restricted enclaves, and few Afghans, outside the Taliban regime itself, harbor any sympathies for his cause. Afghanistan now, no less than during the decade of Soviet control, is an occupied nation, and we must enlist in our struggle the many Afghans inside the country and out who would welcome the opportunity to unseat the Taliban and get rid of the Arab interlopers in their country. Two steps must be taken to draw these people into the international community in its attack on bin Laden and his supporters.

First, the international community must assemble experienced Afghan leaders to provide the nucleus of an interim government. This group should include exiled moderates who were forced out of the political picture first by the extremist resistance parties in Peshawar back in the 1980s and then by the Taliban. They must be joined by the handful of moderate commanders forced into exile by the Taliban who Afghans still trust. The number of recognized Afghan leaders who have managed to both survive and maintain their reputation in the polarized politics of the last two decades is small, but they exist and must be persuaded to put aside their partisan disputes and participate in a transitional coalition to govern Afghanistan until democratic elections can be held. As this group is brought together, Afghans generally must be convinced that these leaders will not be puppets of the United States or any other foreign power. Similarly, Afghanistan's neighbors must understand that the interim government will avoid foreign entanglements and dedicate itself to the immediate goals of reestablishing the foundations of government, helping the Afghan people become economically self-sufficient, and preparing the ground for general elections. The second step is an international commitment made up front to provide a massive influx of development assistance to reconstruct the economic and social infrastructure of Afghan society. After 23 years of foreign occupation and civil war, the country's roads, irrigation systems, and electrical grid are in a state of ruin, and Afghanistan now is in the grip of a drought that has turned much of the region into a desert. Afghans remember well that the international community largely forgot about them after the Soviets withdrew from their country, and they must be assured that this will not happen again and that we will work with them to rebuild the once vibrant and modernizing society that existed prior to the Marxist revolution of 1978. Without such commitments, Afghans will find little reason to take the risks that opposing Bin Laden and the Taliban will entail. On the other hand, the promise of sustained international support for Afghanistan will send a message not only to Afghans, but to Muslims generally that the West is committed to their welfare rather than their destruction. No group has suffered more in the last quarter century than the Afghans, but they are a resilient people and will be a formidable foe again if they believe themselves to be under invasion from a foreign enemy. We must frame our response to the terrorist outrage not as an assault but as a liberation&emdash;from oppressive rulers, unwanted guests, and the economic calamity that is their everyday reality. Respected Afghan leaders must be at the forefront of our efforts, and it must be clear that our intentions are to help rebuild rather than to destroy. Those of us who have enjoyed the prosperity of the last two decades must recognize that terrorism is born of political and economic despair. If we fail to take into account Afghanistan's future, as well as its past and present, Afghanistan will remain a place where terrorists can find safe haven, and all the military might in the world won't make us safe again.

David B. Edwards is Professor of Anthropology at Williams College and the director of the Williams Afghan Media Project. He is also the author of Children of History: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad (forthcoming, Univ. of California Press) and other books and articles on the Afghan conflict.

Shahmahmood Miakhel was a reporter for the Voice of America in Pakistan and the director of the Belgian relief organization for Afghan refugees. In the early 1990s, he was senior liaison officer in the United Nations Development Program in Afghanistan. He is presently a taxi driver in Washington, D.C.

Contact Information: • For David Edwards: dedwards@williams.edu • For Shahmahmood Miakhel: miakhel@erols.com

Fast, Feast, and Famine

David B. Edwards, Williams College

This year, Thanksgiving, our national celebration of family, food and football, will fall in the middle of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. Both rituals will, of course, take place against the backdrop of the conflict in Afghanistan and the prospect that, over the next four months, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of drought-stricken and war-ravaged refugees from that country will starve or freeze to death. Feasting and fasting, satiation and starvation, football and war ñ the ritual calendars of our two nations at war have conspired to bring us face-to-face with our different beliefs, customs, and circumstances in the moment of our shared affliction.

Americans are learning a great deal, very quickly about Islam, and one thing they are bound to hear a lot about in the coming weeks is the importance of the month of Ramadan, which will begin on or about November 17th this year. Ramadan, which is based on the lunar cycle and therefore begins approximately ten days earlier with respect to our solar calendar, is the month during which Muslims abstain from food, drink, and other sensual pleasures from sunrise until sunset. Ramadan is thought of as a time of spiritual meditation and personal contemplation, when the individual takes stock of his life, but because all adults, male and female, rich and poor, are expected to observe the fast, Ramadan generates a strong communal bond among believers as well. It is said that the Quran was first revealed to Muhammad during this month, and the Battle of Badr, one of the most important early victories for the Muslim faithful, also occurred in Ramadan. Given the strong sense of communal solidarity and historical momentousness awakened by Ramadan, we will likely see sympathy for the Taliban and Afghan civilian casualties raised to a fever pitch if bombing continues after the beginning of the month. That virtually guarantees a marked increase in demonstrations, and since special blessings are bestowed on those martyred during Ramadan, the demonstrations this year could be especially violent, not only in Pakistan, but in other Muslim nations as well.

As Ramadan approaches, we need to assess what we have accomplished with our air war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda and what our next steps should be. On the plus side, we have destroyed a number of fuel and ammo dumps, and several dozen airplanes and tanks. With these successes, our aircraft are now able to crisscross the skies of Afghanistan more or less at will, attacking individual Taliban units and the few remaining entrenched tanks and anti-aircraft batteries that remain. On the minus side, air strikes appear to have strengthened rather than weakened our enemy.

Before the bombing, the Taliban were unpopular rulers, despised by many of the Afghan people for their severe interpretation of Islamic doctrine. Since the bombing began, they have once again become mujahidin, holy warriors, devoid perhaps of their most sophisticated weapons, but respected at home and admired abroad. Parallels to the Soviet experience in Afghanistan are not exact - our technology for one offers opportunities the Soviets never enjoyed - but if the Soviet occupation teaches us anything, it is that a unified Afghanistan, even without aircraft and tanks, is a dangerous enemy indeed. If, in addition to a united Afghanistan, the Muslim world should join in opposition to the United States, then bin Ladenís most important mission will have been accomplished, and it wonít really matter anymore whether the man himself is, in fact, dead of alive or how many tons of ordinance we drop.

This is not where we wanted to be when we initiated air strikes on October 7, but the reality is that our strategic goals have never been clearly defined, our intelligence is inadequate (when it is not actually compromised), and it would appear that we donít really know how to proceed. Under these circumstances, Ramadan is a Godsend, as much for us as for the Muslim people, because it provides the U.S. with a face-saving way to call a truce and thereby disengage from an increasingly futile and counter-productive military campaign. At the same time, a Ramadan truce would also give former king Zahir Shah an opportunity to try to bring the forces of the Northern Alliance with the Pashtun group convened recently in Peshawar by Pir Gailani. These two groups need to coordinate their efforts to achieve a political solution, but their efforts will be pointless as long as bombs are raining down on Afghanistan.

As we contemplate the onset of Ramadan, we might also want to think about our own ritual of Thanksgiving and what it used to stand for and what it means to us now. When it was first celebrated in 1622, it was a feast to celebrate and praise God for the bounty of the season. It would be good to remember the roots of our national holiday and honor them by recommitting ourselves to an effective plan for dealing with the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. On the day that we gather as families to celebrate our blessings, the government should announce a massive effort not only to deal with the immediate crisis this winter, but also to provide financial and technical assistance in a multi-national effort to reconstruct the shattered Afghan economy. Funding for this endeavor should be placed in trust with the United Nations until reconstruction efforts can begin.

This undertaking would not only regain for us some of the moral high ground that we have lost since the bombing campaign begun, it will also help shore up our increasingly nervous coalition. Equally important, making good on our commitment to help Afghanistan out of its current crisis will do us good. Americans now are scared and uncertain. The anthrax contagion has proven that no one is safe from terrorism, and our vaunted military power is not accomplishing the goals we had hoped it would. However, using our technology and our wealth to help save the most beleaguered people on earth will remind us of the principles of generosity and compassion that, far more than military might, are the bedrock of our society.

David B. Edwards is Professor of Anthropology, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts and the director of the Williams Afghan Media Project. He is also the author of two books on Afghanistan: Heroes of the Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier (U. of California Press, 1996) and Children of History: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad (U. of California Press, forthcoming).

Contact Information:

• For David Edwards: dedwards@williams.edu

Outwitting Osama

David B. Edwards, Williams College

September 23, 2001

America needs to drop "smart bombs" on Afghanistan. I don't mean the ones that go down smokestacks to reach their target. I mean the kind that tear the heart out of a terrorist movement by denying it the support of the people it needs to spread its message of hatred and fear. The bomber we need to mobilize for this mission is not the B-1 or the B-52. It is the C-5A cargo plane, and the bombs should be shipments of food, blankets, and medicine to help the starving people of Afghanistan get through the coming winter. The international recognition that would come our way as a result of this humanitarian gesture would stop bin Laden in his tracks. It's the response from us he least expects, and that is why it is the response that just might succeed.

To understand why, two facts need to be recognized. First, Afghanistan is an occupied nation. Most Afghans support neither the Taliban rulers nor the foreign radicals who have set up bases in their country. The Taliban regime was imposed on the Afghan people after nearly two decades of foreign invasion and civil war. They promised a respite from violence, but promptly turned the people into instruments for their own extremist policies. Afghans endure a second occupier as well in the form of Osama bin Laden and other foreign radicals who came to Afghanistan under the guise of helping the people in their struggle against the Soviet Union, but then stayed on to pursue a holy war against America and its western allies. It is no coincidence that Afghans have not been listed among the hijackers. Afghans have never embraced bin Laden's ideology or tactics, and it is still possible to enlist the people of Afghanistan as allies in our struggle to destroy these occupation forces.

The second fact is that Afghanistan is a nation of subsistence farmers in the grip of a three-year drought that, following on the heels of a two-decade long war, has left people desperate for assistance. A Christian Aid worker recently forced to leave Afghanistan estimated that five million people are in danger of starving this winter.

It might be argued that the U.S. provided $123 million in humanitarian aid for Afghanistan last year, which didn't help us any in gaining the trust of the Afghan people. Why would this operation be different? The vast majority of our assistance has been funneled through UN agencies like the World Food Program, and few Afghans have any idea where this aid originally came from. This time, however, each of our "smart bombs" should display on its side an American flag, and contain a message in the native languages of Afghanistan telling the people that we recognize their suffering and will support them in their efforts to rebuild their society.

We should also announce that, in light of the humanitarian crisis, we will temporarily hold off on military operations against Afghanistan. During this time, the U.S. will provide Afghans the opportunity to decide on a strategy for dealing with the terrorist bases on their soil, recognizing that their elimination is a non-negotiable requirement. We should also announce that, while the airlift continues, we will stand ready to assist moderate political and religious leaders inside Afghanistan and in exile who want to help resolve this crisis by ridding their country of both the terrorists and the Taliban.

Such an operation succeeded in 1948, when the U.S. and Great Britain launched the Berlin Airlift that became a defining moment of the Cold War. The Airlift did not prevent the Cold War, nor forestall the division of Germany by the Soviet Union, anymore than this operation would preclude a sustained war on terrorism. But the airlift of 1948 ensured that a part of Berlin remained open and free, and just as importantly kept hope alive for the German people. Our actions at that time won for America and Great Britain the abiding respect of millions of Germans, who had until recently perceived us as enemies but who since have been our staunch allies. An airlift to help the innocent people of Afghanistan could work a similar transformation, confounding our enemies and winning over to our cause not only Afghans, but millions of other Muslims who will see that, in the face of terror, America retaliates with hope.

It would cost us little to try this strategy and could be of inestimable benefit to our efforts to destroy bin Laden's terrorist bases if it succeeded. At this point in time, we have lost the element of military surprise, but a "surprise attack" of a different kind would catch bin Laden and his followers off-guard. They expect revenge and are ready to broadcast to the Muslim world pictures of the Afghan civilian casualties that would inevitably result from U.S. military strikes. How much more powerful it would be to show the world a different picture, a picture of Americans providing assistance to a people in need. No action on our part would more effectively reveal the falseness of bin Laden's claim to be the defender of Islam or demonstrate more clearly to the world the true nature of American justice.

David B. Edwards is Professor of Anthropology, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts and the director of the Williams Afghan Media Project. He is also the author of two books on Afghanistan: Heroes of the Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier (U. of California Press, 1996) and Children of History: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad (U. of California Press, forthcoming).

Contact Information:

• For David Edwards: dedwards@williams.edu

Thinking beyond the Taliban

David B. Edwards, Williams College

September 26, 2001

U.S. intelligence officials have had more than two weeks now to contemplate the complexities of Afghan politics, and they must be sobered by what they have seen. The Pentagon isn't showing us any satellite photos of bin Laden's bases, but it's a safe bet that they reveal a lot more empty mud huts than "military assets." Defense analysts also must be scratching their heads trying to figure out whether the groups of bearded men in turbans they are seeing are Arab, or Taliban, or just ordinary Afghans. Meanwhile, our officials have undoubtedly realized that a lot of those Arab terrorists hold Pakistani passports, and they may now understand that while we plan military operations into Afghanistan, the people we are after may have crossed the porous border into Pakistan in order to organize a new round of demonstrations and attacks to destabilize the Musharraf regime we are relying on so heavily.

Our policymakers also may be realizing that the much vaunted Northern Alliance, even if it had been able to call on the services of its late leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, would not be the answer to our problems because of the complex ethnic makeup of Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance is comprised mostly of Persian-speaking Tajiks, who constitute around a quarter of the national population and are far less significant politically than the majority Pakhtuns.

If we employed Tajik guerrillas, or even just used Tajik areas to launch our own attacks on bin Laden's bases, Pakhtuns would perceive this as a conspiracy to install a Tajik regime in Afghanistan, all the more so because the terrorist bases are situated in Pakhtun areas close to the Pakistani border. Their opposition to an American/Northern Alliance effort to attack the bases would also solidify bin Laden's influence in the Pakhtun border zone, the stability of which is critical for our efforts to both uproot the terrorists and preserve the Pakistani regime.

Now, as in the past, Pakhtuns will determine the fate of the Afghan nation, and while other ethnic groups must be included in any plans that are developed, Pakhtuns are the ones who need to be at the forefront of our concern.

To gain Pakhtun support, we need to start by helping moderate Afghans assemble an alternative political front. That will require the assistance of former king, Zahir Shah. Zahir Shah is now 86 years old and has neither the vigor nor the vision "to ride the wild Afghan steed" (in Lord Curzon's phrase). However, millions of Afghans remember his rule as the last time they knew peace, and he could perform a crucial role by presiding over a national assembly, a loya jirga, the traditional forum in which Afghans have chosen their leaders and worked out their most serious political problems for almost three centuries.

For the loya jirga to succeed, it must be truly representative. Over the last two decades, hundreds of thousands of educated Afghans have resettled in the West. They must be represented, and so too must religious leaders. Many religious leaders do not support the Taliban and worry that the regime has embraced not only bin Laden's political tactics, but also his Wahhabi ideology, with its opposition to saints, shrines and other religious beliefs that have deep roots in Afghanistan. These religious leaders, who enjoy great influence with ordinary Afghans, must be part of the assembly, but they will be willing to join only if they are convinced that Americans and Pakistanis will let the assembly do its business without interference.

Twice in the 1980s, moderate Afghans tried to convene loya jirgas in Pakistan. Both attempts failed, in large part because of the opposition of the Pakistan government, which saw the loya jirga as a threat to the Islamic political parties it then backed. This time, Pakistan must not only support the efforts of the loya jirga, it must also provide ironclad security for its members and resist the impulse to meddle in the assembly's deliberations, directly or behind the scenes.

Tribal Pakhtun elders must also play an important role in the national assembly. They are the ones, in the end, who must be called on to get rid of bin Laden's camps, and there is good reason to believe that this will not be a tough sell. While Pakhtuns are devout Muslims, they have never liked the idea of turning Afghanistan into a theocratic state, and the Taliban have consistently encountered hostility trying to impose its harsh social policies in Pakhtun tribal areas. Bin Laden's Islam is even less reflective of the Islam of the tribal areas than that of the Taliban, and many Pakhtuns view bin Laden's followers as arrogant and insensitive to tribal culture.

Pakhtuns are also entrepreneurial to a fault, and many among their leaders will recognize the opportunity American assistance represents. This fact offers an opportunity, but it is one that will have to be negotiated carefully. One lesson of Afghanistan's long war with the Soviet Union is that aid dispensed to one faction generates hostility among others. We should therefore focus our efforts at this stage on helping the loya jirga, not buying friends.

Whether the Taliban themselves should be represented is the most difficult question of all. While generally unpopular, the Taliban have their supporters, particularly in the border areas. Excluding them might make for good politics back in the U.S., but it could backfire where it counts most. At the same time, including them might be strategically effective, especially if doing so exposes cracks within the Taliban administration. The Taliban regime is not monolithic. As in Iran, there are hardliners and moderates, and the convening of a loya jirga might offer moderates a welcome exit from what must seem to them a no-win situation.

However this and other issues are resolved, it is critical that Afghans be the ones in charge. If it looks like outsiders are calling the shots, the jirga will be finished as an option, probably for good. Allowing democracy, Afghan-style, to work itself out will require extraordinary patience on our part. Agreements will not happen quickly. Every delegate will want to speak at every juncture, and will need to be heard. We cannot rush the process. And while we have the right to demand from the outset the elimination of terrorist bases from Afghan soil (and should keep alive the threat of a military response if this demand is not met), we also must commit ourselves to abide by what the loya jirga decides about the future government of Afghanistan. Democracy is ultimately what we are fighting for. We must demonstrate our commitment to it as we help Afghans reconstruct the political fabric of their nation.

Contact Information:

• For David Edwards: dedwards@williams.edu

Anthropology, the Web and the War on Terror

Daniel Martin Varisco, Hofstra University

Anthropology News (December, 2001)

The events of September 11 that enraged the American public immediately engaged the American media with extensive live coverage of the early destruction, statements by government officials and commentaries from a wide range of media experts. All of a sudden, almost anyone with any knowledge of the Middle East, Islam or terrorism became a target for media journalists. A number of MES members participated in teach-ins and public forums to play the role of responding to "why" such an event could have happened, why do "they" hate "us" and an outpouring of questions from people who mostly knew about Muslims and recent Middle East politics from Hollywood films, soundbites and the occasional PBS documentary.

A new twist, however, is our unparalleled use of the internet in getting background information, viewing pictures (eg Bin Laden aside Sesame Street's Bert), posting comments and forwarding petitions. In addition to being a valuable tool, there is much about the use of the web in this crisis that calls out for anthropological analysis. There are quite a few new sites about Bin-Laden, building the myth of the latest postmodern alter-ogre of the "West." MSA News (msanews.mynet.net/Scholars/Laden) eg lists both pro and anti-Bin Laden links, the most bizarre being a "Bin Laden Liquor Store" shoot-the-terrorist game posted on an e-casino site. Consider the irony that Yahoo has a Jihad Web Ring (nav.webring.yahoo.com/hub?ring=jihadring&list). There you will find "The Islamic Kuwait" (connect.to/q8) with a file of Bin Laden speeches, which can be downloaded and viewed. Visual anthropologists might be interested in the "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" photo of a group of trees in Germany (geocities.com/robi94/1images.html) &endash; the trunks spell out the Islamic shahadah &endash; alongside photos of the WTC on fire. Many Muslims have posted condemnations of the Sept 11 attack, alongside critiques of US Middle East policy, on their personal websites.

MES has put up a new webpage on the Sept 11 tragedy (people.hofstra.edu/faculty/daniel_m_varisco/wtc.htm) with links to web sources. Not exhaustive by any means, the goal is to provide a few representative links about the concerned Middle Eastern cultures, Islam, discussion of the initial tragedy, and relevant educational resources. It also contains links about hate-crimes against Muslims and "others" in America. The role of the internet in the Middle East is also the focus of the New Media and Information Technology (NMIT) site (nmit.georgetown.edu/index.html) created by Jon Anderson and hosting a series of working papers. Colleagues interested in a discussion list oriented to this topic can subscribe at NMITME-L@georgetown.edu.

Lessons from the Antimafia Struggle in Sicily

Jane Schneider ( Graduate Center, City University of New York)

and Peter Schneider (Fordham University)

We write as an anthropologist and sociologist who have been studying the mafia and the antimafia in Palermo since the late 1980s, who heard President Bush say that Al Qaeda is to terrorism what the mafia is to organized crime, and who believe that the profound changes in Palermo and Sicily over the last decade and a half might offer some insight ñ and some hope ñ for these troubled times. Above all we think the Sicilian experience suggests a way forward for those who desire to frame our situation in terms that do not immediately evoke the images and rhetoric of the Cold War era ñ hawks and doves, hard hats and hippies, freedom fighters and peaceniks. The Sicilian mafia is not ideologically driven, nor did it ever have a global reach, or attempt acts of spectacular vengeance on the scale of September 11. It is, however, a secretive organization whose ìfamiliesî nurture violence. Moreover, after the breakup of the French Connection, in the context of Sicilyís becoming a crossroads of global narcotics trafficking, this violence bordered on terrorism. It is on these grounds that we offer the following reflections.

The massacres of the Palermo Prefect General Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa, in 1982, and the heroic prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, in 1992, provoked intense moral outrage among Sicilians and a determination to bring the perpetrators and those who protected them to justice. This reaction, however, was never depicted as a ìwarî on the mafia (the word ìwarî being reserved for episodes of reciprocal intra-mafia killing). The language used instead was la lotta contro la mafia -- ìthe struggle against the mafia.î It has been a long and uneven, but not unsuccessful struggle, on several parallel fronts.

One is the criminal justice front. Sicilians who were not accustomed to lauding the work of prosecutors and policemen soon came to appreciate, and give their support to, a cohort of brilliant prosecutors and police investigators. Like the leading figure, Falcone, these professionals demonstrated an impressive sociological imagination, grasping the contours of what had formerly been a little known and much mystified phenomenon. The work was dangerous, and Falcone and others paid for it with their lives, but not before developing two critical investigative strategies: tracing the money and (borrowed from the 1970s prosecution of political terrorists in Italy) turning some mafiosi into ìjustice collaborators.î Producing an astonishing amount of new knowledge in a short period of time, these strategies encouraged participants in the broader antimafia struggle.

On a second front, the antimafia struggle challenged the Italian state for having harbored ñ given aid and comfort to -- the mafia. Throughout the Cold War, the major centrist political parties benefited from votes that mafiosi delivered from Sicily; mafiosi in turn counted on these parties to protect them from effective prosecution. But leaders of the antimafia struggle did not proceed by demonizing the state of Italy per se. Adopting the felicitous expression ìpieces of the state,î they attempted to identify and shore up political elements committed to reform while demanding transparency from, or the removal of, elements that were covert and corrupt. A similar approach was taken in other institutions ñ the banks, the church, the health care system, the unions, the university ñ all arenas where reformers found each other and pressed for change. Sustaining these efforts was the movimento antimafia, a multi-faceted citizensí social movement. Catalyzed anew by each episode of terror, it poured its energy, in the form of a great deal of volunteer work, into promoting the values of democracy and civility. It is important to appreciate that antimafia Sicilians share both location and history with the mafia. Dedicated to the antimafia struggle, they are nevertheless loyal to their Sicilian identity, and in some cases burdened by a past of ambiguous social relations with mafiosi or their friends and kin. The resulting moral anguish is the more troubling because ìSiciliansî are so often treated as a stigmatized category by the wider world. In coping with their anguish, men and women in the forefront of the struggle have found comfort in the declarations of support that they have received from outsiders ñ for example, a sympathetic press in Northern Italy and Europe.

Antimafia activists in Sicily remain committed. There has been, as well, a series of investigative and prosecutorial breakthroughs. Sicily is today a remarkably different place ñ changed in ways that no one thought possible a decade and a half ago. At the same time, however, many sense that the gains could be reversed, in part because, although it unfolded on a broad front, the antimafia struggle never adequately addressed deeply rooted problems of poverty and unemployment. If anything, its economic impact, particularly on the construction industry in the major cities, made these problems worse, so much so that the graffito ìviva la mafiaî can be seen here and there in poor neighborhoods.

Four lessons of the antimafia struggle seem potentially applicable to fighting terrorism. First: be encouraged by inspired police and judicial investigators, globally networked in a collaborative effort to follow the dirty money, ìturnî witnesses, and uncover evidence of criminality. We will soon know more about secretive organizations dedicated to producing terror, and these organizations will be more vulnerable to prosecution. Second: expect that state support of terrorism is not unitary ñ that pieces of many states play or have played a role. This manner of thinking about the integument surrounding secretive and violent organizations enables us to assimilate the embarrassing fact that pieces of the United States of America contributed to the formation of the Al Qaeda organization following the Soviet invasion of Afghanstan. Responsibilities are multiple, and need to be shared. Third: citizensí movements against violence, and for transparency and democracy, will emerge ñ have already emerged -- in many Muslim countries and in Muslim immigrant and exile communities around the world. Reflecting an intense moral condemnation of the horrors of September 11, these movements will be critical to weakening the terroristsí political shield and undermining their prestige. Recognizing them and crediting them can help to contradict representations of Muslims as terrorists in Western popular discourse ñ in turn a contribution to easing the burden that Muslim anti-terrorists bear. And, finally, the world struggle against poverty and desperation is urgent; it cannot be a secondary concern, set aside until the emergency is over.

How far these lessons actually are from current American foreign policy is difficult to know; our attention is riveted on the deployment of hardware and troops while the word ìwarî has been chosen to summarize what lies ahead. The qualification that the ìwarî will be unlike any other we have ever known does not adequately dispel what this word conjures: battles between opposing sides, the fear of retaliation, an unrealistic expectation of victory. The alternative word ìstruggleî (which, by the way, does not preclude military action) should replace the word ìwarî in our national rhetoric about terrorism. Ultimately, struggles against secretive and violent organizations have their best chance if they go forward along multiple paths: investigations and prosecutions, citizensí mobilizations against corruption and violence, and a concerted effort to address the millions whose children have no future.

Jane Schneider, Graduate Center, City University of New York

Work: 212-817-8014

janeschneider@compuserve.com

Peter Schneider, Fordham University

Work: 212-636-6395

schneider@fordham.edu

September 11: Contexts and Consequences

edited by Misha Klein and Adrian McIntyre

Department of Anthropology at UC Berkeley

available for purchase at: CopyCentral, 2560 Bancroft Way in Berkeley

(between College and Telegraph), tel. 510-858-8649, email: muji@copycentral.com.

The cost of this 600-page reader is $41.68 + tax. Within the next week or two copies of the anthology will also be available on reserve in libraries around the Bay Area, including UC Berkeley, the Berkeley Public Libraries, and other colleges and universities. The goal of this anthology is not to answer all the questions provoked by the 9/11 attacks or their aftermath, but instead to provide a collection of resources to promote critical thinking and informed debate.

Table of Contents:

Section I: Geographical, Historical, and Cultural Background

* Map of the Middle East and Central Asia: Political Boundaries, 1990.

* Ian Manners and Barbara Parmenter, "The Middle East: A Geographical Essay," 1996.

* Gail Bensinger, "Muslims, Arabs and misconceptions," 2001.

* San Francisco Chronicle, "Zones of Conflict: Central Asia and the Middle East at a Glance," 2001.

* Excerpt from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa, 1998.

* Rosanne Klass, "The Great Game Revisited," 1987.

* Fredrik Barth, "Cultural Wellsprings of Resistance in Afghanistan," 1987.

* Ashraf Ghani, "Gulab: An Afghan Schoolteacher," 1993.

* Ahmed Rashid, "High on Heroin: Drugs and the Taliban Economy," 2000.

* Ahmed Rashid, "Dictators and Oil Barons: The Taliban and Central Asia, Russia, Turkey and Israel," 2000.

* Elizabeth Fernea, "Islamic Civilization, A.D. 650-1600," 1996.

* John Williams, "The Word of God: The Qur'an," 1994.

* Mohammed Arkoun, selections from Rethinking Islam: Common Questions, Uncommon Answers, 1994.

* Laura Nader, "Orientalism, Occidentalism and the Control of Women," 1989.

* Elizabeth Fernea and Robert Fernea, "Behind the Veil," 1986.

* Talal Asad, "The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam," 1986.

* Joel Beinin and Joe Stork, "On the Modernity, Historical Specificity, and International Context of Political Islam," 1997.

* Lisa Hajjar, Mouin Rabbani and Joel Beinin, "Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict for Beginners," 1989.

* Russell Schoch, "A Conversation with Beshara Doumani," 2001.

* Edward Said, "The Formation of American Public Opinion on the Question of Palestine," 1982.

* Dwight Reynolds, "Language, Translation, Culture, Conflict," 1991.

* Edward Said, "Ignorant Armies Clash by Night," 1991.

* Thomas Nagy, "The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply," 2001.

* Marie-Aimée Hélie-Lucas, "The Original Sin and Internationalism, 1995.

* Noam Chomsky, "Rogue States," 2000.

* Pierre Bourdieu, "Abuse of Power by the Advocates of Reason," 1995.

* Michael Sells, "Resource List for the General Reader, Student, and non-Specialist: Islamic Cultural and Civilization and the Sept. 11 Tragedy," 2001.

* Mikhail Gorbachev, "Open Letter to George W. Bush," 2000.

Section II: Terrorism

* Pablo Neruda, "Keeping Quiet."

* David Whittaker, "Definition of Terrorism" and "Counter-terrorism: Ethical and Legal Considerations," 2001.

* Mark LeVine, "10 Things to Know About Terrorism," 2001.

* Chalmers Johnson, "Terrorism," 1982.

* Edward Said, "The Essential Terrorist," 1988.

* Ali Abunimah, "Terrorism's Real Locale," 2000.

* Gore Vidal, "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh," 2001.

* William Beeman, "Terrorism: Community Based or State Supported?"

* World Islamic Front, "Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders," 1998.

* Bernard Lewis, "License to Kill," 1998.

* John Miller, "Interview with Osama bin Laden," 1998.

* Mary Anne Weaver, "The Real bin Laden," 2000.

* Reuel Marc Gerecht, "The Counterterrorist Myth," 2001.

Section III: War and Violence

* Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Apostrophe to Man," 1934.

* David Riches, "The Phenomenon of Violence," 1986.

* Hannah Arendt, excerpt from On Violence, 1969.

* Carole Nagengast, "Violence, Terror, and the Crisis of the State," 1994.

* Jane Margold, "From 'Cultures of Fear and Terror' to the Normalization of Violence: An Ethnographic Case," 1999.

* Arthur Kleinman, "The Violences of Everyday Life: The Multiple Forms and Dynamics of Social Violence," 2000.

* Hannah Arendt, Preface to The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1st ed., 1951.

* Ghaus Ansari, "The Role of Anthropology in the World Crises," 1975.

* Margaret Mead, "Warfare is Only an Invention - Not a Biological Necessity," 1940.

* Robert Park, "The Social Function of War," 1941.

* Sigmund Freud, "Why War?" 1932.

* Stasa Zajovic, "Birth, Nationalism and War," 1995.

* Reuven Firestone, "Islam and Holy War," 1999.

* Hamid Algar, "The Problem of Retaliation in Modern Warfare from the Point of View of Fiqh."

* Harumi Befu, "Demonizing the 'Other'," 1999.

* Yaacov Schul and Henri Zukier, "Why Do Stereotypes Stick?" 1999.

* George Lakoff, "Metaphor and War: The Metaphor System Used to Justify War in the Gulf," 1991.

* Kurt Vonnegut, excerpt from Slaughterhouse Five, 1966.

* W. H. Auden, "September 1, 1939."

* Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Conscientious Objector," 1934.

Section IV: Post-9/11 Commentaries

* Paul Dosh, "September 11" and "No Such Thing as a Precision Bomb."

* William Beeman, "Why Are We So Hated? Looking Beyond Osama Bin Laden."

* Noam Chomsky, "On the Bombings."

* Tamim Ansary, "Bomb Afghanistan to Stone Age? It's Been Done."

* Chris Toensing, "The Harm Done to Innocents."

* George Lakoff, "September 11, 2001."

* Robert Fisk, "Bush is Walking into a Trap."

* Fritz Utzeri, "Those Who Raise Wolves..."

* George Monbiot, "The Need for Dissent."

* Robin Morgan, "Ghosts and Echoes."

* Ariel Dorfman, "America Looks at Itself Through Humanity's Mirror."

* Jacob Levich, "Happy New Year: It's 1984."

* Susan Sontag, essay from The New Yorker.

* David Talbot, "The 'Traitor' Fires Back."

* Tariq Ali, "The Kingdom of Corruption: The Saudi Connection."

* Edward Said, "Collective Passion."

* Edward Said, "Backlash and Backtrack."

* Ashraf Ghani, "The Folly of Quick Action in Afghanistan."

* Barbara Kingsolver, "Jingoism Isn't Patriotism."

* Arundhati Roy, "The Algebra of Infinite Justice."

* Barbara Lee, "Why I Voted Against War."

* Robert Fisk, "Lost in the Rhetorical Fog of War."

* William Beeman, "Why U.S. Anti-Terrorist Message Won't Fly in Islamic World."

* Chalmers Johnson, "Blowback."

* Tariq Ali, "The Eichmann Scenario: An Alternative to War."

* John Pilger, "Hidden Agenda Behind War on Terror."

* Suheir Hammad, "First Writing Since."

Taleban: The Word

by M. Jamil Hanifi

Retired Professor of Anthropology

Independent Scholar

Anthropology and History of Afghanistan

hanifi@msu.edu

In Western discourse the neo-fundamentalist Taleban movement, and the noun from which it is derived, are awkwardly, often incorrectly, represented. In Paxtu (Pakhtu, Pashto, Pushtu) the movement is rendered da talebano ghorzang and in Dari (Afghan Farsi), jonbesh-e taleban. In Paxtu and Dari usage the noun taleb (student, seeker of knowledge) is gendered and the second vowel in the nown is the short e, not the long i. In the local settings taleb is used for singular male, taleban for plural male and the movement and, theoretically, taleba for singular female, taleban (Dari) and talebany (Paxtu) for plural female.

In English renditions it would be correct to say "Taleban" for the movement and plural male (as locally used), "Taleb" for singular male and "Talebs" for plural male. Thus, one can correctly say: The Taleban (or Talebs') movement included thousands of Pakistani Talebs, hundreds of Tajiks, many Uzbeks and one Taleb from the United States. Every Taleb was required to grow a beard. Some, not all, Talebs (Taleban) were Paxtuns. The movement's Supreme Council included a number of one-eyed and one-legged Talebs. The Taleban are no longer in control of Kabul.

DISTORTING THEORY AND MISREADING SOCIETY IN AFGHANISTAN

M. Jamil Hanfii

Former Professor of Anthropology, NIU

Independent Scholar, Anthropology and History of Afghanistan

hanifi@msu.edu

Posted 11/7/02

This is in response to M. Nazif Shahrani's piece titled "The Taliban Enigma: Person-Centered Politics & Extremism in Afghanistan" posted on this website and originally published in ISIM Newsletter 6, October 2000, pp. 20-21. Crucial ethnographic details, structural principles and historical processes, especially those dealing with social inequality and political instability in contemporary Afghanistan, are misunderstood, garbled, and oversimplified by the author. Shahrani deliberately distorts a number of theoretical views in the social sciences and ethnographic facts apparently in order to fit his confused conception of history, society, and relations of power in Afghanistan.

The author has the habit of invoking well-known authors and their theoretical frameworks without spelling out his understanding of them. It is rather curious that a Western trained Afghan (Uzbek) "anthropologist" anchors an ostensibly anthropological analysis of social conditions in a complex Central Asian society and culture in judgmental idioms borrowed from a Western economist whose Eurocentric ideas of "efficiency" and "poor performance" are merely codes for condemning non-European, non-industrial societies. Perhaps unwittingly, Shahrani plays into the hand of European racism when he invokes the economist Douglass C. North's notions of "persistent poor performance" in his interpretation of Afghan history, society. North's approach is inherently incompatible with the basic tenants of anthropology. In the opening sentence of his piece, a quotation from North, Shahrani deceptively inserts his own words "socio-political and economic" without an explanation. North's institutional analysis is aimed specifically at Western notions of various forms of material "efficiency" and Western views of "the consequences of institutions for economic (or societal) performance" (parenthesis in the original, emphasis added)1, not what Shahrani first calls "socio-political" and three sentences later "political culture." More importantly, Shahrani makes no attempt to apply North's understanding of "efficiency" and "poor performance" to any specific set of social and economic conditions in Afghanistan. His essay contains neither a description nor analysis of ethnographic or statistical economic data on Afghanistan, leaving the reader in the dark with the mere abstraction of "political ecological and socio-economic realities shaping the contest" in Afghanistan. Questions about the nature of "political ecological and socio-economic realities", "the contest", the contestants, issues and stakes in the contest, and the regional and global contexts of the contest remain unanswered. An anthropological analysis would treat this contest as a predictable adaptive response and process transpiring at the inevitable confluence of the historical past and the ethnographic present and would dispassionately spell out the specific ethnographic "realities" involved and not merely wax condemnations of Paxtun society and culture in Afghanistan

To Shahrani "person-centered politics" is the "crucial characteristic of Afghan political culture" and "[p]erson-centered politics, the cornerstone of kin-based mode of Pushtun tribal social and political organization, has been the defining attribute of Afghan politics since the creation of Pushtun-dominated centralized polity in the mid *18th century." The leap from "Afghan" to "Pushtun" and the frequent divergent and interchangeable uses of the two categories and the confusion of "Afghan political culture" with "Pushtun tribal social and political organization" characterize this piece and other of Shahrani's chapters in various edited books. Given this orientation (and the citation of Wolf for it), readers are primed to expect at least an unadulterated reading of a benchmark anthropological study of the expansion of European capitalism, where Wolf identifies "[t]he kin-ordered mode of production"2 and argues that when kin-ordered leadership acquires enhanced economic resources, i. e. surplus, its mode of production changes "from a set of interpersonal relations" to "a governing ideological element in the allocation of political power."3 Kin-ordered modes of production are usually found in societies where there is little or no surplus. Shahrani concocts out of this his "kin-based mode of Pushtun tribal social and political organization" ignoring the reality of regular surplus producing pastoralism and intensive agriculture among Paxtuns and all the other groups in Afghanistan. Substituting "based" for "ordered" and overlooking the typological differences between a foraging subsistence economy and a surplus-producing agricultural and/or pastoral economy cannot be simply matters of narrative style or technical errors.

Nowhere are readers told what the author's understanding of the Marxist concept of "political economy" is and how he applies it to Afghanistan. Thus the meaning of the "person-centered, kin-based" version of this economy remains obscure and suspended. Shahrani confuses "political economy", the structural arrangements that pertain to the production, accumulation, and distribution of economic surplus, or the formal academic procedure that attempts "to lay bare the laws or regularities surrounding the production of wealth" 4 with what Western functionalist political scientists call "political culture", sentiments and cultural values that are considered diagnostic of a specific political process and behavior. Shahrani's inability to appreciate the "relational" framework of the synthesis between "theoretically informed history and historically informed theory"5, coupled with the perversion of established theoretical frameworks are either due to ideological blinders or understandings that are uninformed, contradictory and unsupportable by the ethnography and history of Afghanistan and the region.

Elsewhere, in attempting to reduce structural features to personalities, narrow and specific articulations of social relations in the abstract Shahrani, without any explanation, equates his garbled understanding of "kin-based personalized politics…of the person-centered, Pashtun-dominated, Afghan political culture" with Edward C. Banfield's typological formulation of "amoral familism".6 In so doing, he relegates the Paxtuns explicitly (and all Afghans by implication since he frequently interchanges Afghan with Paxtun) to a Westerner's racist views. But he does so by first tampering with Banfield's original ideas of "amoral familism". In the 1950s Banfield, a political scientist, conducted a study of the Montegrano, a small peasant community in Southern Italy, based on field observations and the interpretation of a single picture in a thematic apperception test given to 31 individuals. He concluded that the underdevelopment of the Montegrano peasants qualified them for being lumped with the non-Western World. As a remedial measure for their underdevelopment he hinted at "[c]hanging the ethos" of these Italians by introducing "Protestant missionaries".7 Banfield had hypothesized "that the Montegranesi act as if they were following this rule: Maximize the material, short*run advantage of the nuclear family; assume that all others will do likewise" (emphasis added).8 Shahrani changes "rule" to "tendency" and attributes the idea of "amoral familism" to Banfield as "a tendency to 'maximize material, short-run advantage of the … family [and kin], assuming that all others will do like-wise'" (spacing and brackets in the original). Changing "rule" to "tendency", deleting "nuclear" and inserting "kin" and similar tampering behavior elsewhere are breaches of academic standards that cast serious doubt on the integrity of the author's writings about Afghanistan. On the face of it and at the minimum this is an attempt to make racist generalizations about southern Italian peasantry fit stereotypical and distorted views of the people of Afghanistan. Even if Shahrani had not modified Banfield's language, he would have been only speaking of some urban dwellers in Afghanistan (less than 15% of the total population), including western oriented urban Afghan elite and merchants who dominated the country and who were intimately familiar with the social formation called a "nuclear family." The vast majority of Afghans live in larger, extended versions of the family. Moreover, those who are inspired by "amoral familism" should realize that Banfield was oblivious to the historical context of Montegrano society, a society that was successfully adapting to a number of hostile Italian national power structures and a political atmosphere that inhibited larger social arrangements including extra-familial formal groupings. Nevertheless, while Banfield clearly states the bases for his conclusions, Shahrani offers no historical or ethnographic or demographic evidence whatsoever for the application of "amoral familism" (even in his crafty manipulation of this typology) to the Paxtuns and other ethnic groups in Afghansitan.

It is well known that the author was intimately connected with a non-Paxtun faction of the U. S. sponsored terrorists ("mujahidin", Muslim holy warriors to him)9 who were to be state rulers of Afghanistan. Reminiscent of Banfield's suggested religious based solution to a concocted social problem among the Montegrano, the mujahidin terrorists and their "born again" Muslim Afghan supporters, also openly proposed fundamentalist Islamic solutions to what they perceived as problems of Afghanistan. The now defunct Taleban regime was essentially promulgating and implementing, albeit with zeal and symbolic emphasis, the ideology and policies of those Islamic solutions, solutions that Shahrani and his mujahidin subscribed to. It is difficult to avoid concluding that for Shahrani the Talebs'overt Paxtunness made them less legitimate as the implementers of these solutions. He writes that "Talibanism" is "the inevitable culmination of the person-centered Pashtun-dominated, Afghan political culture". And equates "Talibanism" with "amoral familism" and "kin-based personalized politics" but he offers no analytical bridge or ethnographic or historical evidence for this equation. Nor does he establishes an analytical relationship between Talibanism and the "person-centered Pashtun-dominated, Afghan culture", rendering the "Taliban Enigma" in the title of the article meaningless.

Shahrani equates the Arabic concept of "jam'at" (sic) society organized around Islamic principles with the secular Western concept of "[C]ivil [S]ociety", a central subject for prominent European writers such as John Locke, Adam Smith, Georg Wilhelm, Karl Marx, Alexis de Tocqueville, Antonio Gramsci. Characteristically, Shahrani neither states his own understanding of this typology nor does he tell us which version of civil society he has in mind. Elsewhere, without mentioning its genealogy he invokes the concept of "[S]ocial [C]apital" and imposes on it notions that are removed from Pierre Bourdieu's original construction of the idea. To Bourdieu social capital is "made up of social obligations ('connections'), which is convertible, under certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the form of a title of nobility" (parenthetical quotation in the original).10 Were this application to be meaningful Shahrani would have had to tell the reader how his notion of "trust" figures in Bourdieu's foundational concept of social capital and how was trust "institutionalized" within Shahrani's ideal "circle of family and close kin or at most one's own ethnolinguistic group" in Afghanistan, and what conditions have "caused the general erosion of trust" in those communities. To suggest that stark trust-eroding structures of inequality, induced by capitalism (operated mostly by non-Paxtuns), within ethnic and other local borders, did not exist in Afghanistan denies the social and historical realities of the country. Tensions within and between ethnic groups in Afghanistan and elsewhere inevitably revolved around unequal access to material resources and center-articulated structures of power. This center has always been dominated by non-Paxtuns.

Finally, a brief comment about gender relations in Afghanistan, a subject that evokes great passion among Europeans and, only very recently, among Afghan intellectuals. Mistreatment of women and gender inequity were used as a pretext for the recent European military occupation of the country. Apparently Shahrani believes that before the ascendance of the Talebs in 1996 Afghanistan was free of gender segregation and inequality. He asserts that the Talebs' "real claim to infamy comes from the imposition of a policy of 'Gender Apartheid' directed against the girls and women of Afghanistan". This is indeed perplexing! What former regime in Afghanistan cannot be identified with such an "imposition"? Shahrani must have in mind a country other than Afghanistan, the country of our birth, enculturation, primary and secondary schooling, and ethnographic research. The rudiments and structures of gender apartheid and inequality have been defining fixtures of everyday social life for centuries in the region of which Afghanistan is a part. This kind of blatant ethnographic and historical misrepresentation (or perhaps misunderstanding!) together with the crafty manipulation of various theories and theoretical ideas raises serious academic questions. Cloaking a bizarre patchwork of mangled fragments of theoretical ideas and formulations by various economists, political scientists, and sociologists with the prestige of an academic title in an anthropology program, besides being a bad academic habit, does not qualify for an anthropological (or for that matter, social science) contribution. But to be fair, Shahrani himself has not explicitly claimed for this genre of his writings (post-1979, ever since he dropped "Mohib" from his name) an anthropological label. The label that might fit would neither be scholarly nor academic.

The pos-1992 Afghan Islamist regimes, including the Talebs were not really enigmas. What is enigmatic, however, is the myth of Paxtun rule and domination in Afghanistan, a myth that Shahrani naively embraces and invokes with heated passion and puts forward as a historical and ethnographic fact. This myth can be debunked with a simple straightforward empirical observation. Based on a vast amount of theoretical and ethnographic comparative literature on language as a tool of domination and construction of relations of power, in multiethnic and multilingual societies like Afghanistan, the language of the dominant ethnic group (even when it is a numerical minority) is the language with which structures of political and economic power are articulated and it is this language that provides privileged access to these structures. The dominant group is invariably monolingual in its own language. On the other hand, the dominated groups are overwhelmingly bilingual&emdash;they are forced to adopt alongside their own language, the language of the dominant group. Let us now ask Shahrani: Which ethnic group in Afghanistan was overwhelmingly monolingual? Which ethnic groups were overwhelmingly bilingual or trilingual? If he correctly answers these questions, his expatiations about the domination of Afghanistan as a state structure by Paxtuns are invalid and totally unfounded.

By manipulating Islam and practicing ethnic dissimulation, the Persianized Durrani governments, through a variety of tactics, chief among them, the playing of one ethnic group against another and shi'a against sunni, were able to rule Afghanistan and keep ethnic tensions barely below the boiling point. In this bloody enterprise they enjoyed the support of all non-Paxtuns. The 1978 overthrow of the last of these Persianized and Persian-dominated governments in Afghanistan and the subsequent United States reaction of creating, financing, and managing the terrorist freedom fighters/mujahidin in a phony Islamic "jihad" against the legitimate central government of Afghanistan destroyed the national market and the fragile center-periphery relationship in the country. For fourteen years the ethnically based mujahidin factions were pitted against each other in a bloody contest for the favor of their patrons and competition for the resources of cash and guns supplied by the United States and locally distributed by the government of Pakistan. One major consequence of this "jihad" has been the unleashing of ethnic hostilities in Afghanistan. Non-Paxtuns (like Shahrani) desperately and understandably insist on return to the "status quo ante", what was a non-Paxtun-dominated state. The Paxtuns, on the other hand, advocate an arrangement where their perceived numerical majority would guarantee them prominence in central government. An objectively constructed model of government that will creatively blend these (not necessarily opposed) positions will likely succeed in a reconstructed Afghanistan.

NOTES

1. North, Douglas C. (1990), Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, p. 3. For North's ideas of "efficiency" see pp. 51, 80-81, 92, 94.

2. Wolf, Eric R. (1982), Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of California

Press, p. 88.

3. Ibid., p. 93

4. Ibid., p. 19.

5. Ibid., p. 21.

6. The idea of "Amoral Familism" is from Edward C. Banfield (1958), The Moral Basis of a

Backward Society, Glenco, Illinois: The Free Press. Shahrani mistakenly locates this racist

typology in Edward C. Banfield (1970), The Unheavenly City, Boston: Little Brown.

7. Idem., (1958), pp. 170-171.

8. Ibid., p. 85.

9. Shahrani, M. Nazif (1994), 'Honored guest and marginal man: long-term field research and

predicament of a native anthropologist', in: D. D. Fowler and D. L. Hardesty (eds.), Others Knowing

Others. Washington, D. C.,: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 15-67.

10. Pierre Bourdieu (1986), 'The Forms of Capital', in: J. L. Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory

and Research for the Sociology of Education. New York: Greenwood Press, pp. 241-258.

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