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The Challenges to Nation-Building
in Afghanistan
continues...
It is interesting and important to note how successive rulers in
Afghanistan have dealt with these solidarity groups, the phenomenon
which has often been regarded by western scholars as the ‘tribal problem’.
These groups are usually politically unified, though not necessarily under
a central leader, both features commonly attributable to the interaction
with the state.
The state as a territorially bounded polity with a centralized
government and a monopoly over legitimate forces, usually includes
within its bounds different social classes and ethnic/cultural groups.
Olivier Roy, in his brilliant analysis of the relationship between the
state and society in Afghanistan observes that these tribes see the state as
existing on the periphery, responsible for administering land whose
boundaries are constantly fluctuating on account of conquests carried out
by the tribal confederation, in respect of which the state is no more than the means of continuity. As far as their own territory is concerned, the presence of the state would seem to be redundant and totally unnecessary.
The historical mission of the Afghan state can be summarised as an
attempt to reverse this relationship in order to pass from the periphery to
the centre.
The nature of state control depends partly on the strength of the
government and partly on the accessibility of the tribal groups concerned.
The notion of ‘encapsulation’ of tribes has been extensively used in the anthropological studies of the tribe-state relation, a situation arising from
a variety of state policies whereby a degree of cultural and political
autonomy is allowed to the tribal groups located within the territorial
boundaries of the state. In Afghanistan, the state’s attitude to these
encapsulated tribes has been ambivalent. Aspirants to power have relied
on the support from these groups and at other times established rulers
cultivated the tribes as sources of revenue, military levies and agricultural
produce. But tribes have also been feared as disruptive elements, prone to raiding non-tribal society and armed opposition to government.
To be continued....