The Challenges to Nation-Building
in Afghanistan
continues....

The traditional gender roles have developed within the structure of marriage and family. The most important duty of a man is to support and protect his family. His honour requires him to defend and control those elements collectively known as namus: zan, zar, zamin (woman, gold and land). Zamin includes both land owned by the family and the homeland of a broader kinship group—tribe or lineage. Men thus see women as the repository of their honour. Any sign of sexual misconduct is seen as a threat to the honour and strength of the family and the punishment may range from ostracism to death. The social customs through which male control is expressed are pardah and chadri. Some women especially in the Islamic movement, contest the reading of these customs as signs of male domination and reinterpret them as signs of female self-determination within Islam .

There is also a division of labour where women’s work apart from food-processing, child rearing, cooking and other household activity range from carpet weaving to felt making or for some agricultural family revolves around working in the fields.

The family in Afghanistan shades off into larger groupings based on kinship and other components of identity based on kinship and it is common to describe this phenomenon by calling Afghanistan a tribal society. In rural areas (atraf) the district administration interact with the population indirectly, through officially appointed representatives (called malik or arbab) of units called qawm. Qawm is sometimes translated as tribe, but in reality refers to any form of solidarity or asabiyya. Qawm identity might be based on kinship, residence or occupation.

Afghans are conscious of belonging to a larger entity which takes the form of more or less endogenous community or solidarity group (the qawm), whether its sociological base is either the tribe, clan, professional group (qawm of the mullah or barbers), caste (bari or Nuristani), religious group (Sayyad), ethnic group (Munjani), village community or simply an extended family. While the state claims authority over society within a territory, a tribe claims jurisdiction over a set of persons bound by kinship relations.

To be continued....