Table Of ContentPashtun Identity and Geopolitics in
Southwest Asia
Anthem middle eAst studies
the Anthem middle east studies series is committed to offering to our global
audience the finest scholarship on the Middle East across the spectrum of academic
disciplines. The twin goals of our rigorous editorial and production standards
will be to bring original scholarship to the shelves and digital collections of
academic libraries worldwide, and to cultivate accessible studies for
university students and other sophisticated readers.
series editor
Camron Michael Amin – University of Michigan – Dearborn (USA)
editorial Board
Benjamin Fortna – School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London (UK)
John Meloy – American University of Beirut (Lebanon)
Lisa Pollard – University of North Carolina Wilmington (USA)
Mark L. Stein – Muhlenberg College (USA)
Renée Worringer – University of Guelph (Canada)
Pashtun Identity and Geopolitics
in Southwest Asia
Pakistan and Afghanistan since 9/11
Iftikhar H. Malik
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2016
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
Copyright © Iftikhar H. Malik 2016
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested.
ISBN-13: 978 1 78308 494 4 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1 78308 494 4 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an ebook.
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Acronyms xi
Glossary xiii
Maps xv
Introduction 1
Chapter One Gandhara Lands: Wrestling with Pashtun Identity and History 13
Chapter Two I mperial Hubris: The Afghan Taliban in Ascendance 33
Chapter Three Masculinities in Conflict: Western Pedagogy and the
Return of the Afghan Taliban 53
Chapter Four U nderstanding Pakistan: Geopolitical Legacies and
Perspectives on Violence 67
Chapter Five Understanding Civic Sentiments and Movements in Pakistan:
Stalemated Cycle, or a Way Forward? 83
Chapter Six The United States and Pakistan: Friends or Foes! 103
Chapter Seven The European Union and Southwest Asia: Perceptions,
Policies and Permutations 115
Conclusion: Pashtun Troubled Lands, Uncertain Southwest Asia or
a New Beginning! 133
Notes 151
Bibliography 195
Index 205
PREFACE
Momentous and painful developments in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and especially
in their Pashtun regions, over the past two decades make it pertinent to analyse their
respective and often conflictive quest for a consensus-based identity within the param-
eters of ethnic and religious pluralism. While the Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand
Line – seen through the Orientalist or neo-Orientalist prisms – have been in the throes
of these vital historical, ideological and geopolitical events, studies have often tended
to focus only on the high politics of the two Southwest Asian states, the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Afghan Taliban. Other than a pronounced and
no less grievous reality of various forms of violence, these countries and especially their
Pashtun regions are hastily caricatured as the epicentre of world terror and an exclu-
sive and inherently militant political Islam. In the process, the securitization of scholarly
investigation ends up overshadowing the historical and sociological aspects of life in the
Gandhara lands, or upper Indus Valley. Ironically, it may appear convenient to hastily
lump a historical (Gandhara) region like Southwest Asia – or western territories of the
Indus Valley – only as an area of perpetual conflicts, porous borders, volatile ethnicity
and a militant Islamism, and even its reconstruction as the romanticized graveyard of
the old and new empires is not too unfamiliar. These factors may operate as significant
determinants, but one needs to go beyond them. While recapping history, sociological
hypotheses and security analysis, this volume seeks out more recent and ongoing the-
matic issues such as state formation, civil society clusters, multiple forms and postula-
tions of violence and postulations from the outside. Southwest Asia, especially after the
Western invasion of 2001, has encapsulated varying but no less problematic relations
with NATO, the European Union (EU) and regional neighbours, along with intermittent
tensions between Kabul and Islamabad, further complicated and influenced by ground
realities, grass-roots defiance and various forms of competitive modernist and traditional
trajectories.
Whereas since the withdrawal of most NATO and International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF) troops from Afghanistan in 2014 politicians and strategists have talked of
‘minimal deterrence’ and ‘zero option’, Afghans and Pakistanis are faced with fresher
challenges and opportunities with varying regional and global ramifications. With the
new political dispensation already ensconced in Islamabad and Pakistani generals settling
for a less obtrusive role, the Kabul regime is cautiously eager towards building bridges
across deeper ethnic and ideological chasms despite apparent hesitation, ambivalence and
uncertainty. However, both these countries still need to move towards substantive region-
alization and consensual politics, and the hitherto traditions of distrust, scapegoating and
viii PASHTUN IDENTITY AND GEOPOLITICS
dependence on external support have yet to give way to pragmatic and systemic alterna-
tives. Mutual accusations and mistrust, or falling prey to a new great game between India
and Pakistan (and possibly involving China, Iran and Central Asian Republics), can only
exacerbate the ongoing human predicament on all sides, as is sadly being experienced
in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Somalia. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan have been the casual-
ties of multiple forms of militarist enterprise and, without succumbing to a debilitating
victimhood or seeking scapegoats in each other’s state structures, they can move towards
more cohesive and gradualist consensus without falling for any ethnic discretion in the
sense of taking pluralism aboard instead of forming a government by selecting some
ethnic groups and ignoring others. While Pakistan needs to augur a fresher and co-optive
approach towards Afghanistan’s various ethno-regional particularities, Kabul is equally
required to reciprocate in similar terms, while India, China and Iran can certainly follow
a ‘hands-off’ policy towards trans-Indus communities. If it acts more responsibly and
in a collective spirit, Afghanistan in the post-2015 era can still engender a long-awaited
phase of regional peace, as it may also bleakly fall victim to increased militancy in the
name of religion, vendetta and ethnicity in which numerous factions might accentuate
their jockeying for political power. In that case, Pakistan and, for that matter, India will
be gravely impacted from the fallout, which could further aggravate their respective dis-
cretionary interventionism. In other words, the next few years are crucial for this heart
of Asia and that is where civil societies as well as the respective political elite can exhibit
a greater sense of responsibility and regional ethos instead of pushing South Asia into
another abysmal phase of moroseness, violence and instability. As has been the case so
far, insurgency, militancy, midnight raids and drone warfare have rendered the Pashtun
regions on both sides of the Durand Line into a simmering cauldron, and here instead
humane imperatives deserve fresher dynamics auguring a new era of Pak-Afghan inter-
dependence. Or, conversely, their free fall into a new chaos could also mean unbridled
and extensive violence at various levels. In the same vein, increased Indo-Pakistani dis-
cord can lead all the three states to a bleeding balkanization with the horrid spectre of a
new nuclear showdown.
My sincere thanks to a number of individuals and institutions who come from a wide
variety of disciplines and regions and who are too numerous to be acknowledged in a
paragraph, but whose words and time have duly benefitted this sociopolitical commen-
tary. My colleagues and students at Bath Spa University kept me going with their queries
and nods, while the family as always stood in good stead as I tended to disappear for
extended spells at the Old Bodleian, Oriental Institute, Wolfson and the British Library.
I am thankful to James Hollifield, Yunas Samad, Pritam Singh, Meena Dhanda, Farzana
Shaikh, Ian Talbot, Gurharpal Singh, Alan Marshall, Elaine Chalus, Brian Griffin and
several other colleagues whose works and words never allowed me to slow down. My
deeper appreciation is due to Anthem Press and its team, especially Brian Stone, Kiran
Bolla, Tej Sood and the production group for their persistent faith in my commitment
to this research. In addition, I duly acknowledge the feedback and criticism from two
anonymous reviewers, whose comments led me to newer angles and better presentation
of this complex terrain. My Pakistani, Afghan, Iranian, Indian, Turkish, Arab, European
and American friends – too numerous to be identified here – deserve my gratitude for
PREFACE ix
keeping me on course. Of course, the situation on the ground remains quite fluid, but
there is nothing wrong in talking about regional interdependence and the yearning for
peace in the old Gandhara lands.
I dedicate this book to the dignity of countless innocent lives lost over the last several
years with the hope that we will finally see light at the end of this bleak night.
Oxford
8 June 2016
