T

he emergence of Afghanistan as a nation state and its survival

is a remarkable story given the tumultuous nature of the country’s

political life and the fact that, as defined by its present colonial

frontiers, it lacks historical validity or cohesiveness. Afghanistan is the

product of a series of fortuitous circumstances precipitated initially by the

break-up of the Safavid, Mughal and Uzbek empires and the conquests of

Nadir Quli Khan Afshar, and subsequently perpetuated and sustained by

the rise of British and Russian power in India and Central Asia, respect-

ively. Under British tutelage, the rump of the kingdom founded by Ahmad

Shah Durrani, which was on the verge of collapse, was redefined and its

frontiers reorientated, creating a nation state that bore little resemblance to

the tribal belt known as Afghanistan in the pre-colonial era, or to historic,

pre-colonial geopolitical frontiers. The outcome was a political entity that

was unstable and riddled with factionalism, both within the ruling dynasty

and society as a whole.

Imperial and Afghan nationalist-monarchist discourse claims the foun-

dation of modern Afghanistan began with the ‘election’ of Ahmad Shah

Durrani in Kandahar in 1747 and has tended to emphasize the Afghanness,

or Pushtunness, of the dynasty. This narrative ignores key historic factors

that gave rise to this Durrani dynasty, while glossing over the uncomfort-

able fact that the ‘Abdali tribe and its dynasties were essentially persianate.

The alliance with Safavid Persia was arguably the key element that facil-

itated the rise of both the Hotaki and Saddozai kingdoms, an alliance

that came about in part because urbanized ‘Abdalis in Kandahar, though

referred to as Afghan, spoke a local dialect of farsi. Indeed, more than likely

the ethnogenesis of the ‘Abdali tribe derived from the Persian-speaking

peoples of medieval Ghur and Gharchistan.

The Saddozai alliance with the Shi‘a Safavid monarchy of Persia was

due to a power struggle between Mughal India and Safavid Persia for

control of the key frontier town of Kandahar. This same geopolitical rivalry

gave rise to an internal conflict between Barakzai and Saddozai for the

Conclusion