conclusionordinary Afghans, who are generally tolerant of differences and contemp-
tuous of movements that demean their deeply held faith and discount more
than a millennium of Islamic civilization and Muslim heritage.
Islamists, too, lack consensus as to what constitutes an Islamic state
and society and have gone to war with each other again and again despite
all of them claiming to share the same political and religious values. In the
1990s the Taliban’s main enemies in Afghanistan, after all, were mujahidin
parties founded on the political philosophies of Islamizers such as Sayyid
Qutb and ‘Abd al-Wahhab. These forms of Islamic radicalism further-
more exacerbate differences between Sunni, as well as between Sunni and
Shi‘a. Since most of Afghanistan’s Shi‘as are Hazaras, this has fuelled ethnic
violence too. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the era of mujahidin resistance
to the Soviet occupation and the Taliban was the increasing polarization of
regional and ethnolinguistic differences. These tensions, of course, already
existed under the monarchy, though they were suppressed, yet the leaders
of the various Islamist parties by and large failed to unify the opposition,
even though most of those who fought against the Soviet occupation did
so, in part at least, in defence of their faith. As for the Islamist governments
that took power following the fall of the Communist government, these
were the most fractious and dysfunctional administrations since the era
of the Saddozai sultanate of Herat.
Successive governments have attempted some kind of synthesis
between the Islamic and European legal systems only to create a dichotomy
that affirms both. Since European and Islamic law are essentially at odds
over, for example, the issue of women’s rights, gender equality, the role of
the judiciary and the function of the justice system, this is one more strand
of conflict that has undermined stable government. Attempts by Amir
’Aman Allah Khan and the Musahiban dynasty at establishing a modus
vivendi with Islamizing networks quickly broke down under the weight of
its own contradictions and contributed to the fall of the Durrani dynasty.
Today Islamists control the political and ideological agenda. With nato
and the un anxious for militias such as Hikmatyar’s Hizb-i Islami and the
Taliban to join the so-called peace process, Afghans can look forward to
yet more Islamization rather than less.
The outcome of these various attempts to unify the country has been
mostly counterproductive with the gap between the government and the
governed becoming wider as the years pass. The majority of Afghanistan’s
population care very little about central government’s impositions and
ordin ary people have evolved mechanisms that have allowed them to
survive the vicissitudes of insecurity and the vacillations of their leaders.