104 Islam and Modernity
A corollary of these observations is that the uncritical espousal of the notions
of ‘re-traditionalisation’ and ‘re-Islamisation’ to account for post-Soviet devel-
opments yields relatively limited insights. National traditions are being actively
reinvented and self-consciously deployed to serve new ideological purposes.
Discourses on national independence perform a dual function. They attempt to
distance new regimes from their Soviet past by casting it as a colonial encounter
that repressed a national essence that is now being revitalised. They also strive
to create new imaginaries of the nation that enhance social solidarity in increas-
ingly fractured societies. Gender plays a central role in both these processes.
The offi cial restoration of culturally sanctioned age and gender hierarchies
signals ‘de-Sovietisation’ in a context where the language of women’s emancipa-
tion was appropriated by the Soviet state. The populist appeal of acquiescence
to hierarchy in the family is implicitly harnessed to the vision of a harmonious,
law-abiding citizenry thriving under the guidance of the father of the nation.
The Islamic revival in Central Asia, that peaked during perestroika and achieved
broader appeal after independence, introduced an arena of doctrinal and politi-
cal contestation between different actors where state actors themselves attempt
to appropriate Islam as national heritage to upstage more radical oppositional
tendencies.
The successors to Soviet-era agents of modernisation appear to be inter-
national aid agencies, with their platforms of market reform and democratic
governance, and the various international and local NGOs they support. An
analysis of ‘international assistance’ encounters and of the blueprints they bring
to issues of gender equality must remain outside the scope of this chapter.
However, it must be clear that confrontations between transnational ‘tech-
nocratic’ feminisms, government policies and local and transnational Islamic
tendencies in Central Asia are partly being played out on the terrain of gender
relations.
Afghanistan: The society without the state?
Two episodes of violence against women, separated by over two decades, point
to the changing stakes around the politics of gender in Afghanistan. The fi rst,
sensitively related by Edwards (2002: 167–73), took place in 1980 during the
mujahidin resistance against the Soviet invasion. The second was reported from
the province of Badakhshan in April 2005.
The incident in 1980 involved a Safi woman from the Pech Valley who
pleaded with her husband, on leave from his military service, not to serve
under the Soviet-backed Khalqi government but to join the jihad against the
Soviet invaders, threatening to leave for exile without him. When her husband
opted to return to the army, she decided to fl ee, asking a young paternal cousin
to accompany her to Pakistan. They were captured on the way by the Hezb-i