Constitutions and Modernity in Post-Colonial Afghanistan: Ethnolinguistic Nationalism and the Making of an Afghan Nation-State
Keywords:
Afghanistan, constitutional history, rule of law, constitution-making, Afghan nation-state, national identity, ethnolinguism, Pashto,Abstract
In recent decades, the rule of law has not been commonly associated with Afghanistan.
Instead, its politics have been more likely to be framed in terms of lawlessness and ungovernability. But this trope does not do justice to Afghanistan’s longer history of statehood
or experiences of constitution-making. Over the course of the twentieth century, Afghan
leaders drafted seven constitutions (in 1923, 1931, 1964, 1976, 1980, 1987, and 1990). These
constitutions represented leaders’ attempts to assert their legitimacy and enforce their
vision of an Afghan nation-state. This article sheds fresh light on Afghan elites’ topdown framing of Afghan national identity through ethnolinguism, exploring the legalization of Pashto as both an official and national language in Afghanistan’s constitutions.
Reformers intended Pashto to transgress community, kinship, and regional boundaries
and act as a source of unity (though one in which ethnolinguistic minorities had little
say). Tracing Afghanistan’s constitutional history from 1923–90, this article reveals language as a constitutional arena for debating Afghan modernity and identity. As such,
this article integrates Afghanistan into legal histories of South Asia while emphasizing
how Afghan constitutionalists engaged in the process of law-making as a means of
expressing Afghanistan’s own independence and ideas of modernity
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Dari copies of the constitution are maintained by the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University http://law.acku.edu.af/fa/search/site/?f%5B0%5D=im_field_classification%3A336 (September 15, 2021). I have also cited English-language translations for ease of reference.
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Green, “Introduction: A History of Afghan Historiography,” 6. In reality, demarcations between Pashto speakers and non-speakers and between Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns are far more complicated. See Robert D. Crews and Amin Tarzi, “Introduction,” in The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan, ed. Robert D. Crews and Amin Tarzi (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 21; and Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, “A History of Linguistic Boundary Crossing Within and Around Pashto,” in Beyond Swat: History, Society, and Economic along the Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier, ed. Benjamin D. Hopkins and Magnus Marsden (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 63–75. Likewise, “ethnicity” is a complicated category in Afghanistan that does not always accurately describe specific collectivities of people within Afghanistan. See Robert L. Canfield, “Ethnic, Regional, and Sectarian Alignments in Afghanistan,” in The State, Religion, and Ethnic Politics: Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, ed. Ali Banuazizi and Myron Weiner (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 75–103.
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See Louis Dupree, Afghanistan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), ch. 7.
22
Constitution of Afghanistan, April 9, 1923, with annotated appendix of January 28, 1923. English translation by M.A. Ansari. Emphasis added.
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Robert D. Crews, Afghan Modern: The History of a Global Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 117. See also Vartan Gregorian, “Mahmud Tarzi and Saraj-ol-Akhbar: Ideology of Nationalism and Modernization in Afghanistan,” Middle East Journal 21 (1967): 345–68; and Senzil Nawid, “The State, the Clergy, and British Imperial Policy in Afghanistan during the 19th and Early 20th Centuries,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29 (1997): 581–605.
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Senzil Nawid, “Language Policy in Afghanistan: Linguistic Diversity and National Unity,” in Language Policy and Language Conflict in Afghanistan, 34.
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Tariq Rahman, “The Pashto Language and Identity-formation in Pakistan,” Contemporary South Asia 4 (1995): 151–70, at155.
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Wide, “Demarcating Pashto,” 107–8.
27
On this political transition, see Senzil K. Nawid, Religious Response to Social Change in Afghanistan, 1919–29 (Costa Mesca, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1999); Leon B. Poullada, Reform and Rebellion in Afghanistan, 1919–1929 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973); and Vartan Gregorian, The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan: Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880–1946 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), ch. 9–11.
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Caron, “Ambiguities of Orality,” 117. See also James Caron, “Reading the Power of Printed Orality in Afghanistan: Popular Pashto Literature as Historical Evidence and Public Intervention,” Journal of Social History 45 (2011): 172–94.
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Green, “Introduction: A History of Afghan Historiography,” 37.
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Caron, “Ambiguities of Orality,” 122; Nawid, “Language Policy in Afghanistan,” 36; Faridullah Bezhan, “Nationalism, not Islam: The ‘Awaken Youth’ Party and Pashtun Nationalism,” in Afghanistan's Islam: From Conversion to the Taliban, ed. Nile Green (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017), 175.
31
Crews, Afghan Modern, 71.
32
Çolak, “Language Policy and Official Ideology.” Scholars have recognized how Afghan reformers took inspiration from Turkish modernizers across the twentieth century. See Ahmed, Afghanistan Rising; Crews, Afghan Modern; and Zeynep Tuba Sungur, “Early Modern State Formation in Afghanistan in Relation to Pashtun Tribalism,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 16 (2016): 437–55, at 446.
33
Rahman, “The Pashto Language,” 156.
34
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, “The Pashtun Counter-narrative,” Middle East Critique 25 (2016): 385–400, at 389–94.
35
James M. Caron, “Cultural Histories of Pashtun Nationalism, Public Participation, and Social Inequality in Monarchic Afghanistan, 1905–1960” (unpublished PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2009), especially 153–57.
36
Bezhan, “Nationalism, not Islam,” 174.
37
Caron, “Cultural Histories of Pashtun Nationalism,” 173.
38
M. Jamil Hanifi, “Vending Distorted Afghanistan through Patriotic ‘Anthropology’,” Critique of Anthropology 31 (2011): 256–70, at 265; and Nile Green, “Introduction: Afghan Literature between Diaspora and Nation,” in Afghanistan in Ink, 18.
39
Nawid, “Language Policy in Afghanistan,” 36–37; Bezhan, “Nationalism, not Islam,” 179.
40
Cited in Nazif Shahrani, “State Building and Social Fragmentation in Afghanistan: A Historical Perspective,” in The State, Religion, and Ethnic Politics, 56; and Gregorian, The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, 345–53.
41
Cited in Bezhan, “Nationalism, not Islam,” 169.
42
Ibid., 174, 178.
43
See Mukulika Banerjee, The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North West Frontier (Oxford: James Currey, 2000); Robert Nichols, “Reclaiming the Past: The Tarawikh-i Hafiz Rahmat Khani and Pashtun Historiography,” in Afghan History through Afghan Eyes, 211–34.
44
On Afghans at the United Nations, see Elisabeth Leake, “States, Nations, and Self-Determination: Afghanistan and Decolonization at the United Nations,” Journal of Global History 17 (2022): 272–91. On Pashtunistan in Afghan foreign affairs, see Nunan, Humanitarian Invasion, ch. 1; and Elisabeth Leake, The Defiant Border: The Afghan-Pakistan Borderlands in the Era of Decolonization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
45
See Faridullah Bezhan, “The Pashtunistan Issue and Politics in Afghanistan, 1947–1952,” Middle East Journal 68 (2014): 197–209.
46
Caron, “Ambiguities of Orality,” 128–29.
47
Nawid, “Language Policy in Afghanistan,” 37.
48
Ibid., 38.
49
United States Embassy, Karachi, to Department of State, Dispatch 360, November 15, 1955, US National Archives, RG 84, UD 3063, Box 8.
50
Sayed Qassem Rishtya, Afghanistan: The Making of the 1964 Constitution, trans. Leila Rishtya Enayat-Seraj (Lausanne: Publi-Libris SA, 2005), 12–13.
51
Tarzi, “Islam and Constitutionalism,” 219.
52
Caron, “Cultural Histories of Pashtun Nationalism,” 179–80.
53
Bezhan, “Nationalism, not Islam,” 175; and Hafizullah Emadi, Dynamics of Political Development in Afghanistan: The British, Russian, and American Invasions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 58.
54
Green, “Introduction: Afghan Literature between Diaspora and Nation,” 10–12.
55
Rishtya, Afghanistan, 42; and Nawid, “Language Policy in Afghanistan,” 40.
56
Qanun asasi Afganistan (1964) http://law.acku.edu.af/sites/default/files/acku_risalah_knf2050_qaaf29_1343_n12_dari_title1.pdf (August 30, 2022); and “Chapters on State and Sovereign: Draft of the Constitution of Afghanistan,” Kabul Times, August 3, 1964, 2.
57
Brian Spooner, “Persian, Farsi, Dari, Tajiki: Language Names and Language Policies,” in Language Policy and Language Conflict, 99; Nawid, “Language Policy in Afghanistan,” 40; and Green, “Introduction: Afghan Literature between Diaspora and Nation,” 18–20.
58
Qanun asasi Afganistan (1964); “Individual Liberties; Parliament: Draft of the Constitution of Afghanistan,” Kabul Times, August 4, 1964, 2.
59
Rishtya, Afghanistan, 45.
60
Nawid, “Language Policy in Afghanistan,” 40.
61
Louis Dupree, “Constitutional Development and Cultural Change Part III: The 1964 Afghan Constitution (Articles 1-56),” American Universities Field Staff Reports (September 1965), 11.
62
“His Majesty Opens Loya Jirga to Ratify Afghan Constitution,” Kabul Times, September 10, 1964, 1. See also “The King Pushes through His Reforms in Afghanistan,” The Times, September 11, 1964, 10.
63
Dupree, “Constitutional Development,” 12.
64
Ibid., 8.
65
Dupree, Afghanistan, 585.
66
Da Afghanistan kalanay (Kabul: Government of Afghanistan, 1964), 55–70.
67
Cited in “Press at a Glance,” Kabul Times, July 30, 1964, 2.
68
“The King Pushes through his Reforms in Afghanistan,” The Times, September 11, 1964, 10.
69
Da Afghanistan kalanay (Kabul: Government of Afghanistan, 1964), 74–79, 286–344.
70
Both cited in “Press at a Glance,” Kabul Times, November 19, 1964, 2.
71
“Committee to Develop Pakhtu Language Meets,” Kabul Times, December 24, 1964, 1; and Nawid, “Language Policy in Afghanistan,” 41.
72
Da Afghanistan kalanay (Kabul: Government of Afghanistan, 1965), 156, 213.
73
Da Afghanistan kalanay (Kabul: Government of Afghanistan, 1966), 156.
74
Da Afghanistan kalanay (Kabul: Government of Afghanistan, 1971), 180.
75
M.G. Weinbaum, “Legal Elites in Afghan Society,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 12 (1980): 43–44. See also Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Law in Afghanistan: A Study of the Constitutions, Matrimonial Law and the Judiciary (Leiden: Brill, 1985).
76
Dupree, Afghanistan, 581.
77
Kamali, Law in Afghanistan, 206.
78
Martin Lau, “An Introduction to Afghanistan's Legal System,” Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law Online 8 (2001): 29.
79
Nazif Shahrani, “Centre-Periphery Relations in Afghanistan,” in Local Politics in Afghanistan: A Century of Intervention in the Social Order, ed. Conrad Schetter (London: Hurst & Co., 2013), 29.
80
Micheline Centlivres-Demont and Pierre Centlivres, “The State, Intermediaries and ‘Licit’ Corruption: Local Politics in Northern Afghanistan in the Sixties and Seventies,” in Local Politics in Afghanistan, 113.
81
Ibid., 118.
82
Ibid., 116.
83
See Dupree, Afghanistan, ch. 24; and Emadi, Dynamics of Political Development, 66–79.
84
Qanun asasi afganistan (1964).
85
See Hanifi, “Pashtun Counter-Narrative.”
86
Tarzi, “Islam and Constitutionalism,” 224.
87
The 1977 constitution offers a case study in socialist constitution-making, as well as the potential tensions and elisions between socialism and authoritarianism, which cannot be explored here (Kamali, Law in Afghanistan, 55–57). For broader parallels, see Bui, Ngoc Son, Constitutional Change in the Contemporary Socialist World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tom Ginsburg and Alberto Simpser, eds., Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
88
“The Constitution of the Republican State of Afghanistan (English translation, part II),” Kabul Times, March 6, 1977, 1. The 1977 constitution was only officially published in Pashto and Dari, although the Kabul Times ran an English translation across several issues in March 1977.
89
“Power to the People,” Kabul Times, February 26, 1977, 2.
90
Shahrani, “Centre-Periphery Relations,” 63; and Centlivres-Demont and Centlivres, “State, Intermediaries and ‘Licit’ Corruption,” 128.
91
Arnold, Anthony, Afghanistan's Two-Party Communism: Parcham and Khalq (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1983)Google Scholar, Appendix A.
92
Kamali, Law in Afghanistan, 74–75; and Martin, Terry, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001)Google Scholar. Some commentators also saw this as a potential attempt to further reduce the use of Dari, although not necessarily to increase use of Pashto (Eden Naby, “The Ethnic Factor in Soviet-Afghan Relations,” Asian Survey 20 [1980]: 237–56).
93
For a more detailed history of the rise of the PDPA, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the accompanying civil war, see Leake, Elisabeth, Afghan Crucible: The Soviet Invasion and the Making of Modern Afghanistan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022)Google Scholar.
94
“The Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan,” April 21, 1980. The Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture published an unofficial English translation of the 1980 Fundamental Principles. I have not been able to ascertain whether it was made available in languages beyond Pashto and Dari.
95
Constitution of the Republic of Afghanistan, November 30, 1987. Whether the constitution was made available in languages beyond Pashto and Dari is unclear. These articles also were replicated in the 1990 constitution.
96
Hakala, “Locating ‘Pashto’,” 82–84; Nawid, “Language Policy in Afghanistan,” 48–49; and Ahady, Anwar-ul-Haq, “The Decline of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan,” Asian Survey 35 (1995): 624CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 149.
98
Hanifi, Shah Mahoud, “Local Experiences of Imperial Cultures,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 41 (2021): 243–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 244.
99
See the paradigmatic Rubin, Barnett, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.
100
Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, January 26, 2004. Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs https://www.mfa.gov.af/constitution/preamble.html (July 28, 2021). Emphasis added.
101
“Taliban Removes Uzbek from Official Language Status,” Asian News International (ANI), September 20, 2021 https://www.aninews.in/news/world/asia/taliban-removes-uzbek-from-official-language-status20210920065221/ (September 6, 2022); “Taliban Abolishes Persian Language from Supreme Court Bill,” ANI, April 23, 2022 https://www.aninews.in/news/world/asia/taliban-abolishes-persian-language-from-supeme-court-bill20220423170132/ (September 6, 2022); and “Afghanistan Dispatches: ‘The Taliban Are Using Only Pashtu Language in Their Official Communications,” Jurist Legal News & Commentary, October 18, 2021 https://www.jurist.org/news/2021/10/afghanistan-dispatches-the-taliban-are-using-only-pashtu-language-in-their-official-communications/ (September 6, 2021).
