Islamisation in Afghanistan and Afghan Jihad: A critical appraisal

Abstract

Afghanistan has been a central focus of world power for the last two thousand years, notably from Alexander the Great in 330 BC to the current US invasion, due to its geographical location, landscape, social, economic and political perspective, but none of these forces gained success or was able to control its territory.(1) The Kandhar and Kabul were considered as the gates of Hindustan: as Sir Percy Sykes, former British Diplomat and historian, explained it, “He alone can be Emperor of Hindustan who is first Lord of Kabul.”(2) In ancient times, the great conquerors such as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane had tried to conquer Afghanistan.(3) The British and Russia played the “great game” throughout the Nineteenth Century to gain control over the buffer state of Afghanistan, but failed. Moreover, it was a focus of bipolar rivalry due to its closeness to the Persian Gulf’s oil and the Indian Ocean’s ports in the 1970s. Afghans have always been a symbol of resistance against foreign invasions and were never colonised because “Pakhtuns, no less so than other groups, have available alternative moral maps to guide them in their life decisions.”(4) However, Afghanistan has always been a “rentier state”- heavily dependent on foreign assistance: and a rentier state always produced rentier revolutionaries.(5) Failed foreign invasions, the civil war and years of cold war conflict have brought a terrible tool of death and destruction for the people of Afghanistan. They have always been united against a foreign enemy and fought among themselves to rule the land. Edward suggests that this is because, “Afghan people have three different models of behaviour- Islam, rule, and honour and the concrete presence of these characteristics block the emergence of a coherent civil society, and by which the polity continues to be afflicted”.(6)