Afghanistan

Louis Dupree

Princeton University Press, 1973

Publishing Date: Thursday, July 29 2004

By the publication of this book Afghanistan scholars will be deprived of one of their favorite topics of gossip at professional meetings: When, if ever, will Dupree publish his book? The book indeed is received with much anticipation, for Dupree's notoriety as a scholar of Afghan affairs is umivaled. He has been writing about Afghanistan since 1953. His eighty-odd publications are "musts" for anyone interested in that country. Most of them have been reports of the American Universities Field Staff, who has permitted him "unlimited freedom of research since 1959." In a sense this book is tlie fruition of that research, distilling the "essence" (a favorite word) of Dupree's knowledge, insights and moralisms about his favorite region of research.

The object of the book apparently is to "ferret out the patterns" of Afghan culture with a view to establishing "guidelines for further investigation as well as [presenting] a reasonable survey of available data." He hopes "platforms will be established from which Afghan scholars can launch research projects of their own" (xxiv). As he says, the book is a survey. The topic is Afghanistan as a whole, its culture, history and contemporary affairs. I have now lost track of the number of books published in the last ten years claiming total coverage of Afghanistan - a nation consisting of nearly two dozen ethnic groups, a diversity of terrain and climate from deserts to glaciers and a busy known history from before Alexander to the present. Rather than demonstrating how much is understood, these books have generally shown how little. Dupree comes closer than most to realizing his objective.

It is a tribute to Dupree's versatility that in a book on such a broad amorphous subject there is something for almost everyone. For Afghanistan specialists there are 20 maps, 31 charts, 6 diagrams, 8 appendices, an over powering bibliography, an Epilogue on the coup that took place after the book was written, and in the latter two-thirds of the book, over 450 pages of informative, usually reliable, sometimes brilliantly written text. For the modernized Afghans who will read the book there are vigorous defenses of Afghanistan's culture and political point of view, scores of suggestions for its modernization, lots of citations to the achievements of Afghans, and much optimism about the country's progress along the "unpaved road" to a democratic government. And for the untutored general reader there are 103 photographs and the occasional lurid aphorisms for which Dupree is justly famous, e.g., "On the Kashmir question, the United States attempts to straddle the razor blade of neutrality, trying to remain neutral without becoming neuter" (511).

There is much to recommend in this book. I especially appreciate the inclusion in a single volume of many fine charts and maps. There are maps of provinces before and after the 1964 reorganization with an accompanying chart of the old and new administrative ranks, Ferdinand's map of nomadic grazing areas, a map of ethnic group locations accompanied by a chart of e'ihnic group qualities, ill map of rivers and drainage systems, a valuable map of the major areas under cultivation, and lots of charts based on statistical data taken from official sources, many of which, as Dupree of course knows, must be taken with some salt. Several of the chapters valuably enhance our limited knowledge. Many people wiH appreciate the wealth of ethnographic detail in the early part of the book. It could serve as a handbook on Afghan culture, even though its defects, discussed below, will very much detract from its usefulness. The chapter on literature includes translated selections from many of the more important Afghan authors (but curiously Dupree provides no examples from the greati'ist poets laved by Mghans: Hafiz, Sa'di and Firdowsi), and supplies extensive lists of many of the prominent twentieth century Afghan poets (it reads like a Who's Who of the Afghan elite, so many literate persons write poetry). The dllipter an folklore and music will be useful until others now writing havle published their work. (Dupree seems unaware that the tale he cites on page 1234 is a popular version 'Of a selection from Sa'di.)

But it is in the !latter two-thirds of tbe book on Afghan history and contemporary affairs that Dupree shows where his interest quite evidently lies. The chapter on prehistory, the field in which he was trained, is among his best. The succeeding ones on history to the present are also well�done, probably much enhanced by the competence 'Of his wife, Nancy Wolf. The eighteen-page chart on political events in the nineteenth cen.tury will prove useful to the initiate, incl;uding much detail ina small space. (On the chart of the genealogy of the Inajar AbdatiImfSOnSC in the nineteenth century the words "Civil WarXntlensifi~s (1818�26)" appear by mistake.) Th~ last eight chapters of the book cover the topic of Dupree's current major interest: on the Zaher Shah period, during which he has been an observer for practically twenty years, surely there is no more prestigious authority. We read Dupree on current conditions with great respect, however differently we might feel about certain details and intepretations. Dupree is a unique and important person for the scholarly study of Afghanistan, for he has been a long-time on-the-spot observer. Already his work exceeds in volume and scope the work of the great field observers of the nineteenth century, Elphinstone, Burnes and Robertson.

But there is also much to criticize. A perpetual minor annoyance throughout the book is Dupree's handling of linguistic data. He extensively litters the whole text with unnecessary Persian and Pashto glosses: e.g., " .. .many Sufi tarika (or tarikat; plural, turuk; subsects, 'roads,' or 'pathways') occur ... " (Actually the proper form is tariqa, etc.) How unnecessary the gloss is is indicated nine lines later when he uses the singular tarika as if it were a plural. Not only does he extensively gloss when a brief gloss would do, but he also translates a host of phrases and terms that are directly rendered into English and have therefore no business being glossed at all: words like "silk," "rosewater," "pigeons," "irrigated wheat," dryland wheat," "black tea," "green tea," "truck driver," "electric company," even "very close."

I appreciate the attempt to discuss religion, a topic until now carefully eschewed by scholars, to the detriment of our understanding of Afghan culture and politics- But the chapter in important ways misleads. The author seems not to know about the Mu'tazili-Ash'ariya debate or he would not have insisted that the religion "in essence" holds no predestination doctrines. Moreover, his contention that Islam is "in essence" relatively tractable is contradicted by an excellent case study of the difficulties of moderniz~ng Islamic theology in Egypt (Safran, Egypt in Search of a Political Com munity). His reference to Central Asian Islam as an example of its pliability cannot be taken seriously. It is no secret that Islam in Soviet Central Asia has for many years been actively persecuted and suppressed, so that what exists today is anything but the vigorous, masculine Islam that is the ideal of even the most tractable modernistic Muslim. The four "subsects" of Sunni Islam are more properly known as "schools" (mazhabs) which recognize each other as variant "orthodox" traditions of jurisprudence; they are not comparable to the Shiite "subsects" which are indeed discreet sects, none of them recognizing the legitimacy of the others. Dupree's descriptions of Ismaili beliefs applies better to the Ithna' Asharia Shiites than to the Ismailis. of Afghanistan: The Ismaili Imam is not hidden (as is the last Imam of the Ithna' Asharias) but is present in the person of the Agha Khan.

Parts I and II, unlike the rest of the book and most of Dupree's other work, are poorly written. Paragraphs are choppy, sentences dangle, and major headings offer little clue as to the material included - e.g., under "Settlement Patterns: Town" one learns inter alia about the structure of provinces, improvements in transport technology and the peck order of ethnic groups (there is a chapter elsewhere on ethnic groups), and under "Life Cycle" one learns about kinship, social statuses and diet. Some of these pages read like a K roeberian trait list, but without Kroeber's precision and parsimony. Dupree apparently gives all the tidbits he has on a subject and then moves on to the next. Presumably this "platform" on which Afghan scholars are to build consists of cultural traits to be gathered, the gaps to be filled by "further investigations" until aU the preconceived categories are filled up. The approach cripples original thought and defies insight.

The reason for this one�damned-trivium-after-another sort of scholar ship seems to be that in fact the author has no point. Worse, he appears to have no clear-cut frame of reference. Throughout the book Dupree has a problem formulating concrete and testable explanations for his material, presumably because his basic orientation is vague. He says this book is "an attempt by an anthropologist to ferret out the patterns, functional and dysfunctional, in the total synchronic-ecological-cultural sense" - wh2itever that means; the phrases "functional and dysfunctional patterns" and ''the total synchronic-ecological-cultural sense" are never clarified. He apparently supposes that this mass of culture traits - customs, tools, yurt types and all the rest - blend into some kind! of mutually reinforcing coherence. Afghan society and Afghan character mjrror each other: "The Afghan character and social system can be generally described as tribal, authoritarian, patrilineal and patriarchal" (464). What is "patrilinea! character?" Dupree's pivotal explanation for Afghan society appears at the end of his long catalogue of cultural material, and is the frame of reference he refers to throughout the remainder of the book: "All these attributes perpetuate an 'inward-looking' society, which simply means a society 1..'1to which a man is born into a set of answers. In developed nations, a man is born, at least technicaily, into an "outward-jooking" society, or a set of questiom, hut the answer to any given question breeds another set of questiol1S, so the half-truths of tomorrow continually replace the h4lf-truths of any given today" (250: emphasis o:-iginal). How does this explain? This is a statement of problems to be solved, not of explanation. What is the relation between looking outward and asking questions? Or between looking inward and having answers? Or between outward-looking and wltural advancement? What makes a society outward looking? Why does a western society ask questions better than an underdeveloped society? This vii;;wpoint leads him to typologicalgeneraliza tions about mental orientations: groups do what they do because of their personality attributes. Government officials fail to take initiative because they are "comfortable stagnates" (662). Peasants won't Jet government help them because their outlook is inward�c.riented (151, 249). Even modern nations by their outlook can become "tribally oriented": "In the post-World WaI II era, both the Americans and the Soviets were convinced they had the answers for social, economic, and political development. Having the answers made both countries almost tribally oriented" (660).

Actually, the interpretive frame of reference Dupree seems most comfortable with is a semi-popular, stereotyped Freudian psychology. For example, the fact that men can never be sure they are biological fathers of their children may be "one of the deep-rooted unconscious reasons for men's aggressive tendencies (assuming they exist) toward one another" (124); "In-group tensions account for much out-group aggression, particularly in non-literate societies" (I 18). (Why doesn't it work in literate societies?); the temporary maIriages practiced by the Shia ("actually a form of prostitution") prepares a man "better ... to perform his primary economic functions" (198). Psyhic orientations even explain major adaptive innovations: "From my studies of modem nomads and peasants since 1949, I suggest that pastoral nomadism (emphasizing sheep/goats economy) may have developed when dissidents in the incipient farming, sedentary groups broke away because they could not stand the boredom of settling down" (263; emphasis added). Did it never dawn on him that nomads might have moved out on the range because economic and political conditions made it pay to do so?

Lacking clear explanatory frames of reference other than psychological ones, Dupree explains his material by resorting to cute paradoxes: "The main themes in Afghan culture [aIe J best described as close cooperation within a framework of fierce, individual competition" (221); "their suspicion of outsiders is modified by a traditional code of hospitality; ... dynamic when work is to be done, they are easily swayed to indolence; their aVaIice is combined with i.mpetuous generosity; conservative in their mountain home land, they adapt quickly to new ideas and techniques when citified; they have an anarchistic love of individual freedom softened by the accepted rule of their aristocratic khans; their masculine superiority complex tacitly recog nizes women's rights; their love of isolation is overlaid by curiosity about the outside world" (125-6). Faced with all this, the mind bogs down where it most wants to understand. Such sta.tements raise more questions than answers, and in this sort of business, like the Afghan peasantry, I prefer answers.

Dupree's indifference to precise formulation is evident in many careless statements. There are non-sequiturs: "In the West most people spend their days as professional specialists or technicians, but Afghans on the whole ate generalists, following diurnal and annual ecological cycles" (133-4); "the Afghans will remain neutral in World War III, for [they] realize that nuclear fallout will respect no national boundaries" (51l). There are reifications of descriptive categories: "Fission penetrated Islam and became the major pattern" (362). There are banal generalities: "Afghanistan moved frQm relative illaction to relative action" (556): "The city grows rapidly; the town follows more slowly; the villages continue as always (Neolithic subsistence pattern in an Early Iron Age technology), sending surplus crops and population to towns and cities" (174). There are grandiloquent generaliza t ions: "Once a religion approaches ritual stagnation and an internal logical or rationalistic philosophy evolves, mysticism inevitably arises" (78); "Adoles cence is primarily a function of a literate, pluralistic society, which can afford to waste half a man's life in socialization, or preparing him to live as a productive member of his society" (194; compare a.dolescence among the Iban: Freeman, Iban Agriculture). There is needless jargonese: " ... the idealized picture is greatly modified by certain elements which perpetuate matri-infl uen ces" (181).

One r.an but wonder what Dupree has been up to since 1959, when he became free to carryon unlimited research. Clearly his research has been so data-oriented that he has neglected to familiarize himself with the frames of reference in the scholarly world that might have helped him understand the muck of data he has chosen to rake. Why is Dupree so indifferent to precise formulation? Why has he ignored the flow of dialogue that constitutes modern social science? Whatever he has been doing, it is to him "anthro pology." Several times he reminds the reader of this volume that he writes "as an anthropologist." Why is that so important? There is nothing 'wrong with ]1js calling himself an archaeologist or a foreign affairs analyst or a chronicler of Afghanistan affairs all of which he does well. But whether his work is "anthropology" will have to be judged by that body of scholars whose frames of reference he has chosen to neglect.