Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad (review)

Edwards' earlier historical study, Heroes of the Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier (Berkeley, 1996), was organized around classic anthropological issues of governance, honor, and religion. These "fault lines," always in tension, were illuminated through the sophisticated analysis of three turn-of-the-century figures, the "Iron Amir," the ruler of Afghanistan; a tribal chief; and a Muslim saint. Edwards' new work follows the same model, thus suggesting that issues of governance, honor, and Islam persisted as core dynamics in Afghan society during the final, turbulent decades at the end of the twentieth century.

Edwards now studies three recent leaders, none in this case likely to be thought a "hero": Nur Muhammad Taraki (a leader of the Communist revolution); Samiullah Safi, a tribal khan; and Qazi Amin Waqad, a leader in the Hizb-i Islami, one of the anticommunist jihad organizations. Throughout, the events and personalities of the earlier period provide a counterpart to the analysis of recent developments. The result is a book that, even though written before September 11, 2001, provides a superb introduction to the current tragedy of Afghanistan. It gives a rare human face to abstractions, and it displays the elements of the competing failed visions that typically stood at odds with what Edwards sees as enduring patterns of Afghan social interaction and morality.

A third discipline, after anthropology and history, is central to the success of this book, namely elegant and evocative writing. The book's argument is built into its structure. Each of the three major sections focuses on an event: the communist Saur Revolution of 1978, for Edwards the single most important event in modern Afghan history; the tribal Pech uprising against the communists; and the emergence of Islamic jihad in the 1980s. Each section features a biography, and each ends poignantly, with a "coda" reporting a brutal death that underlines the dysfunctional sociopolitical relationships of the times.

Edwards conveys his argument, in part, by emphasizing different kinds of sources as appropriate to each of his subjects. Taraki's life is illuminated not only by the rhetoric but also by the existence of a printed official biography. The life of Samiullah Safi, the tribal khan, is presented through stories that he himself tells in the style of a traditional elder. Qazi Amin responds to the oral history opportunity offered by Edwards by answering questions; his story unfolds in an interview format that befits a participant in a new style of modern politics. The epilogue, focused on the rise of the Taliban, uses bulletins from Reuters to evoke the speed of change and the extent to which Afghanistan is embedded in a larger world. Edwards also draws on a marvelous range of primary and secondary works, as well as his own acute perspectives based on residence in Afghanistan during the mid-1970s and Peshawar during the 1980s. Particularly notable are his subtle analyses of fifteen photographs scattered throughout the book, and of a film from the hopeful 1970s.

Edwards brilliantly succeeds in providing representations of Afghans to supplement the old one of "freedom fighter" or the new one of "terrorist." He also effectively shows the novelty of the new efforts to assert power in this period, whether on the part of a self-made man like Taraki, characterized by none of the traditional Afghan claims of authority, or, more recently, of the mullahs, whose historical role was never rule but mediation. Why the optimistic visions for Afghanistan failed, however, probably needs more analysis of the international context of recent Afghan history than Edwards presents. But what we are given is a remarkably successful book that should be of interest far beyond a narrow scholarly audience.