Nice read-“It’s important to note that there are no accurate statistics to definitively determine the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. However, Tajiks are widely considered to be the most populous ethnic group in the country.
Shabnam your writing is stunning, powerful, evocative, challenging, and so needed. Thankyou for what you share here.
"Before we can discuss solutions, we need far more writing, far more research, and far more truth-telling about what Afghanistan really is and what it has been. The country’s history has too often been written by those who sought to rule it, map it, or manage it. Until we confront that history on its own terms—not Kabul’s terms, not the West’s terms—we are not building peace. We’re just negotiating over the furniture in a house with no foundation."
The foundation is everything. My own home nation, Australia has a wildly different story than your own and yet there are echoes here too. British colonialism still impacts, and those most disenfranchised continue to carry intergenerational trauma and injustices. Truth telling matters. Re-storying is fundametal to restoration.
I so appreciate your insights and writing. Thankyou.
The history of Iraq is a similar tale of arbitrary boundaries and masking-taping a “nation” together, mostly by the British. Iraq’s efforts to stabilise are also a century in the making. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible. This reality is already being addressed with the example of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan.
This is really good. Most people don't understand this kind of background. I too until recently tended to think in terms of "naturally emerging nation-states which become democracies" because that has been a large part of Western (European) history. It always astounds me that other peoples, because of their history and experience, think in very different parameters. (And what happened at the Afghanistan desk in the U.S. State Dept? Were they also unaware of all this?) Yes, by all means it's so important to understand the past and understand. The question, however, will still arise, sooner rather than later, "What now?" Nation-states do have minorities, even large ones, and still function (Switzerland, Belgium after a fashion) - and every nation has its trauma, often involving its minorities, not to mention having to deal with various forms of colonialism and domination. We also don't want to get fully mired in past traumas and resentments. That doesn't take us to a good place either.
In Western legacy coverage, ethnic divisions in Afghanistan are almost never acknowledged or analyzed. What might help the country is the same thing that might help Syria, and has never yet been tried in modern times: federalism
Nice read-“It’s important to note that there are no accurate statistics to definitively determine the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. However, Tajiks are widely considered to be the most populous ethnic group in the country.
Shabnam your writing is stunning, powerful, evocative, challenging, and so needed. Thankyou for what you share here.
"Before we can discuss solutions, we need far more writing, far more research, and far more truth-telling about what Afghanistan really is and what it has been. The country’s history has too often been written by those who sought to rule it, map it, or manage it. Until we confront that history on its own terms—not Kabul’s terms, not the West’s terms—we are not building peace. We’re just negotiating over the furniture in a house with no foundation."
The foundation is everything. My own home nation, Australia has a wildly different story than your own and yet there are echoes here too. British colonialism still impacts, and those most disenfranchised continue to carry intergenerational trauma and injustices. Truth telling matters. Re-storying is fundametal to restoration.
I so appreciate your insights and writing. Thankyou.
Thank you so much, Melanie. I’m honoured my writing spoke to you.
The history of Iraq is a similar tale of arbitrary boundaries and masking-taping a “nation” together, mostly by the British. Iraq’s efforts to stabilise are also a century in the making. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible. This reality is already being addressed with the example of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan.
This is really good. Most people don't understand this kind of background. I too until recently tended to think in terms of "naturally emerging nation-states which become democracies" because that has been a large part of Western (European) history. It always astounds me that other peoples, because of their history and experience, think in very different parameters. (And what happened at the Afghanistan desk in the U.S. State Dept? Were they also unaware of all this?) Yes, by all means it's so important to understand the past and understand. The question, however, will still arise, sooner rather than later, "What now?" Nation-states do have minorities, even large ones, and still function (Switzerland, Belgium after a fashion) - and every nation has its trauma, often involving its minorities, not to mention having to deal with various forms of colonialism and domination. We also don't want to get fully mired in past traumas and resentments. That doesn't take us to a good place either.
so interesting!!!
In Western legacy coverage, ethnic divisions in Afghanistan are almost never acknowledged or analyzed. What might help the country is the same thing that might help Syria, and has never yet been tried in modern times: federalism