"Afghan World View" by Norm Gustavson, Ph.D.

“If It's Worth Owning, it’s worth building a wall around”
and other aspects of Afghan world view

Preface: Rereading the text I find myself apologetic for writing a rather dry, analytical piece. My intention is reasonable: to aid my colleagues in the development community to better understand why so many well planned trainings or “capacity building” workshops with Afghans are such dismal failures. The view I have created here, while I believe it can be very useful, is far from complete and neglects many of the strong, positive features of Afghan culture and society. It does not give the reader a sense of the elderly professor who patiently works to help my Dari along, or the little boys in the neighborhood who run up to say “How are you? What’s your name?” all in one breathe in their best English. It does not capture the girls herding their sheep and goats through the early morning streets to find bits of green and edible garbage which is all the access the young goatherds have to fodder in the city. It doe not convey the earnestness of the offer “Chai mekuri?” (Drink tea with me?) by almost any shopkeeper or neighbor with whom you share more than a polite greeting. There is a friendly openness that is still the most automatic response of most Afghans I meet, a true generosity offered to the guest. This deeply felt ethic, the “Pashtoon Wahli” is a powerful and positive aspect of the culture to be appreciated working in Afghanistan, or wherever you encounter Afghans.

Afghanistan: History from an Anthropological Perspective

But this analysis is really directed at something else. One of the first things that I noticed about the human geography of Afghanistan, especially as I began to travel outside of Kabul, was the walls. From individual farm sites isolated by miles from their nearest neighbor to the agglomerations of compounds on an extended family holding, to villages, towns and even the largest cities. Virtually everything owned has a great wall of mud slabs, adobe brick or stone enclosing it. Not just the houses but each cultivated plot of land is enclosed by a five to eight foot earthen wall. There must be more to this than keeping the roaming sheep and goats from eating the crops? What sort of view of the world must exist to produce such extraordinary and ubiquitous earthworks?

Afghanistan is, one might say, a nation by default. It has a colorful and imperial past, but these empires, like the last one, the great Mogul empire that lasted through the better part of three centuries only to fall before the British colonization of India in the middle of the 18th century, can hardly be called a nation state in modern terms. It was a vast feudal empire held together by the sword and tribute money in a complex confederation of feudal lords and tribal chieftains. This type of empire building is referred to in the literature on the development of civilization as “predatory expansion”. Predatory expansion, the forceful taking and holding of other people’s lands, requires a level of social and technical development that can support a warrior class. It marks a point in social and technical development when the production of, in almost all cases, cereal crops, i.e., food stuffs that can be stored and transported, allows for the existence of an army of conquest and occupation rather than just raiding parties and local vendettas. In the anthropological scheme of things this level of military organization is based on a tribal level of social integration: inherited rights and at least an incipient ruling elite within the kin based tribal structure. The level of social integration we see as the predecessor of the Nation of Afghanistan, right up to last king, Zahir Shah, is much like our view of feudal Europe. Like feudal Europe the vast majority of the population are subsistence farmers essentially tied to the land with wealthy land owners controlling access to the most valuable of local resources and access to sources of wealth beyond their immediate territory. Unlike the development of European peasantry (Russian serfs included) Afghanistan and much of central Asia has stayed at a kin based level of social organization with an effective “kingship” imposed on the underlying tribal system instead of forming a true ruling class (or caste) as in Europe.

My point is that the social order and cultural views of peasants, as studied in Europe and Central America, can provide useful insights into the dynamics of Afghan society today for those of us attempting to “develop” this war ravaged human ecosystem.

In the 1940s F.G. Bailey wrote about the last vestige of European peasantry as it still existed in Spain and parts of Italy. His book is called “Gifts and Poison”. What Bailey saw in his decades of study were village scale social networks. Farming villages always struggling on the fringes of a larger market economy. Because of their perpetual subjugation to the market and near subsistence level of production the “world view” of peasants, Bailey argued, is always one of distrust, attempting to stay “one up” on ones neighbors, or currying the favor of the wealthy. The society he describes is one in which rumor and innuendo are the basis of political action and family alliance. Societies where all generosity is suspect for potential hidden gains and where apparent gifts may be subtle poison. Distrust might be said, in such a society, to grow with physical and social distance. But the social dynamic of distrust is really more like the concentric waves extending from the point where a pebble is dropped in the water. In a tight competition even ones closest relatives cannot be trusted. This seems quite close to the dynamic which led Durrani to have his rival cousin’s eyes put out and held captive in a remote fortress in order to gain the throne in the mid 19th century (still no name or flag for the country as a whole).

In the 60’s and 70’s Robert Redfield gained notoriety with his analysis of Mesoamerican peasantry. He delineated a definition of “peasantry” as always having a marginalized relationship with a market economy (or other higher level of social structure not based on local production and barter). “Peasants” and other, similar groupings of people, find themselves struggling on the brink of survival and unable to accumulate the kind of surpluses necessary to risk a change in the current order of things. They cannot risk shifting toward single (or few) crop farming that might bring full participation in a money economy, and freedom from oppressive ties to large land owners or tribal chiefs, because crop failure would mean overwhelming indebtedness, persecution and probable starvation. Peasants and others with similar forms of social and economic networks are always in a state of indebtedness, servitude, or tribal obligation. There is always the perception of being “one down”, or at risk of it, in such a social system. Redfield described a belief system in which there is the perception that the world has a very limited set of opportunities or courses of action; that wealth, or livelihood, is something carved from limited access to a limited resource base. He called this orientation the “Idea of Limited Good” and made it the cornerstone of his interpretation of the way peasant level societies behave. Peasant type social systems are marked by the appearance of close family ties, fluid allegiances, distrust and outright treachery beyond the coalition of the moment. For the insider there may well be great generosity between friends and relatives but too, always the specter of betrayal to gain a larger piece of a limited pie. Peasants tend to be conservative and cannot afford to take risks with new methods of farming or crops, much less ideas or the social order of things. They tend to be religious and place their faith in luck, or god, or the power of witches and the evil eye, but not so much in their own power to break the cycle of economic dependency that often dominates their lives.

Afghanistan is the land between the Southern reach of the Russian Bear, the Westward expansion of the British “Raj” and the Eastern boundary lands of old Persia. It is an ethnically diverse land bitterly divided by tribal rivalry, ethnic and religious hatreds (“the Muslims hate the Sikhs, the Sikhs hate the Hindus, the Sunnis hate the Shia and we don’t like anybody very much”). This is an agrarian society carved out of tiny mountain valleys and dry plains where a scratching a livelihood from the high desert and narrow river bottoms is a hard proposition at best. But Ariana lies squarely across the “silk road”, the legendary trade route from Cathay to Arabia and Byzantium. The wealth of the greatest civilizations of East and West has passed back and forth across these barren lands for more than a millennium. And in a way the “silk road” was the “market economy”, the access to an unlimited good, that created the marginalized and peasant like social fabric that still permeates Afghanistan today. Tribal chiefs were bandit chiefs who made their living robbing the treasure caravans and ransoming caravan drivers who balked at paying tribute to cross tribal lands. Rank and wealth arose out of a subsistence, agrarian base and chieftainships evolved toward a class of noble houses, but always along tribal and family lines. Almost any adult Afghan can name the four branches of the royal family, cousins all. One line dominated the royal household for two hundred years until Nadir Shah took the throne in 1929 and ended with the reign of his son Zahir Shah in 1975.

The honor code of generosity to guests, the “Pashtun Wahli” is a sort of semi codified ethic that calls for the ultimate protection and succor of guest, once they are viewed as such or while they are viewed as such, but the overriding ethos is much the same as that of Redfield and Bailey’s peasants: rumor, factionalisms, shifting allegiances and fundamental distrust are what literally put walls around all that Afghan’s value.

Afghanistan and the Role of Women

Tribal and peasant societies with agricultural and herding economies can be found all across the developing world, from Southeast Asia, to Central America; Africa to India. They share many features in common in their social structures and social attitudes, but there are, of course, many differences as well. One of the most striking areas of difference can be seen in the different roles that women play across the strata of social organization.

The Neolithic revolution, the domestication of plants and animals which led mankind permanently away from nomadic hunting and gathering to sedentary farming, also led from simple and quite egalitarian roles for men and women as hunters and gatherers, respectively, to hierarchical social formulations. For most of humankind in the last twelve thousand years or so women may be seen as primarily a mode of exchange between men; essentially property. But even if we accept this feature of “primitive economics” the roles of women; their value and authority in these societies varies widely. In many, women control significant wealth separate from their husband’s or have considerable influence in the life of the community outside their domestic sphere. In Afghanistan traditional cultural values, including the practice of bride price, or payment by the family of the groom to the father of the bride, and strong taboos against contact between males and females outside the family compound appear to have had an unfortunate and restrictive synchrony with Islamic views on the role of women. The Afghan woman is cloistered inside the walls of her compound. Even in the cities few women are seen on the streets and then usually covered from head to toe with a “chadori” (burqua). I call them the blue ghosts of Afghanistan. The public world is a world of men, with few exceptions even today. Women leave their natal homes to live with their husband’s extended family often by the age of 12 or 14 and not infrequently much younger, essentially being raised like Cinderella in the domicile of their mother in law. Inside the walled compound there is a very real “pecking order” between the wives of the brothers who form the extended family, and the mother in law is the law indeed. Domestic violence is common and not restricted to men beating their wives. The greatest perpetrator is often the household matriarch and not infrequently senior wives of senior brothers. In this highly age ranked social structure anyone in a higher status may well use corporal punishment to enforce their will on anyone lower (younger) male or female. Marriage preference is for the cross cousin: mother’s brother’s daughter or father’s sister’s son, though any first cousin will do nicely. For economic reasons a more distant and older male relative may be the designated groom and the betrothed couple often do not meet before their wedding. A woman who consorts with someone of her own choosing is at risk of severe punishment even death at the hand of her own father or brothers, the stigma of sexual pollution is so great. In fact, in my view, the social regulation of interaction between men and women is more restrictive and harsher in Afghan culture than anywhere else in the world today.

Past Attempts at Modernization

King Amanuallah tried to ban “purdah”, the cloistering of women even within a household, and the wearing of the chadori in the 1920’s and was quickly sent into exile. The “communist” social revolution of the 1970’s led to violent protest, a series of coups in the government and the disastrous interventions of the Russian army. This was not a struggle against a foreign oppressor, but an ideological struggle of conservative and traditional Afghan culture against change and modernization. Once the communists, in all their guises, were thrown out or eliminated the tribal factions in the form of the Mujahaddin commanders went to work to wrest the biggest piece of the pie for themselves and to assert the authority of their tribe and ethnic group. Thus Kabul, essentially intact at the end of the Russian war, was razed to rubble by the cannon and rockets of Heckmatyar, Dostum, Khalily,and Ahmad Shah Masoud in a few short years.

The Social Impact of Two Decades of War
In two decades of war and civil war the physical infrastructure of Afghanistan was laid to ruin. Interestingly, what was preserved was the social and cultural infrastructure (at least in much greater part). Tribal and family allegiances as well as the basic social hierarchy in village life: the patrilineal and patriarchal family structure; the old mans council of the village “Shura”; the pervasive and conservative devotion to Islam; even the government bureaucracy which had never been shut down in all the years of fighting, maintained a traditional status quo. According to Jason Elliot, in his book “An Unexpected Light”, it was this environment of prolonged (physical) instability and horrific conflict that gave ascendancy to the Mullah’s of Afghanistan who historically had no great political role in Afghan communities. It is rather clear that it was this climate of ideological conservatism and harkening back to the core values of the past that allowed the Taliban to come to power, not their military prowess or political acumen. Even today, with all the additional horrors and injustices heaped on Afghanistan by the Taliban, the Afghan “on the street” sees this as a period of lawful order and relative freedom from open warfare across much of Afghanistan South of the Salang pass and the Panjshir. Last year an elderly gentleman who manages the UNHCR efforts out of Jalalabad told me: “at least in those (Taliban) years you knew you were safe. No one was going to rob you and you could walk the streets at night. You can’t say that any more”. Recently, riding home from Shar-e-Nau (Kabul city center) in a cab, the driver went on at length about how the crazy, aggressive driving that we were dealing with much less the rows of carts crowding off the sidewalk and into the street would not be there if the Taliban were running things. There was no anti-foreigner element in what he said, just frustration at the present lack of law and order.

Afghans and their Cultural Relationship to Change and Learning

The French anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss called up a simple dichotomy between what he called the “hot” societies of North America, Western Europe, Soviet Russia and even Communist China, and the traditional or “cold” societies of the developing world. The West is oriented fundamentally by a belief in “progress”; where the only constant is change itself, and where god, sexual divisions of labor and even family roles are moribund. Traditional societies are… traditional. There is little to divide the past and the eternal present. “Cold” cultures look to the authority of tradition for the “Truth”, while “hot” cultures see no Truth with a capitol T, but relative truth based on ethical and moral rules continually being influenced by evolving technologies and concomitant shifts in our conceptualization of the world around us.

Traditional cultures tend to use rote learning styles or recitation and a codified body of knowledge rather than participatory learning styles that emphasize innovative problem solving and experimentation. Traditional vocational skills are passed by example from parent to child. “Why do we do it this way?” “Because we always have!”

Some Implications for Education and Training programs designed for Afghans

In such a traditional milieu analytical thinking and creativity are not adaptive. Rote learning and regurgitation of the known “Truth” and known methods is adaptive. Bright children here as in the West learn faster, and remember more accurately. But what they recall is more of a fixed constellation of known “Truth” rather than facts to support inquiry inside a world view of change.

Now, let us introduce the new “facts” of democracy, social equality, gender equity, a focus on creativity rather than re-creation, on analytical deconstruction instead of traditional reaffirmation, on group synergy and cooperation as opposed to insular loyalty and mistrust of the “outsider”... The lack of appreciation of these different sets of beliefs and values; the profoundly different ways in which development experts interact with their world and Afghans interact with theirs is a staggering barrier to present efforts at “development”.

But what is the answer?

I am drawn to take a page from the work of the American social psychologist Robert Bandura and his notion of “internal vs. external locus of control”. First studying school children in several Caribbean countries Bandura came to see these children as often behaving as if they had little or no sense that they had any real impact on what was going on in the world around them. In one experiment children were set up to play a game in which they were to try to throw balls into a basket. The children got to set their own distance from the basket. The children who had scored low on a questionnaire designed to get at “locus of control” would either stand virtually on top of the basket or improbably far away. In the first case, putting the balls in the basket gave no real satisfaction, no “win”, and in the second, no win was possible. The children’s efforts can be seen as completely avoiding risk or relying on pure luck. Both answers are revealing of an attitude that the child has little control over his or her environment and must minimize risk or rely on outside influences: luck, witchcraft, god…

So Bandura set himself a problem. How do you move people from an external locus of control to a more internal one? The answer: initially by making risk less risky. By setting up situations where real and valued gains can overcome the conservative tendency to stick with the known. Immediacy and delay of reward (or consequences) is another important factor. Children who initially would opt for a lesser but immediate pay off learned to delay gratification for a larger reward by making the payoff for delay relatively high and manipulating greater and greater delay while slowly diminishing the exaggerated payoff to a more realistic (real word) level of payoff. Cooperation and trust can be developed in much the same way.

So how can we relate Bandura’s experimental findings to the larger issues on the ground in Afghanistan? The National Development Program (NPD) and the mechanism of Community Development Councils (CDCs), with their existing development funds for projects, could form the nexus of a widespread effort to empower local initiative and entrepreneurship. This model of development offers a relatively secure (safe) environment for innovation. The basic resources needed are already provided for by the NDP’s community development fund, a pool of money allocated to all CDC’s based on the local census). Using this model, political “capacity building” of democratic structures would be a natural outcome of the CDC process. At the same time such local development project would offer tangible and sustainable rewards (results). The process is one of support for cooperative action and community organization that emphasized local but dispersed, decision making instead of reliance on traditional authority.

At the same time it is important that development workers, as change agents, listen and learn just where the communities in which they work are operating on different issues. Development workers can then plan activities that respect where the community values lie and at the level of technical expertise that exists in a given community. Development efforts that are based on realistic levels of change and that do not demand shifts that are not feasible in the current worldview of the people served. Will Afghanistan ever be a “hot” culture with a relativistic ethical code or Western style democracy? Not for a long time to come, but neither do the people of Afghanistan need to cling to the past as a fixed constellation of Truth. There is a way from then to now, the past to the future.

Observations and recommendations from training experiences in Afghanistan that reflect the worldview described:

My wife, Marnie, has added a series of observations here from her many training sessions both in Kabul and in the Provinces over the last year and a half. Here are some examples and tactical training suggestions based on her experience in the field.

“As a result of the world view described and the current state of education programs, which reinforce the traditional outlook, I have attempted to develop programs that achieve the following objectives:

• To increase the participants sense of power over life circumstance-(internal versus external locus of control).

• To construct learning environments and projects in which the participants experience success however small it may be.

• To incorporate into all trainings a component in which the group is introduced to the idea of “world view” (paradigm’s) are is taken through a process in which the participants attempt to describe the Afghan world as an outsider, rather than as one of the ‘fish’ swimming in it’s ‘water’. I challenge the participants to explore this concept in relationship to the Afghan world view, how it dictates their relationships. I then give the participants the opportunity other possible views that will allow for change but maintain what they value most. This one idea of being able to examine ones own basic presupositional view of the world and to step outside it, even for a moment, to consider other possibilities, provides a strong platform for creative inquiry and exploration. I find the participants surprisingly capable of understanding this, although they may eventually tire of the conversation and ask for a “step-by-step” solution.

Training components that are proving successful:

• Trainer’s that work with participants over the long-term (minimum of a year)
• Close relationships are highly valued by Afghans. Given access to a good relationship with a trainer or consultants, most Afghans will demonstrate a high tolerance for incisive and critical conversations, new ideas and mentoring. He/she may participate in small working groups of trusted friends or relatives. By initiating such work in a “trusted” environment a trainer can increase participant’s willingness to engage in innovative and interactive educational methods. Training programs that make use of international consultants who are here for a short time, will generally not have the impact intended except Afghans who have been raised in other countries with Western educational methods.

• Interactive methodology, one-on-one consulting and small working groups
• In most training, technical and soft skills, participants have difficulty transferring their knowledge into practical application. Workshops or trainings that rely solely on didactic delivery for the transfer of ideas or “facts” tend to be preferred by the Afghan trainees, but have little or no lasting impact. Trainings that have follow up components and/or focus more on a consulting or mentoring approaches seem to penetrate the ethos of a “concrete” or fixed reality that deters Afghans from fully appreciating (or taking on) the training material being offered to them. A one-on-one approach also allows the trainer to identify learning assets and deficits and to more accurately provide a learning experience of incremental success that encourages risk taking and change.

• Training exercises that involve some tangible “pay-off” that facilitates the learning process
• Strategically, the idea is to develop training tools and training materials that contain an inherent payoff for creativity and cooperation. To accomplish this end consultants and trainers might set up exercises, or learning situations, that provide opportunities for incremental risk taking with high payoff (an increased probability of success for moderate risk)

• In addition to tactics that might be borrowed from the work of Bandura and other social psychologists who have worked on increasing “internal locus of control”, other “game” models like “the prisoners dilemma” might be used to enhance trust.

• Increasing trust and risk taking behavior in Afghan trainees, through well constructed training programs, can, it is proposed here, facilitate the integration of ideas “outside the box” of the current Afghan world view and thus help to foster positive social and technical change.

Notes On working with Afghan Women leaders (Parliamentarians and Provincial Council):

Democracy and Afghan leadership
Upon examining training gaps, based on our interviews, it appears that a historical Afghan interpretation of what Afghan leaders provide has a large influence over the activities of the Afghan women leaders. Historically, reigning Afghan leaders qualify for this role by being affluent enough to provide goods, services and to intervene in matters of mediation. Afghan leaders have traditionally competed with each other for power. Because of this, the women we interviewed expressed concern about their own lack of connections and money. As women few of them have this access.

At this point in the new Afghan democracy “law making”, “policy making” and “oversight”-the backbone of their job description-are activities viewed as relatively unproductive, especially in the current chaotic political environment. In fact, given Afghan’s experience of law in the post-Taliban reconstruction, “law making” as an activity is met with great skepticism by parliamentarians and constituents a like. Given there is relatively little integrity to the governance structures that enforce the law, why spend so much time making them?

Activities currently being conducted by the parliamentarians are congruent with a perception that leadership entails securing economic advantage for their constituents, by entertaining groups of people from the provinces and approaching ministries and international donors to seek money, services, roads, clinics and schools.

We did not encounter in any of our interviews a woman who had a comprehensive understanding of the role of a parliamentarian in a democratic society; the necessity for coordinating with other governance bodies (provincial councils and ministries) in order to influence change; or the need to work with constituents so that they understand that they have an important role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan; or the necessity of having a healthy civil society implementing programs and services all over the country.

Recommendations for program development:
A bridge between the economic needs of Afghan communities and the need to build a democratic government and society can be found. Developing practical program models that results in tangible outcomes would go a long way toward creating a productive learning environment for Afghan leaders. Most of these leaders simply have no reality that they can draw upon to demonstrate that democracy can work. For issues that relate to economic development the CDC model of programming in which the community Council can apply for funds after certain requirements have been satisfied could be adapted to programs for parliamentarians and provincial council members.

An application procedure for funding that models a democratic lobbying effort could provide an interim training step. Provincial Council Members or parliamentarians could access funding for their provinces as they facilitate consensus building, set up oversight structures, and enlist community investment. Afghan leaders who can manage this process will develop confidence in democratic principles as well as stature as leaders in the eyes of their constituents. This is only an example of how training programs can be set up to require democratic organizing principles to be achieved and at the same time have the participants experience producing a tangible outcome in their role as parliamentarian or provincial council member.

We are working with Afghan leaders who are being required to be leaders at the same time as they are learning what leadership and democracy is. They are citizens of a country that defies change. Our first parliamentarians are not only leaders but teachers who have to educate their constituents to democracy. With their countrymen experiencing such hardship, the concept of “lawfulness” and “due process” are a hard sell. Training programs that take this fact into account and provide follow up support to conceptual trainings –resulting in tangible outcomes for the parliamentarians effort could provide some momentum toward social change in this country.