In August 2021, America left Afghanistan hastily. Wide spread condemnation was poured by the global community, and many found America had created the instability that Afghanistan now faces. However, I argue that the problem with Afghanistan isn’t an American problem, but it is an Islamic problem. Afghanistan is a region of the world that cannot establish a sufficient, reliable form of government. It was a relatively stable region of the world when Islam was stable– and even then it was chaotic. But since Islam is fragmented, Afghanistan is also fragmented.
Islam The Religion
Islam’s power structure was set right after the Prophet Muhammad’s death and brought relative stability to the religion. When the Prophet Muhammad died in 632, it left a power vacuum that Islam had struggled to maintain in the beginning. The four pious Caliphs or the Rashidun Caliphs– rightly guided caliphs– essentially established the practical backbone of Islam. The Qur’an was codified in written form, the Caliph was established as the authoritative, executive figure of Sharia law, and the Ulama were the scholars who interpreted Islamic law and issued fatwas on what Islam decreed was Islamic law. This system is much like the Rabbinic system with the Oral Torah in Judaism, where the Rabbis would argue with one another for their interpretation of what the letter and spirit of the Torah meant and the best argument was the interpretation that the Jewish community followed. The Prophet Muhammad was both the Caliph and Ulama when he lived, and the Prophet Muhammad’s companions separated both powers into separate and distinct entities. The Caliph was a political figure while the Ulama were strictly religious figures. The Caliph could not have any influence over the Ulama to taint God’s law into obscurity and unrighteousness. And this system was essentially the Caliphates’ governmental structure that ruled in Islamic history, from the Umayyads to the Abbasids to the Ottomans.
Afghanistan and Islam
Afghanistan is essentially a composition of many diverse tribes adverse to one another. When adversarial powers invaded Afghanistan, the tribes would unite and expel the enemy from their land. And then, they would recommence their animus against one another after they expelled the enemy. The four biggest tribes are the Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras. The Pashtuns are the biggest tribe in Afghanistan, and the Taliban is essentially a Pashtun militant group. One credit to the Prophet Muhammad was his ability to unify all people of all economic, cultural, and political backgrounds under Islamic identity. In fact, that was one of his major goals in Mecca, among several reasons for which the Quraysh tribe went to war against him over. Even though the tribes fight against one another, their identity of being Muslim unified them and brought stability to the land. This made the aforementioned Afghan tribes relatively peaceful as they both share Islam as their religion.
Islam Deteriorating
Since 1923, Islam has essentially been fragmented and impaired. The Ottoman Caliphate was dissolved and with it, the Caliph and Ulama dissolved. The Ottoman Caliphate’s regions were suddenly free and various leaders were trying desperately to rule over them as nation-states such as the famous Hashemite King Faisal I of Iraq– Hashemite is a designation for the Prophet Muhammad’s descendants. Kemal Ataturk essentially ended the Ottoman Caliphate when he promoted Turkish Nationalism to create modern-day Turkey under the days of European Nationalism in the 1920s, something the radical wing of the Young Turks pushed strongly for. It left the Ottoman regions in the British and French hands to have their way with them and fueled colonialism that much more.
And even more than this, Pan-Arabism was the popular ideology in the Middle East during that time, and many leaders such as Gamal Nasser were its greatest champions internationally. And Islam’s place of origin, Saudi Arabia, follows the strictest school of thought in Sunni Islamic law, and the Ulama is systematically corrupted by the Saudi royals and issues fatwas in their favor. Thus, Islamic law is fragmented and isn’t as powerful since the Caliphate has dissolved, on top of being behind the times in adjusting and commenting on today’s issues, which has left Islam a bit theologically crippled.
Moreover, the nation-state and Pan Arabism are antithetical to Islam because it segments and separates the Ummah– or the Muslim community– and creates divisions that the Prophet Muhammad tried to eliminate. One must understand that Islam has never been in a state of fragmentation like this in its history for this long where there wasn’t a dominant Caliphate uniting the Ummah. Additionally, Islam has been invaded by Western ideas that seek to change the first principles of Islam and convert it into a western religion. Various fractions in Islam have objected to this, as the prominent scholar Sayyid Qutb famously argued against in “The Milestones.” With this, Afghanistan remains fragmented and the tribes continue to fight one another for supremacy over the land.
America’s Limits In Reshaping Afghanistan
With the state of affairs, America could not have succeeded in creating any stable government in Afghanistan. For one, if the goal was to establish democracy in Afghanistan, that would have been nearly impossible. One thing people must understand is that Islam doesn’t have human rights in its religion. It simply doesn’t exist. Also, it has an institutional memory of being ruled by a strong Caliph and wise Ulama. A democracy is a foreign, western invention that requires the people to participate in key decisions the state has to make. But this is totally alien to Islam; in fact, it could even be sacrilegious since it divorces God from the state and renders him weak because he does not have sovereign rule over the state’s affairs. In essence, democracy could not have worked in Afghanistan, nor could it have worked in the Middle East in general.
Secondly, if the goal was to establish a stable government in Afghanistan, most likely, that also would not have worked. China is the new kid in town in the geopolitical landscape, and Pakistan is its ally. China would undoubtedly try to create division and enact a coup d’etat if that government would not want to ally with them or at least create economic instability if the government doesn’t sate their interests, and even then China would try to use soft power mechanisms to desiccate American influence in the region and indirectly convert Afghanistan into its own image and likeness. China would ultimately enlist Pakistan’s help and cause a change of government that ultimately would have been Pashtun-led since they are the biggest tribe with the most political power in Afghanistan– and the logical choice would have been to have the Taliban rule over Afghanistan. Either way, I see the Taliban taking over Afghanistan regardless unless America would stay in Afghanistan indefinitely, and that could not have happened for obvious political and economic reasons.
Conclusion
I believe the solution in Afghanistan is for Islam to find its stability and power back again. Since the tribes in Afghanistan are Muslim, a stable Islam will ensure that it can unite Afghanistan with other Middle Eastern states under the Caliphate. And the nation-state will cease since it is against Islam and ultimately deleterious for the stability in the Middle East. Thus, Afghanistan is a Islamic problem rather than an American problem. America dealt with a dysfunctional Afghanistan when it first invaded it rather than creating a dysfunctional Afghanistan. Fixing Afghanistan is Islam’s responsibility.