ISSN 2562-9948
Review of: Afghanistan Post-2014: Power Configurations and Evolving Tragectories. Edited by Rajen Harshe’ and Dhananjay Tripathi. (New Delhi: Routledge), 2016, pp. xix+248. The colonial and postcolonial writings about of Afghanistan are marked by the absence of a systematic and critical awareness about the country as an offspring and dependency of Western colonialism. The ethnographic, historic […]
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In the name of liberating Afghan women several American feminist organizations joined forces with various American Zionist groups (including the Zionist “neocons”), manufacturers of weapons, and other American militarist groups to invade Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 incident. There is a substantial volume of academic and popular literature dealing with this general subject. This […]
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The military occupation of Afghanistan by the United States and its partners has spawned floods of popular and academic writings and visual effects about the culture, history and politics of the country. A leading contributor to these stores of information about Afghanistan is Thomas Jefferson Barfield, currently professor of anthropology at Boston University and president […]
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This is in response to M. Nazif Shahrani’s piece titled “The Taliban Enigma: Person-Centered Politics & Extremism in Afghanistan” published in ISIM Newsletter 6, October 2000, pp. 20-21. Crucial ethnographic details, structural principles and historical processes, especially those dealing with social inequality and political instability in contemporary Afghanistan, are misunderstood, garbled, and oversimplified by the […]
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In his “Drone Strikes” (Anthropology News, March/April 2013) Daniel Varisco softly counsels the raging and confused American warfare machine about the futility of its bloody military operations in the lands of the Others in pursuit of its sadomasochistic “war on terror”. I partially agree with Daniel Varisco; yes, the acts of terror committed by the […]
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The letter signed by “Mehdi Mohammadzadeh” (MM) in the March/April 2013 issue of Anthropology News contains a number of ethnographic, political and ethical issues which I wish to address. The letter is heavily tinted with strains of occidentosis (Farsi, gharbzadagi). MM has either misunderstood C. K. Mahmood’s comment in AN 53(9), 2012 or is interested […]
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First published in Critique of Anthropology, 2011, 31(3) 256–270 Review Essay: Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010, xi + 389 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-14568-6. $29.95 (hbk) The destabilization and military occupation of Afghanistan by the United States over the past three decades has triggered the hasty production of […]
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The information and discussion about the activities of and the accumulation of various forms of capital by some Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs)—all in South America—is interesting (Anthropology News, December 2011, March 2012). President John Kennedy adapted the blast “ask not what this country can do for you, ask what you can do for this country” […]
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In the words of U. S. representative Michael Honda the U.S. war of terror in Afghanistan has become the longest and “everlasting war” in the history of the United States. The vulgar asymmetry and injustice of this so called “war” has prompted its pre-industrial victims in Afghanistan and the surrounding region and their global supporters […]
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The down fall of Hosni Mobarak, the “blessed amicable”, will have profound consequences for the corrupting American presence in the region. The expulsion of Hosni will mean one less major obstacle to peace and justice in the Middle East. Egypt under Mobarak and Saudi Arabia are the two most corrupt pro-fascist, pro-Israeli regimes in the […]
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The military and civilian forces of the United States should leave Afghanistan. The American government has morally and politically disqualified itself from involvement in Afghanistan (and every other place in the world). This freaked out and dark minded killing machine has no business in the affairs of other people. During the past sixty years everything […]
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The occupation of Afghanistan by the United States is not only based on misguided policies, denials of truth and glaring political realities, it is also guided by ignorance and profoundly distorted understandings of the cultural and social complexities of this devastated country. A major source of these distortions and misrepresentations is a small number of […]
Read More…By M. Jamil Hanifi & Maximilian C. Forte The Telling of a Tale There is no “scoop” in Joel Brinkley’s article, “Afghanistan’s dirty little secret” (29 August 2010, San Francisco Chronicle)—just an ugly sensationalist title on a story already abundantly covered by PBS Frontline months ago (see: “The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan”). What is more […]
Read More…The diary of Ted the Tongue reveals more about the poverty of the academic thinking and conduct that provisions the “Comparative Cultural Competence” (or is it “Cross-Cultural Competence”?) component of the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS) than the colorful background and confused imaginings of a young American adventurer in the guise of anthropologist and […]
Read More…TIME: What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan (story) BOING BOING: What Still Happened Despite 10 Years of Occupying Afghanistan (story) ZERO ANTHRO: What Happens When We Don’t Fix Problems at Home (story) The August 9th TIME magazine cover story is about a young Afghan woman whose nose and ears have been allegedly “mutilated” by the Taleban. […]
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ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY 