Afghanistan is a land that has stood on the threshold of civilization for more than a century, yet each time it has neared progress, it has been pushed backward again. Over the same period, our neighbors embarked on nation-building and modernization: Turkey established a republic, Iran experienced constitutional reform followed by Reza Shah’s modernization drive, and India, even under colonial rule, nurtured its civic institutions and later achieved independence. Afghanistan, however, remains trapped between tribalism and nationhood, between primitiveness and modernity. This historical stagnation was no accident. It was an engineered backwardness, a condition partly created by a century of self-serving Afghan politicians and elites. Every time a historic opportunity for transformation arose, the country’s leaders chose to strengthen their tribes instead of their nation. They sought legitimacy through kinship rather than citizenship. Yet tribal power has never been capable of rescuing either the rulers or the people. This recurring pattern may well be called Afghanistan’s cursed politics.
Our history shows a consistent tragedy: leaders have always entered the stage with national slogans, only to retreat into the embrace of their tribes. King Amanullah Khan came to power under the banner of modernization, but his downfall emerged from within the tribal heartlands. Mohammad Daoud Khan declared a republic, yet the foundations of his power remained deeply ethnic. After the fall of communism, the mujahideen had a chance to build a national state, but each faction relied on its own tribe and foreign patrons, turning Kabul into ruins. The Taliban, who rose in the 1990s promising justice and security, soon revealed their true nature as a tribal movement cloaked in religious garb. In the past two decades, both Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani came to power with the rhetoric of nation-building, yet both structured their governments around narrow tribal loyalties. Even non-Pashtun leaders, Tajik, Hazara, and Uzbek, were caught in the same cycle. They entered politics with national promises, but in practice relied on their local kinship networks, ultimately losing the trust of the very people who had believed in them. The cycle has always been the same: national rhetoric, tribal practice, public disillusionment, and state collapse.
The problem, however, was not purely domestic. Foreign policy, too, became a tool in the same vicious game. From the reign of Abdur Rahman Khan to the present day, every time one tribe held power in Kabul, another sought help from foreign powers to overthrow it. Abdur Rahman consolidated his rule by aligning with the British and accepting the Durand Line. During the Cold War, Pashtun leaders leaned toward Britain and the United States, while Tajik, Hazara, and Uzbek factions at times turned to the Soviet Union or Iran. In the 1990s, each mujahideen group became dependent on its foreign sponsor, plunging the country into civil war. The Taliban, nurtured in Pakistan, turned Afghanistan into an instrument of Islamabad’s regional agenda. Under Karzai and Ghani, foreign policy largely served to secure external support for their personal and tribal survival rather than national interest. Instead of connecting Afghanistan to the world, diplomacy became another weapon in the tribal arsenal. Foreign powers understood this weakness perfectly: granting favors to one tribe was enough to destabilize the entire state. This predicament is deeply rooted in Afghanistan’s social and psychological structure. Society remains organized around ethnicity rather than citizenship. Loyalty belongs to the tribe, not to the law. Because the state has always been used as an instrument of one group against another, public trust in it has never taken root. People have learned to rely on their tribe for survival, not on the nation for unity.
From a political-psychological perspective, the cycle is clear: Afghan politicians have always feared that if they share power, both they and their tribe will be destroyed. Thus, they cling to power exclusively. Ordinary people live with the same fear, believing that if “their man” is not in power, their rights will be trampled. The tragedy, however, lies in the fact that the people have always suffered the most from their own so-called “representatives.” Those who proudly claim to speak for their tribe are often the very ones who betray their own people. If today, in Kunar, Herat, or Badakhshan, people die in earthquakes for lack of roads and hospitals, we must ask: what did the Tajik, Hazara, Pashtun, and Uzbek leaders do during the twenty years when Afghanistan was awash with American dollars? And what are the Taliban doing now, who claim to represent those same ethnic groups? What have the provincial politicians, who sat in office for years, offered their people besides corruption, deal-making, and tribal favoritism? This is exactly what Ibn Khaldun warned centuries ago: states that remain bound by tribal solidarity have short lives. To endure, they must transcend the tribe and reach a broader civic cohesion. In Afghanistan, no government has ever managed to rise beyond this level. Dr. Ali Shariati also cautioned that nation-building is impossible when leaders speak the language of nationalism but remain captives of ethnicity and class in practice. A true leader must move beyond the boundaries of the tribe and think in terms of justice and inclusiveness. Today, the tribe, disguised as religion and politics, even in exile, continues to play its role, and Afghanistan is trapped in the darkest chapter of this cycle. The Taliban no longer even pretends to uphold a genuine national or Islamic ideal; they have been reduced to a single tribe interpreting everything through its narrow lens. The Hanafi jurisprudence, once a school of justice and rationality, has become an instrument of tribalism in their hands, where ignorance replaces wisdom, and religion is reinterpreted to consolidate tribal rule. Their fanaticism runs so deep that they regard modern institutions as enemies: universities, media, books, beauty salons, music, and even the internet. When they ordered a two-day internet blackout, it showed how a purely tribal decision could inflict massive damage on a nation’s economy and even undermine their own grip on power. Eventually, the Taliban were forced to reconnect it, without realizing that the internet itself symbolizes the transition from tribe to nation, a bridge between custom and law, between desert and city.
On the other side stand the representatives of other tribes, the so-called Taliban opponents in exile. From abroad, they seek to weaken the Taliban regime by every possible means. Yet the problem remains: no one trusts them. The Afghan public has witnessed time and again that opposition figures in exile are also entangled in the same web of tribalism. Each small group claims to represent a single ethnicity, and instead of building a national project, they chase personal or regional privileges.
The fundamental questions are these:
- Who, among the diverse peoples of Afghanistan, will finally turn their back on this tribal legacy?
- Who will be willing to sacrifice personal and tribal interests for the sake of the people and the nation?
- Will there ever come a day when an Afghan leader ceases to be a tribal chief and becomes the imam of a nation?
- And until that day arrives, how many more times must this land pay the price, fall, and rise again from the ashes?
The consequences of this cycle are all too clear: Afghanistan and its people have yet to become a nation. The public trusts neither themselves nor the state, and foreign policy remains anything but national. Historic opportunities have been squandered, and artificial backwardness persists. Yet this curse can be broken if three essential conditions are met.
First, Afghanistan must have a leader who sees himself as the guide of all the people, not the head of a single tribe.
Second, power must be distributed and interpreted through law, not through ethnic or regional affiliation.
Third, politicians must learn that power is the trust of the nation, not personal property, nor the inheritance of a tribe.
Intellectuals and politicians alike must rely on their own society, not on foreign powers. Foreign policy must free itself from tribal constraints and serve the interests of the entire nation. For a century, Afghan politicians have toyed with their land and people, each generation with new slogans but the same old mindset. The question is: how long will Afghan leaders continue to favor tribe over nation? And how long will we, the people, keep falling for the same repetitive game? Unless we confront these questions and awaken as a people, the curse of politics will remain forever, casting its shadow over this land.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:
