Afghanistan has been a target in the cross hairs of Western media since the late 1970s. Up to that time, only political scientists took any notice of the political rivalries between the two opposing blocs in this ‘oh-so-peaceful’ country. But the coup d’état of 1978 and the ensuing Soviet intervention of December 1979 plunged the country into the ongoing drama of the Cold War. The USSR, it seemed, had taken a giant step on its path towards the ‘warm seas’.
Across the country, revolts broke out against the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, and refugees by the thousand, and soon by the hundreds of thousands, sought refuge in Pakistan and Iran. NGOs on site alerted world opinion to the difficult conditions in which refugees found themselves and to the repressions and atrocities taking place inside Afghanistan. Support groups welled up all over the West, provoked by humanitarian conscience and, perhaps, by anti-Soviet sentiments. In Switzerland a Committee for the Support of the Afghan People was created, its objective being to increase awareness of the Afghan situation among politicians and the media. Its press organ, Afghanistan Info, an analytical and documentary periodical, was, from the very beginning, published in French, German and English. The editorship was entrusted to me, an anthropologist familiar with Afghanistan since the 1960s. Seventy-five issues have appeared since its inception.
In 1980, when I became editor of Afghanistan Info, my relations with Afghanistan were marked by long, on-site field trips to the country, following other research in Iran. My memories of those field trips were, and still are, inseparable from the sumptuous beauty of the countryside and the equally gracious and generous hospitality of its inhabitants. These stays and experiences were shared by my husband, Dr Pierre Centlivres. Between two such research periods we lived in Kabul, in close contact with Afghan and foreign friends and colleagues, most of whom were the anthropologists, teachers and archaeologists who would later become the first collaborators on Afghanistan Info.
Following the events of 1978 and 1979, the ‘time of innocence’, truly quite illusory, became a distant memory, as inexorable as it was inaccessible, like the north and central Afghanistan terrains. Publishing Afghanistan Info was therefore designed to inform the Swiss parliament and the public at large of the faraway, worrying news. It was also a way to settle a debt my husband and I felt we owed to the country and its people.
The authors represented in Afghanistan Info, both Afghan and non-Afghan, are experts on the country or witnesses to its recent history. The instructions given to them were clear and rigorous: speak the essentials in a maximum of two to three pages. After more than 35 years of the journal, this ‘Best of’ brings together, in chronological order, the most pertinent articles concerning the recent history of Afghanistan. The fields covered include political and military events, the role of ethnic groups in the crisis, religion and ideology, the role of the leaders and war chiefs of the period (from the anti-Soviet resistance to the presidency of Hamid Karzai), economic issues, particularly agriculture, civil society and state reconstruction programmes, and Afghan cultural heritage.
Organized diachronically, this collection offers an overview of the evolution of the Afghan crisis and the re-evaluation of its nature and causes, as well as its future. It is a contribution, of unique and diverse views, to the history of a period marked by internal conflicts and foreign intervention as well as by an unprecedented transformation of Afghan society. It also reflects a diversity of experiences and viewpoints of authors, scholars and witnesses in domains as varied as political science, economics, anthropology, musicology, history and architecture.
I should like to express my gratitude to the authors, firstly, for their voluntary contributions to the Afghanistan Info news bulletin; secondly, for their fortitude, as a number of them appear more than once in the collection; and, thirdly, for their permission to reprint their articles in this compilation.
Aware of the interest a publication such as this evokes, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Berne, has graciously agreed to support the project financially, for which I am extremely grateful. I particularly wish to thank Frank Wiederkehr, Programme Manager Afghanistan, for his encouragement.
Olivier Roy, a long-standing friend, agreed to write the introduction, for which I should like to offer my warmest thanks.
Sincere thanks go to Patrick Camiller, who was responsible for translating those articles originally in French and German into English, and to Anaïs Laurent who proofread the appendices and translated the preface. My thanks also go to the faithful readers of Afghanistan Info, who by their gifts have made the publication of this work possible.
Lastly, this book would never have seen the light of day without the encouragement of my husband, Pierre Centlivres, who not only collaborated on the publication of Afghanistan Info from the very first issue but also backed the project from its inception. I am indebted to him for his help and suggestions.
Micheline Centlivres-Demont