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Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad. David B. Edwards. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. 354 pp.
David B. Edwards has become known popularly as a specialist on Afghanistan. He taught English in Kabul during the 1970s but has not conducted field research inside the country. The author was "drawn to Afghanistan by exotic tales and camel caravans, turbaned tribesmen, and women in veils" (p. 10). Using information from Persian language taped biographical accounts and some English texts, he attempts to provide an understanding of the interface between Islam, state, and tribe in Afghanistan and in so doing he wishes to "uncover the origins of the jihad" (p. xix) in that country.
Before Taliban is the "sequel" to the author's 1996 work in which he alleges "moral fault lines" within Islam, state, and tribe and between these components of Afghan polity. The latter book was based on biographical narratives of three heroic, "larger-than-life," figures in Afghanistan. The counterparts in the current volume to these three figures are three "not larger-than-life" individuals.
Edwards sets out to interrogate Islam, state, and tribe in Afghanistan. But very quickly and for unexplained reasons this emphasis is reduced to Islam, rule, and honor and these are in turn downsized to the idiosyncrasies of specific individuals. Those Edwards has selected to represent Islam and tribe are members of the urban elite among whom he lived in Kabul and Peshawar. He acknowledges this narrow orientation but offers that he was "not in a position to conduct the necessary research" among ordinary Afghans-"noncombatants" and "women in particular" (p. xviii)-who made up the bulk of the population and the millions of Afghan migrants who moved to Peshawar and vicinity. Unfortunately, Edwards's study results in precisely what he justifiably critiques in the works of others when he notes that, "Western attempts to understand Afghans and Afghanistan since the onset of the war in 1978 have centered largely on stereotypes and personifications" (p. 16).
Part 1 deals with the background and political career of Nur Muhammad Taraki, the first Ghalzai president of Afghanistan after the Muhammadzai dynasty was overthrown in April 1978. The English language newspapers, Kabul Times and Kabul New Times, and a U.S. government publication (Foreign Broadcast Information Service, South Asia Review) are...