Exporting Racism: Imperial Interventions and the Occupation with Pashtun Culture

Abstract

This paper explores the racial dimensions of western military and political interventions and asks whether the sociology of race and ethnicity can provide the critical lens by which to understand conflict and the evolution of ethnic tensions in present day Afghanistan. Drawing on the sociology of race and ethnicity I argue that ethnic conflict in Afghanistan is not disconnected from western imperial projects in the region which frame the Pashtun peoples as the pre-modern and violent ‘bad Muslims’. I consider colonial texts related to British India and examine the role of colonial policies of aggression in framing Pashtuns as the cultural ‘Others’. I also draw attention to contemporary discourses about the post 9–11 invasion of Afghanistan and show the linkages between, racial discourses exported by western military and political interventions, and local articulations of Pashtun ethnic identity. I argue that local articulations of Pashtun ethnic as cultural ‘Others’ are not isolated from the broader contexts of colonial power and imperial legacies of domination. Rather, knowledge about the Pashtun identity is closely linked to racialized discourses exported by imperial interventions.