Citizenship in Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: civic education without citizens?

Abstract

This article seeks to find out how the idea of citizen was conceptualised in civic education in Islamic Republic of Afghanistan during the Western-led state-building process (2001–2021). To this end, textbooks of Civic Education are examined and discussed in the light of the interviews conducted at the Ministry of Education in Kabul in 2018. The major finding is that the textbooks of Civic Education present a content almost entirely without citizens. Instead, they reveal a ‘localised’ conceptualisation of the state and democracy in Afghanistan, the first described as an Islamic state; the latter shaped by the pattern of the Loya Jirga (Grand Council). In this picture, ‘citizen’ appears randomly a few times, either as tab’a (subject/national) or shahrwand (citizen), caught between a conceptual dichotomy. Revealing important clues about the sociology of Afghanistan, the article concludes that the Civic Education textbooks do not reflect a specific goal for generating citizens.