AFGHANISTAN WAR | ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Browsing All Posts filed under »AFGHANISTAN WAR«

Distorting Theory and Misreading Society in Afghanistan

November 24, 2013 by M. Jamil Hanifi

This is in response to M. Nazif Shahrani’s piece titled “The Taliban Enigma: Person-Centered Politics & Extremism in Afghanistan” published in ISIM Newsletter 6, October 2000, pp. 20-21. Crucial ethnographic details, structural principles and historical processes, especially those dealing with social inequality and political instability in contemporary Afghanistan, are misunderstood, garbled, and oversimplified by the […]

Colonial Feminism, Liberal “Progress,” and the Weakness of the Left

October 12, 2013 by Brendan Stone

[Max Forte: Welcome to Brendan Stone who, along with Donnchadh Mac an Ghoill, joins ZA as a writer.] In view of Quebec’s Charter debate, the resurgence of discussions of the burqa and the niqab, and the continuing stories in the Western press of women’s oppression in Afghanistan, readers may be interested in this update of a paper written in […]

Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, or the “Top Thinker” in the World Scouting for the Empire in Afghanistan

September 5, 2013 by M. Jamil Hanifi

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The postings on the website 8Sobh (8Morning) dated 6 Sonbola 1392 (August 7, 2013) include an article in Farsi titled “Fasl-e natamom dar tarikh-e Afghanistan” (an incomplete chapter in the history of Afghanistan) by Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai (aka “Ashraf” and “Ashraf Ghani”– His website http://ashrafghani.com/profile-dari/ is under the name “Ashraf Ghani”. There is absolutely nothing original in this article and other […]

Drones and the Production of Terror in Afghanistan

April 23, 2013 by M. Jamil Hanifi

In his “Drone Strikes” (Anthropology News, March/April 2013) Daniel Varisco softly counsels the raging and confused American warfare machine about the futility of its bloody military operations in the lands of the Others in pursuit of its sadomasochistic “war on terror”. I partially agree with Daniel Varisco; yes, the acts of terror committed by the […]

A Massacre for a Moral Martyr: ‘Person’ versus ‘Population’ in Humanitarianized Afghanistan

April 14, 2013 by Maximilian Forte

Massacred by “Good Intentions”? On April 7, 2013, the BBC reported this awful story, one of a long string of such NATO airstrikes on areas with civilian populations in Afghanistan: “Eleven children have been killed in a Nato air strike in eastern Afghanistan, officials and witnesses say. At least one woman was reportedly killed and […]

John’s Final Epistle to The Anthropologists, Part I: The Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) at the Climax of the Neolithic

March 30, 2013 by John Allison

Peeping through a Keyhole, Down upon My Knees We are virtually here to discuss with you something that I would call InTRADOCtrination: Intelligent Design for Retraining the Masses The Mission?: We suggest that it is The Locking-In: The Prison-Industrial Complex, well-documented and contextualized by Angela Davis. In fact, she traces my essay’s central themes. You Say You Want […]