Book Review

Barnet R. Rubin’s book titled “The Fragmentation of Afghanistan” is a very comprehensive in-depth study of the Afghan history and the reasons behind the disintegration of the Afghan society and failure of the state.   The first part of the book mostly goes through the days of the Musaheban family, especially Zaher Shah and Daud Khan’s regimes and the politics, and perceives that in the days of Zahir Shah’s regime and politics the new activists were born in the pathways of Kabul University. It deeply describes the reasons and stages of the formation of communists and Islamists evolved and sponsored by the foreign governments through the end of Daud’s regime. The second part of the book discusses the development of the communists since their overtaking as Marxist revolutionary agnostic to the days when Najibullah was quoting the Holy Quran. It clearly explains the changes in the policies of the regimes as signs of the larger changes in international politics. It also quantifies the decline of the Afghan economy and the devastating control of the Soviets over its “communist pawns”. The last part of the book is an expedition into the life and policies of the regimes and the role of the Pakistan ISI in the day-to-day operations of those regimes. Overall this book provides an account of the nature of old regime, the rise and fall of the PDPA, and the Mujahedin resistance.

According to his thesis, the author argues that the main reasons behind the fragmentation of Afghanistan and disorder in the Afghan Society due to Afghanistan’s tribal structure and ethnic multiplicity has been intentionally amplified by the outside powers and internal parties seeking to dominate. Moreover, he argues that outside aids has played critical role in facilitating central leaders to maintain power and to force different ethnicities and tribes to consolidate, and that when the aid runs out for some reasons, the leaders are left helpless and quickly loses power to internal dominant parties...