The Foreign Service Journal, December 2014

34 DECEMBER 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL e messy political transition that Afghanistan underwent this year revealed the continuing in uence of deep-seated political realities that constrain the country’s political mod- ernization. (“Political modernization” is a broad term, but the best de nition is still probably the one provided by Samuel Huntington in Political Order and Changing Societies : ratio- nalization of authority, di erentiation and specialization of political functions, and popular participation.) If we are to make the most of our investment in Afghani- stan, the task now is to identify the traditional features of Afghanistan that endure, and to distinguish the tangible and substantive changes that will redirect Afghanistan’s political destiny from those that are merely super cial. In the following pages I o er some pointers to assist in that task. Three Pillars For most of the 20th century, Afghanistan was a poor, tran- quil, slowly developing country. e three pillars of stability were a moderate form of Islam that regulated daily life, a tribal organization of society based on norms of traditional leader- ship and a state dominated by royalty that had two essential functions: to represent Afghanistan to the world as an inde- pendent and Islamic entity, and to mediate internal con icts when necessary. Each of these pillars was fundamentally transformed by Afghanistan’s clash with modernity in a way that turned them from bases of stability into sources of con ict. e clash, which began with the 1973 coup by Mohammed Daoud Khan against his cousin, King Zahir Shah, became irreversible with the communist coup of 1978. Burkha-clad women window-shop for jewelry at the gold market in Herat city.