The Foreign Service Journal, December 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2014 35 e ensuing policy of emptying rural areas, which the his- torian Louis Dupree describes as “migratory genocide,” undid the tribal structure of authority. e new structure made no sense in Afghanistan’s rural or urban areas, or in the refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran to which millions of Afghans ed. It led to an Islamist reaction, which radicalized politics and religion, taking the latter far beyond its traditional function of regulating daily life. e in ux of arms and the formation of Islamist mujahe- deen groups during the resistance to the Soviet occupation created new sources of power and even more radical ideolo- gies. is also transformed Afghans’ traditional, quasi-ceremo- nial use of violence to resolve con icts between communities into a pattern of atrocities. e defeat of communism tempo- rarily legitimized the Islamist factions, but was insu cient as a governing ideology or a means of uniting these factions. 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 conflict. Casey Garret Johnson A young girl accompanies her mother into a voting booth in a secondary school in Kabul during the second round of the 2014 presidential elections. Casey Garret Johnson