From Kabul to Kiev: Afghan trading networks across the former Soviet Union

Abstract

AbstractWhile the territory of Afghanistan is widely connected in the popular and historical imagination to long-distance trade, Afghan society continues to be popularly represented as being made-up of ‘tribes’, who subscribe to static ‘honour codes’, and tenaciously cling to archaic tribal values. This article examines the significance of traders of Afghan background to commodity flows across a wide range of contexts in the former Soviet Union, especially in Russia and Ukraine and the Muslim-majority Central Asian Republics. It charts the social and political backgrounds of the merchants who make up this trading network, the nature of their connections to one another and the forms of mobility that make these connections possible, their complex relations with the communities amongst whom they live, and the types of moral value they attach to their work as traders.