Political Legitimation in Contemporary Afghanistan

Abstract

In an article published in 1984, the American journalist Selig Harrison argued that the concept of legitimacy has little meaning against the backdrop of recent Afghan political history.1I This is a startling claim, for as Dolf Sternberger has suggested, is hard to discover any sort of historical government that did not either enjoy widespread authentic recognition of its existence or try to win such recognition.2 In sharp contrast to Harrison, one can plausibly argue that it is impossible to understand the state of contemporary Afghan politics without adverting to the problems of legitimacy and legitimation that confront the present regime in Kabul, which was brought to office by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 27, 1979. This paper opens with some general observations about legitimation in communist political systems. It then considers the historical patterns of loyalties in Afghanistan, explores the implications of these patterns for the consolidation of the Kabul regime, and suggests why it is that a number of the legitimation devices typically deployed in communist countries have proved defective in Afghanistan. Finally, it sets out some conclusions about both short-term and long-term strategies being pursued by the regime to increase its legitimacy, and puts forward some views about their likely effects. A necessary qualification is that the approach of this paper is general, and that it is usually possible to advance examples countering any generalizations about problems of legitimation in Afghan politics. However, as is often the case in politics, gen-