filehnuh

Jun 21, 2026 04:57 · 1:00:00 · English · Whisper Large V3 · 8 & Kefluniañ
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0:58
S… Speaker 6 (filehnuh)
Yay.
0:59
S… Speaker 5 (filehnuh)
Hello,
1:52
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
good morning.
1:53
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
Anybody can hear me?
1:56
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Salam,
1:58
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
salam.
1:58
S… Speaker 4 (filehnuh)
Salam, Dr.
1:59
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
Sir. Salam, salam.
1:59
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
Yes,
2:01
S… Speaker 7 (filehnuh)
hello, everyone.
2:01
S… Speaker 4 (filehnuh)
Hello,
2:02
S… Speaker 7 (filehnuh)
Professor Tim.
2:03
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Hello,
2:04
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
how are your voice?
2:05
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Yeah. Professor
2:09
S… Speaker 7 (filehnuh)
Tim, I can't hear you well.
2:11
S… Speaker 5 (filehnuh)
How
2:36
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
is that?
2:37
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Better?
2:37
S… Speaker 5 (filehnuh)
Any
2:52
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
distance?
2:52
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
It's just a little
2:56
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
quiet.
2:57
S… Speaker 5 (filehnuh)
Yeah,
3:30
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I'm not sure.
3:30
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
My kids play with the computer quite a bit.
3:33
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I'm a 12 -year -old.
3:36
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
I cannot hear you,
3:37
S… Speaker 8 (filehnuh)
Sota.
3:38
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
It came from very far.
3:40
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
It's kind of dull.
3:41
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
The sound,
3:42
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
I can't hear you very well.
3:43
S… Speaker 5 (filehnuh)
I
3:50
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
apologize.
3:51
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I'm not sure what to do.
3:52
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
But the good thing is I am not the main speaker here.
3:55
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
So I think,
3:59
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Professor Nurastani,
4:00
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
should we get started?
4:02
S… Speaker 5 (filehnuh)
My students
4:14
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
also, do I have a faint sound?
4:17
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
The audibility
4:23
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
isn't great.
4:34
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
I think you're mute.
4:36
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Oh,
4:37
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
sorry.
4:37
S… Speaker 7 (filehnuh)
Should I start,
4:39
S… Speaker 7 (filehnuh)
Professor Tim?
5:54
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I think some of my students are having trouble joining the
5:59
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Zoom link.
6:00
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
I don't know.
6:02
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I can see some of my students here.
6:06
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
See
6:12
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
the names.
6:12
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
I
6:18
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
think he left.
6:21
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Yeah, they need to be admitted into the session.
6:24
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
Is
6:29
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
anyone else the host right now?
6:31
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
Oh,
6:32
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Professor is here.
6:33
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Professor Tim,
6:37
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
can you hear me?
6:38
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
Yes,
6:42
S… Speaker 4 (filehnuh)
I can hear you.
6:43
S… Speaker 4 (filehnuh)
I'm not sure about audio.
6:45
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
Okay,
6:46
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
some of my students,
6:48
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
they're still waiting for the host to let them in.
6:52
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Do you see any requests there
6:56
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
from students?
6:58
S… Speaker 4 (filehnuh)
I just let them all in.
7:00
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
Okay.
7:01
S… Speaker 4 (filehnuh)
Is my audio any better?
7:03
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Not really.
7:07
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
But you can type if you have questions.
7:10
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Perhaps we can chat or something.
7:12
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Sometimes it might be better.
7:13
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Yeah.
7:16
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
Okay.
7:19
S… Speaker 4 (filehnuh)
Should we get started,
7:20
S… Speaker 4 (filehnuh)
Professor Nuristani?
7:21
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
Yeah,
7:23
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
sure.
7:23
S… Speaker 3 (filehnuh)
Well,
7:27
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
good morning,
7:28
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
good afternoon,
7:29
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
good evening to all students,
7:30
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Professor Tim Nusrati and our guest,
7:34
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Dr.
7:34
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Omar Sharifi.
7:36
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Professor Tim,
7:37
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
it's always good to see you and your students.
7:39
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So this is an AUF
7:44
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
and University of Maryland global classroom that
7:49
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
we conduct on a semester basis.
7:53
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So it's always good to see students
7:57
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
on both sides.
7:58
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
They collaborate and sometimes we assign
8:02
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
readings and they have discussions in the class and often we bring in guest speaker.
8:06
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I think the last guest speaker was David Sidney and this time it's Dr.
8:10
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Omar Sharifi.
8:11
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So it's good to have you,
8:12
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Dr.
8:13
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Omar Sharifi.
8:13
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So today we are joined by a very special guest.
8:17
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I'm pleased to introduce Dr.
8:19
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Omar Sharifi,
8:20
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
who is...
8:21
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
who will speak on state building as a theological project in Afghanistan.
8:25
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
He's not only a respected colleague and a close friend of mine,
8:29
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
but also one of the few distinguished anthropologists of Afghanistan.
8:33
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
His research and public engagement have made significant
8:37
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
contributions to our understanding of Afghanistan's social and
8:41
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
cultural landscape during periods of profound change.
8:44
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
He is the Senior Research Fellow and Director
8:48
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies.
8:51
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
In addition,
8:52
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
he is...
8:54
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Asia Society Fellow and member of 21 Young
8:58
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Leaders Forum.
8:59
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
He graduated from Kabul Medical Institute
9:03
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
in 2003.
9:04
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Following his medical studies,
9:07
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
he worked as head of research and publications for the Foundation
9:12
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
for Culture and Civil Society in Kabul and as director
9:16
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
of Open Media Fund for Afghanistan.
9:19
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
From 2006 to 2008,
9:22
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
he studied
9:23
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Cultural Anthropology at Columbia University in New York under
9:27
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
a Fulbright Fellowship.
9:29
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
He also received a fellowship through the Rumsfeld
9:33
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Foundation at the School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University.
9:38
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
He completed his PhD in Anthropology from Boston University in
9:42
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
2019 and is postdoc at the Humphrey School of Public
9:46
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Affairs, University of Minnesota.
9:48
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Please join me in welcoming Dr.
9:51
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Omar Sharifi.
9:53
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Omar, the floor is yours.
9:54
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
All right.
9:55
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Thank you.
9:56
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Thank you, everybody.
9:57
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
I mean,
9:57
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
thank you for this very,
9:58
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
very generous.
10:00
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
lengthy introduction.
10:01
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I was,
10:03
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
so as you know,
10:05
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I'm an anthropologist,
10:06
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
but I was giving something to talk about,
10:07
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
about Afghanistan and the whole idea of kind of an estate building and what it means in
10:11
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Afghanistan. It sounds very boring topic,
10:13
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
to be honest.
10:14
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Our logical process,
10:15
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Afghan state building,
10:16
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
given that what's going on in the world right now within the states and the whole thing about that,
10:19
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
how we have to imagine the states.
10:22
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
But I wrote this article.
10:23
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I kind of thought about that.
10:24
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
The reason I actually sort of think about that because
10:29
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
for the first time when I saw the Americans in 2001,
10:31
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
when they came to Afghanistan,
10:33
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
it was bombing,
10:33
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
they've never, and I look at them and
10:38
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
they were walking on the streets of Kabul and
10:42
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
We have never seen foreigners in our lives.
10:45
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
The only foreigners we've seen were the Russians many,
10:48
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
many years ago.
10:49
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
There was a big war and they defeated.
10:50
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And when I saw the first time,
10:52
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
the Americans in my mind was like,
10:53
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
my God, these people look exactly like Russians,
10:55
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
but they kind of look much nicer,
10:56
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
much nicer.
10:57
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So that was my first impression.
10:59
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And the whole idea was like for the Afghans.
11:02
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
We had,
11:03
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
we, I mean,
11:04
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
for my generation and even before the generation,
11:06
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
except for the Soviet invasion and in the 19th century,
11:08
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
the British invasion,
11:09
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
we had almost very little contact with the rest of the world,
11:13
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
in a sense for the foreigners,
11:14
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
because Afghanistan remained one of,
11:16
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
probably the only Muslim country that never kind of
11:20
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
experienced their colonization.
11:21
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So kind of remained outside the whole.
11:25
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
sort of like the imagination of how the colonial powers,
11:28
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
the Europeans in the 19th century divided the world.
11:31
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And if you look at Afghanistan today,
11:33
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
it's neither South Asia,
11:34
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
nor Central Asia,
11:35
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
nor Middle East.
11:36
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
They sometimes put it in Greater Middle East,
11:39
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
sometimes put it in Central Asian context,
11:41
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
sometimes think of it as a...
11:43
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
South Asian kind of context,
11:45
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
but fundamentally the whole idea is like all these geographical demarcation,
11:48
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
all the kind of area demarcation,
11:50
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
just technically sphere of influences of the great colonial European colonial
11:54
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
powers in the 19th century.
11:56
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And Afghanistan, because it was outside of it,
11:58
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
so it's kind of people thinking about,
11:59
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
it kind of remained like nobody exactly knew where to be
12:03
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
located.
12:03
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
It doesn't mean that the British and Russians in the 19th
12:07
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
century, 20th century tried to conquer it.
12:09
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
It never worked.
12:11
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
to me looking in 2001 when the international community came the taliban
12:15
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
defeated and they left al -qaeda and taliban
12:19
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
It was truly like a moment of a
12:23
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
great opening in my mind,
12:25
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
in my generation,
12:25
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
because we have seen the collapse of the communist regime.
12:28
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
We've seen a decade of a civil war from 1992 to 2001,
12:31
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
and specifically a Taliban who was extremely brutal,
12:34
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
and I don't even need to explain to you.
12:36
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I remember when I get to the medical school,
12:38
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
and we were in a class of 163
12:42
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
students,
12:43
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
and 99 of us were girls.
12:46
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And the Taliban came to power and all those girls were not allowed to come to school.
12:50
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
They were gone.
12:50
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Many years later,
12:51
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
when we went back to school,
12:53
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
none of those would have went there.
12:54
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
So my entire generation was gone.
12:55
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And also the Al -Qaeda ruled in Afghanistan.
12:57
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So 2001 to me was a very,
13:00
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
very kind of a pivotal moment.
13:02
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
For the first time,
13:03
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
we were connected with the world.
13:04
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
For the first time,
13:05
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I've seen all these international,
13:06
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Americans,
13:07
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Europeans,
13:08
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Japanese,
13:09
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Indians.
13:11
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Turks, they were coming and they were talking about concepts of human rights,
13:14
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
civil society,
13:17
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
women's rights,
13:18
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
building a modern state,
13:19
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
creating like a representative democracy.
13:22
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And there was one major problem because for me and my generation,
13:26
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
none of us spoke a word of English.
13:29
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And we and majority of the international community who
13:33
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
came to Afghanistan,
13:34
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
specifically the American state,
13:35
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
none of them speak our national languages,
13:37
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Persian and Pashto.
13:39
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
None of them actually are very few of them except.
13:41
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And so the
13:45
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
whole talk about building,
13:47
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
nation building and kind of an estate building idea.
13:50
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And let's help the Afghans build something
13:54
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
like a new modern democratic state.
13:58
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
There was no direct communication between us.
14:00
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And they were talking about giving a huge amount of funds.
14:03
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
A lot of organizations came to Afghanistan,
14:06
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
the USAID,
14:07
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
the US government,
14:09
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
the EU and others.
14:10
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
They put a huge amount of resources.
14:12
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
But actually none of us neither spoke English nor actually what I'm
14:16
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
just kind of familiar with how the world works.
14:19
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And at the same time,
14:20
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
as I mentioned before,
14:22
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
these people who came to Afghanistan,
14:23
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
they did not know how to kind of deal with us.
14:26
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And specifically,
14:27
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
they thought of us as something that is,
14:30
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
I mean,
14:31
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
totally rightly,
14:31
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I have to say,
14:32
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
like dealing with what they did,
14:34
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
for instance, in Balkans after the collapse of Yugoslavia,
14:38
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
the Bosnia,
14:39
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Serbia,
14:39
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Croatia,
14:40
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
all these ethnic groups fighting and stuff.
14:42
S… Speaker 2 (filehnuh)
Or what they did in the Middle East,
14:44
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
for instance, when the colonial powers dealt with the Muslims,
14:47
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
with the Arabs and others in the Middle East or South Asia or Central Asia
14:51
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
and other places in which they kind of created their own.
14:54
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
kind of uh they had like an imagination of how the easterners look
14:58
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
like but afghanistan
15:00
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
remained outside that and we never had experience so our understanding of the west
15:04
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
was very different their understanding of us was different and there was no way to communicate and the only
15:08
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
bridge between us between like the afghans the indigenous afghans who
15:12
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
like living in their country and international community who came to afghanistan
15:16
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
and tried to build a more democratic state
15:19
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
was this um the mid the intermediary between us were afghan
15:23
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
diaspora predominantly afghan americans afghan europeans
15:27
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
afghan australians and others who left for maybe two three
15:31
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
decades at the west during the soviet war during several war and stuff and they
15:36
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
spoke english they were like familiar with the language of the international
15:40
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
community and their terminology and so they became the major
15:44
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
sort of an intermediary between us as
15:48
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
indigenous Africans and the international community.
15:51
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And we actually,
15:53
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I remember we loved them when they came to Harvard.
15:56
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
We thought like,
15:57
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
my God, these people living their lives back in the West,
16:00
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
coming to kind of help us.
16:02
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
But at the same time,
16:03
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
slowly when the constitution happened
16:07
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
and then they become the most dominant group.
16:11
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
in managing Afghanistan,
16:13
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
especially the Afghan diaspora who had their families living in the West,
16:17
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
but they're working in Afghanistan and stuff.
16:20
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And I slowly realized,
16:22
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
working with them slowly,
16:23
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I saw that immediately I was a graduate from medical school,
16:27
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
but I really wanted to work on some society because it was such an exciting moment for me
16:31
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
to think about building a new kind
16:36
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
of society that's not built on militancy,
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S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
but built on dialogue,
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S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
discussion,
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S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
and cooperation.
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S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So the more I engaged with them,
16:44
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I suddenly realized that for a lot of the Afghans who...
16:47
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
left in the west and now they are the dominant kind of group in managing
16:51
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
our lives and the most importantly they have almost monopoly
16:55
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
over the distribution of resources the international community was given to afghanistan for
17:00
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
them they they had trouble understanding how much changes afghanistan went
17:04
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
through in between 1980s and 1990s during the soviet war and
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S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
several
17:11
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And as you know,
17:12
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
the Soviet war was the perhaps one of the most devastating,
17:16
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
the last great battle of the Cold War.
17:18
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And it was like when the Soviet Union invaded
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S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Afghanistan, nobody imagined that it would be defeated,
17:27
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
but at the same time,
17:27
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
but at war.
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S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Afghanistan was a country of like maybe 18,
17:31
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
19 million people.
17:32
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And when the war ended,
17:34
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
it was a national war when the war ended,
17:36
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
about maybe 2 million people were killed,
17:38
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
between 1 to 2 million,
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S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
we don't know exactly.
17:40
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
About maybe 6 million people fled their homes and
17:44
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
stuff.
17:44
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And so technically between 40 to 50
17:48
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
% of the population were either killed,
17:50
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
wounded, or displaced.
17:51
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
You can imagine the level of changes and this massive...
17:56
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
kind of destruction of the rural areas and the people coming to the city.
18:00
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So there was a huge amount of different kind of things.
18:02
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And Afghanistan is also was a,
18:05
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
it's a very diverse country.
18:07
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
It's an extremely diverse country.
18:08
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
It has,
18:09
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
when we call Afghans,
18:11
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
we're typically talking about multiple ethnic groups who are sometimes very
18:15
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
different from each other.
18:17
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
But fundamentally,
18:19
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
They're also,
18:20
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
because of the experience
18:24
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
of not living under colonial rules like their neighbors in Central Asia and
18:28
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
South Asia, they kind of developed,
18:30
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
they lived in a way that they,
18:32
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
for them, there was no kind of a break.
18:35
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
down in understanding of historical continuity for them,
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S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
because none of their social systems,
18:40
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
their institutions,
18:41
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
their way of identifying themselves was changed because of the European domination.
18:45
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
They continue to imagine themselves as they used to imagine them before the colonial period.
18:50
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So this identity,
18:51
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
they imagine, like the diversity in Afghanistan was not a problem.
18:55
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
and um and you know that the afghanistan has like multiple ethnic groups you know the
18:59
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
tolgics persian -speaking tolgics pashto -speaking uh pashtuns and the
19:03
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
turkic speaking you have all these different three at least three major languages
19:07
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
but also afghanistan remained one of the only country from the muslim
19:11
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
country from there despite this enormous diversity and that every ethnic group in
19:16
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
afghanistan has its co -ethnic on the other side of the border
19:19
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Afghanistan remained the only Muslim country from Bangladesh to Bosnia that never actually experienced
19:24
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
a secessionist movement.
19:25
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Nobody wanted to succeed,
19:26
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
despite the moment's diversity.
19:27
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So that was kind of our reality of our lives.
19:30
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
We had a lot of trouble problems with each other,
19:32
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
but at the same time...
19:36
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
uh uh when the international community came and they started to write they started to
19:40
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
work on on like this new state building project we did not know how to
19:44
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
talk to them and our intermediaries predominantly afghan diaspora
19:48
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
will become the dominant kind of group in managing the resources and also managing the government
19:52
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
to give you like an example in 2006 they were about 63
19:56
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
percent of the executive branch in 2021.
20:00
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
it was about 97 % of the executive branch were run by the African diaspora.
20:03
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Those whose families lived abroad and they lived inside.
20:07
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So they were very much influenced by
20:11
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
their lives in the West,
20:12
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
but at the same time,
20:14
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
They kind of started to see Afghanistan much like the other colonized states,
20:18
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
like European,
20:18
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
like they thought like ethnic divisions in Afghanistan is like the same as Europe.
20:22
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Or like ethnic groups in Afghanistan operates the same
20:26
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
as like, for instance,
20:27
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Middle East, while fundamentally there are similarities,
20:29
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
but also there's very little.
20:30
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
The other issue was about the question of Islam,
20:33
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
which is a fundamental part of our identity.
20:35
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Islam in Afghanistan,
20:37
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
while kind of,
20:39
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
for most of the part,
20:40
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
kind of remains.
20:43
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Because of lack,
20:44
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
because of the absence of colonial rule,
20:46
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
it never experienced interruption.
20:48
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So the identities of the Afghan Muslims in large were very much shaped by
20:52
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
this kind of a thousand -year -old kind of tradition of like
20:56
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Sufi tradition,
20:57
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
literature,
20:58
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
and also like highly grounded in indigenous
21:02
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
practices rather than then politicized Islam that was dominant in the Middle
21:06
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
East or South Asia that emerged in response to colonial rule.
21:10
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
But I realized that this is kind of the,
21:12
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I slowly realized as a young man at that time that there
21:17
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
is disconnect between the international community who really want to actually
21:21
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
help.
21:22
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
the intermediaries who are actually now governing Afghans and majority indigenous
21:26
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Afghans who did who slowly trying to learn English who
21:31
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
slowly kind of develop the abilities both technical abilities but also linguistic
21:35
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
and communicative abilities to talk to their to our to the donors in a sense
21:39
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
to their partners because in that time we all thought ourselves as partners
21:43
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
in a great war against like Al -Qaeda and Taliban and all
21:48
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
this is kind of a political Islamists Islamism analysis
21:51
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So that was the reason I started to think about,
21:53
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
as I said, I left my medical practice.
21:55
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I applied for scholarships.
21:57
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I went to training and I applied for scholarships to anthropology.
22:01
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Because I thought that is like something to do.
22:04
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Because there was no anthropologist in Afghanistan,
22:06
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
at least for the last 20,
22:07
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
30 years.
22:08
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And I thought maybe this indigenous anthropologist may be able to explain
22:13
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
the simple facts about us better to our international partners.
22:16
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So that was the reason I did that.
22:20
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Now, the title of the article that I've sent you,
22:24
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
or the title of this talk,
22:25
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
is kind of very loaded with,
22:28
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I'd say,
22:28
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
building as a dialogical process.
22:30
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And that is kind of what it was,
22:33
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
because there was honestly a response to the efforts by international community
22:37
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
that they wanted to,
22:38
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
they kind of imagined to build.
22:39
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
For them,
22:40
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
they thought that they had to modernize Afghanistan.
22:43
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
They create modern state institutions.
22:46
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And for them building that technically meant that you have to have,
22:50
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
you have to create a highly,
22:53
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
like an American model,
22:54
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
highly centralized.
22:57
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
kind of like a president with much more authority than Donald Trump or other
23:01
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
American presidents,
23:01
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
like a highly king -like president with a highly concentrated elite
23:06
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
that is based in Kabul in the capital.
23:08
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And then they sort of like build modernization,
23:12
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
kind of lead the modernization process.
23:13
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
You know, we are very top -down,
23:15
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
heavy centralized system through which only modernization happens from
23:19
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
the top and they technically have to make everybody act.
23:23
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
or something,
23:24
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
or build institutions that we learn how to follow.
23:26
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And I honestly,
23:27
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
myself, I thought that was a very good idea at the beginning.
23:30
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
But once I started to do my research,
23:33
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
and specifically first during the Masses,
23:35
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
but specifically when I started to do my PhD,
23:37
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
I suddenly realized that this whole imagination of
23:41
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
like, we're going to build a top -down democracy in Afghanistan,
23:43
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
we're not that.
23:44
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Because we are first a very diverse country.
23:46
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Second, we don't have the capabilities.
23:48
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
The center,
23:49
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
the center.
23:51
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Like the Kabul -based elite,
23:55
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
they are predominantly diaspora.
23:57
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
They don't have the ability to connect with the people who live in the rural
24:01
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
areas of Afghanistan.
24:02
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
And fundamentally,
24:04
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
the concentration of
24:08
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
power in the center will create corruption,
24:10
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
will create a lot of problems for us.
24:11
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
So I started to look at the history of that,
24:14
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
what it means when I think about Afghanistan,
24:16
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
how it even emerged as a state.
24:18
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
how that what we think about whole concept of modernization what it even meant for
24:22
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
us because as i told you before afghanistan was not sort of directly colonized
24:27
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
by a european power so we kind of adopted european
24:31
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
kind of institutions like from central asia or south asia like
24:35
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
this legal system or military or finance or economic system that was kind
24:39
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
of they were like inherited from the british or russian or the french that
24:43
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
they did model themselves accordingly and moved on afghanistan never experienced that
24:47
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
But at the same time,
24:48
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
Afghanistan was the first Muslim country who had a constitution,
24:51
S… Speaker 1 (filehnuh)
a constitution in 1920.

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The transcript describes a Zoom meeting between Professor Nuristani and Dr. Omar Sharifi, discussing the importance of state building as a theological project in Afghanistan. The meeting is part of a global classroom where students from AUF and University of Maryland collaborate on readings and discussions. Professor Nuristani acknowledges the difficulty in hearing Dr. Sharifi and asks for clarification on the audio quality.
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