Renegotiating Identities and Cultural Legacies Chapter Twelve Be(com)ing Uzbek

Afghanistan
Uzbeks in Afghanistan are concentrated in the northern provinces where they have long been a major factor in regional politics. In fact, their probably most famous member, Abdul Rashid Dostum, has been one of the leading warlords against the Taliban regime and a key political figure in Afghanistan for decades; he became a vice-president in the national government in 2014. Uzbek forces have thus been an active and relatively successful element in the violent conflicts that have shattered the country, rather than a victim, as in Kyrgyzstan, or a largely passive bystander, as in Tajikistan, although the benefits of this may have remained within Dostum’s inner circle. As part of the Northern Alliance, Uzbeks have sided with most of the other minorities in the region, particularly Tajiks, although this would often be a fragile relationship. As opponents of the Taliban, they have also been for a long time preferentially treated by outside forces, such as the U.S. government.³⁴
Fieldwork among the Uzbeks in Afghanistan concentrated on the city of Mazar-I Sharif and its surrounding. This is a multilingual, polyethnic setting where Uzbeks form one of the major groups and dominate several urban neighborhoods (mahalla) and rural districts. As census data for Afghanistan is notoriously unreliable—and because the ruling Pashtu elite hesitates to conduct a survey that might throw doubts on their alleged absolute popular support—the exact number is difficult to give but probably exceeds three million, thus making them the largest Uzbek group outside of Uzbekistan.³⁵
Uzbek identity is, as in the other case studies, strongly affected by locality, and individuals of the same regional background often find they share more with members of other ethnic groups than with Uzbeks of other provenance. But, similar to the situation in Tajikistan, this is crosscut by another divide, namely that between tribally organized Uzbeks, such as those in the northeastern regions,³⁶ and the traditionally sedentary ones in the larger oases such as Mazar-I Sharif.³⁷ Interestingly, the free listing conducted in Afghanistan differed greatly from other settings, in that tribal, linguistic, regional, as well as religious denominations, such as Aimaq, Farsiwan, Kabuli, or Ismaili, found their way into the ethnic repertoire. This hints at the fact that the determining aspects of Soviet nationality politics did not have that much of an impact here and the respective concept, the qaum, is still much more flexible and ambiguous than corresponding ones in other settings.
The prominent position of Uzbeks also affects the importance of the language, which serves as a lingua franca—besides Tajik/Persian—in many of the northern regions. As in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan many people in northern Afghanistan are bilingual in these two languages, and the respective groups form regional elites versus Hazara, Turkmen, and others. In terms of intermarriage, Uzbeks and Tajiks consider each other most acceptable, and mixed families are a common phenomenon. A similar position in local and national politics has in this setting the effect that relatively little assimilation in either direction is going on. By contrast, both represent attractive options to lean to for members of other ethnic groups, although—as in other sites—this might cut through existing social networks and entails significant costs. Apart from language and, in the case of Hazara, religion, identity is, unlike the post-Soviet space, also marked by clothing and other easily recognizable external features.