Resistance to the Government in Afghanistan's Modern History; a Case - Study Approach

This study has examined two epochs of reform and resistance to the government in Afghanistan’s modern history. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the internal and external factors that terminated the government’s efforts in consolidating the central authority and modernizing the country in failure which consequently resulted in the long lasting civil war and anti-western tendencies in Afghanistan. The first selected regime is the monarchy of King Amanullah Khan (1919-1929) and the second one is the communist regime of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (the PDPA), under the Soviet hegemony (1978-1989). This study has provided a conceptual model, which hypothesizes the functions of different social, political, and religious factors in the process of consolidating the central power and conducting the reform programme. In this regard, the Afghan governments’ inappropriate social, political, and economic policies, which provoked several reactions from tribal and religious forces, are identified as the internal factors. Furthermore, the colonial competitions between Russians and the British, the Great Game, and the tension between the Soviet Union and the West, the Cold War, are indicated as external elements. The study demonstrates how King Amanullah initially was able to attain legitimacy from religious elites, and attract the public support to attain Afghanistan’s complete independence from Britain and successfully implement initial stage of his reform programme while the PDPA in consequence of its military coup from the beginning was involved in the legitimacy crisis. According to comparative analysis of two selected regimes, this study has concluded several significant findings regarding the factors that were supposed to be under the Afghan government’s special consideration and also the characters of the several resistances that occurred throughout the two regimes.