The first survey of birds to be carried out by an Afghan organisation since the fall of the Islamic Republic has taken place. It was also the first time that Afghanistan has taken part in the annual International Waterbird Census, a global effort involving 189 countries. A volunteer team, including expert ornithologists, visited six wetland sites, all potentially important stopover sites on the Central Asian Flyway, the mass migration of birds that takes place twice a year, between winter feeding grounds in India/Pakistan and summer breeding grounds in Central Asia and Siberia. That migration had yet to start when the survey took place, but volunteers from a new Afghan conservation NGO, Organization Rewild, assessed resident and over-wintering birds and habitats in places that might provide a safe place for birds to stop and rest – or possibly not, writes AAN’s Kate Clark, given the dangers posed to them by hunters and the drying up of wetlands. 

Waterbirds at Sardeh Dam, Ghazni province. Photo: Organization Rewild, 2026

Traveling across frozen valleys and remote wetlands, the team from Organization Rewild (OR) surveyed six key wetlands, from the reservoirs of the Kabul River to the reed-filled marshes of the Amu Darya floodplains, counted waterbirds, assessed habitat conditions, spoke with local communities about changes they have witnessed over the years, and walked across the dry basin of Ab-i-Estada – once a sanctuary for flamingos and a resting place for the now-lost Sibe­rian Crane of Central Asia. Shepherds spoke of lakes that no longer fill as they once did. Farmers described shifting seasons. Yet in hidden marshes along the Amu Darya, reeds still sheltered wintering birds, reminding the team that nature’s resilience has not disappeared. 

In this way, the volunteer scientists from a new NGO, Organization Rewild^[1] began their account of their survey of six Afghan wetlands (read it on this map by clicking on Afghanistan). Afghanistan has been important for migrating birds, a place to rest on their great flight north in the spring and south in the autumn. Yet, over the last few decades, it has become more difficult for the flocks to land safely, as historic wetlands have dried up because of climate change and the extraction of ground water, and habitats and birds threatened by the encroachment of agriculture, pollution and hunting.^[2]

The CEO of Organization Rewild, Ayub Alavi, has spent many years in conservation, working mainly with communities to establish protected areas, and in management and planning, including, most recently, setting up Rewild. Surveying birds was a new experience: “Joining the team in the field,” he said, “learning so much, was a joyful experience. I was so happy to get out, to travel and do some fieldwork.” They were fortunate, he said, to have two experienced ornithologists on the team: Mirza Hussain Rezai, who has ten years’ experience in wildlife monitoring and conservation projects, and Sayed Naqibullah Mostafawi, with 20 years’ experience, during which time, he has recorded 600 species of birds in Afghanistan, including the large-billed reed warbler, that had not been seen anywhere for a hundred years (AAN). The fourth team member, Noorullah Ahmadzai, is a para-veterinarian and climate adaptation expert.

The survey was undertaken as part of the International Waterbird Census, which has been carried out every year since 1967. “From coastal areas in northern Europe to tropical estuaries in Asia and Africa,” its website says, “volunteers and professionals alike,” have been joining “this global citizen science effort dedicated to tracking the health of waterbird populations and the wetlands they depend on.” For Organization Rewild, the survey was an opportunity to re-establish baseline information on wetland habitats and their waterbird populations, identify priorities for future wetland conservation and research but also to use the survey to work with Afghanistan’s national environmental authorities about the need for wetland conservation measures.

The wetlands surveyed

Organization Rewild carried out its survey at the start of the year when many lakes and wetlands in Afghanistan are frozen, so they focused on six that they expected to be at least partially clear of ice and suitable for waterbirds. Two are natural wetlands:

Amu Darya Marshes at Sasukkhol (Ai Khanum), Dasht-e Qala district, Takhar province – a floodplain on the Amu Darya;

Ab-e Istada in Nawa district, Ghazni province, an alkaline lake, lying in a large depression created by the Chaman Fault system in the southern foothills of the Hindu Kush, fed largely by groundwater. Two rivers, the Ghazni and Gardez, also drain into Ab-e Istada, but rarely, is there any outflow (ie, it is endorheic). Before the war, the government had designated it a Waterfowl and Flamingo Sanctuary, with guards posted to prevent egg collection or other disturbance.

The other four sites are reservoirs. The first three were built for hydroelectricity and are collectively recognised as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International:

Naghlu Dam in Sarobi district, Kabul province, built in the 1960s on the Kabul River;

Sarobi Dam, a smaller reservoir in the same district, eight kilometres south of Naghlu, where the Panjshir River joins the Kabul River, built in the 1950s;

Darunta Dam near Jalalabad city in Nangrahar province, further down the Kabul River, also dating from the 1960s.

The fourth reservoir was built to ensure water supply:

Sardeh Dam in Andar district of Ghazni province, fed by snowmelt from the mountains to the northeast which flows into the Gardez River (aka Jilga River, aka Sardeh River), built in the 1960s to ensure water supply to the south of Ghazni province.

The best site, and the one which most surprised the team, was Sardeh Dam, which had not been monitored in the past. It offered, said Alavi “some opportunities for conservation, with acceptable outcomes, provided there were good efforts.” Sardeh supported the highest abundance and concentration of waterbirds recorded during the survey, especially in the shallower, more extensive eastern section, although its margins were being encroached on by farming. A deeper western basin next to the dam has some recreational infrastructure developed along its southern shore, including a pedal boat operation. The team counted 45 different species at Sardeh, many in sizeable numbers – almost 300 common teal, more than 600 mallard and almost 2000 Eurasian coots (see the list of birds at the end of this report for all six sites).

At Sarobi, the team had expected “a good number of birds, but because of net fishing and hunting – human activities,” said Alavi, “the birds couldn’t settle.” While it had the highest concentration of waterbirds of any site monitored in the eastern region, they were in far fewer numbers than at Sardeh, both species (19) and individuals – 32 teal and 18 coots, but still 256 mallard. The team observed little birdlife at Darunta – just 15 species. “Most obvious,” said Alavi, “was a group of black kites (Milvus migrans) roosting along the western side of the reservoir on one of the islands, playing with a piece of plastic – taking it for prey.”

At Naghlu, 12 species were observed, of which only four were waterbirds. At all three of the sites along the Kabul River, said Alavi, the team witnessed “the usual issue with any dam – there’s not been enough maintenance, and we see agricultural run-off, extending into what was wetland.” The result? “A space that was water is now salt, dust and soil.” Water levels were down, and around Sarobi and Darunta what had been marshy wetlands on the margins of the reservoirs were now being farmed. In the dry season, the team’s survey report (seen by the author) said, water from the Kabul River, which first enters Naghlu, is largely “untreated urban wastewater… a major source of pollution affecting the surface water quality of the reservoir and the outgoing downstream flows.”

On its visit to Ab-e Istada (a name that means ‘standing water’), the Rewild team found no ab whatsoever. This wetland had once measured approximately 13,000 hectares, including a surrounding mudflat zone ranging from 0.5 to 7 km deep (Scott). In 2026, said Alavi, Ab-e Istada was “entirely dry. There were no waterbirds at all.” He said that if there was water there in the spring, even temporarily, migrating birds might stop, “but it would be hard to restore its flamingo habitat.” That was a reference to a greater flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus) colony, first mentioned by Babur, founder of the Moghul empire, that the emperor encountered in 1504 on his way from Dera Ghazi Khan to Ghazni and Kabul:

When we still had one körüh to go to Ab-e Istada, we became witnesses of a splendorous spectacle: From time to time, a red glow lit up, almost as the shine of the afterglow. … When we came closer we realized that this were gigantic swarms of wild flamingos.

Babur wrote that there were more than 10,000 or even 20,000 birds. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig cites this (with some interesting questions about translation) and mid-twentieth-century surveys putting the number of flamingos at 1,000 (1965), 4,000 (1966), 5,100, plus 1,000 young birds that had hatched on some of the islands (1969) and 2,900, with almost 12,000 at another site, Ab-e Nawur, also in Ghazni (1970). “Some flamingos were caught for the Kabul Zoo and successfully raised there,” wrote Ruttig, citing German ornithologist, Gunther Nogge. “Apart from the flamingos, some 40 other species of birds were spotted, among them different kinds of cranes and seagulls, herons, spoonbills, brown ibises, geese and ducks.” Historically, bird counts (from 1959 and 1977) at Ab-e Istada and the surrounding area comprised 122 species (cited by conservation biologist, Ahmad Khan).

Ruttig writes of the drying up of this wetland in the 1970s during the terrible drought of 1971, when snow and rain failed across Afghanistan. Even before that, in 1970, the newly built Sardeh dam had blocked one of the tributaries flowing into the wetland, reducing the water supply. That year, the water level dropped low enough for people to wade across to the islands where the flamingos bred. German ornithologists found evidence of hunting, which would have prevented any breeding.

A 2003 visit by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) found the lakebed and inflow rivers completely dry and the water table approximately three metres below surface level. It said that, according to local people, “the lake has dried each year since 1999. In spring 2002 the lake filled for a brief period but was dry again within 10-15 days.” Locals reported that no flamingos had bred successfully for the previous four years. UNEP did observe numerous falcon trappers on the dry flats, looking for saker (Falco cherrug) and peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus), which, it said, could be sold to local dealers for as much as USD 3,400. It also said local people were “active waterfowl and flamingo hunters.” A 2006 survey by Ahmad Khan described a lake of 13,000 hectares, surrounded by 14,000 hectares of mudflats. With good rains, Ab-e Istada may fill temporarily. However, droughts – now occurring more frequently and more severely because of the climate crisis – tube-well extraction of groundwater, encroachment of agriculture and the damming of one of the inflow rivers, suggest this wetland habitat may be lost. When the Rewild team visited, they observed just seven species, none of which were waterbirds. “There were only larks on the dry bed,” said Alavi, “and it was being grazed by sheep.”

The team found a more mixed picture at the Amu Darya wetlands. It comprises, they wrote, “heavily degraded riverine and floodplain wetland systems. At present, only fragmented remnants of these habitats persist, characterized by reedbeds, in­terspersed with stands [of] bushes along [the] riverbanks and on alluvial islands.” The Imam Sahib and Darqad areas have been recognised as Important Bird Areas (IBAs) by BirdLife International and were once designated a Royal Hunting Preserve. The team found one relatively intact area at Sasukhkol in Dasht-e Qala district. It lies at the confluence of the Panj and Kokcha Rivers and comprises approximately 450 hectares of marshland and riparian (river) woodland, in two patches, roughly two and six kilometres, respectively northeast of the Ai Khanoum archaeological site. This is one of the “last relatively intact wetlands … along the Amu Darya River in this region,” said the team, an example of a rare riverside ecosystem, once widespread in the floodplains and valleys of the arid regions of Central Asia. A 2007 survey by Stéphane Ostrowski, Ali Madad Rajabi & Hafizullah Noori for the Wildlife Conservation Society described the area:

With its diverse stands of poplar and willow trees and its shrubs of various genera such as Tamarix, Elaeagmus, and Hippophae, along with its patchwork of tall reed grass communities and grassland clearings, [which] offer oases for resident and migratory wildlife species. The Tugai forest ecosystem is also a resource of great value for water and soil conservation. It has evolved over thousands of years in response to successive periods of harsh and moist conditions. Typically Tugai areas are continuous but often narrow strips of forested areas along river valleys and constitute important corridors for wildlife. 

Yet, often, the 2007 surveyors wrote, tugai areas are the most fertile lands that can be irrigated and most have been converted to agriculture. What is left suffers from logging and grazing. Its destruction, it warns, “leads to an increase in river flow fluctuations, and river-bank erosion. In Afghanistan the last strongholds of this rare and fragile habitat are located on the relatively less accessible islands of the Amu Darya River.” The 2007 surveyors counted 72 species of birds in this area. Two decades later, in 2026, the Rewild team observed 21 species, including 13 waterbirds, but, their report said, the “presence of extensive dense marsh vegetation limited full visual coverage of the … area.”  They thought Sasukhkol could still provide suitable wintering and stopover habitat for waterbirds migrating along the Central Asian Flyway, albeit with some trepidation:

The wetland’s persistence to date has largely been due to the presence of permanently flooded and swampy basins, which have limited land conversion for agriculture and grazing. Extensive reedbeds con­tinue to offer important wintering and roosting habitat for waterbirds. The birds seem to be very calm and not very scared of nearby people. However, this condition is beginning to change, as border-control and trade in­frastructure are being developed in the area, along with the emergence of small-scale gold extraction activities. These developments pose increasing risks of habitat degradation and disturbance. 

Habitat degradation, they wrote, “is approaching critical levels, as much of the surrounding landscape has already been convert­ed to agricultural land and pasture, and large areas of swamp woodland have been cleared.” Artisan goldmining is also changing the land (see AAN’s August 2025 report, with details on goldmining in Takhar). There was one bright spot: “Field observations about [the] tameness of the waterbirds suggest that bird hunting pressure may currently be limited at this site.”

As to the general conclusion of the teams’ survey of eight wetlands, “Compared with reports from the past,” said Alavi, “the situation is not good. The birdlife is under stress and pressure. It’s very difficult to get a full picture because there are many wetlands we’ve not yet been able to visit. There are at least 28 sites that we’d like to visit. But from those we have seen, the picture is really not good.”

Where are the birds?

Building up a regional picture of habitats and numbers and diversity of species is important for understanding how a phenomenon like the Central Asian Flyway is being affected by human activities, including the changing climate, and how birds may – or may not – be adapting. Alavi conjectured that the migrating flocks might, for example, have learned to avoid stopping on the Shomali plains, famous for its fowlers, and indeed, anywhere south of the Hindu Kush, if they possibly can.

“People play a major role in making it near to impossible for a healthy population of birds to overwinter and breed or stop over.” Those birds that survive trapping and shooting, he said, remember where to avoid and where it is safe to stop. “The birds may now be stopping in higher altitudes, far from communities, and if the weather allows, try to get as far as possible from people.” But, he said, “this needs a more in-depth and thorough assessment.”

The weather, Alavi said, is a crucial factor. Bad weather can mean migrating birds have no choice but to land near people, where there is “very little chance of them surviving.” In March last year, following two nights of heavy rain, he and Rezai had found a single hunter in Bagram district of Parwan province had captured 200 demoiselle cranes in one night. The birds had been forced to land in an area they would normally avoid as unsafe. Alavi and Rezai had been working on a project for the Wildlife Conservation Society, aimed at finding out more about the hunting and trapping of cranes in areas known for high hunting pressure during the migration period (report seen by author).

At the bird market in Kabul, Alavi and Rezai also found that, out of 15 shops they visited, two were selling live cranes – at a price of USD 100 for a pair. They also found three shops in Bagram District selling a total of 18 dead cranes for meat, each priced at about USD 7. In one village in Sayedkhel district, in Parwan province, they observed 13 trapping sites – artificial ponds surrounded by nets, with plastic lures and recordings of crane calls to attract birds in the hope of capturing them alive. Alavi and Rezai concluded that “most cranes taken in the Shomali Plain were captured for the pet trade, and a few were hunted for their meat.” The price of cranes has fallen significantly: in 2017, they were selling for USD 2,500, perhaps because there is less ‘easy money’ in Kabul to spend on luxuries, so less demand, or maybe the bad weather had driven supply up and prices down.

The people of northern Shomali are famously avid hunters and trappers (see also a previous report by the author on a Bagram shopkeeper’s attempt to sell an inedible Great Black-Headed Gull, (Ichthyaetus ichthyaetus) as “very tasty” meat). The loss of adult and young birds during migration through these areas, write Alavi and Rezai, is thought to have been “the leading factor behind the decline and extinction of the Western Population of the Siberian Crane. Nowadays, the Demoiselle and Eura­sian cranes are the main species [that hunters] target between the last week of March and mid-April.”

An energetic response to a bleak outlook 

Despite the dismal picture for waterfowl and migrating birds presented by Organization Rewild’s survey, Alavi noted one positive – the good cooperation they had received from Afghanistan’s National Environment Protection Agency (NEPA). After they briefed NEPA on the survey, officials suggested they collaborate, for example, by the agency “dedicating staff to join us on field trips.” Alavi also said the head of NEPA suggested they provide NEPA with relevant reports, for example about hunting or conservation, that NEPA could use to lobby central government to better enforce the official ban on hunting (mentioned, for example, by Pajhwok). Better-managed wetland sites, where local communities are centrally involved, could bring benefits, and not just for birds and ecosystems: they can provide pleasant recreation sites, with the potential also for tourism.

Some joint work has now started. In March, ahead of the spring migration, Organization Rewild and NEPA set up a temporary Crane Conservation Taskforce which is carrying out, said Rewild, a media campaign highlighting “the prohibition of hunting, trapping, illegal trade and to avoid disturbance and to provide the safe passage for the cranes during the spring migration season across Afghanistan.” The taskforce has already undertaken field visits to stopover sites for migrant birds and known hunting hotspots. One was to the Shomali plain, lying across parts of Kapisa and Parwan provinces, north of Kabul, which functions, Rewild said, “as a critical migratory bottleneck for numerous bird species, including cranes, as they concentrate in this landscape prior to crossing the Hindu Kush range and continuing northward along the Central Asian Flyway.” It is also, as described previously, famous for its hunters.

The taskforce also visited Ab-e Istada in Ghazni where, Rewild says, the immediate need is to coordinate with the Ministry of Energy and Water and the relevant dam management authorities “to establish and maintain sustainable environmental flow regimes from the Sardeh and Hawz-e-Sultan Dams,” something which is critical to at least “partially restore hydrological conditions necessary for wetland recovery.” There is also a need to understand groundwater dynamics to to enable evidence-based water management and long-term restoration planning.”

One small, good piece of news is that, as of 7 April 2026, “following several days of sustained rainfall and the release of overflow from the Hawz-e-Sultan Dam [upstream of Ab-e Istada], reports indicated the presence of a substantial volume of water in this wetland.”

Alavi also spoke about how much conservation work there is to do. The team is keen to survey other wetlands, and other habitats where Afghanistan is important, such as the western deserts, with their endangered houbara bustards (Chlamydotis undulata), so beloved of Gulf Arab falconers, who have already hunted the species to near extinction in Arabia, but pay to come and hunt them in Pakistan and Afghanistan.^[3] The team would also like to monitor vultures that migrate in spring and winter through the Salang Pass – lammergeiers (Gypaetus barbatus), Egyptian vultures (Neophron percnopterus) and griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus) – and work with local communities and government in the Bamyan plateau – important for birds of prey and mammals, and declared a protected landscape by the Republic. “Given the size and type of habitat,” said Alavi, “it would be a unique opportunity.”

Alavi’s experience is in community-based management of natural resources, but the hope is that the wetlands bird survey will be a first step in greater conservation efforts in Afghanistan. It was also important in its own right, the team wrote:

This was more than a bird count. It was a reconnection of Afghanistan to the global flyway, the first renewed national count. It re-establishes Afghanistan’s pres­ence in global waterbird monitoring and provides the first updated baseline in decades for some of the coun­try’s most important wetlands. The data will be shared with national authorities to support better wetland man­agement and conservation planning. 

Alavi recognises that, without funding, they could not replicate the methodology of earlier surveys, but even so, Organization Rewild’s 2026 Afghan wetlands bird survey, though limited, made plain the huge decline in habitats, in the number of species and the number of birds. The four-member team paid to carry out this research from their own pockets. Such voluntary work is unsustainable. Afghanistan certainly has the expert scientists to do far more, but without funding, it will be difficult to match outcomes with that expertise.

Edited by Fabrizio Foschini and Jelena Bjelica

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After the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan returned to power in August 2021, women and girls were barred from continuing their education beyond grade six. Women were also banned from working in most government jobs and NGOs, leaving many without employment or a way to support themselves. The opportunities that had seemed within reach during the Republican years suddenly vanished, leaving many women struggling to chart a course for themselves. Some families set out to secure their daughters’ futures, often by marriage, and to men they had never met. In this instalment of The Daily Hustle, AAN’s Rohullah Soroush hears from one young woman whose family married her to a man living in Europe. She was sent to live with her in-laws in Afghanistan, despite never having met him. What followed was a life of anguish, before she found her way back to her own family and began to rebuild her life.

A bride arrives in a car at the wedding hall for a mass marriage ceremony in Kabul. Photo: Sahel Arman/AFP, 13 June 2022.

Growing up too fast 

I was born in Mazar-e Sharif into a modest family. We didn’t have much money and we lived in the shadow of financial worries. I grew up knowing that life wasn’t going to be easy. I learned that some kids don’t really get to be children – they have to grow up faster than everyone else and take on responsibilities beyond their years.

Still, our home was filled with love and my parents tried their best to make us happy. They were determined that I should go to school. They said it was the only way for me to have a better life. So I went to school in worn-out clothes, taking the second-hand notebooks the extended family or our neighbours had given my mother for me. Even then, I had dreams. I wanted to stand on my own two feet.

In the afternoon, when I got home from school, I helped my mother with chores around the house. I helped her cook our family meals, cleaned the kitchen in the evenings, and on Fridays helped her with the laundry.

Later, when I was still in high school, I started working at a pharmacy. I learned how to check patients’ blood pressure and give injections when needed. I gave most of my earnings to my mother, but I kept a little for my own expenses. After graduating from high school, I took the university entrance exam. The day I got into university was the happiest day of my life. It felt like everything I’d worked for was finally paying off and my life was moving in the right direction.

Alongside my studies, I worked on a project run by an NGO in our area. The salary covered my college fees and other expenses and I was gaining practical experience for the future.

When everything changed 

Then the Taliban came back and suddenly everything fell apart. The new government banned girls from going to university. Then, they banned women from working for NGOs and I lost my job. Just like that, it was all gone. It felt like the world had gone dark. I stayed at home with nothing to do and no future to work towards. It felt like my life was over.

It was during this time that my family decided I should marry. They told me there was a man who lived in Europe. They said he came from a family of means, that he had a stable job, that he would take me abroad and give me a secure future.

They talked about security, not happiness. No one asked me what I wanted. No one asked if I was ready.

The marriage I didn’t choose 

This is how I agreed to marry a man I’d never seen. It was not my heart’s choice. It was what my parents thought best for me and I went along with their wishes as girls in Afghanistan tend to do.

I don’t blame my family for my misfortune. They thought they’d secured a better future for me – that I’d be happy and eventually go to Europe. Many Afghan families think this way. When someone who lives in the West shows up at their door and asks for their daughter’s hand, families are often blinded by the opportunity and the false hope. So it wasn’t unusual for my family to agree to the match and push me to accept it.

This is how I became a bride, but I felt no joy on my wedding day. After the wedding, my in-laws took me to their house in Kabul. No one welcomed me into that house and that family. There was no warmth, no kindness. From the very beginning, they made it clear that they didn’t like or respect me. They humiliated and abused me – emotionally, sometimes physically. I was expected to serve, to obey and to stay silent. That was my life, day in, day out.

My husband was in Europe and I had to stay in Kabul with his family while I waited for him to come and fetch me. I kept telling myself that he was busy, that he didn’t know how I was being treated by his family. I held on to the hope that one day he’d come, take me away and we’d finally start our life together in Europe.

But the days turned into weeks, then months. I waited for my husband, imagining what he might be like and wondering if he even thought of me. But he never came. I never saw him.

A house without kindness

Life in that house became unbearable. My in-laws treated me harshly. Their words were humiliating and even my small mistakes were met with anger. I learned to move carefully, to speak less, to make myself invisible.

Although my in-laws were rich, they didn’t support me. They didn’t cover my expenses and forced me to work from dawn till dusk to earn my keep. So I started working as a maid in a clothing factory. The factory was noisy and suffocating and everyone was busy meeting their quotas. No one there knew my story. No one seemed to notice my pain. No one asked.

My in-laws wouldn’t let me contact my family. It was the most alone that I’d felt in my life. The situation started to take its toll. I was always tired and I kept getting sick. My spirit was broken and my body was growing weaker by the day, until finally, I was diagnosed with diabetes. I remember going to the doctor by myself, paying the bill out of my meagre earnings and knowing that even my illness was something I had to face by myself. When I got home from the clinic, no one asked after my health. No one cared.

The night it ended 

Then, one night, everything changed suddenly. It was late at night when my in-laws pulled me out of bed and turned me out of the house. They said they didn’t want me living with them anymore. The street was dark and empty. I remember standing there in the dark, shaking, trying to understand what had just happened. I had nothing with me and nowhere to go. That night could have ended very differently, but someone saw me – a kind neighbour who took pity on me and opened the door to their home to me.

The next day, they let me use their phone to call my family and let them know what had happened. They helped me get back to my family and even paid for the bus fare to Mazar-e Sharif.

Finding my way back 

It wasn’t an easy journey. I was physically weak, emotionally exhausted and not sure how my family would react. I knew there would be talk in the family and the neighbours would gossip.

In Afghanistan, it’s not uncommon for a girl to disappear into the family she marries into. It’s not even unusual for her to be mistreated by her in-laws. But when a girl is sent back, tongues will wag. People will look for a reason and often they blame the girl. She must’ve done something, they’ll say in disapproving tones. Rooms will go quiet when she walks in – the silence is damning and pitying all at once.

But when I arrived in Mazar-e Sharif and stepped into my parents’ home, they embraced me. I’d been worried for nothing. For the first time in a long while, I felt safe and I knew I wasn’t alone. With their support, I began again from scratch. It wasn’t easy, but I didn’t lose hope. Being back with my family gave me the strength to start taking small steps to rebuild my life.

Still standing 

Today, I am still standing.

I’ve known hardship, loss, and pain, but I didn’t disappear. I didn’t surrender to what had happened to me.

To other girls and women in Afghanistan, I say this: Stay strong, even when life feels impossible. Don’t lose yourself. If you fall, get back up, because you’re stronger than you think.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark

 

An Afghan proverb, tang amad, ba jang amad sums up the circumstances which led to rebellion in a northeasterly corner of Afghanistan, the poor and isolated Shughnan district of Badakhshan province, a century ago: When your back is against the wall, you will fight back – no matter how weak your side and how unlikely your chances of success. In 1925, the residents of Shughnan, who belong to the tiny and hitherto peaceful Ismaili community, revolted against the oppression of state officials. Ismailis, like other Afghan Shia Muslim communities, had often been subjected to various degrees of discrimination or exclusion from power in the context of the mostly Sunni-dominated polities that asserted their dominance in the region. What made things different this time was that the increased burden of state oppression was an indirect consequence of Amir Amanullah’s reformist policies. Their progressive goals included integrating the country’s different communities and granting the same rights to all its citizens. As often in Afghanistan, the location of the turbulence in a border area considered strategic by international powers resulted in contrasting interpretations of facts. Fabrizio Foschini has pieced together the story of this lesser-known episode based on oral and archival sources.Introduction: exploring the legacy of a fateful decade from a remote corner of Afghanistan

Over the past few years, AAN has published several reports revolving around events or texts from the period between 1919 and 1929, an eventful and at times tumultuous decade in Afghan history coinciding with the reign of King Amanullah.^[1] Although occasional in output, the idea of such recurring publications has been grounded in the assumption that the reforms attempted during the so-called Amani decade in both international relations and the internal administration of the country, together with the reactions that they engendered and which culminated with the ejection of the reformist king, continue to be of huge significance for comprehending the contemporary history of Afghanistan. Indeed, many of the points of contention of that era, from national independence vis-à-vis foreign powers to girls’ education and minority rights to tax collection, remain relevant to the politics of the country, largely informing the current debate.

Continuing this series, we offer here a different take on the major topic of the conflict of state vs society by looking at a lesser-known and atypical episode of open rebellion that took place in the northeastern border district of Shughnan in 1925. In the spring of that year, residents took up arms against oppressive local government. After a military expedition was sent from the provincial capital, the rebels were forced to disband and submit, or flee across the border into Soviet territory.

The subject of this report, coming after AAN’s previous study of the Khost Rebellion that took place a year earlier, should not surprise readers. The point contended here is not that the interest in the legacy of the Amani era consists mostly of studying the causes for revolts and the way these were dealt with, but rather that rebellions, as traumatic events, often constitute recorded moments in the otherwise ‘invisible’ history of marginal areas, and thus provide rare glimpses of the material and intellectual life of non-elites in a country’s history, including of subaltern groups such as the Afghan Ismailis.^[2] Also, a rebellion in Shughnan can be seen as coming from an unexpected direction, especially in light of the population’s later political and social orientation, which was markedly progressive and pro-government.

Despite being peripheral inside Afghanistan at both the political and economic levels, Shughnan and its adjoining districts were important in their own right to international observers because of their border with Russian-held territories. After the formation of the Soviet Union, previous British concerns about Tsarist Russia’s meddling in that region had turned into fears of communist propaganda spreading among Afghans.

Finally, in the light of what is happening to some border areas of Badakhshan province these days, a comparison can be made about the dynamics of communal mobilisation against a central government perceived as oppressive and unfairly appropriating local resources, although in the name of a better good such as increasing the state’s revenue (and arguably public services) through the exploitation of mines.

A note on methodology 

The bulk of the report consists of a narrative of the events before, during and after the rebellion, as related by people in Shughnan to the author in 2009, contemporary diplomatic material coming mostly from British archival sources and the few academic studies that take into account the impact of Amanullah’s reforms on the region and on the Shughnan rebellion, in particular.

Oral traditions such as those revolving around the Shughnan rebellion of 1925 present some fixed features (words, themes) which are literally handed down through generations of tellers and re-tellers and act as backbones to the narrative, exemplifying its chief meanings and making it easier to remember. Over time, they also, inescapably, come to include broader perspectives, filtered through the later experience of local communities, which come into play in modern interpretations, to enhance or diminish certain aspects and leitmotifs.^[3]

Written historical sources such as archival material left by colonial polities active in the areas surrounding Afghanistan have long been considered more authoritative, but come with the same risks of selective emphasis and blindness attached. ‘Hot border’ regions such as Shughnan, especially in times of heightened political tensions and polarisation, such as the advent of Soviet communism in the 1920s that gave a new spin to the Russian threat to British India, regularly increase this blur, requiring a cautious interpretation of even the most precise archival sources.

The peculiarities of a peripheral district

Nowadays, Shughnan is a district of Badakhshan province, fairly large in terms of area but with a population numbering only around 35,000, due to the high-altitude terrain that makes up most of it. The majority of the settlements are found along the Panj Valley, where the river forms the international border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, a situation common to the other districts of Badakhshan bordering Tajikistan, from Wakhan downstream all the way to Shahr-e Bozorg.

Before its definitive annexation to Afghanistan^[4] in the 1880s, Shughnan had held a paramount position among the petty principalities of the upper reaches of the Panj and Kokcha river valleys, mostly inhabited by followers of the Ismaili Shia branch of Islam. The Ismailis inhabiting these high mountain areas at the feet of the inhospitable Pamirs were usually comparatively poor and vulnerable communities, their heterodox faith exposing them moreover to the risk of being carried off to the Central Asian slave markets by their Sunni neighbours.^[5] The mirs of Shughnan, however, did manage to keep a dignified status in the closed-doors dynastic game of the ruling potentates of the area. They claimed descent from Alexander the Great and intermarried on a regular basis with the (Sunni Muslim) rulers of Faizabad. The latter were the nominal lieges, but the Shughni mirs often intervened in the affairs of Faizabad from a prominent position and their Ismaili faith – the same as their subjects’ – did not seem to have posed a major hurdle to their political and commercial relations with the Sunni-inhabited areas of central Badakhshan.

Things, however, changed with the incorporation of Shughnan into Afghanistan. The last Shughni mir was deposed in 1883, and by the 1920s, the traditional feudal leadership structure of Shughnan had long gone. The Afghan governors of Badakhshan, after an initial soft approach, more in line with pre-existing forms of indirect political control and allegiance, had sought to change local leaders deemed untrustworthy and uncooperative and replace them with their own appointees. Increasingly, these were Muhammadzai Pashtuns or anyway, individuals from outside the region and closely linked to the court in Kabul. This trend accelerated after 1888, when the amir, Abdul Rahman Khan, began to suspect that many northern notables had either conspired with his cousin Ishaq Khan, who that year had staged a revolt against him, or were in communication with Russia and its protectorate in Bukhara, which was then competing with Kabul for influence over Badakhshan and other northern provinces. A new dynamic set in: state repression was now able to reach not only the old ruling families, who were arrested or deported away from their former turfs, but also a broader class of local headmen, called aqsaqal and arbab,^[6] or indeed anybody suspected of wielding dangerous influence over the local populations.

When in 1893, the northeastern border in its Shughnan section was finally demarcated following the course of the River Panj, Shughnan lost half its population and most of its territory to Russia. Against the backdrop of general waning local autonomy, the district’s relevance and political weight was particularly diminished. The local leadership void would, in the next few decades, be gradually filled by religious networks composed of pirs (spiritual leaders) and khalifas (their local representatives), who played a major role in organising society, eventually in cooperation with the transnational institutions led by the paramount Ismaili leader, the Aga Khan. Much later, after 1940, Shughnan’s population embraced teaching as a survival strategy and attained high standards of education and the political consciousness that went with it. That contributed to emancipating the people from their district’s poverty and marginality (AAN). In 1925, however, the situation was bleak and, furthermore, the capacity, locally, to lobby Afghan state actors was at a minimum.

Shughnan and the other Ismaili districts in Badakhshan were never able to exploit their arguably strategic location on the border to their advantage. That could, to some extent, have made up for the trauma caused by colonial border-making or even improved their standing and importance at the national level, as some Pashtun tribes along the Durand Line managed to do.^[7] Contrary to the broad ‘Frontier’ buffer separating Afghanistan from the settled areas of British India, the border with Russia was not a particularly porous one that easily allowed local communities to benefit from smuggling, raiding or abetting escapees from the other side. Indeed, its demarcation along the Panj River was actually a tragedy for local communities, which saw themselves torn apart, their social connections and viable economies destroyed. However, the demarcation proved rather practical for the purposes of state control. The difference between the two border areas was augmented by the different attitude and balance of power in the Afghan state: the heavily-armed border Pashtun tribes on the one hand and the tiny, poor and vulnerable – from both military and religious perspectives – minorities living along the Panj, on the other.

Who pays for the reforms?

Amanullah is often remembered and celebrated as the king who secured Afghanistan’s complete independence by wresting it from the British in the Third Anglo-Afghan War (1919), or, as Afghans more aptly call it, the War of Independence (AAN). Beyond the fanfare of military glory and diplomatic activism, however, the real meaning of Afghan independence was that, for the first time in forty years, and possibly for the longest span over a much longer period, both before or after Amanullah, the Afghan king, and the state he managed, had to do without a foreign subsidy that guaranteed them a minimum of military superiority over possible rivals or rebels and partially freed them from the need to seriously tax subjects in order to have a budget.

Public finances were not the only revolutionary aspect of Amanullah’s reign. From progressive ideals to his ambition to achieve the fast modernisation, technical and cultural, of a ‘backward’ country, many aspects of his reign aimed to be revolutionary. However, the big changes in store were thus to be financed only through taxation, and direct taxation on agricultural produce was to be the pivotal part of that. There were attempts to revive international trade and, with it, one of the traditionally major sources of income for the Afghan rulers – transit fees and customs. Even so, at least two-thirds of the revenue paid to the Afghan state under Amanullah was derived from taxes on farmers.

It has been estimated that between 1919 and 1929, Amanullah’s decade in power, the tax rate on land increased fourfold and on livestock fivefold, and that up to 45 per cent of the value of the harvest was taken from farmers.^[8] Furthermore, contrary to what had happened in the past, payments were to be made largely in cash and not in agricultural products, which entailed greater difficulties and, for the inhabitants of areas with virtually no monetary economy, such as the Ismaili districts of Badakhshan, the frightening risk for farmers of going into debt.

Statistics for 1923 published by the Afghan newspaper Ittihad-e Mashriqi give an idea of the scale of tax revenues in a poor region such as Badakhshan: even excluding Crown lands, out of a total revenue of 1,293,000 rupees, 1,020,000 came from taxes on agriculture and livestock. That sum had increased by 211,000 rupees compared to the previous year, an increase of a sixth. Furthermore, the proportion of taxes paid in cash had already reached almost three to one compared with taxes paid in goods.^[9]

Within all peripheral areas, there are different layers of marginality. Some of the residents of central Shughnan, or at least some of those from the district centre of Qalah-e Bar Panj, had in due time been able to forge some relationships with their new Afghan masters. Provision of lodgings, government employment, trade ventures and the occasional intermarriage had contributed to create a minimum of common interests that ran above qawmi divisions.^[10] Even though these interests were diluted by those of language and confession, they still proved sufficient to shield a group of local residents from the worst aspects of state power. The degree of such commonality grew thinner as an individual lived further away from the centre of the district. Remote areas may have enjoyed greater quiet due to their isolation in normal times, but would face the brunt of state impositions, entirely unprotected, once these were unleashed.

In the context of the state apparatus’s renewed efforts to expand into rural areas under Amanullah, it is no surprise that the area of Shughnan that fared the worst would be Roshan, the northernmost and most remote part of the district. It was from Roshan – a toponym which carries the ancient Persian root connected to ‘lightening’ or ‘brightening’ – that the spark of the rebellion would ignite.

The rebellion of Mahram Beg

Let us first introduce the eponymous hero of the rebellion. Mahram Beg, hailing from Robat village, the last village of Roshan before Shughnan proper, was in his forties and a man of some local importance. He was already listed among the notables of Roshan by the Afghan functionary and writer Burhanuddin Kushkaki in 1923, and had been appointed around that time an arbab in a village a short distance downstream from his own village, Chasnud-e Payan. There, an alaqadar, a sub-district state official appointed by the central administration and often coming from outside, had been posted, arguably, for the first time. Local oral sources claim this particular official was originally from Wardak.^[11] His character plays a major part in the oral history of the rebellion, triggering the action in the first place. In the oral narrative handed down among locals, the mere burden of heavy taxes was not considered a sufficient explanation for the revolt. Rather, the abuse of power by the state was coupled with other types of abuse and oppression couched in terms of immorality, as was relayed to the author:

At the time of Mahram Beg, there was such oppression that he was forced to make the people revolt. He went down to Chasnud-e Payan, where an alaqadar had arrived. The alaqadar exercised power with such tyranny that his men were snatching bread from people’s ovens: “Bring forth the butter!” they would shout, while, meanwhile, they helped themselves, picking the loaf of bread of their choice. Such was the level of tyranny. Then, one evening the alaqadar said to Mahram, who was arbab there, to bring him a woman. Mahram was flustered, he said: “Why, how could I bring you a woman?! You yourself must have nang, some namus [honour] of yours – a sister, your mother…” But the other insisted, adamant: “These arguments don’t touch me.” 

Mahram Beg (or his contemporary impersonator) is here trying to reason with the Pashtun official by playing up specific concepts — namus and nang — that he hopes he may value. The Arabic-origin word namus connects mostly to honour in terms of one’s family’s reputation through the respectability (henceforth seclusion) of its female members. Nang(coming from Middle Persian but quite obsolete in modern Iranian Farsi), refers to honour as well, but more with the nuance of individual pride. Both terms are widely used in Afghan Dari, the language in which the related conversation arguably took place, but hold a special conceptual centrality for Pashtuns as enshrined in Pashtunwali (about which, read this AAN paper). Having failed to connect with his interlocutor on these terms, Mahram feigned compliance:

So, one day Mahram told the alaqadar he was leaving; he was travelling down the valley to get women for him. But instead, he went to a village downstream and sat in an assembly with people whom he had secretly gathered and told them: “Look, that’s how bad things are, how oppressed we are. But now you can decide to help me rebel. If you are with me, we take over Shughnan. 

Those gathered agreed to stage a revolt and Mahram toured nearby villages to enlist men for the action. Wherever there was an arbab he trusted, he would task him with selecting a man and sending him to Chasnud-e Payan, disguised as a woman under a full chador. Then, when he had thus managed to assemble his strike force unnoticed:

[T]hat night, when required to, Mahram introduced fifteen men thus disguised into the alaqadar’s guesthouse for his after-dinner programme, and told them “Go get him and give him a beating.” The alaqadar cried, “What are you doing?!” but those men, burqa-clad as they were, jumped on him and thrashed him with sticks. Then they dragged him outside, put an old furry coat and hat on him, forced him to wear a pair of coarse homespun trousers, tied him to a tree and left him there until morning. The next morning, they strapped him onto an ass, a black ass, and paraded him around. 

The use of a chador as a disguise by warriors is a common expedient in the so-called ayyar literature, once widespread, mostly through oral transmission, across India, Iran and Central Asia.^[12] As such, it will return later in the same narrative. However, here it also serves the purpose of making the retribution meted out to the villain, whose chief crime was to threaten the honour of women, more fitting. The theme of the disguise takes on another level of meaning immediately afterwards: the ordeal to which the alaqadar is subjected includes nullifying his exalted status as a state official – likely conveyed by clothes of a different style or superior quality – by having him dressed as a commoner in coarse local fabric. The symbolic reversal of roles and the exposure to public mockery, in many parts of the world, a cliché of peasant rebellions vis-à-vis the powers governing them, is completed by a parody of another major status symbol of the powerful, the mount.

After this early success, with the critical adhesion of some local hunters who provided the only firearms to the war party, Mahram set to conquer, or better, to free Shughnan, the centre of his people’s universe and the logical ultimate target of their action.

Then Mahram and his men marched towards Shughnan. They went to Yarkh and then to Chawid and so on and everywhere people would join them. For weapons, they had only some siahkaman (matchlocks) and the rest had spades and forks. At the time, guns and ammo, nobody had it, only the security forces. So when the rebels reached the district centre of Shughnan, the local garrison and the border guards barricaded themselves into the government fortress, sealing the doors and windows. Mahram told his followers: “Do not attack them now, they’ll eventually surrender, let’s not damage both sides with a fight.” Then, he positioned his men on the hilltop where nowadays the district office is located. 

The stalemate lasted over a week. The few hunting rifles that Mahram’s men had at their disposal were totally ineffective against the stone and mud walls of the government compound. Besides, they lacked any ammunition reserves and had to rely mostly on dry beans as bullets. Mahram not only prevented them from launching a risky attack, but he also sought to keep those inside the fort in check and prevent sallies from their part. He had water boiled over a fire beyond the hilltop, and by heating spades that they would then hit with stones, his men produced loud bangs which sounded a bit like the voice of artillery, which scared the besieged garrison into inaction. With water running scarce, it was a matter of days before they surrendered. Meanwhile, news of the revolt had reached Faizabad, and a military force had been dispatched to suppress the revolt. Probably, this news began to cool local enthusiasm for the revolt, as some residents of central Shughnan who suspected the rebellion could not resist state power indefinitely came to fear the reprisals they would face once government control was re-established^[13]

News came that an army was coming from the way of Ishkashim. Mahram asked the people “And what do we do with those?” and they replied “Well, you should go meet them.” “Very well” he said, “I’ll go to Gharan. If I manage, I’ll crush those soldiers. You stay here and do not attack. If the government forces surrender, take them prisoner, but don’t expose yourself in the open.” Then he went to Gharan and selected a narrow spot to set an ambush. When the troops arrived, his men suddenly opened fire and forced them to retreat, they ran back to Ishkashim. 

After the successful ambush,^[14] prospects for the rebels were looking more favourable, but treachery was to undo Mahram’s military success. While he was away, says the oral history, a local resident, a man from Bashohr,^[15] managed to slip into the government fort at night. 

He told the government forces there: “Those people don’t have rifles, they’ve got nothing. Mahram has left for Gharan and they only make the sound of guns, don’t let yourself be fooled.” When they did not believe him, he added, “Ok, I’ll have you sent women’s clothes, a chador, right? One of you can put it on and go have a look at how things are.” So, the next day one of the soldiers disguised himself as a woman and went around Mahram’s camp. He saw that the situation was exactly as reported: they had no weapons and only made the sound of a gun from time to time. He went back and reported to his commander, and the next day at dawn, those in the fort rushed out and attacked the camp of the rebels.

Without weapons, how could they resist? They fled, half towards Gharan, to Mahram, and half towards Roshan. The government troops arrived in Bashohr and let their 303. rifles do the talking. They did not make distinctions between those who had fought with Mahram and those who had not. They killed, they arrested, they looted. Then those who had fled towards Mahram ran into him at the springs near Darmarakht. He asked them, “How come you are here?” and they said “We narrowly escaped from their clutches” and they told him what had happened. “Very well” said he. “All that has happened has been out of the will of those people who don’t need freedom, those who don’t cherish freedom. Now it’s up to you. Do as you wish. I jump to the other side. I can’t stay here, there’s no place left for me to go, I’ll cross to the Soviet side of the river.” And then, near Wyar, he jumped into the water and reached the other bank. Many of those who had fled, men and women, followed him: the lucky ones made it, others vanished in the river.

Exit Mahram, pursued by the Russian bear. Detained by the suspicious Soviet authorities for around three years, the unlucky leader of the short-lived revolt would never see his homeland again. Well, not quite literally, as from Khorog, the Russian-held Shughni town just across the Panj, where he was settled for some time, he would be able to do so every day, but he never set foot again on Afghan soil and was eventually given a place of residence in central Tajikistan by the Soviet authorities.

Different was the fate of those who had followed him into exile. Their number is unclear. Boyko, on account of a petition sent to the Soviet authorities by the refugees themselves, gives the staggering number of eight thousand. That would have amounted to virtually all the inhabitants of Shughnan and Roshan put together, according to the data collected by Kushkaki in 1923. The desertion of an entire district constituted a significant problem for the state, especially in a border area, where it could exacerbate political differences or result in external interference, and all the more so in a territory that, because of the extreme environmental conditions, would prove nearly impossible to repopulate. Already, one month after the revolt, Amanullah had issued a general pardon and an invitation to those who had fled to return. According to Soviet sources, some accepted, but it seems not too many, as in the next few months, several Afghan officials travelled to the Soviet side to try and persuade the remaining refugees to return. Even if not comprising the total population, the exodus must have been massive, as it stirred diplomatic activities across the Panj. It is well remembered by people nowadays and forms part of the oral narrative of events connected to the rebellion:

[After the revolt] on this side of the river, nobody was left. Those people remained over there [on the Soviet side] for nine months. To all the government people who went there to look for them, they would say: “No, we don’t come back.” Eventually, there came a person called Mir-e Muqil, he was an arbab in Shiduwj village. So, this man went to the other side and the commanders, the Soviets, they told him: “The people don’t accept it, they won’t come back to your side.” He said: “Well, gather them so that I can speak to them. If it works, fine, otherwise it’s over.” Then all the refugees gathered there, in Khorog. And the Soviet official questioned them: “People, are you going to Afghanistan or are you staying?” And they answered: “With him, we shall go, without him, we won’t.” And the Soviet officer would go like: “How come? Until now, you were saying that you’ll never go back there, that you’d rather be killed here and that this was the place you belonged to!” And so they told him: “This man has done many good services for us back there, he helped us a lot. In Afghanistan, in Shughnan, he is a civil servant, a good man. With him, we can face everything: be it water or fire.” All those people were saying thus. Then they started back with that man; they came back to this side. 

The interpretations of events internationally and locally

The Shughnan rebellion of 1925, together with the temporary occupation by Soviet troops of the river island of Urta Tagai later that year, was one major development in the Great Game along the northern Afghan border. For decades, British and Russian agents had been spying on each other’s moves or absence thereof, and after the variation in the game brought about by the 1917 October Revolution and takeover of Central Asian territories by the Soviets, it had developed new categories to interpret old patterns.

The British were, for example, convinced that all unrest inside Afghanistan could be put down to foreign (ie Russian) hidden hands. “During April a local insurrection took place in Badakhshan… It is possible that Russian agents may have been in part responsible for the outbreak,” was the laconic comment by the British envoy in Kabul.^[16]

By the mid-1920s, moreover, they had become convinced that the Soviets were actively spreading Marxist propaganda into Amanullah’s kingdom and that the Ismailis, with their seeming absence of religious fanaticism, had easily fallen prey to communist doctrine: “The area affected seems to be in the part of Afghanistan marked for corruption and penetration by the ethnologically-allied Tazik [sic] province recently established on the Russian side.”

From the cold welcome they offered to Marham, we may instead assume that the Soviet authorities, although newcomers to the Great Game, likely followed in the footsteps of their predecessors in most everyday decisions and were equally suspicious of all local leading men, irrespective of which side of the border they came from.

Throughout the 1920s, the Soviets became increasingly suspicious of the links maintained by the Ismaili religious leaders, the pirs, and their representatives, the khalifas. Given that their devotees could often be found in faraway villages, they were at the centre of networks through which money and information travelled. The authorities concluded that these were being actively used by British intelligence through the good services of the Ismaili spiritual leader and British subject, the Aga Khan. Oppression of Ismaili pirs and khalifas had already started in the early 1920s and would increase in intensity towards the end of the decade, both to satisfy the hostility of Soviet authorities towards religious leadership, indeed, any leadership rival to their own and to frustrate the ‘machinations of Western capitalism’, to the point that several Ismaili religious leaders would be forced, in turn, to take shelter on the Afghan side to escape arrest by Soviet authorities. “The Sayid inhabitants of Russian Wakhan are alleged to be very badly treated by the Bolsheviks authorities,” said one report of the British political agent in Gilgit in his Diary for September-October 1922. “Their property is being confiscated and distributed among the lay public” (L/P&S/10/973). Another report, from the Intelligence Bureau North-Western Frontier Province n° 14 (week ending 16.07.1928) said: “There has been much religious oppression in Shighnan [sic] and Russian Wakhan and the people, while secretly retaining their Maulai [Ismaili] faith, have been forced to become overt converts to Bolshevism.”

Leaving aside the foreign and often flawed takes on the rebellion, it may also be useful to contrast the oral narrative as told by local people in Shughnan with the official account of the incident given by a state-controlled newspaper, Tulu-e Afghan:^[17]

At the beginning of the current year, the inhabitants of Shughnan fell out with the alaqadar of that place regarding the payment of poor-rate on their cattle. At the instigation of certain malefactors, they resisted the payment of the poor-rate. When the local ruler came out to realise that tax and applied force upon the inhabitants, they flatly disobeyed his order, congregated in one place and demonstrated against the civil and military officials of that place. On this occasion, it was the day of the month of Hamal (20th April) that the report on this event was received through the proper channel by Muhammad Suleiman Khan, Naib ul-Hakuma of the Province of Qataghan and Badakhshan. The Governor, who is a perfect man and a true servant to the state, despatched forthwith to Shughnan a committee, composed of certain experienced and influential personages with full instructions to enquire into the causes of the disturbance and to make every effort for its removal. Also he gave orders to the force at Badakhshan to hold themselves in readiness for the march. As soon as the committee in question reached Shughnan, crowds of inhabitants who had besieged the local Government Departments after exchanging shots with the local military dispersed and the malefactors who were the cause and instigators of this trouble fled. To sum all up, the enquiry committee brought necessary arrangements into force. The deserters returned to their place, the quarrel and dispute came to an end and all submitted to Government. Peace and order began to reign supreme on every side and the matter was settled without any further trouble and loss of life and property.

Both narratives recognise one common key point – the role of the local authorities. The role they played in unfolding of events, however, is told very differently by the Kabul newspaper and local people. They are mirror opposites of the other. The weak link where the chain of social peace in Shughnan was broken in that April of 1925 lay precisely in the part taken by the Afghan provincial authorities. The new tax burden fell heavily on rural areas, but even more so, it disrupted social customs. The dependence on taxes collected from rural areas and the drive for modernisation inherent in Amanullah’s political project led him to reform the district administration at the same time as he launched his tax reforms. In 1921-22, a travelling commission had mapped the entire national territory to establish new tax rates based on products and soil type. Until then, this had been the prerogative, at the local level, of the old aqsaqal class, who, deprived of their role as village administrators, nevertheless retained the informal role of providing the provincial governor with tax data on their territories, agreeing on the quotas that individual families had to pay and supervising the delivery of the tribute.^[18]

This function, which the aqsaqals, as members of the old local elites, carried out in a manner that was as conciliatory as possible with the needs of what ultimately remained their patronage network, was taken over at the sub-district level by the alaqadars, the state officials appointed by the central administration, who were also often outsiders. The loss of control over local relations with the state apparatus, previously managed through traditional, albeit hierarchical, mechanisms via the mediation of the aqsaqals, was as intolerable to the peasants as the increased tax burden itself, to which it was, in fact, closely linked. This was probably one of the underlying reasons for the Shughnan uprising in 1925. The presence of ‘foreign’ district authorities was not entirely new, nor was it a characteristic only of Amanullah’s reign. Certainly, their predatory behaviour towards the population could have justified an even earlier violent reaction, but as long as they had been assisted by local figures in the exercise of power, abuses had been, if not avoided, at least mitigated.

Things would actually worsen for Shughnan in the years following the reform. In the words of an Indian Muslim, a Shia doctor from Calcutta who visited the region a few months after the rebellion: “All officials are Kabulis. No official knows when he may be ‘axed’, consequently bribery and extortion are relied on to bring in as much money in as short a time as possible. Taxes are very heavy. Every tree, animal and field is taxed twice a year. Any criminal can escape punishment by payment. Only the poor are punished.”

The importance of residents having the possibility to access and connect with local authorities to shield their households from excessive burdens and survive becomes apparent from some of the leitmotifs in the history of the revolt of Mahram Beg, as related across Shughnan. Unlike the state media, which sought to highlight the loyalty, efficiency and generosity of the provincial officials appointed by the government, people in Shughnan chose to remember those arbabs, that is, intermediaries whom they had chosen or who, anyway, had come from among their ranks, who would stand up and risk everything to try and shield them from state oppression.

With the elimination of the residual role held by the aqsaqals in assessing taxes, the last vestiges of the social structure of the indigenous elites in Shughnan had disappeared. Only the arbabs remained as potential leaders around whom to rally. Their status was hardly exalted or idealised. Their tasks, in fact, consisted mainly of organising the accommodation and meals of visiting state officials or military personnel, and representing the village before the institutions. This association with the state could bring small economic benefits if one sought them, but not necessarily respectability within the community, as it often led to accusations of corruption and partiality. Hence, the people’s choice of remembering those arbabs who did what they were expected to do, honestly, or who had played an outstanding role – one by starting a rebellion against external officials who transgressed social norms and decency and another by successfully mediating the homecoming of the exiled Shughni people.

Conclusions

Among the modern public of Shughnan, well-educated and (although it took longer than British colonial officials presumed) often left-oriented, today’s re-telling of the 2025 revolt causes a curious series of re-positionings. There is but little sympathy or nostalgia for the autonomous Shughnan before the Afghan annexation, as that era is widely associated with the feudal rule of the mirs and thus viewed negatively from many perspectives. Moreover, Shughnis generally hold a high opinion of Amanullah and praised his reformist attempts and political ideals. However, the poverty and helplessness experienced by the local population at that time amply justify, in their eyes, the need for Mahram to revolt. More recent periods of oppression and destitution, especially during the early times of the mujahedin takeover after 1991, have, moreover, left an indelible mark on the collective memory of the population. For example, during discussions with the author, people in Shughnan sometimes linked the revolt of 1925, in spirit, to a series of revolts staged by local people in 1996-97. They were aimed at throwing off the yoke of the most predatory of the mujahedin commanders, who came from the Sunni central area of Badakhshan and had established themselves as authorities in the district: the parallels, from the Shughnis’ perspective, were clear.

The attention of a small community may be focused on extraordinary times of strife and activism and these events may be fixed in its collective memory. However, the long-term truth about Shughnan is that, like its neighbouring Ismaili districts, it has, since its annexation to Afghanistan and especially since its remarkable achievements in education, proved one of the most peaceful and law-abiding areas of the country. It continues to be so, even in the face of increasing difficulties, such as the restrictions on female education which have seriously damaged its teacher economy, and the growing reports of discrimination towards Ismailis by at least some among the IEA officials (Hasht-e Subh).

But beyond the heroes and symbols that are passed down through generations in a community’s oral history lie always the roots and material causes of the actions that immortalised them. Those very causes that spurred the people of Roshan and Shughnan to rebel a century ago, namely the oppressive behaviour of the authorities imposed from the outside and the lack of local lobbying power to negotiate with a seemingly all-powerful government, are today found in many parts of Afghanistan. Centralising attempts, pushed through with haste and force, can easily cause grave imbalances when, in many Afghan rural areas, the local balance of power and established relationships of reciprocity help people cope with fragile economic conditions. Not to stray away from the banks of the Panj, the continuing tensions and clashes (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) downstream of Shughnan in the gold-mining districts of Badakhshan and Takhar^[19] are clear proof that Afghanistan’s central governments, even a hundred years later and no matter what common good or best ideal they claim has motivated their actions, are still unable to consider these border areas as anything but up for grabs.

Edited by Kate Clark and Jelena Bjelica

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