In Afghanistan, anthropologist Thomas Barfield has observed, centuries can merge as decades do in other countries — the past isn't even the past yet there. The history of contemporary Afghanistan is complicated, yet the last 150 years bear directly on why civil society in Afghanistan is in the same perilous state as its maternal and child health.
The British fought two wars against the Afghans in the 19th century, in an attempt to block the expansion of Czarist Russia's sphere of influence towards British India, the jewel in the crown. The Afghans won, but were then bankrolled by British India. This is a centuries old weakness of the Afghan state: its dependence on outside aid to ensure financial stability.
The arrival of Western powers in Central Asia began to change Afghan political dynamics. During the Anglo-Afghan wars elites engaged rural militias in rebellions against the British, but refused to share power with them after the British were defeated.
Over subsequent decades the refusal of the ruling elites to even consider that ordinary people should have a say in how their country was run, and the brutal suppression of numerous revolts by the new emir, Abdur Rahman, eventually undermined his successors and led to a civil war in 1929.
The establishment of a parliamentary system in 1964 ostensibly widened political participation. However, Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, refused to give up any executive authority. His cousin, Daud, ousted him in a republican coup in 1973. Five years later Daud was killed in a communist coup — ending 230 yeas of dynastic rule.
But the question of what was to replace the dynasty, who had the right to rule and on what basis, was unresolved even when the Russians withdrew in 1989 and its local regime fell in 1992.
The West supported the mujahideen's resistance to the Russians but victory quickly deteriorated into a civil war which destroyed the state structure and engulfed a huge number of ordinary Afghans in political battles from which they had previously been separate.
Enter the Taliban. Within half a lifetime Afghans had experienced ideological extremes in government. And the country was broke.
The so-called war on terror drew the US and the West into Afghanistan — now the US is leaving. At the first hint of serious negotiations with the Taliban this year US lobbyists and some Afghan women asked: what will happen to women if the Taliban return?
Things are already