577 Juan Ignacio Castien Maestro Modernisation and regression in Afghanistan... the precarity of the more complex organisational forms that always existed before society would fall back into another recession.4 THE EMERGENCE OF THE AFGHAN STATE It was precisely this context, so unfavourable to any centralisation process, that gave rise to the first Afghan state. Specifically, the enthronement in 1747 of Ahmed Shah, leader of the Sadozai clan of the Durrani tribal confederation could be considered as being the starting point for an institutional continuity that, with the necessary transformations, has endured to the present day. Of course, this was not the first state to appear on Afghan territory, but it was the first consolidated state dominated by the Pashtun ethnic group, hegemonic in Afghanistan ever since. This was a novel situation given that previous long-term state experiences had been built on Turkish-origin lineages. This change was made possible thanks to two favourable circumstances linked to the border and tribal conditions of these lands. The first was the fleeting weakness of the two neighbouring empires – the Persian Empire and the Mughal Empire – two empires that had shared control of most of the country since the 16th century. This new circumstance left a gap in power, filled by the Pashtun aristocracy. The second favourable circumstance was linked to certain specific advantages enjoyed by the Pashtun ethnic group. Firstly, they benefitted from a solid and elaborate tribal organisation that allowed them to mobilise large groups of combatants. And secondly, despite having been a stateless people within their own territories until that point, the Pashtun had extensive experience of statehood in other countries. Since the Middle Ages, their warriors had been recruited by several of the conquerors of India, such as the Ghurids in the 12th century and the Timurids in the 14th century. Once established on Indian territory, some of them broke away from their masters and founded their own local dynasties.5 In addition to the experience they already had, part of their population had already gone through a process of hierarchisation in line with the general model explained in the previous chapter; more specifically, as a consequence of interaction with the Safavid State. It was during this process that certain aristocratic lineages within the Abdali confederation (later Durrani) hatched. By contrast, in other regions, such as the mountains that now make up the Pakistan tribal belt, it was much more common for the former egalitarian structures to continue to exist (Rubin, 2002: 29). 4 Gregorian, 1969, op. cit. pp. 10-24. 5 Caroe, O. The Pathans. 550 B.C. - A.D. 1957, London, Mac Millan & Co LTD, 1958. Pp. 117-150. http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee
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