Maliks (Afghanistan)

Maliks 🇦🇫
Location: Afghanistan
Definition: Spokespersons representing interests of the villagers
Keywords: Afghanistan – Central Asia – South Asia – Pashtun – Intermediation – Informal governance – Public service
Author: Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili
Affiliation: Associate Professor, Director of the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh
Website: https://gspia.pitt.edu/faculty-and-staff/jennifer-brick-murtazashvili

By Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Associate Professor, Director of the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh

In rural Afghanistan, maliks are village representatives. They are not leaders, but individuals who represent village interests both internally and to the outside world. Often mistaken for village chiefs, they are executives and serve not as headmen or chiefs, but as first among equals, primus inter pares. While this entry employs the term “malik,” individuals exercising this role in the Afghan society have a range of regionally specific titles or honorifics. The following terms are to be considered synonymous with the role of maliks in Afghan rural life: qaryadar, khan, qalantar, wakil (representative), namayenda (also representative), arbab, mir, rais (leader/head). Historian M. Hasan Kakar examined that “broadly speaking, the term arbab was used in Western Afghanistan and the term malik is used in eastern Afghanistan” (Kakar 1979, 58). In some cases, the term malik is equivalent to a tribe or clan leader, but more often tribal status has little to do with selection of village representatives. This is because Pashtun tribes have no natural leaders as they are generally acephalous. This does not mean that leaders do not emerge from tribal configurations, but leadership is not a status bequeathed upon individual leaders through hereditary status.

It is also important to note that maliks are not the same things as large landowning khans that are prevalent in some parts of Afghanistan and in other parts of South Asia, especially Pakistan. In general, maliks do not preside over several villages the way that large-landowning khans have done in the past. In some villages in Afghanistan, individuals referred to their self-appointed village leaders as khans, but this did not mean that they were powerful. In the past, khans may have been more powerful because they were large landowners, but this power has diminished over the past fifty years. This was noted by anthropologists in the years before the Soviet invasion, it is not a new phenomenon nor a consequence of war (Anderson 1978). Despite predictions that the customary system collapsed, it has actually strengthened after 2001. Although maliks are typically men, there is an increasing number of female maliks throughout rural Afghanistan (Murtazashvili 2016).

There are a number of ways for maliks to come to power. In some communities the position is hereditary and handed down from one generation to the next. In others, there is some sort of selection process that brings a malik to power. This could be through secret ballots or through consensus among community members. Consensus is in fact the most typical fashion these individuals are selected. Typically, male community members, usually through a shura process (a process of community consultation and consensus building), select a single person to represent them. By doing so, they give them the authority to make decisions on behalf of the community and represent community interests to the state and outside actors (often to international donors working in villages).

The malik is presented by community members to the district governor. In some instances, a district governor will write a letter acknowledging the community decision to local district courts, who may give maliks a seal proving the status of village representative (Nojumi, Mazurana, and Stites 2008, 260). District governments do not always do this: in some cases maliks simply rely upon their signature or their thumbprint on official documents to indicate their authority. The policy of giving stamps and seals to maliks is not consistent around the country, but has its legacy in histories of cooptation by the state. In the past, the state made seals obligatory. After 2001, maliks have no legal status, so when district governors acknowledge their authority to lead communities, this is not a legal act but entirely informal. Of course, this creates enormous confusion, because they are given accoutrements that indicate state support such as seals and appointment letters. Nevertheless, this also indicates the importance of these individuals in mediating community life and underscores the importance of this informal practice. Maliks continue to play a vital role in local governance, despite the fact that they are not recognized by any state law or edit.

In many communities, individuals refer to their malik as the “bridge between the people and the government” (Murtazashvili 2016, 79), but the direction of this bridge goes from the village to the state. In other words, the malik is not an agent of the state but an agent of the people. Maliks most often interact with district governors (woluswals), who represent the lowest level of government in post-2001 Afghanistan. Although the constitution calls for elected village councils, these elections have never been held (donor projects, such as community development councils have sought to take their place, but these are not bodies elected through formal processes). The power of maliks ranges from community to community and often depends upon how much authority the community is willing to bestow upon them. The farther a community is from a seat of power, the more important role the malik plays in mediating community life and helping to access the state. In the most populated areas, each community selects its own malik, but in more remote ones, it is not unusual for several communities to rely on a single malik.

Although communities view maliks as leaders who derive their authority to lead based on local consent and custom, their history is deeply interconnected with the state. Throughout Afghan history, state authorities have sought to co-opt maliks and use them as agents for their indirect rule. During the 1970s, President Daud tried to establish his own network of maliks he could rely upon to collect taxes in rural areas. In the 1980s, the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, tried to appoint its own network of maliks to villages to serve as their representatives. Efforts to co-opt maliks have generally been unsuccessful.

Maliks can lose power and they are accountable to citizens. In general, when residents become dissatisfied with their malik, they can dismiss them from his or her duties. The fact that they are accountable to others is a constraint on their power that generally prevents them from engaging in predatory behavior. It is for this reason that maliks and other customary leaders at the community level enjoy higher levels of trust than any other public organization in rural Afghanistan (Asia Foundation 2018).

References

Anderson, Jon W. 1978. 'There Are No Khāns Anymore: Economic Development and Social Change in Tribal Afghanistan', Middle East Journal 32 (2): 167–83

Asia Foundation. 2018. 'A Survey of the Afghan People: Afghanistan in 2018'. Washington, DC: Asia Foundation, https://asiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/2018_Afghan-Survey_fullReport-12.4.18.pdf.

Kakar, M. Hasan. 1979. Government and Society in Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Abd Al-Rahman Khan. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press

Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick. 2016. Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan, New York: Cambridge University Press

Nojumi, Neamatollah, Dyan Mazurana, and Elizabeth Stites. 2008. After the Taliban: Life and Security in Rural Afghanistan, New York: Rowman and Littlefield