Robert Canfield

This spring Robert Canfield is travelling to Pakistan and, if internal fighting subsides, to Afghanistan. The purpose is to update his information on Afghan religio-political institutions, which he has been studying since 1966. The information will enable him to update and correct, in a final revision, a book now nearing completion, and to augment his information on the Ismailis, a topic which will be the object of his next writing project.

The book currently nearing completion examines the social and political influence of Islamic "saints" in Afghanistan. "Saints" -- Islamic specialists [pirs, ruhani] believed to have unique spiritual powers -- can be politically influential in Afghanistan, as they are the foci of informal networks of "friends" who in times of crisis may form into broad-based political coalitions. In the recent civil war, for instance, "saint networks" comprised the cores of two of the major "political parties" formed to resist the Soviet-supported Marxist regime in Kabul; also, the family of one of the two Ismaili "saints" in the country, along with their Ismaili followers, provided the core of a powerful pro-government militia. What has been different about these organizations in the recent civil war is that they have not been overtly religious, but formed as political or military coalitions.

Information specifically on the Ismailis of Afghanistan will be useful in his next writing project. That topic has been taken out of the current manuscript to reduce its length. Together with material collected in earlier visits [1966-68, 1989] the new material will be extensive enough to produce a separate [perhaps book-length] study. The main focus will be the public revelation in the 1950s that a prominent "saint" and his followers were secret worshippers of the Aga Khan, and thus Ismailis. Ismailism is generally despised among the Afghans, most of whom are Sunni Muslims, but it is especially so among the minority Shia, among whom the [secret] Ismailis had been intermarrying. The public exposure of the Ismailis rent apart many communities in Bamian, central Afghanistan, where Canfield did his original field work. The occasion of this exposure and the events that resulted from it will be the main concern of the next writing project.

Because political circumstances have changed since the earlier field work he is now more free to reveal details about the Afghan Ismailis than previously, when they were being persecuted. To the early material he plans to add information on what has happened to the Afghan Ismailis since then, based on interviews collected during a stay in Pakistan in 1989, and on interviews during his projected field trip this spring. The Ismailis, since becoming public, have been a small but organized social force in the country, and they continue to play a strategic role in its still fluid political affairs.

Having supported the Marxists during the recent civil war, they helped form a new coalition made up of former Marxists and resistance fighters as the Kabul government collapsed in 1992. Now, the society is divided into several unstable factions, and the Ismailis are faced with special threats and challenges that Canfield hopes to learn more about during the proposed visit.