Abstract:

Afghanistan’s Uzbek minority have been an under-researched community with tremendous insights to be offered for the role different aspects of identity formation, such as politics, religion, and ethnicity, play in a community’s self-understanding.This study, conducted from 2018-2019 in a provincial capital of Northern Afghanistan, involved twenty participants, from ages 25 to 65, different economic statuses, and association with nine different cities or villages. The study used an ethnographic framework that was supplemented by the analytical tools of grounded theory. The primary research question for the broader study was, “How do members of an Uzbek Muslim community in Afghanistan negotiate their identity?” The study found that Uzbek participants of the study formed their identity through the tension between being a distinct ethnic group on the one hand, and sharing religion, geography, and traditions with other groups in Afghanistan on the other - all the while aspiring to legitimacy or “partnership” within Afghanistan as Uzbeks. This paper presents aspects of the study concerning the assertion for legitimacy within the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2002-2021) and the way it related to identity formation. In addition to the general findings, two particular aspects of this assertion are explored in the paper. The first is the way participants resisted what they perceived as outsider attempts to divide their community through different ethnic labeling. This prompted a perception of threat to attempts at a unified assertion of legitimacy within the Pashtun-dominated politics and culture of the country. Secondly, participants expressed an ambivalence in their support of General Dostem, an Afghan Uzbek leader, even as his role in asserting Uzbek legitimacy within the country was perceived as essential. Both of these aspects interact with theories on revitalization movements but are particularly salient for exploring how “figured roles” (Holland, et. al.) support social movements, the role of “cultural intimacy” (Herzfeld) in identity formation, and the challenges of multiculturalism within Afghanistan (Sadr). Furthermore, the study provides indications of how regional definitions of Uzbek identity interplay with the minority populations outside of Uzbekistan.