Excellent and informative article on Pashtun customary law by Tom Barfield. Found via Afghanistanica.
...
Pashtuns, even wealthy ones, who moved to large cities were even farther removed from the values of the
Pashtunwali because there they were enmeshed in state systems of government that restricted autonomy and cash economies that valued money more than honor. It is for this reason that examples of customary law as a living tradition are found mainly in the marginal areas of rural Afghanistan even though the ethos of the Pashtunwali is common to all rural Pashtuns ...
The blog has some nice commentary as well:
I would venture a guess that if it was possible to do a quantitative analysis of revenge in Afghanistan, a researcher would find that few Pashtuns actually attempt revenge and even fewer attain it. But damn it, that whole Pashtunwali thing makes for an interesting article. And never mind that it is a wee bit Orientalist and sensationalist; Whatsisname at that there newspaper wants to tell you that Pashtuns are an unthinking bunch of maniacs bent on revenge, guided only by their basest emotions and incapable of logic, reason, forgiveness or pragmatism. I’m not going to cite any articles because there are so many to choose from, and not just from second-rate rags like [insert name of any newspaper in the world], but in quality sources such as
The Economist and
The Christian Science Monitor.
What those journalists are leaving out are the concepts of
Nanawatay, Rogha, Nagha and
Jirga. All these concepts are, in some form or another, tools for reconciliation, forgiveness, compensation, punishment or justice. And guess what? They are included in
Pashtunwali along with
Badal.
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