I should preface this by saying that my question is worded in a somewhat exaggerated way. Hopefully it will be clearer in a few lines what I am really trying to ask.
My understanding of the nation state concept is that it is defined by:
I have read that much of the difficulty that various nations have had when attempting to invade (or “spread freedom to”) Afghanistan is - apart from the geography - that it is a very fractured country.
The central government as it is now does not exert full autonomy over the regions is governs on paper. This goes beyond The Taliban: it is also caused by a broad lack of that understanding that one is part of a national identity. That is, each person in the countryside tends to be a member of their village first and an Afghani second (if at all).
This would seem to indicate that, in a strict sense, Afghanistan as it is now is not a nation state - or perhaps a state without a nation.
Is this assessment broadly correct, when one compares Afghanistan to both contemporary and historical nation states?
Has it always been like this? Why?
^1. I understand that the generic feudal system did not ever really exist, and was more of an oversimplification (or outright invention) by later scholars - trying to make sense of a continent’s patchwork of different types of rule.
Edit: it should probably be worth noting, given that at the moment this is sitting on 0 with 3 downvoted and no up, that whether or not a country is a nation state is a completely neutral point as it relates to the people living in a country.
In Europe, in the 20th century, there were many nations without states and many states which encompassed what people felt were multiple nations.
There may be a way to read this that goes along the lines of “has Afghanistan always been backwards” or something like that, but that is not the intention behind the question at all. Thinking of a nation-state as the only “modern” form of government is ... well quite a narrow view of things.
In short: No. Afghanistan is a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic country that has never had a coherent national identity.
Has it always been like this? Why?
Yes. The concept of a nation-state or the idea that it's desirable is basically a 19th century concept. Under the Barazkai Dynasty, King Zahir Shah (r. 1933-73) tried to instill and promote a sense of Afghan nationalism, but state control was sufficiently decentralized (and Afghanistan itself so isolated) that these ideas didn't really penetrate except among the elites of Kabul. And even among them, the tribal and ethnic divisions were still ever-present.
Why was that? Well, again, Afghanistan is a multi-lingual country. Dari (a variety of Persian), is the most widely spoken language in the country, but is not the language of its traditionally most powerful ethnic group, the Pashtuns.
It's also as I said a profoundly isolated and disconnected country. The largest cities of the country are connected by the Afghan Ring Road. The modern version of this road did not begin construction until the 1950s. Before then, the fastest way across the country was still by horse. Afghanistan had no rail networks. It's landlocked. And its terrain is incredibly rugged.
We can't even say very much about just how fractured Afghanistan is by language, ethnicity, tribe, and religion, because it has never had a census of any kind.
It didn't have a postal service until 1870.
Today, only 43% of adults are literate (again, we probably don't even know that statistic accurately.)
I could go on and on. But the point is that Afghanistan simply did not and does not have any of the conditions that made nationalism possible elsewhere.
Without getting into contemporary politics too much, but its contemporary government doesn't especially try to make it a nation-state either--quite the opposite. The President of Afghanistan is Pashtun. The Vice President is from the Panjshir Valley and fought with Ahmad Shah Massoud, a Tajik. One of the Vice Presidents is Hazara (Shia), and until earlier this year the other was an Uzbek. This is by design as part of an effort to balance the ethnic interests of a deeply divided country.
If you want to read more, I might suggest this journal article as a starting point: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3879829?read-now=1&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents
