RASC News Agency: Last semester, I enrolled in a graduate course titled The Kurdish Question and authored an academic paper on the subject now published in German on the English section of this website. The Kurdish predicament bears a striking resemblance to the sociopolitical fate of Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun ethnic groups. The parallel becomes clearer when one recognizes that “Afghani nationalism” is, in essence, a derivative construct of Turkish nationalism. In this ideological analogy, Afghani nationalism assumes the role of Turkish ethnonationalism, while the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, and other marginalized ethnicities mirror the role of the Kurds. One need not look far to discern a profound ideological symmetry between Turkish and Afghanistani nationalism. Both are rooted in a shared ethno-ideological framework, and the ruling elites in Ankara and Kabul have historically enjoyed a form of unspoken solidarity, shaped by parallel nation-building strategies. To fully appreciate this comparison, one must first revisit the contours of the Kurdish struggle.
Approaching the Kurdish issue as a non-Kurd and an outsider to the region, I began my academic exploration with complete neutrality. Within the Western Kurdish diaspora, one encounters a multiplicity of often contradictory narratives: some attribute Kurdish statelessness to foreign intervention; others point to poverty, political exclusion, or internal divisions. A significant portion of the discourse blames the PKK’s militarism and ideological rigidity. However, after extensive research, I reached a more fundamental conclusion: the primary obstacle to Kurdish liberation lies in the ideological fragility of Kurdish nationalism itself. It is a movement with incomplete intellectual scaffolding lacking the conceptual coherence necessary to mobilize a cohesive front. This fragmented ideological core has engendered a fragmented political destiny. While Kurdish nationalism emerged in reaction to Turkish nationalism, it failed to build a commensurate ideological architecture of its own.
Although Kurds and Turks share centuries of cultural, religious, and historical overlap, Turkish nationalism monopolized key civilizational elements such as Islamic identity, the concept of a territorial homeland, and the symbolism of historical continuity and skillfully integrated them into a coherent nationalist framework. Kurdish nationalism, by contrast, was left clinging solely to an ethnic marker. It lacked both institutional power and the spiritual legitimacy conferred by Islam a vacuum that proved fatal in the long run. This vacuum allowed Turkish nationalism not only to appropriate Islam but also to weaponize it against the Kurds. Deprived of their religious-cultural anchor, Kurdish ideologues turned instead to imported revolutionary doctrines specifically Marxist-Leninist communism. That decision proved disastrous. Communism, with its rejection of religion and traditional social structures, was alien to the lived realities of most Kurds. Unsurprisingly, it failed to resonate with the wider Kurdish population. Many devout Kurdish Muslims viewed the communist turn as a betrayal of their core values and resisted it some paying the ultimate price. The phenomenon echoed across the Muslim world, including Afghanistan, where hundreds of thousands were martyred resisting Soviet-backed regimes.
When communism eventually collapsed, segments of the Kurdish elite especially those in exile attempted a pivot. Seeking to curry favor with Western powers, they adopted the language of liberal democracy, human rights, and secular governance. Yet this new ideological orientation proved equally ineffective. Western liberalism had little organic connection to the Kurdish sociocultural fabric, and it carried negligible influence over Western foreign policy, which remains rooted in strategic calculus, not moral idealism. The liberal turn, like the communist one before it, failed to address the movement’s central weakness: the absence of a unifying ideological force grounded in the community’s own religious and historical identity.
In many ways, the Kurdish diaspora exacerbated the problem. Detached from the cultural sensibilities of their homeland, many Kurdish exiles promoted a version of nationalism increasingly out of touch with the people it purported to represent. Their rejection of Islam historically the glue of Kurdish society further alienated the masses. In contrast, Turkish nationalism continued to benefit from Islam’s mobilizing power, albeit in a nationalist-appropriated form. Kurdish resistance, now devoid of its religious core, became susceptible to both ideological collapse and external manipulation. The result was sociopolitical marginalization and internal disintegration. The consequence has been devastating: after decades of struggle, and the spilling of vast amounts of Kurdish blood, the movement finds itself disoriented and ideologically bankrupt. With Abdullah Öcalan’s moderation of the PKK’s objectives and the strategic recalibration of many Kurdish factions, the movement appears to be retreating to where it began its sacrifices rendered tragically futile by its own ideological disarray.
This story should sound eerily familiar to the peoples of Afghanistan particularly to Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras. In our own modern history, Islam played a central and decisive role in resisting ethnonationalist despotism. The victory of Habibullah Kalakani over Amanullah Khan’s imperialist regime was rooted in a deeply religious ethos. While Kalakani remains a contested figure, his revolt was a legitimate and historically justified response to cultural and ideological aggression. To judge him by contemporary political standards is not only anachronistic but intellectually disingenuous. We would do well to remember that today’s “rational choices” may appear as catastrophic failures to future generations. The subsequent phase of ideological resistance was spearheaded by Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani and Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. Both men revitalized Islamic political discourse, anchoring their resistance in religious legitimacy. Their achievements were substantial, though often undercut by structural limitations and external pressures. To attribute the failures of an entire era to them alone is unfair. They carried the struggle as far as they could under the constraints of their time. The burden now falls on a new generation to resume the unfinished work.
Alarmingly, the ideological decline seen in the Kurdish movement is increasingly mirrored in the current trajectory of Tajik nationalism. Once again, we find a void where there should be ideological clarity. Pashtun ethnonationalism now embodied in the Taliban’s regime has seized the banner of Islam, even if in a distorted and ethnocentric form. The Taliban’s use of Islamic symbolism first formulated in slogans like “Islamiyat wa Afghaniyat” by Mahmud Tarzi is a continuation of Turkish-inspired ideological frameworks designed to consolidate ethnic power under religious pretense. And yet, it works. By co-opting Islam, however distorted, the Taliban have successfully mobilized vast networks of followers and legitimized their rule in the eyes of many. Meanwhile, many Tajik youth particularly those in the diaspora have either embraced the failed doctrines of communism or adopted a passive posture, hoping that geopolitical winds will eventually shift in their favor.
This reliance on either outdated revolutionary dogma or imagined foreign salvation is politically suicidal. Communism left Afghanistan in ruins; to resurrect it now, even rhetorically, is to repeat history’s gravest mistakes. Equally delusional is the fantasy that Western powers will spontaneously intervene to deliver us from tyranny. The so-called “Monday intellectuals,” who passively monitor global headlines while awaiting divine intervention, embody the paralysis of an ideology in decline. If our resistance is to succeed indeed, if it is to survive it must be anchored in a compelling, internally resonant ideological foundation. That foundation must be Islam not as a dogma, but as a liberating force that aligns with our historical identity, spiritual sensibilities, and societal values. Only then can we articulate a vision of democracy, human dignity, and national sovereignty that is both authentic and sustainable.
Without this pillar, we are left adrift like the Kurds, suspended between fragmented ideologies and perpetual marginalization. The time has come to reclaim our ideological heritage and build anew.
By Shamsurrahman Ferutan
