Both systems share a common assumption: this land is “ours,” and others must either become as we want them to be or leave.
Author: Fayaz Bahraman Najimi, analyst of regional and international affairs, member of the Advisory Council of “Sangar”
AN ETHICAL WARNING
This note is neither a general account of history nor an emotional identity-based debate; rather, it is an attempt to show a specific historical pattern based on how the logic of fascism was transmitted, localized, and sustained from Nazi Germany to the geography called Afghanistan, to create and shape the ideology of Afghanism and Pashtunism. The present comparison is based on a historical analogy, which, if not understood, can lead to the suppression or deadlock of any identity-based resistance.
In the tradition of German moral philosophy—from Kant to Jaspers—a “historical warning” is valid only when it is used not for revenge but to prevent the repetition of evil. In this sense, analogy is a tool for ethical understanding, not political exaggeration.
The history of nationalism in Europe—from the formation of Arthur de Gobineau’s racist theories to the First World War, and subsequently the rise of fascism in Italy, followed by the victory of Nazism in Germany and the establishment of the “Third Reich”—has long attracted my attention and been studied by me since my university years.
Later, I became interested in the growth of Turkish nationalism under the influence of the “Young Turks” movement, as its ideological consequences spread into the geography called Afghanistan and eventually led to the creation of a one-nation state under two names: “Afghans” and “Pashtuns.”
The entry of German nationalist thought dates back to the Amanullah era and later, particularly during the rule of Nadir Khan and his brothers, took a racist form in which Nazism played a key role. In this brief note, I want to make a short comparison based on historical patterns to show how the plague of fascist ideology penetrated the minds of the absolute majority of Afghans or Pashtuns, an ideology that was transferred to Kabul in the 1930s by German Nazis.
Thomas Mann, during his exile, wrote that fascism first produces a “mentality of obedience” before it creates a state. This point is key to understanding why Afghanism was rapidly adopted within Kabul’s power structures.
At the beginning of the Nazis’ rise to power, their official policy toward Jews was based on “expulsion and forcing them to leave Germany,” not on immediate physical extermination. This is fundamentally important for understanding the radicalization process of Nazism. I highlight it in three stages of antisemitism:
1 – Removal of Jews (1933–1939)
After Hitler came to power in 1933, Nazi policy was as follows:
Exclusion of Jews from public life;
Economic, legal, and social pressure forced them into mandatory emigration.
To implement this program, various tools were used, the most prominent being the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. Under these laws, Jews were downgraded to second-class citizens; marriages and relationships with “Aryan Germans” were prohibited; they were expelled from government service, universities, medicine, law, and other sectors; the process of “Aryanization” began through the gradual confiscation of Jewish property; intense anti-Jewish propaganda created an atmosphere of psychological and social insecurity.
The Nazis’ goal was clear: to empty Germany of Jews. As a result, between 1933 and 1939, about half of Germany’s Jews were forced to leave the country.
In mass propaganda, Jews were told: “Leave, but the world will not accept you.”
Nazi Germany was aware that the wave of antisemitism had spread throughout Europe, and many so-called democratic countries—from the United States and Canada to Britain and France—would refuse to accept about 600,000 Jewish immigrants from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.
The 1938 Évian Conference in France, initiated by Franklin Roosevelt and attended by over 30 countries, was a clear example of a moral failure: almost none of the participating countries, except for tiny Dominica, agreed to accept a quota of new Jewish refugees. This event is considered a stain on the history of democratic Europe before World War II. The refusal to accept Jews reinforced the Nazis’ argument that “the world does not need the Jews.”
Later that same year, the infamous “Kristallnacht” occurred—a turning point on the road to the mass murder of Jews. Nevertheless, the main goal of Kristallnacht was still intimidation and forcing Jews to leave Germany. At this stage, it can be said that industrial-scale extermination had not yet begun.
It should be noted that in the same year, a similar pogrom occurred in Jewish towns in the territory called Afghanistan, especially in Herat and Maimana, which marked the beginning of large-scale Jewish emigration to contemporary lands, including Palestine.
2 – The Deadlock of Expulsion and the Beginning of the Blockade (1939–1941)
With the outbreak of World War II, borders were closed, making mass expulsion impossible. Millions of Jews were trapped in the occupied territories. The 1938 Évian Conference, which exposed the incapacity and moral irresponsibility of the “civilized West,” convinced the Nazis that the world was complicit in the removal of Jews.
Walter Benjamin, the German-Jewish philosopher, wrote in his essay On the Concept of History that progress is often built on the ruins of victims. He himself became a victim of this moral deadlock until his death.
3 – The Final Solution (1941–1945)
The “Final Solution” (Endlösung) plan marked the transition from soft expulsion to industrial extermination, involving the organized physical destruction of Jews in death camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Dachau, and others. Historically, this is known as industrial genocide and moral collapse.
Without the two preceding stages, the implementation of the “Final Solution” would have been impossible.
Understanding Nazism is impossible without returning to the moral genealogy of European nationalism. From the mid-19th century, nationalism in Europe gradually transformed from a liberation theory based on cultural self-awareness into an ideology of eliminating “the other” with a hierarchical system.
The Frenchman Arthur de Gobineau, by developing the theory of “inequality of human races,” laid the first pseudo-scientific foundation for morally dehumanizing the “other,” where human value was defined not by dignity but by blood, ancestry, and myth—a framework that persists to this day.
As Hannah Arendt explained, fascism begins when “individual moral responsibility toward a grand historical narrative is suspended.” In this logic, the individual is no longer responsible but merely an “executor of historical necessity.” This is the very foundation that later allowed people to say “leave” without feeling guilt.
After World War I, Germany’s humiliation under the Treaty of Versailles, the economic crisis, and the collapse of social order turned this logic into a mass force. Nazism was not merely a political reaction but a reversed moral response to an identity crisis—an answer based on the elimination of “the other.”
Thomas Mann, in exile, wrote that Nazism was “the triumph of moral banality over conscience,” where language, myth, and history are transformed into tools to justify violence.
This flawed moral framework became the very pattern that, later—albeit with historical delay—was reproduced in the Afghanism project: replacing morality with myth, dignity with ancestry, and coexistence with soft elimination.
THE INTRODUCTION OF NAZISM INTO AFGHANISTAN — FROM THE ARYAN RACE TO AFGHAN NATIONALISM
The entry of German nationalism, particularly Nazism, into the territory called Afghanistan, was neither a random event nor the result of “neutral cultural inspiration.” It was part of a conscious ideological, political, and educational link in the 1930s, formed even after meetings and the establishment of a tripartite alliance—Mahmud Tarzi, Amanullah, and Mohammad Nadir—with the German delegation of Oskar von Niedermayer (military mission commander) and Baron Hintig (assistant) from 1916, and later during Amanullah’s rule led to the deployment of many German experts who assisted in drafting regulations and state-building. For this tripartite alliance, Germany was a “third force” against British India and Bolshevik Russia.
After the Amanullah period, during the rule of Nadir and his brothers, relations with Germany were institutionalized in a racist form and continued on a broad scale. Nazism in Afghanistan did not act as a full copy but in an adapted form compatible with the tribal and linguistic structure of Afghan society.
The ideology of “Nazism” was built on the concept of the “Aryan race,” which Alfred Rosenberg, the main Nazi ideologue, transformed from a pseudo-scientific theory into a state identity project. In the Afghan version, this became the concept of the “Aryan Afghan,” aimed at creating a dominant ethnic identity and gradually excluding others. This connection was not accidental: documents, correspondence, staff training, and literature from that period show that Afghan nationalism was fueled by the same Nazi logic of “one nation, one language, one history.”
In this framework, the Pashto language was considered the language of the “ruling nation,” while Persian, despite its civilizational roots and administrative function, was seen as an obstacle to the centralized state project. Just as German Nazism defined Jews not merely as a religious group but as a “racial problem,” Afghanism redefined Persian speakers and other ethnic groups not as equal citizens but as an “identity problem.” This moral redefinition paved the way for soft exclusion.
A key element of this transfer was the use of “soft power,” the same model the Nazis applied before resorting to industrial extermination. Afghan history—from Mirwais to Ahmad Shah Abdali, the creation of ethnic myths like Malalai, the rewriting of texts in a book called Patta Khazana, and the instillation of the idea that “being Afghan is a condition for citizenship”—all were tools of staged exclusion. This is why the present text emphasizes historical analogy: without understanding this transfer, Afghanism is perceived merely as local prejudice rather than an imported and adapted fascist project.
THE ETHICS OF DISCRIMINATION AND THE RESPONSIBILITY OF PASHTUN INTELLECTUALS — FROM COLLECTIVE DENIAL TO THE ABSENCE OF JUSTICE
Today, let us see how many YouTubers, bloggers, TikTokers, and other celebrities among non-Afghans dare to oppose the dominant order and boldly question Afghan identity. The answer is almost none.
Therefore, one can confidently say that the role of part of the non-Afghan intelligentsia and elites—especially Persian-speaking—on the territory called Afghanistan in sustaining Afghan identity has been extremely destructive. The reason lies in the trauma accumulated during the period of repression, pressure, imprisonment, dark dungeons, humiliation, and soft exclusion in the 1930s–1940s, which led generation after generation to become pragmatic, seeing survival as dependent on adaptation. Gradually, this led to a moral collapse: cooperation ceased to be “forced” and became a rational act, and eventually turned into a virtue—the virtue of silence, compromise, and self-Afghanization.
WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE PATH FROM AN ETHICAL PERSPECTIVE?
After a century of experience with Afghanism and Pashtunism, the crisis in Afghanistan can no longer be seen merely as a crisis of governance, political system, or foreign intervention. What has been destroyed is the foundation of moral coexistence and mutual understanding. A state built on the denial, humiliation, and transformation of the identities of its peoples, even if it repeatedly changes its name and system, will reproduce the same violence. Therefore, the central question is no longer “who will rule,” but “on what moral basis can people live together again?”
What has been propagated for a century as “national unity” was in fact a kind of informal social contract, embedded in regulations and constitutions or their equivalents, yet imposed:
Non-Afghan ethnic groups may remain, provided they accept the name “Afghan”;
Their language may exist, provided it has no independent history;
Their culture is tolerable, provided it serves the dominant “Afghan” identity.
This so-called contract was never voluntary, equal, or ethical. Therefore, at the first serious crisis—from civil wars to the rise of the Taliban—it invariably collapsed. The Taliban are not a deviation from the Afghan contract but the embodiment of the transition from “soft” to “hard” exclusion, while the logic of events has always remained the same.
In this context, the theory of the “right to self-determination” is no longer a radical or separatist demand but a moral response to structural historical oppression. This right is not only philosophical, legal, and political, but also profoundly ethical, because it rests on a simple principle: no individual, no people, no society should be forced to accept an identity that has been used as a tool of their humiliation and exclusion.
Just as after fascism, European peoples realized that coexistence is possible only based on free consent, in this geography, coexistence makes sense only when the right to say “no” to imposed identity is recognized.
One of the key issues in understanding the continuation of Afghanism and Pashtunism lies not only in the behavior of rulers but also in the political and cultural ethics of a significant portion of the Pashtun intelligentsia. In recent years, seemingly conciliatory arguments have been repeated by individuals of Pashtun origin: “Pashtuns love the Persian language and culture,” “one should not blame a whole people,” “if discrimination occurred, it was the rulers’ doing, not the Pashtuns’,” “most Pashtuns are victims of their own rulers’ authority,” or “we should be humanists,” etc. The topic of “Afghan humanism” has already been discussed by me extensively in a separate publication.
At first glance, these arguments appear humane and anti-discriminatory, but at the moral level, they carry a serious flaw. The issue is not whether all Pashtuns directly participated in oppression, just as not all Germans under Nazism were killers. The question, as Daniel Goldhagen points out, concerns the existence of an ethics of “voluntary cooperation”: cooperation that is not directly tied to overt violence but manifests as silence, justification, denial, and benefiting from a discriminatory order and power for personal gain.
A “prayer for Pashtuns’ love of the Persian language,” if it does not go beyond individual emotions and translate into moral and political action, effectively resembles a cost-free gesture. Love for a language is meaningful only when it does not coexist with silence in the face of its structural humiliation; when Pashtun graduates stand alongside victims in the denial of the rights and educational opportunities of Persian speakers rather than hiding in the safe zone of illusory neutrality.
Ethical measurement is not found in declared intentions but in actions that are costly and demanding!
Here, the connection to the hashtag #IAmNotAfghan becomes clear. This hashtag became an unprecedented ethical test for the Pashtun intelligentsia: could they publicly critique the imposed Afghan identity—from which their own dominant communities benefited most—or not?
The bitter reality is that to this day, no prominent political or cultural Pashtun figure has openly and unequivocally stood for the identity rights of non-Afghans. Collective silence itself constitutes a stance that actively contributes to the continuation of discrimination and injustice.
This situation is what Hannah Arendt called the “banality of evil,” an evil arising not from personal hatred but from the normalization of injustice and its transformation into a natural state. Not all Pashtuns are simultaneously willing to align with the victims of the Taliban and Afghanism; in fact, no moral distance is created between them and the structures of power.
Neutrality under conditions of inequality is itself a form of bias.
THE TALIBAN, LIBERAL AFGHANISM, AND THE CONTINUATION OF A UNIFIED ETHICS OF POWER
A common analytical mistake—both among external observers and some internal intellectuals—is the attempt to draw a moral distinction between the Taliban and state Afghanism, or the so-called “modern” Pashtun nationalism. This distinction is more a product of a psychological need to exonerate oneself and preserve the image of the “good Pashtun” versus the “bad Taliban” than a reflection of historical reality.
In truth, the Taliban are not a rupture but an overt continuation of the same moral logic institutionalized by state Afghanism since the 1930s. If classical Afghanism carried out “soft exclusion” through laws, history, language, and education, the Taliban implements such exclusion through weapons and Sharia as a fascist ideology. The difference is in the instruments, not the ethics!
Both sides rely on a common assumption: this land is “ours,” and others must either conform to our demands or leave.
In this context, “liberal Afghanism”—of the type represented by Ashraf Ghani, Hanif Atmar, Dawoodzai, and their associated intellectual networks—serves as a “moral intermediary,” not to restrain fascism but to legitimize it in modern rhetoric.
Just as in 1930s Germany, bureaucrats, lawyers, and university professors normalized Nazi violence through “law” and “national interest,” liberal Afghanism whitens” ethnic domination using terms like “state-nation,” “national unity,” and “shared identity.”
Without this intermediary stage, the Taliban could not have emerged. The Taliban are not the result of the failure of liberal Afghanism but rather the result of its moral success. When for decades, it was taught that “being Afghan” is a natural identity, Persian is merely a tool, false history must be accepted, and any protest is “division.” The moral foundation for violent exclusion was prepared.
Not a single prominent Pashtun figure—liberal, leftist, Islamist, or technocrat—after the Taliban’s rise has advocated for the rights of non-Afghan ethnic groups. Protests, if any, were limited to “loss of power,” “Afghanistan’s global image,” or “women’s rights” in an abstract form, not the ethnic and tribal structure of Afghan dominance. This silence is neither coincidental nor fear-driven; it is a continuation of the same discriminatory ethics that made Taliban dominance possible.
VOLUNTARY COLLABORATORS AMONG NON-AFGHANS
A brief note on “voluntary collaborators” among non-Afghans highlights the collapse of moral responsibility among the intelligentsia in the face of ethical resistance. This group mainly consists of corrupt bureaucrats, ethnic claimants, and opportunists from the republican period, who constantly chant the mantra of “being Afghan”!
No fascist project—neither in Nazi Germany nor in Afghan Afghanism—progressed solely by force of arms or security apparatus. What sustains fascism is the “voluntary cooperation” of potential victims. This is precisely the phenomenon Daniel Goldhagen identifies as a key element of Nazi crimes. According to him, ordinary people, the educated, and members of the intellectual and cultural elite become enforcers of the fascist order not out of compulsion, but out of belief or accumulated fear.
In connection with the theory of the “right to self-determination,” an alternative social contract is proposed as a counterweight to the formal republic, the repeated emirate, and even federalism, which merely change the name while preserving the logic of domination. This contract only makes sense if it is based on three ethical principles:
Real equality of identities — no name, language, or historical narrative should have institutional advantage over others;
Recognition of diversity — based on acceptance of differences not as a threat but as a fundamental condition for coexistence;
Recognition of the right to exit — every group must have the right to challenge the contract if it deems it unjust, and in doing so, act to the point of redefining borders and structures.
In this context, names such as Ariana or Eastern Khorasan are not historical nostalgia but an ethical proposal to break the forgery of Afghanist identity. Legitimacy comes not from distorted history but from the free consent of living people.
It is precisely in this modern sense that the moral meaning of the slogan “I am not Afghan!” is embedded.
“I am not Afghan!” is neither a denial of neighborliness nor a declaration of enmity; it is a statement of exit from an unjust contract. The same as what the victims of fascism did before it became possible to establish a new order: they declared that they were no longer part of the lie.
History shows that no fascism has ever fallen due to superficial reforms. Nazism collapsed not only because of military defeat but also because of moral collapse. Afghanism will end only when its moral foundation is openly and unequivocally rejected.
The “right to self-determination” and the “alternative social contract” are not tools of revenge, but tools of moral salvation in this false territory called Afghanistan. Without them, this land will either remain a field of permanent exclusion or a vast prison under different names.
And the final question is not political but ethical, addressed to those Afghans who possess conscience and a sense of justice:
Do you wish to live together with others, or do you prefer to continue your Afghan domination?
The answer to this question will determine the future of this territory!
