St Petersburg International Conference of Afghan Studies

St Petersburg International Conference of Afghan Studies 85 Panel Five. Political Patterns in Afghanistan and in the Liminal Areas... a cadre of intellectuals, he assisted the official constitution writing committee, pre- sided by his father, the Minister of Justice. The document was drafted, reviewed and ratified under Majruh’s eyes, and subsequently he also witnessed its disintegration, tied to the dissolution of the ‘constitution coalition’. Averting censorship, Majruh’s 1972 article, “Political Philosophy”, which appears as a scholarly introduction to the subject, barely conceals a critique of the activities and ideologies of the fractious intelligentsia, and their increasing disunity and disillusionment with the constitution. Perhaps because the Pashtun poet and tribal chief, Khushal Khan Khattak, captures the extreme individualism valued by Afghan politics, Majruh uses his Dasturnama, a text described by Dr V. V. Kushev as a treatise on political ethics, to elaborate on the localization and hierarchization of power inAfghan society. The concept of ethics that emerges from Majruh’s discussion of political philosophy will be contrasted with the same notion as it is conceived both by Islam and by Pashtun culture.