Etnicidad, nacionalismo y el Estado en Afganistán

The paper begins by surveying the cultural, linguistic, occupational and sectarian diversity of Afghanistan's population, going on to discuss the origins of the modern Afghan state in the reign of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan in the late 19th century. It explains that it has almost always been dominated by Pashtuns, particularly Durranis, and that this has often been resented by non-Pashtuns. It looks at the way that starting in the 1920s efforts were made to link Afghan national identity with Pashtun culture and values. Opposition to King Amanullah's modernisation programme led to his departure in 1928. For a brief period in 1929 a Tajik ruler, Habibullah II, held power, but Amanullah's third cousin, Nadir Khan, soon restored the Durrani monarchy. A renewed emphasis on the Pashtun character of the Afghan state followed, with for instance Pashtu being proclaimed the official language in 1937. After drawing attention to the significance of the Prime Minister Daud Khan's support for an independent Pashtun state, Pashtunistan, in the 1950s, the paper looks at the emergence of a somewhat more inclusive ethos and a stronger sense of a shared national identity in the 1960s. Finally it examines the impact of the Saor Revolution in April 1978, the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s and the rise of Taliban in the mid-1990s on identity, concluding that ethnic divisions and tensions became more marked in the last quarter of the 20th century

Afghanistan

Since 1905 Britain had paid the Afghan ruler, Amir Habibullah, a subsidy and had controlled Afghanistan's foreign relations, and he maintained Afghanistan's neutrality throughout WWI in spite of strong pressure to induce him to join the Central Powers. The war did not have much of an impact on most Afghans (although there were shortages of some commodities), but many died in the global influenza outbreak which began in 1918. When the war ended Britain failed to reward the Amir for his refusal to take advantage of British weakness during it, and he was assassinated early in 1919. His successor, Amir Amanullah, launched the third Anglo-Afghan War, following which the country became fully independent, but Amanullah's hasty modernization was to lead to his overthrow in 1929

Tribe and state in Waziristan 1849-1883.

The thesis begins by describing the socio-political and economic organisation of the tribes of Waziristan in the mid-nineteenth century, as well as aspects of their culture, attention being drawn to their egalitarian ethos and the importance of tarburwali, rivalry between patrilateral parallel cousins. It goes on to examine relations between the tribes and the British authorities in the first thirty years after the annexation of the Punjab. Along the south Waziristan border, Mahsud raiding was increasingly regarded as a problem, and the ways in which the British tried to deal with this are explored; in the 1870s indirect subsidies, and the imposition of 'tribal responsibility' are seen to have improved the position, but divisions within the tribe and the tensions created by the Second Anglo-Afghan War led to a tribal army burning Tank in 1879. The contrast is drawn with the relatively good relations which were established with many of the Darwesh Khel Wazirs, some of whom had begun to graze flocks and cultivate land in the Bannu district on the north Waziristan border. However, clumsy handling of the latter led to a serious crisis in 1870, and the resulting efforts to improve tribal management are described. In conclusion, the nature of British frontier policy in Waziristan in this period is analysed, and the strategic, political, economic and cultural influences upon it examined; in particular ideas about how the tribes were organised and could be handled are investigated. Actual techniques of tribal management are described and their effectiveness assessed. Tribal reactions are briefly explored; the difficulties experienced with them are seen to have been due to factionalism and a general clash of cultures, as much as to their poverty. The relationship between the tribes and the government in Kabul in this period is also discussed. The implications for the general question of relations between 'tribe' and 'state' are briefly assessed, and the dialectical quality of the relationship emphasised

Tombs and footprints : Islamic shrines and pilgrimages in modern Iran and Afghanistan.

The thesis examines the characteristic features of Islamic shrines and pilgrimages in Iran and Afghanistan, in doing so illustrating one aspect of the immense diversity of belief and practice to be found in the Islamic world. The origins of the shrine cults are outlined, the similarities between traditional Muslim and Christian attitudes to shrines are emphasized and the functions of the shrine and the mosque are contrasted. Iranian and Afghan shrines are classified, firstly in terms of the objects which form their principal attractions and the saints associated with them, and secondly in terms of the distances over which they attract pilgrims. The administration and endowments of shrines are described and the relationship between shrines and secular authorities analysed. Attention is drawn in particular to the lavish patronage of shrines by the Safavid Shahs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The question which categories of people are most likely to visit shrines is raised; shrines are seen to play an especially prominent part in women's religious lives. The organisation and ritual of pilgrimage are described as far as the sources permit, as are the rituals which take place at the shrines themselves. In particular, the ritual of 'raising the standard', which is performed at or soon after New Year's Day at a number of shrines in northern Afghanistan and is believed to help to assure the prosperity of the community as well as the individual, is examined in some detail. People's motives for visiting shrines, economic, political, medical and social as well as strictly religious, are explored. Finally a wider question is raised, how the diversity of Islamic belief and practice of which these shrine and pilgrimage cults provide such striking evidence may best be accommodated within an analytical framework. Some criticisms are made of the models of Islam put forward by Spooner, Gulick, Gellner and Eickelmann, and an alternative approach is outlined

Bridging the Political Deficit: Loss, Morality, and Agency in Films Addressing Climate Change

This article examines the emotional rhetorical strategies of 3 films—TheDay After Tomorrow (2004), An Inconvenient Truth (2006), and The Age of Stupid (2009)—that attempt to create engagements with the “postpolitical” problem of climate change. In all 3 films the experience of personal loss, the potential for future loss, and the emotions associated with loss are fundamental to affective engagement.The emotional loading of representations of environmental problems derives partly from concerns about human political agency and subjectivity. It is not so much that emotional or moral appeals are simply added on in order to bolster a political message, but rather that autobiographical narratives of loss and morality occupy the space once dominated by modernist forms of politics

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Adding 6 months of androgen deprivation therapy to postoperative radiotherapy for prostate cancer: a comparison of short-course versus no androgen deprivation therapy in the RADICALS-HD randomised controlled trial

Background Previous evidence indicates that adjuvant, short-course androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) improves metastasis-free survival when given with primary radiotherapy for intermediate-risk and high-risk localised prostate cancer. However, the value of ADT with postoperative radiotherapy after radical prostatectomy is unclear. Methods RADICALS-HD was an international randomised controlled trial to test the efficacy of ADT used in combination with postoperative radiotherapy for prostate cancer. Key eligibility criteria were indication for radiotherapy after radical prostatectomy for prostate cancer, prostate-specific antigen less than 5 ng/mL, absence of metastatic disease, and written consent. Participants were randomly assigned (1:1) to radiotherapy alone (no ADT) or radiotherapy with 6 months of ADT (short-course ADT), using monthly subcutaneous gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogue injections, daily oral bicalutamide monotherapy 150 mg, or monthly subcutaneous degarelix. Randomisation was done centrally through minimisation with a random element, stratified by Gleason score, positive margins, radiotherapy timing, planned radiotherapy schedule, and planned type of ADT, in a computerised system. The allocated treatment was not masked. The primary outcome measure was metastasis-free survival, defined as distant metastasis arising from prostate cancer or death from any cause. Standard survival analysis methods were used, accounting for randomisation stratification factors. The trial had 80% power with two-sided α of 5% to detect an absolute increase in 10-year metastasis-free survival from 80% to 86% (hazard ratio [HR] 0·67). Analyses followed the intention-to-treat principle. The trial is registered with the ISRCTN registry, ISRCTN40814031, and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT00541047. Findings Between Nov 22, 2007, and June 29, 2015, 1480 patients (median age 66 years [IQR 61–69]) were randomly assigned to receive no ADT (n=737) or short-course ADT (n=743) in addition to postoperative radiotherapy at 121 centres in Canada, Denmark, Ireland, and the UK. With a median follow-up of 9·0 years (IQR 7·1–10·1), metastasis-free survival events were reported for 268 participants (142 in the no ADT group and 126 in the short-course ADT group; HR 0·886 [95% CI 0·688–1·140], p=0·35). 10-year metastasis-free survival was 79·2% (95% CI 75·4–82·5) in the no ADT group and 80·4% (76·6–83·6) in the short-course ADT group. Toxicity of grade 3 or higher was reported for 121 (17%) of 737 participants in the no ADT group and 100 (14%) of 743 in the short-course ADT group (p=0·15), with no treatment-related deaths. Interpretation Metastatic disease is uncommon following postoperative bed radiotherapy after radical prostatectomy. Adding 6 months of ADT to this radiotherapy did not improve metastasis-free survival compared with no ADT. These findings do not support the use of short-course ADT with postoperative radiotherapy in this patient population