Zohra Saed

Decolonizing Afghanistan: Countering Imperial Knowledge and Power

The newly released Decolonizing Afghanistan: Countering Imperial Knowledge and Power Editors: Wazhmah Osman, Robert D. Crews (Duke University Press, 2025). My essay (chapter 15) intervenes in dominant historiographies that have framed Afghan history through imperial, Cold War, and ethnonational lenses, often marginalizing Turkestani, Uzbek, Turkmen, and Uyghur lineages within the modern Afghan state. Drawing on family archives, oral histories, visual materials, and institutional collections, I examine how indigeneity, migration, and professional labor were selectively erased or reassigned in state narratives—particularly during the mid-twentieth century.

A central component of this research appears in my chapter, “An Other Afghanistan: Indigeneity, Migration, and Belonging in Andkhoy.” Through a microhistorical approach grounded in archival photographs, painted portraits, educational records, and oral testimony, I trace how Turkestani professionals, dentists, artisans, and educators were integral to Afghanistan’s modernization yet later excluded from official histories on the basis of ethnic and regional identity.

This work foregrounds the politics of naming, attribution, and archival visibility, demonstrating how professional achievements were reassigned, anonymized, or nationalized, thereby obscuring Turkestani contributions. By situating personal and familial archives alongside state and colonial records, my research offers a decolonial methodology that reclaims marginalized histories without reproducing nationalist or imperial frameworks.

I have presented this work in academic and public forums, including at the Kevorkian Center at NYU, and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Annual Meeting 2025 in DC and invited panels connected to the Decolonizing Afghanistan volume, contributing to broader conversations on empire, indigeneity, and historical memory in Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Contributors: Zohra Saed, Helena Zeweri, Nivi Manchanda, Morwari Zafar, Matthieu Aikins, Ali Karimi, Marya Hannun, Hosai Qasmi, Purnima Bose, Dawood Azami, Sabauon Nasseri, Tausif Noor, Gazelle Samizay, Paula Chakravartty