Talk:Pashtuns/Archive 1

message: Afghan is an ethnicity, Pashtuns are ethnic Afghan. A citizen of Afghanistan is "Afghani" or "Afghanay". Awghan is ethnicity, while Afghanay (Afghani) is any one from Afghanistan. Pashtuns are ethnic Afghans i.e. they are Awghans, Avagans, Asvakans, Abgans. Tajiks are Tajiks, Uzbek are Uzbek, Hazarajat are Hazarajats, Turkmen are Turkmen and Pashtuns (Awghans) are Afghans. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.164.19.66 (talk • contribs) 12 Oct 2005
swati r ruling tribe of swat, dir , malakand and kashmir,,they r pashtun and mixture of differnt tribe,,but as they united as swati so they known as swati... (anon 26 Aug 2005)
Anon, in edit summary: What controversy where? Who declines this fact? No controversy at all!
I "decline" this "fact". The Pashtuns are no more the true Afghans than white people are the "true" Brits, or any other such rubbish. Evercat 20:44 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
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There's some equivocation going on in the article as it now stands. First it's said that "Afghan" can refer to a particular ethnic group rather than inhabitants of a particular country, but then it's claimed that, by this logic, other groups are not true Afghans. This might be logical if "Afghan" is again being understood in the ethnic rather than national sense, but it isn't at all clear (in the article) which sense is intended (in this second claim). Evercat 21:21 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
: So I've fixed it, I think. Evercat 21:29 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
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I converted the population estimates for Afghanistan and Pakistan from %'s to absolutes, then added the three together for the estimate.  Thus, these unsourced numbers, in addition to being arbitrary, may be wildly inaccurate.  I think that we should cut out the descriptions of prominent Pashtuns.  We can make a list if it's that important.  The only Pashtuns important to this page are those that are important within the group, i.e. had some effect on the group itself.  DanKeshet 20:27, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
Hi!
It is interesting to note that there are a number of externals links from this wikipedia entry to various articles at dangoor.com, and that these external articles are confusing the issue of the twelwe tribes of israel versus the ten lost tribes versus the tribes *not* lost (that would be jews)
I did a google on mr Dangoor and he seems like an honest nice chap? Why then this deceptive lingo?	
mvh // Jens M Andreasen	+	
Frankly, this article is a mess. I've copy edited what was there, but I don't know the topic well enough to work on it. This needs cleanup on all sorts of counts: it has a lot of POV material; the links give high profile to non-mainstream views (Pashtuns as lost tribes of Israel) without the article really discussing the scholarship on this issue. I could go on, but I think almost anyone can see it on a quick read. Please, someone who knows this topic, please give this article some attention. -- Jmabel 01:49, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: afghans

message: Via anonymous edits, we're back to Pashtuns as "the true Afghans" and the descendants of lost tribes of Israel. It the first paragraph of the "History" section we have:
* "...what are believed to have been Aryan tribes of Central Asia..."
** Believed by whom? And isn't "Aryan" a rather discredited word, more redolent of 19th century ethnology (not to mention its appropriation by the Nazis) than of current usage?
***The term "Aryan" is a somewhat discredited word. In Indo-European linguistics, the term is now replaced with "Iranic/Iranian", "Indo-Iranian", or "Indo-Aryan".  In its non-racist applications, all the term "Aryan" is meant to reflect, as it should in this context, is that a particular ethno-linguistic group belongs to the West or East Iranian branches of the Indo-European language family, and as such has a number of characteristics in common.  In this sense, therefore, Pashtuns, whose language, Pashto, is a West Iranian language like Farsi or Kurdish, are "Aryans", but as noted this is a culturally loaded word in many languages.  There is a separate issue of the "Aryan Invasion Theory", as some term it, which while originally meant to explain the presence of Indo-European and Dravidian language families in India simultaneously; this theory as I understand it is not relevant to the issue of Iranian linguistics, and is also heavily loaded with racist connotations.  By this token, the Pashtuns are an "Aryan" tribe, but this is vacuous at best.  I would replace this passage with language to the effect simply that "Pashtuns are an ethnolinguistic group whose language, Pashto, is a member of the West Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family"  --KASchmidt 03:19, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "True Afghans"???

message: Why was the following removed from the article? To the best of my knowledge it is entirely correct and correctly cited.
More precisely, there are several levels of organization: the tabar (tribe) is subdivided into kinship groups each of which is a khel. The khel in turn is divided into smaller groups (pllarina or plarganey), each of which consists of several extended families or kahols. [Wardak, 2003, p. 7] "A large tribe often has dozens of sub-tribes whose members may see themselves as belonging to each, some, or all of the sub-tribes in different social situations (co-operative, competitive, confrontational) and identify with each accordingly." [ibid., p. 10] 
The reference, still in the article, is: 
* Wardak, Ali "Jirga - A Traditional Mechanism of Conflict Resolution in Afghanistan", online at UNPAN (the United Nations Online Network in Public Administration and Finance, 2003.
-- Jmabel | Talk 19:29, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, I put it back.
--Germsteel 05:00, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Levels of societal organization