Are we a nation yet?

Nation has become so integral a part of our life in this world today that it is virtually impossible not to identify ourselves within a nation. It has become so natural that individuals identify themselves according to their nation, obtain national passport, dies for it and kills for it.
Thus, what is a nation? And are we a nation yet? The best definition is given by Timothy Baycroft that “nation is a group of people who believe or imagine that they share a number of characteristics like, common language and culture, religion, territory, a particular vision of accepted history, a common race or ethnicity and its members can identify themselves and others as belonging to a particular group who have the will or desire to remain as a group, united through some forms of organisation, most often political.” (Baycroft.T, 1998)
If we take this definition as our hypothesis of our argument, than it is indeed very hard to claim that we are a nation yet. The country is divided on the basis of ethnicity and the history of the country from its modern creation has gone through domination of one ethnic group over another. The darkest period of our history was the civil war of 1991 to 2001 in which every single ethnic armed themselves with the aim of eliminating another from the political power. Thus, we are yet to accept one another that we all live in that geopolitical territory together. For instance, while most of the European countries created their own history on the ground of common shared features such as glories or achievements of the past, we are yet to create that common acceptable history. Furthermore, while multi-cultural nations like Netherlands or Switzerland found a common ground (that to have a bright and prosperous future), left their differences aside, we are yet to realize that our achievement in the future depends on our willingness to work together. In 21st century where all countries have accepted and are proud of their multi-culturalism, the leaders of ethnic groups in our country are thinking how to impose their language, their vision of history and culture over other ethnic groups. Thus, we do not share any of the above characteristics of a nation.
Birch argues that there are two ways that nations will form, either through racial or ethnical means in which the majority ethnic group eliminate other ethnic groups in order to gain absolute power or through cultural means, in which all ethnic groups accept a common culture and therefore will be seen as the equal citizens of the country (Birch, A, legitimacy, chapter 1). The former, has been tried by many countries like turkey in which Turks massacred millions of Armenians or Nazi Germany in which Germans exterminated millions of Jews. This process also have happened in Afghanistan too where millions of people were killed before the end of 19th century or recently by the Taliban regime. The aim of these killings is to build a pure ethnic group, but as history has illustrated to us, this approach is impossible to achieve. Germans with the most advanced technological means of killing failed to accomplish their mission, so did Turks. Plus, it brought nothing but hatred, and in certain circumstances civil war that destroyed the country’s economic, political and social infrastructures. Still, after decades Germany suffers from the shadow of those periods. Therefore, it should be unthinkable to any ethnic group in Afghanistan to still believe in this means of building a nation. Haven’t we learn from the past events that this will only and only led to our backwardness, destruction and therefore, ability of our neighboring countries to use us against each other to further dig our grave. The latter form of building nation has been largely tried by US, Australia and Canada. In these countries immigrants -who came from all over the world- once accepted the mainstream culture with its institutions as their way of life, became considered as citizens of the country. They would have equal right, legal and constitutional guarantees of their liberties as everyone else in the country. This approach seems to be an adequate means of building a united Afghanistan. However, this isn’t as easy as it may sound. Most of these countries had reached a high degree of cultural and educational understanding before, being able to tolerate one another’s differences. How can we possible do it, when our literacy rate in the country is less than 10%, being the least illiterate nation in the world and above all when our people’s understanding of the world is so limited?
It was Mazzini who famously said “we have created Italy, it is time to make Italians” (Mazzini 1848), indeed we have created a country, Afghanistan, but we are yet to create “Afghans“, this requires state action. The first requirement is the introduction of a comprehensive education system. Compulsory education is essential to increase the population’s understanding of not only their country’s history and their way of life but to learn the history of other nations and their way of life. Literacy is vital to create a highly educated society and academic intellectuals who are likely to solve their differences through discussion, persuasion and deliberation than fight and war. The second requirement is the ability of government to pursue policies and tactics designed to minimize the political effects of ethnic and religious cleavages within society and thus to strengthen the authority of the government. One obvious initiative is the creation of symbols of national identity like national flag and anthems, which are accepted by all ethnic groups. And finally, it requires the establishment of political institutions that represents all sections of society like creation of a parliament, where the representatives of all ethnic groups can be represented or a federal government, like that of Switzerland.
In conclusion, I should say that achieving the conditions outlined above is not easy. As we said, it requires a neutral, effective and strong government, which is far from the ability of this existing government and it is unlikely to come up in near future. Furthermore, realistically thinking, this is my belief that there is no way that we can establish a common ground based on a common culture. Therefore, we can not create past because our past is overwhelmed with ethnic cleavages, civil war and hatred of one another. But we can create future because it is the only mean left for us to put aside out differences. What I mean by future is the ability of us to leave the past behind and focus on building an Afghanistan that it’s president no longer knocks the doors of other countries for some millions dollar in aid, or that kept weak so that its neighboring countries, Pakistan and Iran stands on its shoulders, or that it does not rank any longer as the poorest and least literate country in the world.
(Nationalism n Europe, Baycrfot, T, 1998, PAGE 7).
Hobsbawm