Politics and Poetics of Muqâvimat: Question of Literary Commitment in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan

In 1989, after a decade of fighting, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, but left wide-open scars that penetrated through layers of the Afghan imagination. The historical magnitude of the invasion inspired a multitude of responses, namely a poetic discourse of resistance against the Soviet occupation, a movement broadly known as Sh‘ir-i Muqâvimat. With the displacement of one third of Afghanistan’s pre-war population, these responses were particularly vociferous in Pakistan and Iran. This paper
seeks to problematize the genre of resistance poetry and unpack the ideological dispositions of literary historiographical accounts that attempt to measure its aesthetic force and impact on social and national memory. Narrowly and imprecisely defined as poetry composed against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan, the question of resistance has not yet been thoroughly examined in its multi-faceted discourse of politics and poetics, namely expression of dissent from the safety of “exile,” critiques toward Mujahideen’s leadership during the occupation as well as resistance poetry composed by Afghans after the withdrawal of Soviet forces. Last but not least, this paper wishes to situate Sh‘ir-i Muqâvimat, often examined in isolation, in the larger context of committed literature in contemporary Persian letters. By exploring the constitutive elements of resistance poetry in the case of Afghanistan, its varying interpretations and contestations, I hope to map out the plasticity of what is termed Sh‘ir-i Muqâvimat, pointing to the constellation of voices comprising the vibrant discourse of Afghan poetry of resistance attempting to understand an event of national magnitude in all its complexity.