Washington Post Scribe Orientalizes Afghanistan

For almost a decade, Afghanistan has been largely off the mainstream global discursive agenda. In this context, Joshua Partlow’s recent tome A Kingdom of Their Own: The Family Karzai and the Afghan Disaster is an exception. However, Partlow, who served as the Washington Post’s bureau chief in Kabul, offers a delineation grounded in what Edward Said describes as Orientalism. Offering a discourse analysis of Partlow’s title as a case study, this paper argues that the Washing Post scribe has portrayed Afghanistan—in line with Orientalist approach—as an unchanging polity. Exoticizing the country at times, Partlow presents Afghanistan as a brutal and inhuman space where practices are grounded in tribal customs instead of rationality. Moreover, Partlow’s representation of Afghanistan is aimed at audiences in the Occident. Judging Partlow’s representation of Afghanistan against facts, this paper also demonstrates the inaccuracies in Partlow’s narrative.