Former President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan with Foreign Minister Wang Yi of China, December 2019. Karzai is wearing the Uzbek-style chapan. He is holding a karakuli cap in his hands. Courtesy Ministry of Foreign Affairs, PRC.Some of you may remember Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan from late 2001 until 2014, who used to wear a beautiful striped chapan hanging down from his shoulders, There are some good examples in the TRC Collection (for instance TRC 2004.0268). The garment symbolised his being the president of all Afghans, not only of his own ethnic group, the Pashtuns.
Karzai’s chapan is characteristic for the Uzbeks from northern Afghanistan. A Pashtun from the south, where Karzai hails from, would not be seen dead in it, but Karzai donned this northern garment as soon as he was proclaimed as the first president of post-Taliban Afghanistan. He did so after he had taken off the very different, typically Pashtun dress of southern Afghanistan which he had adopted after being dropped in Uruzgan, southern Afghanistan, by the CIA, in late 2001.
Group of Taliban leaders in Doha, Qatar, August 2020.
As one elderly Pashtun man told me in Kandahar in early 2002: Karzai is a terrrible dresser, but foreigners love it, and they give us money, so he is a good president. And yes, the world loved it: The fashion house of Gucci proclaimed him in 2003 as the world's best dressed president.
But what did I see last week? Karzai, still in Kabul, had a meeting with Taliban representatives, and there was no trace of the chapan, but instead he was wearing what we may describe as the Taliban uniform (what we called "Taliban dull" in an earlier TRC blog of today), namely a white shalwar kamiz (baggy trousers and baggy tunic), with a dark coloured, undecorated waistcoat. The only garment that still distinguishes Karzai from the Taliban is the karakuli, a lambskin cap, which Karzai was still wearing instead of the voluminous turban worn by the Talibs. When will he adopt the turban?
Hamid Karzai with his daughters, August 2021. Courtesy Free Press Journal.I may of course have got it wrong, and perhaps Karzai has been wearing the white shalwar kamiz and dark undecorated waskat for some time, but I wonder. Is this another example of a Karzai make-over? If so, he once again shows that he is very much aware of the power of dress.
But whatever, by adopting the dark waskat he and the Taliban have shown to be far from 'woke' by unashamedly adopting and wearing a typically Western garment; a clear example of cultural appropriation. How inconsiderate! But perhaps the Afghans have more pressing and important matters on their minds than us Westerners.
See also the TRC online exhibition: Afghan dress
Willem Vogelsang, 4 September 2021
Hamid Karzai (left) in talks with the new Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, August 2021.
