The state apparatus of Afghanistan and the periphery it attempted to dominate have received inadequate scholarly attention for the understanding of relations of power in general and for the dominant status of Sayeds, Sufis, and Shi'as in particular. For a complex set of historical and ideological reasons Western scholars have glossed over all forms of social inequality in Afghanistan with various formulations of Afghanophilia and Paxtunophobia in which distorted and paradoxical representations are offered about political tensions between the Kabul-centered state machinery and Paxtun tribal society and the Paxtun domination of Afghanistan. The essay will speak to this defining feature of Western scholarship of Afghanistan and offer an alternative anthropological and historical analysis of pre and post-state Afghanistan in which Sayeds, urban Qizilbash Shi'as, and Sufi leaders and networks dominated virtually all locations of power. Over the past three decades this triangle of domination has been eclipsed by a pattern in which Hazara Shi'as, Sayeds, and Ghalzi Paxtuns enjoy and jostle for prominence. The power of Qizilbash Shi'as and Sufi leaders and networks appears to be on the wane.