This chapter explores a second key human –commercial corridor that acts as a channel for a specific trading network. It explores the activities of traders who identify with adjacent regions of Afghanistan and Central Asia. These traders currently live and work in Istanbul and Jeddah. Afghan merchants of backgrounds very different from those discussed in the previous chapter bring together East Asia, the Arabian Peninsula and Turkey as a triangle. Going beyond the tendency in much scholarly work to fixate on the East –West connectivity of the ‘Silk Road’, the chapter explores these networks in relationship to the geographical scale of West Asia– a geographical concept points towards a geographical scale that is defined by specific characteristics and dynamics but that is also inherently part of Asia more generally. The distinctive nature of the networks described in this chapter is also an important reminder of diversity within the Eurasian arena as a whole and of the dangers of overly unitary attempts to conceptualise it. The trading networks involved in mediating these connections, furthermore, act pragmatically within the nation-state system at the same time as cultivating collective identities that do not revolve around one-dimensional belonging to Afghanistan.

The importance of interpersonal trust for participation in mass politics has been established in some contexts, but rarely in the developing world, and the mechanism linking trust to participation has not be well specified. In this chapter, the link between trust and participation is defined in terms of interdependence, on the one hand, and uncertainty, on the other. Based on this, participation levels are expected to be lower for individuals who generally distrust others and higher for those with a salient religious group identity. Moreover, religious group identity is expected to bolster participation because group-based trust operates as an effective substitute for generalized trust, where it is absent. The hypotheses are tested using survey responses from twenty-four Muslim countries, and evidence is found in support of each. Finally, the theory is extended to explain how repression impacts the advantage of Islamic-based political movements: in contrast to existing theories, which hold that repression should effectively sideline Islamic groups, I illustrate how increased repression bolsters the Islamic advantage by making trust even more important for political participation.