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An Alternative Understanding From History and Sociology: Comments on 'Insurgents Set Aside Rivalries on Afghan Border'

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Written by Kris Merschrod   
Thursday, 30 December 2010 03:42
The article, “Insurgents Set aside Rivalries on Afghan Border” by Shanker and Schmitt (NY Times 29 DEC 2010), provides great insight into the dynamics of the tribal structure and also into the poor understanding of the context by the military sources of spin.

Let’s start with: “New intelligence assessments from the region assert that insurgent factions now are setting aside their historic rivalries to behave like “a syndicate,” joining forces in ways not seen before.”

The Pukhtoon tribes have always been competitive – it is part of the Pukhtoon way or Pukhtoonwali – British and other ethnographers have commented on that cultural aspect for centuries. That being said, “seen before” have been the rout of the British expeditionary forces over 50 times in 1800s. The most famous was one in which the Pukhtoon allowed a lone survivor to tell the story of the massacre. Of course we have seen the rout of the Russians in modern times. But one important part of the history of the Pukhtoon was the formation of the Durrani Federation in the 1700s. The Pukhtun tribes united against the remaining Mogul empire and then expanded all the way to what is Delhi, India. The Duranni Federation had Kandahar as its cultural center and the Karzai family importance dates from that era. Keep in mind that it was a Pukhtun federation of tribes – not Afghanistan nor Pakistan, but Pukhtoon on both sides of the Hindu Kush. The Durrani Federation did not hold the vast empire because the other ethnicities that they had conquered rebelled. The Pukhtoon Empire was conquered and much of the area held by the Sikhs, but, again, the Pukhtoon united, rose up, and, in the early 1800s, they liberated themselves from the Sikhs and the British were also pushed into negotiations that led to the 1897 agreement between Durand and Amir Abdurehman. That agreement led to the division of the Pukhtoon, but, importantly, in what is Pakistan today, the British left the internal affairs to the Puhktoon. So much for the “in ways not seen before.” The solidarity and persistence of the Pukhtoon is legendary, but it is a fact.

Let’s Continue with Solidarity: The noted inter-tribal solidarity has not boded well for external armies or administrators. Colonel Seiber noted correctly that they “put aside differences when they see a common threat.” Unfortunately the sociological significance of the problem is not grasped.
These are demonstrations of solidarity that, in general for all collectivities (tribes, nations, communities, gangs, etc) of humans, is the result of reduced linkages of the leadership and their people. The sociology of this phenomena is well established – reduce the accustomed access to trade, free travel, political influence, and resources and the collectivity will rebel and strike back as a whole putting aside internal differences. Reduced linkages always lead to increased cultural or nationalist solidarity. Other examples of this sociological phenomena of increased nationalism and solidarity are blockaded countries – Iran, North Korea, the Kurds, Iraq, Cuba, and, in its time, Nicaragua.

One has to ask, “where are the old divide and conquer tactics that are centuries old?” Where have been the counterinsurgency tactics that Gen. Petreaus was supposed to apply? Where are the tactics from Gen. McChrystal’s Initial Assessment? In both Afghanistan and in Pakistan there were substantial programs, now about five years old, funded by USAID that would have provided ample resources in the Pakistani FATA agencies and across the border in the Provinces of Afghanistan to make the tribal leadership focus on the needs and development of their people. This USAID approach was to have been the soft side of the struggle, but it was destroyed by the hard side. Small progress was made by civilians and combined military/civilian “reconstruction teams,” but the military haste generated refugees and internally displaced citizens by the hundreds of thousands in Bajaur, Mohmand, both Wasiristans, and Khyber. Where they weren’t displaced they over loaded the more peaceful areas.

Conclusion: The Shanker and Schmitt article raises serious doubts about the knowledge of the US-led ISAF effort. Of course McChrystal was correct in his Initial Assessment of August 2009, when he stated many times that one of the greatest challenges and our weaknesses was the lack of knowledge about the culture. The spin described in the article shows this to be true a year and a half after the fact. The least that the authors could have done was to have read the literature and the assessments of the USAID programs on both sides of the Durand line.

Although our collective goose is cooked, there is a cultural way out that I have described over and over for the last few years – the negotiations that Karzai has tried to start via the good offices of the Kind of Saudi Arabia based on the Pukhtoon jirga.

May the New Year bring wisdom to our leaders, and peace to all.

Kris Merschrod
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