From Wired.com:
Army Researchers Warn Against Tribal War in Afghanistan
By Noah Shachtman
November 30, 2009
12:05 pm
Categories: Af/Pak
Follow @dangerroom
The Obama administration is ready to reveal its new strategy for Afghanistan. And speculation is running high that this new approach can and should use local, often tribal, militias to help combat the Taliban. But the U.S. Army’s own specialists in Afghanistan’s culture and society are warning that relying on the tribes there may be a waste of time. “Most of Afghanistan has not been ‘tribal’ in the last few centuries,” notes a recent report from the Army’s Human Terrain System at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. “In fact, many scholars are reluctant to use the word ‘tribe’ at all for describing groups in Afghanistan.”
As part of the ‘Surge’ in 2007, the American military famously worked with Iraq’s tribes to combat Sunni insurgents. Now, the hope is that U.S. forces can pull off the same trick in Afghanistan. American officers have begun to support local militias that have sprung up to fight the Taliban. With U.S. encouragement, at least one Afghan governor is sitting down with tribal leaders, to get militants in their midst to lay down their guns. “Nothing else will work,” insists one well-circulated paper from U.S. Army Special Forces Major Jim Gant. “We must support the tribal system because it is the single, unchanging political, social and cultural reality in Afghan society.” Dozens and dozens of military officers have written to Gant supportively. If Obama doesn’t pursue the militia strategy in Afghanistan, Slate’s Fred Kaplan warns, “it is almost certain to fail.”
But Afghan society isn’t wired like Iraqi society, the Army researchers warn. “The desire for ‘tribal engagement’ in Afghanistan, executed along the lines of the recent ‘Surge’ strategy in Iraq, is based on an erroneous understanding of the human terrain. In fact, the way people in rural Afghanistan organize themselves is so different from rural Iraqi culture that calling them both ‘tribes’ is deceptive,” according to the Human Terrain System report. Maybe those groups were once tightly-knit. But decades of war with the Soviets and with the Taliban has changed all that.
‘Tribes’ in Afghanistan do not act as unified groups, as they have recently in Iraq. For the most part they are not hierarchical, meaning there is no “chief” with whom to negotiate (and from whom to expect results). They are notorious for changing the form of their social organization when they are pressured by internal dissension or external forces. Whereas in some other countries tribes are structured like trees, ‘tribes’ in Afghanistan are like jellyfish.
I don’t claim to have any great expertise on Afghan culture. But in August, I did spend some time in Afghanistan’s Garmsir district, part of the Taliban’s poppy-growing heartland. I didn’t see much of a tribal structure in my brief time there. Many of the people I met were relatively new to the area, drawn by the farmland made newly fertile by the canals built by the U.S. in the 1950’s. Traditional family and tribal structures, like what I saw in Iraq, didn’t seem to exist. Some of the people were ethnic Pashtuns — and therefore more inclined to vote for a fellow Pashtun, like Hamid Karzai. But the affinity didn’t seem to go much deeper than that. “The phrase “blood is thicker than water” is not an accurate description of Pashtuns. Pashtuns are just as likely to choose a way of organizing that has nothing to do with the closeness of family relationships. Pashtuns freely choose the side of distant family (or non-family) as often as family,” the Human Terrain report notes.
Could there be a stronger tribal structure in Afghanistan than these researchers in Kansas believe? Sure. Is there still a chance of encouraging bottom-up resistance to the Taliban, even if the tribes aren’t well-knit? Could be. The militants are constantly trying to stir up local (but not necessarily tribal) conflicts, in order to destabilize the country. There are village elders and local leaders who are fed up, and would like to fight back, if they can. But work with these players has to be done with eyes wide, the Human Terrain group writes. “‘Tribe’ is only one potential choice of identity among many, and not necessarily the one that guides people’s decision-making.”
A key advisor to top commander Gen Stanley McChrystal echoes the sentiment. Members of McChrystal’s team have launched a new “Community Defense Initiative” that’s been characterized in the press as a tribal assault of the Taliban. But really, “it’s more like community watch; the key thing is that it’s based on a pre-existing group of people who have already taken up arms to defend (not go out on offense) against the insurgents,” the advisor e-mails Danger Room. “It’s ‘local’ based — not sure that always means tribal.”
[Photo: DoD]
Army Researchers Warn Against Tribal War in Afghanistan
By Noah Shachtman
November 30, 2009
12:05 pm
Categories: Af/Pak
Follow @dangerroom
The Obama administration is ready to reveal its new strategy for Afghanistan. And speculation is running high that this new approach can and should use local, often tribal, militias to help combat the Taliban. But the U.S. Army’s own specialists in Afghanistan’s culture and society are warning that relying on the tribes there may be a waste of time. “Most of Afghanistan has not been ‘tribal’ in the last few centuries,” notes a recent report from the Army’s Human Terrain System at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. “In fact, many scholars are reluctant to use the word ‘tribe’ at all for describing groups in Afghanistan.”
As part of the ‘Surge’ in 2007, the American military famously worked with Iraq’s tribes to combat Sunni insurgents. Now, the hope is that U.S. forces can pull off the same trick in Afghanistan. American officers have begun to support local militias that have sprung up to fight the Taliban. With U.S. encouragement, at least one Afghan governor is sitting down with tribal leaders, to get militants in their midst to lay down their guns. “Nothing else will work,” insists one well-circulated paper from U.S. Army Special Forces Major Jim Gant. “We must support the tribal system because it is the single, unchanging political, social and cultural reality in Afghan society.” Dozens and dozens of military officers have written to Gant supportively. If Obama doesn’t pursue the militia strategy in Afghanistan, Slate’s Fred Kaplan warns, “it is almost certain to fail.”
But Afghan society isn’t wired like Iraqi society, the Army researchers warn. “The desire for ‘tribal engagement’ in Afghanistan, executed along the lines of the recent ‘Surge’ strategy in Iraq, is based on an erroneous understanding of the human terrain. In fact, the way people in rural Afghanistan organize themselves is so different from rural Iraqi culture that calling them both ‘tribes’ is deceptive,” according to the Human Terrain System report. Maybe those groups were once tightly-knit. But decades of war with the Soviets and with the Taliban has changed all that.
‘Tribes’ in Afghanistan do not act as unified groups, as they have recently in Iraq. For the most part they are not hierarchical, meaning there is no “chief” with whom to negotiate (and from whom to expect results). They are notorious for changing the form of their social organization when they are pressured by internal dissension or external forces. Whereas in some other countries tribes are structured like trees, ‘tribes’ in Afghanistan are like jellyfish.
I don’t claim to have any great expertise on Afghan culture. But in August, I did spend some time in Afghanistan’s Garmsir district, part of the Taliban’s poppy-growing heartland. I didn’t see much of a tribal structure in my brief time there. Many of the people I met were relatively new to the area, drawn by the farmland made newly fertile by the canals built by the U.S. in the 1950’s. Traditional family and tribal structures, like what I saw in Iraq, didn’t seem to exist. Some of the people were ethnic Pashtuns — and therefore more inclined to vote for a fellow Pashtun, like Hamid Karzai. But the affinity didn’t seem to go much deeper than that. “The phrase “blood is thicker than water” is not an accurate description of Pashtuns. Pashtuns are just as likely to choose a way of organizing that has nothing to do with the closeness of family relationships. Pashtuns freely choose the side of distant family (or non-family) as often as family,” the Human Terrain report notes.
Could there be a stronger tribal structure in Afghanistan than these researchers in Kansas believe? Sure. Is there still a chance of encouraging bottom-up resistance to the Taliban, even if the tribes aren’t well-knit? Could be. The militants are constantly trying to stir up local (but not necessarily tribal) conflicts, in order to destabilize the country. There are village elders and local leaders who are fed up, and would like to fight back, if they can. But work with these players has to be done with eyes wide, the Human Terrain group writes. “‘Tribe’ is only one potential choice of identity among many, and not necessarily the one that guides people’s decision-making.”
A key advisor to top commander Gen Stanley McChrystal echoes the sentiment. Members of McChrystal’s team have launched a new “Community Defense Initiative” that’s been characterized in the press as a tribal assault of the Taliban. But really, “it’s more like community watch; the key thing is that it’s based on a pre-existing group of people who have already taken up arms to defend (not go out on offense) against the insurgents,” the advisor e-mails Danger Room. “It’s ‘local’ based — not sure that always means tribal.”
[Photo: DoD]
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