Afghanistan, long viewed as the step-child of the main arena of the Global War on Terror (Iraq), has recently resurfaced in the news as the Coalition forces, under the direction of the United States, struggle to eradicate the Taliban in the troubled provinces of Helmland, Kandahar, Paktia, Paktika, and Khost. Ask a random person on a street in St. Louis about the war in Afghanistan, and they will probably respond with a question; “didn’t we already win in Afghanistan?” The answer is a resounding no! Not only have we not won in Afghanistan, but Coalition progress is starting to erode in certain bellicose regions.
You might ask yourself what major malfunction is hampering progress in Afghanistan. The answer is surprisingly simple; history. Historically, Afghanistan has been a land of splintered tribal allegiances and competing ethnic/linguistic groups. The nation today is still divided into roughly seven different tribal groups. Instead of being tribes strictly in the European or African sense, the Afghani tribal breakdown is along linguistic and customary lines rather than physical and geographical ones.
The largest tribes in Afghanistan are the Pashto (Sunni) – they make up roughly 40% of the Afghan population – followed by the Tajiks (Sunni), Hazara (Shia), Uzbek (Sunni), Turkmen (Sunni), and an assortment of smaller tribal groups.[1] The Pashto, or Pashtuns, have held sway over Afghanistan since the mid 19th Century.[2] Despite the broader categorization of ‘Pashtun’, there are approximately 60 Pashtun tribes and over 400 sub-tribes that have spent the last several hundred years jockeying for power within their traditional regions.[3]
The Taliban have traditionally garnered their support from the Pashtun heartland, an area straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. From the 10 million Pashtun in Afghanistan and the 14 million in Pakistan, the Taliban has quite large population from which to draw its forces.[4] Despite traditionally backing the Taliban, the Pashtun have their particular customs and mores that are diametrically opposed to the Shariah Law (Islamic religious law) the Taliban strictly enforces. The Pashtuns adhere to a code of Pushtanwali, a set of laws that establish obligations and social structure.
[Pashtunwali] contains sets of values pertaining to honor (namuz), solidarity (nang), hospitality, mutual support, shame and revenge which determines social order and individual responsibility. The defence of namuz, even unto death, is obligatory for every Pushtun.[5]
Despite the Pashtun adherance to Pushtanwali, a number of Pashtun tribes supported the Taliban’s ascension to power simply as a means of increasing their respective influence within the Pashtun tribal hierarchy.
Afghanistan, with its tribal upheavals and complexities, is not a coherent state in the western sense of the term. Instead it is a geographical location bound together by intricate tribal alliances and never-ending tribal warfare. A country carved up by tribal warlord-chieftains and resurgent Taliban forces equipped with borrowed Pashtun armies is a fierce enough place for any invading army – ask the long list of invaders from Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Her Majesty’s British Army, the Soviet Army, to the Coalition forces and NATO headed by the United States.
For the US Army to treat its Afghan embroilment as merely an intervention to correct a wayward state is to misinterpret history’s lessons. The fact that the most powerful nation in the world has sent its allies to quell the growing insurrection in the southern provinces is troubling to say the least. Merely relying on the ill-equipped British Army to sort out the unrest in Helmland is not going to work, just as asking the Germans to increase their commitment to an already floundering NATO deployment is not an effective military response to a strengthening Taliban. The Germans, who seemed to have paid attention in history class, informed the US that they were not willing to send more soldiers to Afghanistan.[6]
Instead, the US Army needs to insert a new page into its unconventional warfare textbook and figure out how to align Afghanistan’s Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and Turkmen into a workable coalition against encroaching Iranian and growing radical Sunni Muslim interests. Iran is working hard to hamper US efforts to pacify and unify Afghanistan while trying to bolster its Shia allies – the marginalized Hazara – against a resurgent Sunni Taliban.
The currently deteriorating situation is far from the un-winnable quagmire that dismantled the Soviet Army in 1989, but in order to route the Taliban resurge it will take added resilience from an already war-weary US public. The US military should use Afghan tribal intricacies against its totalitarian religious foe, the Taliban. The fact that the Taliban is still struggling to cement its foothold in the suspicious Pashtun tribal areas that display fierce adherence to Pushtanwali is something that the Coalition forces should exploit. Instead of approaching Afghan politics with Western concepts of morality and rights, military planners need to de-couple their entrenched Judeo-Christian concepts and concentrate of strategies of war.
If anything, the US military should embrace the tribal differences and customs and adapt individual policies towards each tribe that it seeks to win over. The battle for Afghanistan should not be a battle of weaponry, no matter high hi-tech and unbalanced the playing field. Instead it should be a battle for the hearts and minds of Afghan warlords. Sure, throw in some schools and roads here and there, but remember, the route to power in Afghanistan is not by winning over hearts and minds, it is centered in winning over tribal war-chieftains and their ragtag militias. In many cases, weaponry, land, and some visits from the Army Corps of Engineers can go a long way to win over Pashtun and Tajik chieftains. It is high time that the US Army decided which path to tread in Afghanistan; either put aside the moral complications and get tough, or get out and brace for more terrorist attacks in Western capitals.
[1] “Ethnicity and Tribe: Afghanistan,” Government Publications Access, Illinois Institute of Technology Paul V. Galvin Library, 14/01/2002, http://www.gl.iit.edu/govdocs/afghanistan/EthnicityAndTribe.html.
[2] Peter R. Blood, ed., “Ethnic Groups,” Afghanistan: A Country Study, Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 2001, http://countrystudies.us/afghanistan/38.htm.
[3] “In The Dark,” Afghanistan’s Tribal Complexity, The Economist Print Edition, Jan 31st, 2008, http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10608929.
[4] Blood, Afghanistan: A Country Study.
[5] Ibid.
[6] See the article “Germans Reject US Troops Request,” http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/02/01/germany.afghanistan/index.html.
You might ask yourself what major malfunction is hampering progress in Afghanistan. The answer is surprisingly simple; history. Historically, Afghanistan has been a land of splintered tribal allegiances and competing ethnic/linguistic groups. The nation today is still divided into roughly seven different tribal groups. Instead of being tribes strictly in the European or African sense, the Afghani tribal breakdown is along linguistic and customary lines rather than physical and geographical ones.
The largest tribes in Afghanistan are the Pashto (Sunni) – they make up roughly 40% of the Afghan population – followed by the Tajiks (Sunni), Hazara (Shia), Uzbek (Sunni), Turkmen (Sunni), and an assortment of smaller tribal groups.[1] The Pashto, or Pashtuns, have held sway over Afghanistan since the mid 19th Century.[2] Despite the broader categorization of ‘Pashtun’, there are approximately 60 Pashtun tribes and over 400 sub-tribes that have spent the last several hundred years jockeying for power within their traditional regions.[3]
The Taliban have traditionally garnered their support from the Pashtun heartland, an area straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. From the 10 million Pashtun in Afghanistan and the 14 million in Pakistan, the Taliban has quite large population from which to draw its forces.[4] Despite traditionally backing the Taliban, the Pashtun have their particular customs and mores that are diametrically opposed to the Shariah Law (Islamic religious law) the Taliban strictly enforces. The Pashtuns adhere to a code of Pushtanwali, a set of laws that establish obligations and social structure.
[Pashtunwali] contains sets of values pertaining to honor (namuz), solidarity (nang), hospitality, mutual support, shame and revenge which determines social order and individual responsibility. The defence of namuz, even unto death, is obligatory for every Pushtun.[5]
Despite the Pashtun adherance to Pushtanwali, a number of Pashtun tribes supported the Taliban’s ascension to power simply as a means of increasing their respective influence within the Pashtun tribal hierarchy.
Afghanistan, with its tribal upheavals and complexities, is not a coherent state in the western sense of the term. Instead it is a geographical location bound together by intricate tribal alliances and never-ending tribal warfare. A country carved up by tribal warlord-chieftains and resurgent Taliban forces equipped with borrowed Pashtun armies is a fierce enough place for any invading army – ask the long list of invaders from Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Her Majesty’s British Army, the Soviet Army, to the Coalition forces and NATO headed by the United States.
For the US Army to treat its Afghan embroilment as merely an intervention to correct a wayward state is to misinterpret history’s lessons. The fact that the most powerful nation in the world has sent its allies to quell the growing insurrection in the southern provinces is troubling to say the least. Merely relying on the ill-equipped British Army to sort out the unrest in Helmland is not going to work, just as asking the Germans to increase their commitment to an already floundering NATO deployment is not an effective military response to a strengthening Taliban. The Germans, who seemed to have paid attention in history class, informed the US that they were not willing to send more soldiers to Afghanistan.[6]
Instead, the US Army needs to insert a new page into its unconventional warfare textbook and figure out how to align Afghanistan’s Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and Turkmen into a workable coalition against encroaching Iranian and growing radical Sunni Muslim interests. Iran is working hard to hamper US efforts to pacify and unify Afghanistan while trying to bolster its Shia allies – the marginalized Hazara – against a resurgent Sunni Taliban.
The currently deteriorating situation is far from the un-winnable quagmire that dismantled the Soviet Army in 1989, but in order to route the Taliban resurge it will take added resilience from an already war-weary US public. The US military should use Afghan tribal intricacies against its totalitarian religious foe, the Taliban. The fact that the Taliban is still struggling to cement its foothold in the suspicious Pashtun tribal areas that display fierce adherence to Pushtanwali is something that the Coalition forces should exploit. Instead of approaching Afghan politics with Western concepts of morality and rights, military planners need to de-couple their entrenched Judeo-Christian concepts and concentrate of strategies of war.
If anything, the US military should embrace the tribal differences and customs and adapt individual policies towards each tribe that it seeks to win over. The battle for Afghanistan should not be a battle of weaponry, no matter high hi-tech and unbalanced the playing field. Instead it should be a battle for the hearts and minds of Afghan warlords. Sure, throw in some schools and roads here and there, but remember, the route to power in Afghanistan is not by winning over hearts and minds, it is centered in winning over tribal war-chieftains and their ragtag militias. In many cases, weaponry, land, and some visits from the Army Corps of Engineers can go a long way to win over Pashtun and Tajik chieftains. It is high time that the US Army decided which path to tread in Afghanistan; either put aside the moral complications and get tough, or get out and brace for more terrorist attacks in Western capitals.
[1] “Ethnicity and Tribe: Afghanistan,” Government Publications Access, Illinois Institute of Technology Paul V. Galvin Library, 14/01/2002, http://www.gl.iit.edu/govdocs/afghanistan/EthnicityAndTribe.html.
[2] Peter R. Blood, ed., “Ethnic Groups,” Afghanistan: A Country Study, Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 2001, http://countrystudies.us/afghanistan/38.htm.
[3] “In The Dark,” Afghanistan’s Tribal Complexity, The Economist Print Edition, Jan 31st, 2008, http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10608929.
[4] Blood, Afghanistan: A Country Study.
[5] Ibid.
[6] See the article “Germans Reject US Troops Request,” http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/02/01/germany.afghanistan/index.html.
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