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"Pashtunwali is dead!" Hajji Baraun announced in to the assembled Shura in the village of Zambar. Pashtunwali being the ancient tribal code of honor and conduct of the Afghan people. When I heard the english translation from the interpreter, my brain finally caught up with my what eyes had been seeing or, more accurately, not seeing.
For the past three weeks I walked through the villages, mountains and fields of Sabari district in Khowst province with Team Viper, the Bravo Company of the 1-26 Infantry based in the Sabari District of Khowst Province. I spent most of time with 2nd Platoon which seems to walk everywhere on missions ranging from the routine 6-8 kilometer security patrols to a two-day hike through the mountains to a village no US forces had ever been to. I had seen a lot of Sabari up close and on foot, but it took the mission to Zambar listening to Hajji Baraun speak to handful of Afghan government officials for me to understand the Sabari and why the Afghan surge has not been as effective as the Iraq troop surge of 2007.
The Mission to Zambar was a part of Operation Maiwan IV, a multi-stage operation by Task Force Duke, 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division--The Big Red One--to push units out beyond their normal patrol zones to disrupt enemy activity. Second platoon drove in armored MATVs to Zambar and then would do an 11 kilometer patrol in the heat of the day. The drive was the worst part.
"Hey, JD, they're gonna do a controlled det in five," Sergeant Josh Haigood said, looking back at me. It was about 11 in the morning and we had been crammed up in MATVs and other armored vehicles since 3 A.M.
The route clearance platoon, Aces, which specializes in finding and detonating IEDs had already found a 25 pound bomb buried in the road. This one was estimated to be 35 pounds. The greater Zambar Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau sure knows how to make coalition forces feel welcome.
I took the opportunity to film the controlled det as chance to unfold myself from the cramped back seat and stretch my legs. After a couple hours in an MATV and most armored vehicles the pain of sitting in the most uncomfortable seat ever devised by military industrial complex subsides into a throbbing numbness. Occasionally soldiers legs are so numb they fall four feet to the ground while trying to climb out the vehicles. The Soldiers and Sergeants of 2nd Platoon would rather walk.
A few hours later with legs still crimped and cramped, backs aching and
butts still stinging, 2nd Platoon would set out on their main task for
the mission, an 11 kilometer patrol in the heat of the day across the
rocky, scrub brush covered terrain from Zambar to Lewan Khel.
"The Zambar area is a major C-2 node for the insurgency," said Captain
Aaron Tapalman, the commander of Team Viper. C-2 being the military
term for command and control and the insurgency being a mix of Haqqani
Network and small "t" Taliban.
A report on the Haqqani Network by the Institute of the Study of War, a
think tank that provides analysis for US government leaders states, "The
majority of the Haqqanis’ indigenous support...comes from mixed tribal
elements in Musa Khel, Sabari, Bak, Terayzai."
When I first arrived in Khowst Colonel Chris Toner, commanding officer
of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the Big Red One, told me that Sabari
was one of the Brigade's main efforts because the tribes of Sabari were
among the weakest in Khowst. Where the tribes are weak, the insurgency
is strong. Hajji Baruan's Zandbar clan has the weakest structure of the
three clans of Sabari.
Several nights a week US and Afghan Special Forces conduct targeted
raids around Zambar. Operations like Maiwan, when large groups of US
Forces leave their normal operating zones causes a lot of insurgents to
pop their heads up. Taplaman calls it "kicking over rocks." As the
conventional units kick over rocks, the insurgents start talking and
moving making it easier for the Special Forces teams and Afghan
Commandos to target them. The military term for kicking over rocks is
disruption.
The purpose of the mission to Zambar was kicking over rocks and to hold a
Shura with the elders of Zambar and Afghan government officials.
Zambar, in northern Sabari at the base of the Souliaman branch of the
Hindu Kush mountains has been one of the toughest spots in Khowst
province. On a previous mission to Zambar Sergeant First Class Eric
Schenk made it clear what happens when US Forces go to Zambar. "Have no
doubt in your mind, we will take contact."
The purpose of second platoon's the 11 kilometer patrol in the 105
degree heat in full gear to tell the elders of Lewan Khel that young man
from their tribe had been killed while trying to plant an IED on a road
used by US Forces. It was a task SFC Schenk did not look forward to.
The Lewan Khel are their own little clan and are very commercially
oriented. They run many of the shops in the Kholbesat and Yaqubi
bazaars and are the primary money changers and hawal money transfer
providers who handle the money sent back to the villages from men who
work in the cities or abroad. Remittances form abroad are a major
source of cash in Khowst province. As the soldiers approached the
village they could see the large clusters of people gathering around the
mosque.
With more than 100 boys and young men under 20-years-old hovering a
dozen feet away or leaning over the mosque. There were a few men who
stood out to me immediately because I had never seen men like them in
the villages of Sabari--men in their mid-twenties. Schenk sat down with a
foursome of second tier village leaders and began the perfunctory
greetings and questions. I asked the questions I have been asking for
two weeks--what percentage of village men go abroad to work? What
percentage go to work in the city? The tea was served and Schenk
settled in to what would soon become an awkward conversation about the
fate of a young man from their village.
The Pashtunwali code requires melmastia and mehrmapalineh, hospitality
and being a good host, hence the constant three cups of tea. Afghan
hospitality is legendary, one of the romantic aspects of the country the
code of honor. This hospitality extends to protection of guests.
Under strict Pashtunwali a man, family, village or clan will fight to
the death to protect a guest and pledge of protection and safety is
better than gold.
Antrhopologist Louis Dupree in his master work "Afghanistan" lists other major tenents of Pashtunwali:
Nanawati--Asylum and/or acceptance of a truce offer
Badal--Blood revenge in case of murder, manslaughter or physical injury
Tureh--Bravery
Meranah--Manhood or chivalry
Isteqamat--Persistence
Sabat--Steadfastness
Imandari--Righteousness, morality
Ghayrat--Defense of property and honor
Namus--Defense of the virtue/honor of women
As Dupree writes, it is "a stringent code, a tough code for tough men,
who of necessity live tough lives. Honor and hospitality, hostility and
ambush are paired in the Afghan mind."
Badal, blood debt was on my mind when SFC Schenk brought up the death of
young man from Lewn Khel, but the group of men denied any knowledge of a
young man from the village gone missing. The key task done, Schenk
invited them to the Shura to be held the next day and the platoon headed
into the still blazing heat of the setting sun for the walk back to the
trucks.
"Hey JD, I think the warranty is void if you are outside the circle,"
Sergeant Christopher Chartier said to me with a smile. The orange of
the setting sun, the purple of the mountains and the soldiers walking
over the harsh terrain was a too good of shot for me not to stop a few
times and adjust my camera settings until I got it right--soldiers
walking into the sunset. Of course the soldiers just kept walking and I
soon found myself nearly out of the US formation and in the Afghan Army
cluster. Chartier had a good point so I stepped up my pace trying to
catch up with SFC Schenk. A minute later machine gun fire seemed to
surround me. The Afghans were firing in a death arc, but I didn't hear
any shots coming at me from an AK-47.
The sound of an AK-47 round passing by you is very distinct. What I
heard was full auto blasts coming from beside and behind me--thankfully
not at me. But then I heard a sound that made me think Schenk's
warnings about Zambar weren't exaggerated--a boom, a pause, then an
explosion on impact.
"I thought we were taking mortar fire," said Specialist Eric Mankin, 22,
of Reno, NV who was set up with his M-240 machine gun a few yerds in
front of me.
It wasn't mortar fire. One of the Afghan soldiers started lobbing Rocket Propelled Grenades as part of the death arc.
The ANA paused to reload, a few US soldiers aquired their target based
on sound and fired their M-4 carbines. Mankin ripped off a burst from
his machine gun.
It was the typical Sabari contact with the enemy. They fire a few wild
shots, the ANA goes insane, the Americans acquire target, take few
accurate shots then start team rushes. As if walking 11 kilometers
wasn't enough we started sprinting 50 yards at time toward where the
AK-47 fire came from. Yes, toward the gunfire.
The enemy runs to cover in a Kalat (house) hiding behind women and children. Pashtunwali is truly dead.
"This is Bountyhunter checking on station with 8 rockets and 300 rounds
of fifty caliber," a cool voice said over the radio. "What is your
situation?"
It is one of my favorite sounds in the war, Bountyhunter, a scout
weapons team of Kiowa helicopters letting us know they were ready to
swoop in. When the choppers arrive, the insurgents fade away. Second
platoon made it back to the trucks in the darkness with no further
harrassment from the greater Zambar visitor's bureau. Honestly, I think
they fire the wild pop shots just be jerks and make us run sprints in
the heat.
As laid down on the soft sand of the dry river bed, watching the moon
slowly disappear in an eclipse I thought about the men of Lewan Khel.
The men in their mid-twenties stood out because I had never seen them in
the other villages I walked through. In rural Afghanistan women are
never seen. You go into a village and it is kids, teenagers, a few
middle aged men and few old men.
I drifted off to sleep and was only disturbed by an Afghan Army
spontaneous death blossom a kilometer away. In the morning I would make
my way up the river bed to the site of the Zambar Shura--a first of its
kind to my knowledge.
CPT Tapalman and his counterpart in the Provincial Reconstruction Team,
CPT Steve Baunach, have a plan for the Shuras like the one in Zambar--to
build up the strength of the clans of the Sabari tribe.
"The solution is elders talking to elders," says Tapalman, 28, a
graduate of West Point who previously served a tour as a Platoon Leader
in Iraq. "They say that things were best in Sabari during the time of
the King [pre 1975] when the elders, Khans and Maliks ran things."
Tapalman's strategy for Sabari is part of a wider program called Village
Reintegration and Reconciliation which in some ways resembles the
techniques successfully used in Iraq during the 2007 troop surge to get
the tribes off the fence and switch to supporting the US led coalition.
In a white paper titled 'It Takes a Village: How to Win in Afghanistan,
Village Reintegration COIN Ink-Spot Approach' by Department of Defense
social scientist Melissa Skorka, the techniques of Iraq are contrasted
with the differing conditions in Afghanistan.
In Iraq there was a strong tribal structure where the head Sheik of a
super-tribe could obtain the allegiance of large swaths of the
countryside. Afghanistan does not have such a strong tribal structure
and Skorka references Louis Dupree's 1973 analysis of the inward looking
Afghan society and how the village/family/clan is stronger than the
tribe. This village orientation was first observed by the British
Diplomat Mounstuart Elphinstone who in 1815 wrote, "Throughout all the
tribes, the clannish attachment of the Afghans, unlike that of the
Highlanders, is rather to the community than to the chief."
Skorka argues that the tribe based approach will not work in
Afghanistan, but a village/clan based approach has a better chance of
working, but only if there is adequate security.
"The fundamental factor preventing large-scale reintergration across
eastern Afghanistan is the failure to provide security from retribution
[by insurgents] for ordinary Afghans and 'reintegrated' insurgents."
The Iraqi model is something I witnessed first hand in 2007 as some
tribes were bribed and cajoled into supporting the coalition and others,
like the Jumayli tribe spontaneously took up arms against Al Qaida and
were only supported by coaltion forces after the fact.
http://outsidethewire.com/blog/iraq-travels/kharmah-awakens.html
The fundamental difference between Iraq and Afghanistan is not just
realtive tribal strength based on Afghanistan's inward looking society.
It is what I did not see in Lewan Khel or any of villages I have been
to in Khowst from Mundakeal, Khosal or Madjles: Adult Men, men in their
late 20s, 30s, and 40s.
Just seeing a few men in their mid-twenties in Lewan Khel made me look twice making the absence of older men more obvious.
In the Euphrates and Tigris river valleys of Iraq there were adult men
who lived in the villages. Many of them worked outside the village, but
they resided in the villages and came back to them often. Iraq's
policy of conscription, million man army and decade long war with Iran
built a pool of adult men experienced with arms and fighting. It was a
major source of strength at first for the insurgency and Al Qaida, and
later a source of strength for the Awakening and Sons of Iraq movements.
There is no pool of such men in the villages of Sabari depriving
village, clan and tribal leaders like Hajji Baruan of what should be
their source of strength, adult men who will follow the Pashtunwali and
fight to protect their kin and land from the insurgents, which are
usually young men in their late teens or early twenties.
"I've asked him why he just doesn't kill them," Tapalman said of his
conversations with Baraun and other elders. "They say if they kill the
two or four taliban who come by, 20 will show up the next day and kill
him and everyone in the village."
The Haqqani Network fighters have been known to be brutal to those who
cooperate with the coalition and Afghan government. In 2009 a group of
"Waziri elders held a shura with coalition forces, the Afghan National
Army (ANA), the provincial governor and sub-governor during which they
accepted humanitarian aid to take back to their families. Several days
later, Haqqani militants decapitated three of the elders and burned
their bodies on top of the humanitarian supplies they had accepted to
aid their families." [Institute for Study of War Haqqani Network report]
Hajji Baruan, speaking to the Sabari District governor and the US
officers continued his lament on the death of Pashtunwali, "the young
generation have no Pashtunwali. They have no honor."
The death of Pashtunwali and the loss of tribal power are obvious when
you walk through the villages. The adult men who should be enforcing
social norms like the Pashtunwali are not around. The young men are
often taught a strain of Islam that denigrates their mothers and it is
left to a small group of middle-aged men and few old grey beards to
control mob of restless teenagers and twenty somethings.
The adult men are not merely absent from the village, they are not even in Afghanistan.
In the village of Mundakhela, up in the mountains not far from Zambar, I
asked the elders what percentage of men from their village were working
overseas in the emirates, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. The answer was 40%.
The rest were in Kabul, Karachi, Peshawar.
In the agrarian villages there is only enough farmable land for a
handful of men to stay and raise crops. The smarter, educated men go to
Kabul or Khowst City. The next tier down, if they are ambitious, go to
abroad to work. The left overs, the illiterates with no land to farm
or shop to keep or prospects of getting overseas may join the Afghan
Army or become day-labor insurgents. A few with ambition and darkness
in their hearts become true members of the Haqqani network. Apparantly
there are enough of them to intimidate the few adult men left in the
villages, making it no surprise that the insurgency is strongest in the
rural agricultural areas forming an arc around Khowst city.
In the mountains of Khowst province there is a culture clash as a rural,
peasant almost fuedal society comes in contact with the post-modern
information age. Villages like Khoshal have a few solar panels which
power an electric light or three, a radio and charge up a cell phone.
The wheat is cut with sickles and scythes, but up to 40% of the young
men of the village go abroad to metropolises like Dubai. The goal of
most of the young men who leave the village is not to make a new life in
Kabul or Karachi, but to make enough money in Dubai to pay the
bride-price of up to $15,000 to marry a cousin and return to the area as
a shopkeeper, merchant or worker. It is actually a time worn formula.
One Afghan folktale collected by Louis Dupree tells the story of three
cousins--two boys and one girl. One of the boys has rich father, the
other a poor father. The girl and the poor boy fall in love, but the
girl had already been promised to the rich boy. "Khadi [the poor
cousin] announced his decision to leave and seek his fortune...'I shall
return wealthy and we shall be married.'"
Over the years Khadi became wealthy as a caravan merchant and returnd to
the village asking about girl, Marghalai, "She is well and happy, the
wife of Aslam [the rich cousin]"
Khadi loaded up his caravan and "slowly made its way to Hindustan with its riches, and with Khadi and his borken heart."
Often the men working abroad come home, marry and leave their wife and
children in the village and work abroad their whole life which would
shift the perspective from an inward looking society to a society that
looks back.
IDS International estimates that $6 million dollars in remittances flow
into Khowst each month from men working abroad. This distorts the
inward looking society Dupree wrote about and Skorka cites, creating a
society that is abroad looking back to the village and a village that
looks outward for its economic well being. The young men are still as
Dupree writes, "born into a set of answers." They will work the fields
and attend madrassa. The smart ones will go to Kabul or work for the
government or western development agencies, another competent set will
be able to work in the Afgan cities, the rest will go abroad or join the
insurgency.
The key difference between Iraq and Afghanistan is not that Iraq was
tribe oriented and Afghanistan is village oriented. The difference is
that the Iraqi villages in the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys had
enough adult men around to take responsibility for the security of their
village once it was decreed by the Sheik. The US military did not
provide primary security for the villages of Al Anbar province Iraq, the
local men did. The US just provided support with interlocking squad
and platoon sized patrol bases in case things got really bad.
Hajji Baraun does not have enough adult men in Zambar to provide primary
security that can hold out until Team Viper arrives or be a credible
adjunct to a small coalition patrol base.
The death of Pashtunwali is partially self inflicted, partially a
product of modern transportation and technology and exacerbated by well
meaning development projects.
Dupree writes "lack of mobility is also a big factor" in the
perpetuation of the inward looking society. But four airlines with
daily non-stop flights from Kabul to Dubai, improved roads and Toyota
flooding the vehicle market with Corollas and Hi-Lux pickup trucks has
introduced a level of mobility far beyond what Dupree wrote about in
1973. This mobility has allowed sons who don't inherit land to move
abroad and flood the village with cash and support a family in the
village he sees only once or twice a year. Elders that encouraged this
caused their own downfall.
The US and well meaning non-governmental groups have exacerbated the
problem. The villages of Zambar have several late model tractors. The
Navy Captain who commands the Khowst Province Reconstruction Team said
that the PRT had bought the tractors as part of agricultural
development. By mechanizing farming, fewer men are needed to work the
fields meaing are fewer men to protect the village from insurgents.
Tapalman later summed up the difficulty of the situation, "We can't take the tractors back."
The troop surge in Afghanistan has not produced the dramatic results
seen in Iraq for various reasons, one of them being a lack of adult men
who can step up to protect their own villages. The missing men of
Afghanistan is a problem that is invisible until you are prompted to
look for what is not there.
The long term solution would be true economic development that would
keep adult men, if not in the villages, closer to the villages. That
economic development will not happen until there is adequate security so
the answer must me viewed in the short term by blending historical
precedent with program already in use by Provincial Reconstruction Teams
that will make perfect sense to an Afghan--Cash for Security.
Elphinstone in his 1815 ethnogrpahy, geography and anthropoligical
report "An Account of the Kingdom of Cabul" shows the historical method
used in tribal conflict.
"When the occasion is important, the Khaun and the Jirga call out all
the fighting men of the Oolooss [tribe/clan]. The tribes who engage in
little wars, call on volunteers, and every man who has arms comes.
Those who have occasional wars, make every grown up man serve; and the
Eusofzyes, whose continual strife has made them systematic in war,
require the service of a foot soldier for every plough or of a horseman
for every two. Shame is in general powerful enough to prevent
non-attendance, bur a fine is also prescribed to punish it."
Elphinstone in his detailing of the tribal military establishment also
mentions Khowst province. "Those most engaged in war, often have
permanent alliances, like those of Garra and Saumil, among the
Burdooranees, and the black and white leagues in Khost."
As recently as 2009 the Mangals and Moqbil tribes of Khost engaged in a
hot enough war over some strips of land that "the rival tribes
essentially resulted to trench-warfare, as each side dug-in to prevent
the other from the seizing the land." Whenever I visit a village I
inquire as to what league they are in Tor Goondee (black) or Speen
Goondee (white). The ancient leagues still exist.
If the Mangal and Moqbil can raise enough to fight a tribal war, Hajji
Baraun and his fellow Sabari elders could with some cash from the US,
bring enough competent adult men back to Sabari from Dubai to fight off
the insurgents. The Provincial Reconstruction Teams already fund cash
for work programs to do canal repairs and other manual labor projects.
Cash for security could also work. The preferred approach would be for
the elders to self-finance the effort through a tax on remittances--the
fine Elphinstone writes of--and shaming the men who hide in Dubai rather
than defending their villages. A creative approach may be an
advertising and recruiting campaign to lure competent adult men back to
their villages to fulfill thier Pashtunwali obligation of ghayrat,
defense of property and honor. US and Afghan Army forces would be the
back up and quick reaction forces when the men of village got into a
fight. In Kharmah, Iraq the US infantry company commander gave the
villagers a few motorola radios so they could call in reports or for
help in emergencies.
Tapalman's constant mantra of elders talking to elders is the first step
in forming a new set of Goondees, of village and clan alliances for
mutual self defense. The next step is to bring back the Pashtunwali and
adult men who will enforce it.
Coda: Team Viper kicked over a lot of rocks in the trip to Zambar and
got enough bad guys to pop their heads up that special forces teams from
across the country were running missions into the area for several days
to scoop up bad guys. Team Viper even grabbed a "named objective."
That would be a bad guy high enough on the food chain to have a code
name.
Please help! Hit
the tip jar or buy a dvd.
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JD Johannes is embedded with the Soldiers of Task Force Duke as part of a
project by the McCormick Foundation and Cantigny First Infantry
Division Museum. He has traveled through Afghanistan and Iraq on his
own and with US troops for the past six years.
SFC Eric Schenk at Lewan Khel. Just a few men in mid-twenties with beards, the rest are basically kids or teenagers. The only men over thirty are facing Schenk.
Leaving Lewan Khel.
The Zambar Shura.
JD Johannes at the Zambar Shura. Hajji Baraun is seated, wearing dark vest, black turban. Yes, my beard looks like I'm going native.
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