Oct
09
2008
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Talk to the Taliban? Yes. |
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Written by JD Johannes
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Thursday, 09 October 2008 |
The Taliban, the 'Talibs,' products of Peshawar and Quetta madrassas overflowing with orphans and children of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan are, in the end, Pathans--also known as Pashtuns.
A survey of history of the Pathans shows one never-ending pattern: Fusion in the face of a common enemy and the frission that shortly follows.
The warrior Poet Khushal Khan Khattack, attempted and occasionally succeeded in unifying the Pathans against the Moghuls, but the pattern of fusion and frission always frustrated his efforts, leading Khushal to write of his fellow Pathans:
Of the Pathans that are famed in the land of Roh,
Now-a-days are the Mohmands, the Bangash, and the Warrakzais, and the Afridis.
The dogs of the Mohmands are better than the Bangash,
Though the Mohmands themselves are a thousand times worse than the dogs.
The Warrakzais are the scavengers of the Afridis,
Though the Afridis, one and all, are but scavengers themselves.
This is the truth of the best of the dwellers in the land of Pathans,
Of those worse than these who would say that they were men?
No good qualities are there in the Pathans than are now living:
All that were of any worth are imprisoned in the grave.
This indeed is apparent to all who know them.
He of whom the Moghuls say, "He is loyal to us",
God forbid the shame of such should be concealed!
Let the Pathans drive all thought of honour from their hearts:
For these are ensnared by the baits the Moghuls have put for them. (Dupree, Afghanistan, 88)
"Ultimately, the Taliban are tribal Pashtoons [Pathans]," writes Robert Kaplan in this book Soldiers of God. "An anarchic mountain people who have ground up one foreign invader after another." (Kaplan 239)
The Pathans unify barely enough and barely long enough to bloody their enemy before descending into tribal warfare again. Even Kushal, while fighting the Moghuls, "carried out his tribal blood fued with another major Pashtun tribe, the Yusufzai." (Dupree, 321)
The blood fued, the blood debt, is something the United States has faced recently. The violence in Iraq in 2006 and early 2007 was not, as some believe, a civil war. It was the the Arab tradition of the blood debt spiraling out of control.
As Gibbon wrote of the Arabs in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, "Everyman, at least every family, was the judge and avenger of his own cause...the interest and principle of the bloody debt are accumulated; the individuals of either family lead a life of malice and suspicion, and fifty years may sometime elapse before account of the vengeance be finally settled." (Modern Classics Library, 894)
(In my documentary Baghdad Surge , you can witness the cycle of the blood debt in action and how one infantry battalion set the stage to short-circuit the cycle.)
In the West Rashid district of Baghdad, the cycle of violence was brought to a halt when Sunni assassins like Malik and Shia assassins like the "The Wolf" were captured or killed by U.S. Soldiers. Because many reporters and analysts did not understand what they were seeing, because they did not study Arab culture, they thought they were watching a civil war--but random and targetted assassinations do not a civil war make.
I fear many are making the same err in Afghanistan--a failure to understand the culture. The lumping of Pathans, who throughout time have bloodied any invader (which the U.S. is), with the Taliban would be a mistake.
If the Pathans can be peeled off from the actual Taliban the way generic Sunni tribal insurgents were peeled off from the Takfiris in Iraq's Al Anbar province, the direction of the war will change.
In these discussions and negotiations the lessons of the British in 1842 should loom large.
In 1842 the revolts of the Afghans had the British in dire straights and Sir William Macnaghten, British Envoy to Afghanistan, set about a plan to sow dissent among the various tribal chiefs and bribe them to betray the rebel leader Akbar Khan.
But Akbar Khan set a trap for Macnaghten.
"[Macnaghten] seized on proposals from Akbar Khan which would permit the British to remain in Kabul until spring, and then withdraw voluntarily. Understandably desperate and strained by the awesome responsibility on him, Macnaghten accepted and signed a Persian document which agreed to Akbar's terms. Akbar showed the document to the other Afghan chiefs to expose Macnaghten's two-faced policy. Several of the 'rebel' leaders admitted to receiving proposals from Macnaghten to betray Akbar. Now, all united in a plan to sieze Macnaghten and hold him hostage." (Dupree 387)
(Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game has a more in-depth account.)
Macnaghten was not taken hostage though....Akbar murdered Macnaghten.
The British retreated from Kabul to Jalabad and only one Englishman survived the winter cold and the constant gunfire rained down by the tribesmen from the hills and crags to reach Jalabad.
But the fusion gave way to frission once again:
"Almost immediately after the defeat of the final remnants of the Kabul garrison at Gandamak, the illusion of unity loosened and finally broke down. Akbar Khan could not hold together the exultant Ghilzai and other Pashtun elements, and, singing improvised songs of the improvised victory, many tribesmen returned home." (Dupree 394)
The goal of any discussions with the Taliban, or more precisely, the Pathan (Pashtun) elements of the Taliban is to bring about the inevitable cycle of frission. In this case, frission between the Taliban and the Pathans.
To do this, the wise company and battalion commander will have to master the ancient way of the Pathans.
In a few weeks I will be in Afghanistan to witness what is happening first hand, until then, I will continue to study the history and anthropology of Afghanistan, the Pashtun language and the ways of the Pathans.
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