Tribe on tribe - Pakistan

"The wounded men, and many others in the hospital, were supposed to be the backbone of a Pakistani government effort to take on the Taliban and its backers, Al Qaeda, with armies of traditional tribesmen working in consultation with the Pakistani military.

The tribal militias, known as lashkars, have quickly become a crucial tool of the Pakistani strategy in the tribal belt, where the army has been fighting the Taliban for more than two months. Their emergence is a sign not only of the tribesmen's rising frustration with the ruthlessness of the Taliban, but also of their traditional desire to run their own affairs and keep the Pakistani Army at bay, Pakistani officers and law enforcement officials say.

But even though some in Washington have pointed to the emergence of the lashkars as a hopeful parallel to the largely successful Sunni Awakening movement in Iraq, the tribesmen, armed with antiquated weaponry from the 1980s Afghan war, are facing better-equipped, highly motivated Taliban who have intimidated and crushed some of the militia.

Unlike in Anbar Province, one senior U.S. official said, where the Iraqi tribes "woke up to millions of dollars in government assistance and the support of the 3rd Infantry division," the support by the Pakistani Army and civilian government for the tribal militias has been "episodic" and so far "unsustained.""  IHT

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"Four things greater than all things are,

Women, and horses, and power and war."

R. Kipling

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This will work.

The takfiris and the Taliban are irritants in Pakistani tribal territory just as they were in Anbar and Diyala.  The lives of the tribesmen have a certain rhythm, a rhythm that has developed over hundred of years.  They may well be fanatics of some sort within the larger Islamic galaxy of communities, but  they are their own kind of fanatics.  Their lives are ruled by their conception of Islam, their tribal customary law and their allegiances to family, clan and tribe.  As in Iraq the Sunni takfiri jihadis seek to "reform" the lives of the tribesmen, to make them "pure" as they imagine the early community of the Muslims was "pure."  Nobody wants to be made "pure" according to someone else's conception of "purity."

This is the great weakness of the international movement of the takfiri jihadis.  They are vulnerable everywhere to armed rejection by those they wish to "save." 

I have no specific knowledge of this but I would wager that the "episodic" nature of the support these tribesmen have received will be a lot more dependable soon.

This may bring on civil war in tribal territory?   Quite possibly.  pl

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/23/asia/militia.php

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/ballad_of_kings_jest.html

Comments

[Deus Vult]

> This is the great weakness of the international movement of the takfiri jihadis. They are vulnerable everywhere to armed rejection by those they wish to "save."

Let's be grateful that here in the US we can reject our own version of them at the ballot box. As, one hopes, is about to happen.

[jmc5588]

Nobody wants to be made "pure" according to someone else's conception of "purity."

Col Lang,

In this sentence you have captured a fundamental principle of human organization. It applies as much to the "culture war" in our own country as to Waziristan. Well done.

[Arun]

This relates to the NWFP, not the tribal areas, but the NWFPers were once Gandhian civil-disobedience types -

"...Parshotam Mehra, The North-West Frontier Drama, 1945–1947. Combing through long unexamined records, the author found that in 1932, the NWFP, with a population of just 3 million, accounted for 5,557 convictions for civil disobedience compared with 1,620 in the Punjab, which had five times as many inhabitants."

-- What they might have become and what they actually became -- the moral of the story, if any, is that once you give in to religion-based politics, there is no end to the downhill slide.

[condfusedponderer]

This is the great weakness of the international movement of the takfiri jihadis. They are vulnerable everywhere to armed rejection by those they wish to "save."

Gilles Keppel made a similar observation looking at Islamist terror in Algeria. He said that the indiscriminate violence that tafkiris use alienates their supporters. It means that their radicalism is self-defeating.

The comforting aspect of it is that it underlines that a global Islamofacism (the word wasn't yet coined at that time) is a fantasy. I think the point is compelling. That doesn't make those people less dangerous as far as acts of terror are concerned, but it suggests the threat is manageable.

[McGee]

Arum wrote: "What they might have become and what they actually became -- the moral of the story, if any, is that once you give in to religion-based politics, there is no end to the downhill slide.?"

Bingo....and why our current efforts in Iraq have little chance of ulitimate success, though we had little choice once we went in there.

[William R. Cumming]

Do the tribal areas have any real outside influences on their daily lives and outlooks? Is there religious coherence in these areas? Certain sects of Islam? My concern is that the US must keep its hand hidden to some degree if even the central government of Pakistan has not been able to figure out how to bring about any transformation since the split with India. US airstrikes seem a very crude use of technology to make up for our deficiencies in knowledge of culture and language. The Pakistani government at least has the benefit of language and religion on their side. Worried about the long term not short term. It seems to me that the primary interest of the US in Pakistan is nuclear surety issues and policies. Am I wrong?

[Ael]

Actually, I believe that the Taliban are a strong political segment of the Pashtun. They are not outsiders to the tribal areas.

[Kevin]

"This may bring on civil war in tribal territory? Quite possibly"

Would balkanization spill over into Iran as well?

[fnord]

btw, recommended reading: Fredrik Barth, my countrys great anthropologist who did field research among the Pashtuns in the 50s is out with a new book, "Taleban and the Pashtuns". Havent read it yet and dont know if its translated yet, but his conclusions are that a hearts and mind campaign among the pashtuns is next to useless, unless we are willing to spend serious money to give them all swimmingpools and shit.