Mangwel and the Konar River Valley

[Friends, with apologies, a stomach virus has laid the blog low.  Here's a re-run of a post that has been a reader favorite. We'll be back on Wednesday!]

June 22nd, the Washington Post ran an excellent article by Greg Jaffe, titled “A Personal Touch in Taliban Fight.” The piece is about a young Army captain, Michael Harrison, and his up-close-and-personal work as a company commander in the remote tribal villages of the Konar River valley in Afghanistan.

Flashback to 2003, same valley, same U.S. Army—different captain. This is the story of then-captain Jim Gant of Las Cruces, NM, and how he and Capt. Harrison are linked by a gift of honor, a 12-gauge shotgun.

A tribal chief

Mangwel is a village in Konar province, close to the border with Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. Terrain is mountainous, no paved roads; Taliban fighters use the valley regularly as an infiltration route to and from Pakistan. The chief in Mangwel is Malik Noorafzhal. He’s 86 now; he fought the Soviets in the 80s; he’s been defending his tribe’s turf all his life.

In 2003, Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha 316–twelve men, led by Capt. Gant–had Mangwel as part of its area of responsibility. The ODA helped the chief in some tribal warfare, fighting alongside him. The chief said he would return the favor to augment the ODA’s mission; he mentioned that he could deliver 8 men with guns, then upped it to 80. On 23 April 2003, Capt. Gant had a meeting with him and other tribal leaders. The following is from the captain’s OPSUM [Operation Summary], written immediately afterward:

The head local we have named “Sitting Bull.” He is an old, old warrior. He didn’t speak much. I didn’t speak much either. I mainly listened. I looked him in the eye often. After the meeting was adjourned, he asked to speak with me privately. So my terp [interpreter] and I went out back with him. He took my hand in his. “I want you to know, Commander Jim, that you have my loyalty. If you need men with guns you come see me.” He promised 800. From 8 to 80 to 800!

Bonding tribe-to-tribe

Capt. Gant made it a point to bond with Sitting Bull. This nickname that the ODA gave the chief captures the spirit of their affection and admiration. These tough Special Forces soldiers regarded the malik as a living figure of legend, a warrior who had fought and defeated many enemies, a leader to whom the highest respect was due. They loved to question him about his battles with the Russians and he loved to tell them his stories. The warriors, American and Afghan, would stay up deep into the night, drawing maps of ambushes and infiltrations. Capt. Gant had his own father, James Karl Gant, send Malik Noorafzhal a knife with “Sitting Bull” engraved on it—and a letter, man-to-man, father-to-father. Here is part of it:

My son says you are a great warrior. He respects you and considers you to be his friend. He tells me that your enemies are his enemies. He says he would give his life to protect you. Be my son’s father while he is in your country. Take this gift from us as a token of our friendship.

Through his interpreter, Captain Gant read the letter to the chief.

When I read [the letter] to Sitting Bull, he was outwardly moved by it and said, “Tell your father not a hair on your head will be harmed as long as you are with me, you are now my son.”

Sitting Bull, the shotgun and Capt. Gant, 2003

A gift of honor

Capt. Gant and the ODA wanted to give the chief their own gift of honor. They searched and found a beautiful 12-gauge shotgun. The photo on the right shows the moment they presented it. That’s Capt. Gant beside the chief. Up front is SFC Mark Read.

Flash forward to 2009, a few weeks ago. Marine Col. Bing West, author of The Strongest Tribe, about Marines in Iraq, is now in Afghanistan researching a book. He visits Mangwel and meets with Malik Noorafzhal. The first thing the chief does is to bring out, proudly, the gift shotgun and ask Col. West if he can get him some shells, as he is all out. The photo below tells everything. Bing West e-mailed it to now-Major Gant, who forwarded it to me. The young officer next to Sitting Bull is Capt. Michael Harrison—the company commander profiled by the Washington Post–who is now on his second tour in Konar. Here is part of an e-mail Capt. Harrison sent from there to Major Gant, 18 June 2009, a few days ago.

Over the past five months, he [Malik Noorafzhal] has helped us out tremendously. His son and son-in-law both work at our COP [Combat Outpost] as ASG [Afghan Security Guards.]

Sitting Bull, the shotgun and Capt. Harrison, 2009

Tribesmen relate man-to-man

Men of the tribes never forget an insult or a kindness. Six years later, Capt. Gant and ODA 316’s heartfelt gift of honor is paying dividends for follow-on generations of American soldiers. And Capt. Harrison (though he and Maj. Gant have never met) is employing the same tribal language of man-to-man, person-to-person bonding. From Greg Jaffe’s article in the Washington Post:

Between his two tours, Harrison, whose boyish face and blond hair make him look like an especially earnest grad student, had kept in touch with his interpreter and several of the Afghan leaders from his old sector via e-mail. He sent them packages of T-shirts, jeans and toiletries. Soon after he arrived in Konar for the second tour, Harrison bought mosque speakers for the religious leaders in his area. Although his current sector is a three-hour drive from his old base, Afghans whom Harrison hasn’t seen since 2007 sometimes arrive at the gates of his new base. Many show the guards scraps of paper bearing Harrison’s signature, proof that they once knew him. “You cannot come to me, so I am here to visit with you, my good friend,” one man told Harrison.

All this is not to say that life is roses today in Konar province. Successes are unfortunately the exception, and tribal-savvy breakthroughs like those produced by Capt. Gant and Capt. Harrison are, so far at least, only the model for achievements to come.

Tribes and Alexander the Great

When Alexander fought in the Afghan kingdoms 2300 years ago, a gift of honor might be a horse or a Damascene sword. Alexander understood that such tokens, presented man-to-man, warrior-to-warrior, were the currency of tribal alliance. The celebrated tale of Alexander marrying the Afghan princess Roxane is usually told as a romance–the youthful king smitten by the ravishing damsel. There may be an element of truth to this, but Alexander was also a shrewd political animal whose army was then mired in a disastrous three-year counter-insurgency campaign with no end in sight. He married his way out of that quagmire, by taking to wife the daughter of his most powerful foe, the warlord Oxyartes, thus making his enemy into his father-in-law.

That marriage was an act of honor. In tribalspeak it said to Oxyartes and the other warlords, “I honor you as an equal, you have fought me to a draw and won my respect; let us make war no longer but join our two peoples in a peace whose issue will be prosperity and happiness for all.”

A shotgun and a bride, a gift and an act of honor. Perhaps the Obama era’s young officers and men, incoming now to Afghanistan, can take a page from Alexander and Oxyartes, from captains Gant and Harrison, and from a chief called Sitting Bull.

Site of the tribal gathering in Zazi, Paktia province

They say that every enterprise, from D-Day to a kitchen remodel, takes three times as long as you think and costs three times as much. I must apologize: our two new series have run afoul of this same syndrome. Here’s the latest:

We will launch, for sure, next Friday, with a reconfigured site.

Series #1: A multi-part, in-depth interview with an Afghan tribal chief

Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai was recently elected to the paramountcy of eleven tribes in his home district, the Zazi Valley in Paktia province. His first act was the creation of an 80-man tribal police force to protect the valley from insurgents. Chief Zazai must be doing something right because last week, his enemies tried to blow the force up.

I was having dinner with my family when I received a phone call from my commander, Amir Mohammed, telling me that an IED had been placed in the mosque where [the tribal police] were having a dinner. A small device went off … thank God the main bomb did not … it would have killed 30 to 40 people easily.

Chief Zazai’s father, who fought the Soviets and the Taliban, was assassinated several years ago; the chief himself has survived two attempts on his life. His cause is to unify the Afghan tribes and use them as a basis, not only for security for the Afghan people and state, but for a new (actually very old and traditional) form of governance for the entire country.

Inside the tent: elders from eleven tribes

Series #2: Special Forces Major Jim Gant’s “One Tribe At A Time”

Major Gant, who has served in Helmand and Konar provinces, approaches this same problem from the US side. While Chief Zazai is attempting to work with the 10th Mountain Division, whose area of responsibility is the chief’s home district, Major Gant lays out a program for US Tribal Engagement Teams to reach out to the tribes all over Afghanistan, one at a time. This is from his Foreword:

Afghanistan. I feel like I was born there. The greatest days of my life were spent in the Pesch Valley and Musa Qalay with the great “Sitting Bull” (a tribal leader in the Konar Valley who you will meet later in these pages). I love the people and the rich history of Afghanistan. They are a people who will give you their last bite of food in the morning and then try and kill you in the evening. A people who will fight and die for the mere sake of honor. A great friend and a worthy enemy.

Major Gant with "Sitting Bull," Konar province

Both Chief Zazai and Major Gant express the same belief:

The US [says Chief Zazai] has only one card to play in Afghanistan and that is the tribes.

Major Gant agrees.

… the answer lies in understanding and then helping the tribal system to flourish.

We’ll get these series rolling next Friday, I promise. And we’ll have free downloadable .pdfs of both, with photos and video, as soon after that as possible. Thanks, friends, for your patience.

A guest blog by Michael Brandon McClellan

[Mike McClellan is a graduate of Yale and Georgetown Law and a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute. His articles on politics and foreign policy have appeared in the WSJ, the Weekly Standard and on TCS Daily.  It's our pleasure to welcome him as a contributor.]

A few months ago I sat in awe in a Santa Monica hotel ballroom. George Will had been speaking for an hour and still held the audience spellbound. In a relaxed conversational tone, he addressed a dozen subjects, deploying dates, anecdotes, and quotations with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. Never once in the seventy-five minutes did he consult a note. It was classic George Will, and it was impressive.

Last week, however, Will reminded me that brilliant men can err, and even err substantially, when he wrote a column titled “In Afghanistan, Knowing When to Stop.” Implying that the lives of some of America’s finest young men would be squandered if the US does not withdraw, Will declared Afghanistan to be essentially not winnable, and perhaps more importantly, not worth winning. Citing the present failure of America’s nation-building and democratizing mission after eight years of effort, Will offered the following policy prescription:

Forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

On its face this must sound tempting to a wide audience. Such a policy would save the lives of Marines and soldiers on the ground, save tax-payers the expense of deploying 68,000 troops, and use air-power to play to American technological strengths. The problem with this thinking is not only that it has failed before, but that it has failed before in Afghanistan. Less than twenty years ago, the United States abandoned its mujahideen allies after a decade of arming them against the Soviet Union. We know who filled that vacuum.

George Will argues that Afghanistan is underdeveloped, has a tiny GDP, and is not worth American blood and treasure. To emphasize the point, he asks whether the US should also nation-build in “Somalia, Yemen, and other sovereignty vacuums.” Proponents of withdrawal made the same arguments twenty years ago. They declared that the US had helped the Afghans enough and it was time to leave them to “sort it out.”

Of course a fractured nation such as Afghanistan does not easily “sort it out” when shrewd geopolitical players like Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia are waiting to step in and tip the scales in favor of their preferred partisans. In the aftermath of the Red Army withdrawal, many of the heroes of the war against the Soviets were left facing ruthless warlords armed with foreign money and weapons. The vacuum created by American withdrawal left Afghanistan open to outside manipulation that was in direct opposition to American interests and security. Today, to that list of outside players may be added China and Russia, larger and more powerful than any of the previous three and possessed of substantial ambitions in Central Asia.

The Taliban takeover was not inevitable in the 1990s. Most of the Afghan freedom fighters were not Islamists or jihadists but proud tribesmen defending their land as had their ancestors for generations. Neither did most Afghans desire a continuance of the corrupt, chaotic, and violent rule of the warlords. Backed by foreign money and arms, the Taliban emerged with promises of stability. The stability they brought was that of Wahhabi repression of indigenous Afghan Islam–and of alliance with and sponsorship of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

America reaped the fruit when unmolested jihadist training camps, hosted by the Taliban’s Mullah Omar, produced hardened fighters who brought down the World Trade Center and blew a hole in the Pentagon. I was two blocks from the White House that day and watched the black smoke billow across the Potomac, before the Secret Service, with weapons drawn, made us get off the roof, and we joined the throngs leaving downtown via Connecticut Avenue. As is true for many Americans that witnessed these events either in person or on television, such things are seared on my mind.

That said, if the lesson of 9/11 is not that bad things happen when Afghanistan is left as a vacuum for regional players to fill with anti-American radicals, then what is?

While violence is escalating, and the war in Afghanistan is at a tipping point, the war is not lost. There are tribal leaders who understand the value of American and NATO assistance, and they want peace, freedom, and prosperity for their people. They desire neither Taliban nor warlord domination and they are furious with the corruption and ineptitude of the Karzai government. They are also outraged when their people are killed by missiles seeking Taliban targets.

Equally important, there are American officers who understand the need to win the confidence of the tribes and to enlist them, as tribes, in the cause of the greater nation. They recognize that the Afghan warrior will not be won over by a foreign superpower that declines to put its own young men into the field or that refuses to meet him with respect.

An “offshore” war as Will prescribes has the potential to create the opposite result of engagement with the tribes. Mistakes inevitably happen with missiles, hardening opposition among the tribes in whose midst the Taliban must hide to survive and carry out their war. Moreover, as one Afghan chief has told me, for the cost of a single missile, a whole group of local tribal fighters could be recruited to clear their own valleys and villages of Taliban and warlord forces alike. But such a strategy at its most fundamental level requires engagement, not disengagement.

George Will quoted a Dutch officer saying that walking through a southern province of Afghanistan is “like walking through the Old Testament.” Perhaps in such a statement there is an unintentional lesson. The Afghans have indeed been a proud, fierce, and honorbound people since the time Esther was influencing Xerxes to better treat the Israelites. As the Afghans are still such a people, we can look to history for instruction. In that blank page of the Bible that separates the Old Testament from the New, and the Persian Empire from the Roman, Alexander the Great figured out that if you win the tribes, you can win Afghanistan; lose the tribes and you face intractable insurgency. Two millennia later, Disraeli’s Britons and Gorbachev’s Soviets would surely concur. Given the strange consistencies of Afghanistan over time, and the disastrous ramifications of withdrawal two decades ago, we should recognize that knowing when to stop is not nearly as important as learning how to win.

Three items will be coming up this week (and in the following weeks) in this space that I think will be extremely interesting and provocative. I can say that with confidence because none of them will be coming from me.

First, in the next day or two, we’ll post a response from Michael McClellan to George Will’s recent “This Week” comments and Washington Post column. Mike is an extremely thoughtful and articulate young lawyer and Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute. I don’t know what he’ll say but I’m really looking forward to seeing it.

Second, I’m very excited to use this space as a platform for a white paper titled “One Tribe At A Time — A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan” by Special Forces Major Jim Gant. If you’ve followed this blog, you’ve seen Maj. Gant’s name a number of times. He’s an ODA team leader, recipient of the Silver Star, with three combat tours in Iraq and two in Afghanistan–on his way back for a fourth tour in Iraq in about a month.

Major Gant is not a pundit or a think-tanker; he’s a warrior whose points of view derive from time on the ground, in the villages and under fire, and whose ideas come from real experience that has really worked. In a nutshell his thesis is that, if the U.S. hopes to succeed in Afghanistan, it must work with the tribes. There’s no other way. The good news is that he believes this can be done–in a light-footprint way, without massive additional troop deployments and without egregious casualty counts (though it will take specially-trained, motivated and supported Tribal Engagement Teams). In his paper, Major Gant lays out the specifics for how he believes this can be done. What makes his recommendations carry weight, in my view, is that he is speaking from real-world experience. The course he proposes, he and his team have lived out. It has worked. Whether you agree or not, this is going to be fascinating reading.

Third, I’m hoping to provide a forum for an Afghan tribal chief, just elected to the paramountcy of eleven tribes in his home valley. This gentleman (who I won’t name for the moment, out of respect for him, and also because this announcement may be a bit premature) is knowledgeable in a way that no Westerner can be and is extremely articulate and passionate in championing the tribal cause in Afghanistan. He has survived two attempts on his life–and that’s the least of his personal story.

Like Major Gant, the chief believes that the tribes are the only avenue by which Afghanistan can truly achieve stability, autonomy and evolve to a state from which the forces of global jihad can be neutralized or eliminated. He has very specific ideas and propositions and he too has lived them out in the real world.

I’m hoping to run a number of stories on these issues, primarily in the words of these individuals. One thing they have in common is a belief that it would be a mistake for the U.S. to disengage from Afghanistan at this time. What is needed, they say, is not so much more American involvement as smarter involvement.

I don’t know specifically what any of these gentlemen are going to say, but I’m sure it’s going to make for some really interesting debate.

Discussion of the problems created by tribalism in Afghanistan often provokes from our own compatriots such outraged responses as, “Hey, who are we Americans to talk? We have our share of tribes too!” There’s no arguing with that. Here at home we’ve got the Bible-thumping cracker tribe, the latte-sipping liberal tribe and dozens more, all of which have to be catered to by the political process. To me though, the most useful American parallel to Afghan tribalism goes back to 1491—before the first European sail appeared off these virgin shores.

Tribal America

Pre-Columbian America was tribal from sea to shining sea. From the Mohicans to the Seminole to the Crow and the Apache, the land was a patchwork of warring, competing kin groups. Some, like the Iroquois and the Sioux, could be legitimately called nations; they were families and clans and sub-tribes united by ethnic/racial lineage and confederated, at least loosely, into a political whole. Like Afghanistan’s Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Hazaras and Tajiks, you could tell one from the other just by looking at them.

They were strong, they were free, they proud and virile and autonomous. But there was one thing they weren’t.

They weren’t a nation.

Could they ever have been? Can the Afghans be today? At least our Native American tribes were safe behind the Atlantic and the Pacific. Unlike the Afghans, their land was not the gateway to India or to Central Asia. They didn’t have to worry about superpowers vying in great games to turn their territory to the power’s own advantage.

Sympathy for the devil

Which brings us to this week’s Afghan elections. There was a very interesting article by Elizabeth Rubin in the August 9 New York Times Sunday magazine, titled “Karzai in His Labyrinth.” What the piece highlighted, at least to my reading, was the monumental barrier to true Afghan nationhood (the same one we would have seen in pre-European America): the political void between the tribes and a central unifying government.

Many have tried to fill this gap. Afghanistan has struggled under external invaders and conquerors, homegrown royal families; it had Communism for a while; then warlordism; then Talibanism. Now it’s got Hamid Karzai and us. I must say my heart went out to the Afghan president, reading Ms. Rubin’s article. I believe he’s a good man in an impossible situation. Consider Karzai’s plight. He has no real power in terms of guns or constituency. He has no militia loyal to him (unlike Dostum, Fahim or Hekmatyar), no great personal fortune, no vast landholdings. He has no religious or moral mandate as, say, his hero Gandhi did. What he had, once, was the favor of the Western powers, but now even that is deserting him. He’s trying to hold the country together with baling wire and bubble gum. He could probably do it too, the Afghan way, if the West would back off and let him. I salute him. He’s doing the best he can. From Elizabeth Rubin’s article:

“His father was head of the tribe, and in tribal culture you depend on loyalty of individuals rather than institutions,” says Ali Jalai, his former interior minister and a friend from refugee days in Pakistan. “You always try to be a patron to people close and loyal to you.” [Karzai] cherishes the values of democracy but has no faith in its institutions. “How he reconciles these competing demands creates his style of leadership,” Jalai said. In reality, said another friend, “he sees human rights, freedom of the press, the law, the constitution as chains around his hands and legs.”

Under pressure from the West, Karzai ousted from Kandahar Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, “probably the country’s most infamous drug trafficker.” What happened? The Taliban took over. Karzai has brought onto his ticket (the “warlord ticket”) Muhammad Fahim to bring in the Tajiks, the Uzbek warlord Adbul Rashid Dostum for his homies, and the Hazara politician Muhammad Mahaqiq to deliver those ethnic and tribal votes.

The West calls this corruption. Is it? What Karzai is up against is the Great Void between the tribes and the Kabul government. He’s filling it the most efficient way he can—with supertribal commanders, who can deliver the tribesmen and tribal contingents under them. What else can he do? He has had to accommodate everything, he says.

Everything, everything, everything! I had to balance the U.S. and Iran in Afghanistan. I had to balance other countries in here. I had to balance Europe. I had to balance the Muslim world. I had to make Afghanistan a country where all work together for it. And that I have managed. Fortunately. But, you know, at great personal stress and cost.

The other candidate seeking to fill this political void is of course the Taliban. They’ve done it before. We saw what that produced. The Taliban want again to be the super-tribe, the uber-tribe that can deliver a true national unity.

What is the missing link?

Afghanistan beyond the cities, it seems, is constituted of three political levels: the tribes in the villages, the central government in Kabul and the Great Void in between. What mechanism, what process might with legitimacy bridge this gap? Tribal confederacies have been tried before. They’ve worked before—just not for long. Loya jirgas have been convened, as one was when Karzai originally took office, with representatives from the vast patchwork of tribes that is Afghanistan. Could that work?

My guess is that, if any form of linkage ever does fill this void, it will be idiosyncratic and uniquely Afghan. It will be some hybrid form of governance—partly tribal, partly democratic, with no small measure of feudalism and cronyism thrown in. It will almost certainly require an international presence, for a long time, to serve as an honest broker, preventing some single tribal or ethnic element from dominating all others. This eventual government will probably be something that we in the West will find messy, corrupt and incomprehensible. But maybe it’ll work. Maybe it will stabilize Afghanistan long enough for peace and security to reach the people.

Oh, for wise Chief Seattle

It may help us Americans to try to imagine our native tribes struggling to put together the same thing. If we shrunk down our pre-Columbian borders to the size of Texas and crammed them full of competing tribes and nations, could these groups have gotten it together? Would the Lakota have cared what the Onondaga thought? Could the Kiowa have aligned their interests with the Crow? Now add superpowers on all sides, each with their own competing agenda. Could this crazy-quilt conglomeration find a way to come together as a nation?

That’s what Hamid Karzai is trying to pull off. Can we blame him if he’s coming a little unpeeled?

I was very interested last week to see what would happen, in terms of leadership succession among the Pakistani Taliban, after the reputed death of Baitullah Mahsud. According to scores of press reports as well as Pakistani and Taliban spokesmen, the immediate aftermath was a shootout involving two rival successors, Hakimullah Mahsud and Wali ur-Rehman, that resulted in the death of Hakimullah Mahsud. Within two days however, Hakimullah was phoning in, according to the Economic Times, declaring not only that he was still alive but that so was Baitullah–and that the world would be hearing from both very shortly.

This is pretty Wild West stuff. What struck me on a deeper level, however, was that both incidents–Baitullah’s death and the subsequent succession gunfight–illustrate timeless truths about tribes and the tribal mind-set.

Tribes band together to repel an invader

This is a reality that has been well-established since Alexander’s era, 2300 years ago, when the tribes of Afghanistan/Pakistan/Uzbekistan/Turkmenistan were called Pactyans (modern Pathans), Aparytae (Afridis), Satrayddae, Dadicae, not to mention the Scythian tribes north of the Amu Darya–the Dahae, Sacae and Massagetae. These tribes regularly warred against each other during normal times but came together to attempt to repel Alexander’s invading forces.

The key to such confederacies of expedience is of course a leader whose prestige transcends–like that of Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse–the natural rivalries and jealousies among individual tribes. Such a commander, from all we have read, was Baitullah Mahsud.

Mahsud was responsible, so reports say, for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto (though he himself denied this.) His armed followers numbered 20,000. He was a master in the tactical use of suicide bombers as part of coordinated assaults and offensives. Suicide bombings, he used to say, “are our atomic weapons. Although the infidels have atomic weapons, our atomic weapons are the finest in the world.” He was about 35. A tough act to follow.

The Los Angeles Times on August 8 quotes Masood Sharif Khattak, a former Pakistani intelligence official:

The real challenge for [any potential successor] would be to hold together the tribal groups that Baitullah Mahsud assembled. It’s not monolithic. There are serious personal and economic rivalries.

Indeed. Even if the Hakimullah Mahsud vs Wali ur-Rehman gunfight at the O.K. Corral turns out not to be literally true, it’s certainly credible enough that it might be true. Which brings us to a second characteristic of tribes.

Tribes switch sides

Gary Berntsen’s book Jawbreaker and Gary Schroen’s First In both treat as axiomatic the capacity to “turn” tribesmen, usually for nothing more exalted than a suitcase full of greenbacks. Berntsen and Schroen were fighting the Taliban in the weeks immediately following 9/11, when that force still controlled Afghanistan and called their government an emirate. That lofty appellation didn’t stop individual Taliban from crossing the lines at night to have a yarn with their neighbors of the Northern Alliance, nor did it prevent entire tribal contingents from going over to the Western invaders when the tide of conflict turned.

The notorious saying, which originated with the British during their wars beneath the Hindu Kush, is that “you can’t buy an Afghan, but you can rent him.” The condescension in that phrasing is misleading. The fundamental tactical reality of tribes throughout history is that their numbers are rarely large enough to dominate the region in which they live. Necessity compels them to seek accommodations with rivals. The result is not far from our own Five Families in New York: alliances keep shifting; the enemy of my enemy is my friend. You gotta do what you gotta do.

Is the Taliban a tribe? Not technically. But its fighters are tribesmen and tribal contingents, who share the tribal mind-set (hostility to all outsiders, extreme political and cultural conservatism, a code of honor as opposed to a system of laws, suppression of women) and who are harbored by and among tribal peoples. The Taliban, to my mind, are a super-tribe. Their methods and objectives are tribal (to drive out the invader by all means, fair or foul) but their aims are elevated to the next level (dominance of the entire region) by the adhesion of a passionate religious fundamentalism that is in essence the traditional tribal code squared and pumped up on steroids.

Is Baitullah’s death an opening for the West and the Pakistani government?

My guess is it won’t be easy to replace Baitullah Mahsud. I expect a serious power struggle. Tribes are not good at coming together. What’s working in the Taliban’s favor is the stepped-up pressure by the U.S. in Afghanistan and by the Pakistani military across the border. The first law–tribes band together to repel the invader–will still supersede the second. The time will not yet be ripe, I suspect, for the West to try to peel off contingents. But that day may come.

Can we imagine ourselves into that reputed succession council between Hakimullah Mahsud and Wali ur-Rehman? How much trash did one side have to talk before the other decided to let its AK-47’s finish the argument? Not even the Israelis and the Palestinians have that touchy a hair-trigger.

Baitullah Mahsud, I suspect, will be sorely missed.

I’d like to thank Captain Thomas Daly for writing this guest post. He lived the experiences that so many of us have read about.

Captain Daly joined the Marine Corps in 2004. During his

Lieutenant Thomas Daly outside COP Rage in Juwayba, Iraq. Photo courtesy of the author.

military career, he has held a multitude of billets ranging from Forward Observer to Intelligence Cell Leader. His unique perception of the battlefield has been shaped while operating with units of the United States Army, Navy SEALs, ANGLICO (Air, Naval Gunfire Liaison Company), Iraqi Army and Police Units, and anti-Al Qaeda guerrillas. In July of 2008, Captain Daly transitioned from the Marine Corps to the Inactive Ready Reserves. He currently works for ITT Industries as a project manager. He is also the author of the forthcoming book Rage Company (Wiley, Spring 2010).

On the night of January 26, 2007, I laid in a dark, muddy irrigation canal on the eastern outskirts of Anbar’s capital: Ramadi. Next to me was a former Saddam General, who was also a leader within the tribal movement that later would become known as the “Anbar Awakening.” Together, we watched a squad of Marines storm into a house that the general and his fellow tribesmen insisted was a legal court of the Islamic State of Iraq. Once the Marines gained entry, the tribesmen and I followed. As I approached the rectangular, one-level home and adjoining car port, the general muttered behind me, “Ali Siyagah’s car!” Siyagah, a mid-level al Qaeda cleric and former direct-action cell leader, was the target. His car was parked in the driveway.

I ran up the front stairs and through the main doorway. I was greeted

Lieutenants Thomas Daly (standing) and James Thomas with the leadership of the Juwayba tribal scouts after their first mission together. Photo courtesy of the author.

by the standard Iraqi living room—no furniture, just blankets strewn about, and a television in a far corner—and the calm and defiant faces of the eight military-aged males sitting on the floor. Within seconds, horror overcame the men, as the general and his men entered the room.

The ski-mask-clad tribesmen with us spouted off the names of the men seated on the floor. Ali Siyagah was not present, but his personal driver, two bodyguards and an al Qaeda propagandist were in the group. To me, the group appeared to be normal civilians. The tribesmen quickly explained that the remaining four were exactly that—locals forced into the insurgents’ service. We separated the innocent in a different room while we detained the others, then we prepared to move to the next target. The alliance between Sunni nationalists and America was about to dismantle al Qaeda. In four months the kinetic fight that had plagued Ramadi for three years would be over.

The impact of the uprising of Sunni tribes against al Qaeda was the catalyst that ended insurgent violence not only within Ramadi, but also much of Iraq. However, this fact was not a coincidence. It was the end result of a series of actions and events, which can shed light on the actions required for America to succeed in Afghanistan.

May of 2006, the fully operational 1^st Brigade, 1^st Armored Division (1/1 AD), took over responsibility for the city of Ramadi. This is important because they replaced a collection of Pennsylvania National Guard units that were responsible for the southern and western sectors of the city. The Guardsmen had not exerted control over these sectors, in turn affording the insurgents safe havens to assault the adjacent units of the 1-506^th and 3^rd Battalion, 8^th Marines. The soldiers of 1/1 AD quickly reversed this by moving into the safe havens and establishing a string of Combat Outposts that put their tanks in the heart of Ramadi. Fighting throughout the summer was intense, and over a dozen Bradley Fighting Vehicles and M1 tanks were catastrophically destroyed.

Lieutenant Thomas Daly minutes before the clearing of a VBIED factory in Qatana, downtown Ramadi. Photo courtesy of the author.

As the insurgents fought 1/1 AD, they also faced internal battles. December 30, 2005, a couple of months before 1/1 AD arrived, representatives of Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s and the nationalist 1920s Revolutionary Brigade’s, met at a downtown mosque in Ramadi. Zarqawi wanted all of the different insurgent groups to fall under his proposed Mujahadeen Shura Council, which he envisioned would govern the Islamic State of Iraq. Not everyone in 1920s agreed with Zarqawi’s heavy-handed tactics against Shia Iraqis.

Like a lot of events in Iraq at the time, the meeting ended in a firefight as some elements of 1920s held out. The conflict between the two opposing camps continued through the summer, around the time 1/1 AD arrived. The weaker hold outs turned to America for assistance. We obliged, helping them establish a couple of tribal police stations between the Marine garrison at Hurricane Point and the Government Center.

Al Qaeda quickly responded by focusing deadly attacks on the group, but they also made a critical mistake. They kidnapped and murdered the sheik of the tribe and hid his body, preventing a proper burial. The event became a major tool for the nationalists to exploit via propaganda. One sheik, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, even recorded television commercials blasting al Qaeda for their actions.

By Fall of 2006, the fight for Ramadi’s hearts and minds climaxed. Sheik Sattar declared an “Awakening” of Anbar’s tribes against al Qaeda in September. At the time, Sheik Sattar was not very powerful. The call to awaken went mostly on deaf ears.

October 18, the Mujahadeen Shura Council responded by declaring Ramadi the capital of the Islamic State of Iraq, and held a parade 800 meters from Anbar’s actual seat of government. Yet, the pressure began to pile on the extremists.

1/1 AD continued it’s offensive: new Combat Outposts were seized, an influx of 2,200 Marines from the 15^th Marine Expeditionary Unit flooded into Anbar; including my company, which arrived in Ramadi in early November. Sheik Sattar formed separate military and political organizations to first combat al Qaeda and also reach out to the other tribes of the Euphrates River Valley as well as the Iraqi Government.

The balance of power left al Qaeda’s hands in late November. Until then, Sheik Sattar only was capable of rallying the western side of Ramadi against the extremists, while American troops, myself included, contested the city’s center. Al Qaeda continued to control the urban east and rural areas beyond (Mila’ab, Sofia, Juwayba). However, this dynamic changed when an al Qaeda mortar team trying to use the usual farmland in northeastern Sofia to fire at Americans was turned back by a group of armed locals. The leader of this very small tribe (Shiek Jassim of the Albu Soda) was tired of our artillery counter-fire destroying his fields because of the mortar team. His tribesmen didn’t kill the insurgents, they simply said, “go away; use a different field.”

Again, al Qaeda made a serious mistake, completely disregarding the locals’ concerns. They launched an all-out assault against the Albu Soda tribe, forcing Jassim to call the United States for help. We responded in the midst of the attack, supplying Jassim with arms and ammunition that allowed him to repulse the enemy. Apache gunships followed up the action by destroying insurgent vehicles as they fled.

The attack on Jassim unified the small tribes of Sofia east to the Sijariah crossing, cutting off al Qaeda’s urban headquarters in the Mila’ab from its historic command and control network in Juwayba. At the end of January, the final push for control of Ramadi began. Coalition troops simultaneously attacked the Mila’ab and Juwayba. Days after the push into Juwayba, twenty-five Iraqi tribesmen offered assistance to the Marines. The first two paragraphs of this article describe part of the first mission we executed together. A month later, Juwayba would literally revolt against the extremists after the brutal murder of another innocent Iraqi.

So how does this apply to Afghanistan? How does Iraq’s tribal movement relate to Afghanistan? Is such an awakening even possible in Afghanistan?

The Pashtun tribes in Afghanistan are much more fractured and loosely aligned than the tribes in Iraq. Their territory traverses rugged, sometimes impassable terrain, unlike Iraq’s flat desert. Another difference? The Taliban is not al Qaeda. For almost a decade the Taliban provided for Afghanistan as a functioning government. It is a home-grown movement, led, in most part, by Afghans. The Taliban’s weaknesses and strengths are different than al Qaeda’s in Iraq. In fact, the Taliban’s knowledge of the local districts’ socio-political landscape makes it a more potent adversary. However, warfare is an art, not a science. There is always opportunity to change reality on the ground.

This begins with more combat boots, because step one is showing up. The awakening in Iraq spread in large part because it coincided with the “Surge.” As the support of Sunni tribes grew so did the reach of American troops. This combination of the coalition’s conventional tactics, supported by a Sunni nationalist guerrilla campaign, accomplished what the United States could not do by itself: defeat al Qaeda.

Step two is to truly understand the Taliban. As historic Taliban safe havens get a new combat outpost manned by Afghan and American troops, commanders on the ground must realize who they are facing. A concerted effort to encourage moderate Taliban commanders to our side has to take place. Not everyone in the Taliban agrees with suicide bombings, and as combat outposts move into villages, so will IEDs, mortar attacks, and devastating firefights. By living amongst the populace, local citizens will see the nature of the Taliban’s tactics. Some will probably experience them first hand. Such a burden will force the differences between Taliban leadership to come to a breaking point.

The goal in counter-insurgency is always to divide the insurgents’ voice. Their weakness lies in their inability to agree. Look at Afghanistan after the Soviets left; no one wielded control. The same is true of today’s Taliban. Who is it that leads them? Mullah Omar? Bin Laden? Or was it Baitullah Mehsud, who was reported killed in a Predator UAV strike last week? As we experienced in Iraq, different insurgents will give you different answers. Our goal must be to exploit this weakness and there is evidence it exists.

Take Baitullah Mehsud for example. A day after reports about his death started circulating, sources began stating that his two probable successors (Hakimullah and Wailur Rehman) were at each others throats over control of the Mehsud clan, and that one or possibly both were killed in an ensuing gun battle. Signs of internal struggles within the Taliban were apparent earlier this summer, when Baitullah Mehsud’s agents killed Qari Zainuddin, one of Mehsud’s chief rivals.

This is the sort of situation we need to exacerbate and it must be done at the local level: the company commander level. The biggest signal of America’s failure in this regard is the fact that a standard infantry company in the U.S. Army and Marine Corps continues to operate without a dedicated intelligence cell. This is unacceptable on a battlefield where an infantry company is often times responsible for an entire community. How can we claim that intelligence is truly driving operations?

We also must intensify our highly effective UAV Predator Drone attacks; especially in areas such as Baluchistan, where Taliban fighters can openly flee the Marines currently executing Operation Khanjari due to a non-existent Pakistani troop presence. In essence, the pressure cannot relent. As we experienced in Ramadi, the more we applied, the worse al Qaeda’s decisions became over time. This isn’t to say that al Qaeda wasn’t always so brutal, it’s just that we never followed step one.

Prior to the summer of 2006, after significant events in Ramadi took place, coalition troops would return to their large bases outside the city, allowing al Qaeda’s network of propagandists to shape events for the locals. By living across the street or two blocks over, we will mitigate their lies. When the Taliban take over a local’s house to fire at a combat outpost, the people will ask the Taliban why this happened. They will wonder why they are supporting a brutal militia instead of the Karzai government and foreigners who offer medical care, new schools, cash for damaged property and a future more than opium, a burqa or a beard. Like Iraq, the majority of Pashtun Afghans don’t want an extremist version of Islam to govern their lives.

If we hope to recreate the tribal movement of Iraq in Afghanistan, we cannot expect the extremist views of the Taliban to create a division we can support, such as the division between al Qaeda insurgents and nationalist insurgents in Ramadi. We must look for opportunities ourselves. And, this will only be accomplished if we truly begin to understand the enemy at the local level.

Our infantrymen at the tip of the spear cannot simply hunt for Taliban fighters, they must also develop an understanding of the enemy’s beliefs, personality and, more fundamentally, why they are fighting us. Once we begin to attain this knowledge and develop a relationship with the Afghan tribes, which lasts longer than one mission, we may very well find that the Pashtun tribes are not as committed to the Taliban as we think.

Afghanistan

It can be tempting to downplay or ignore the influence of tribes in Afghan politics, and on the effects on our operations. We tried to ignore the great influence of the tribes during the war in Iraq, and not until 2006, fully three years into the war, did we effectively begin to work with tribes on an appreciable scale.

The work with the tribes during 2006–2007 in Anbar Province helped set conditions that greatly facilitated the successes of “The Surge,” which unfolded during 2007. A compelling argument could be mounted that had we not seen the 2006 tribal “Awakening” in Anbar, the Surge might have spiraled into yet more violence, and the war in Iraq could have been lost.

Drawing parallels between Afghanistan and Iraq is fraught with peril, yet there are some useable lessons in regard to tribal influences.

As I wrote in a recent Washington Times article:

Time has a different meaning here. Take the case of members of the Baibogha tribe who abandoned a patch of land nearby about 150 years ago. Hazaras moved in, now Baibogha have come back to tell Hazaras, “Wait . . . you stole our patch of nothing while we disappeared for 150 years.”   

Ghor Province, Afghanistan

If we desire to help bring Afghanistan to a status that a reasonable observer might call a “developing nation,” then the commitment here has just begun. This expensive project will require many decades of effort at best, and more likely a full century of commitment.

If most Afghans cooperate, and we work hard together, Afghanistan might develop into a self-sustaining country—a real country—after a few decades. In the dispatch “Sangow Bar Village” I wrote that the village was in the dark.

It had no electricity until 2006 when Lithuanians invested about $40,000 to build a micro-hydro generator with the idea of watching the village to see if true improvement was made. Today, Sangow Bar has plenty of electricity and the people have lights and satellite television . . . The Lithuanians have determined that the project was a success, and the project appeared to be a success to the Japanese and to me.

 

With this success in mind, the Lithuanians together with Iceland decided to build thirty more hydro-generation stations. Now, if we look at this in context of the broader picture, thirty, three hundred, or even three thousand might seem like an irrelevant number. But it’s not.

However, Afghanistan’s narco-remittance-puppet-state is hindering each attempted step forward. An embryo of a real country is growing, but will die instantly without help. For now, and at a minimum many decades to come, with a lack of stable government, tribal influences will be at least as important as those emanating from Kabul.

Michael Yon

Sangin, Helmand Province

Remember the Bizarro World, from Seinfeld and Superman comics? Everything is its opposite in the Bizarro World. Up is down, black is white, in is out.

Students of Counterinsurgency (COIN) and Tribal Engagement tell us it’s the same in their field. Who would have thought, for example, that killing bad guys would be a no-no? Or that a good old-fashioned grease-the-palm payoff would prove as effective as “winning hearts and minds?”

Here then, in no particular order, are a few other cherished maxims of conventional warfare that might profit, in the Bizarro World of tribal COIN, from being turned on their heads:

No beards

In Afghan tribal society, a beard is the sign of a man. Boys are clean-shaven. Capt. Michael Harrison reports from Konar today that he was able to bond with tribal elders in one village because they remembered fondly “the bearded Americans”—Special Forces ODA 316–who had been with them six years earlier.

Can discipline be maintained in a U.S. line outfit when troopers are shaggy and unkempt? Probably not. But on tribal engagement teams whose mission is to bond with native elders toward the end of living with and fighting alongside them, maybe the “high-and-tight” is not the best way to break the ice.

Always wear body armor

Clearly when a unit is in the field and expects to take fire, it must keep all defenses up. But once “inside the tribal gate,” in a shura meeting or over tea, such a posture offends the honor of the host. The Pashtunwali obligation of hospitality, melmastia, mandates that the tribesman protect the guest, even at the cost of his own life. Are we, the Kevlar-plated stranger, unwittingly offending the very benefactors we’re seeking to befriend?

Hang onto the purse strings

What we in the West call a bribe can be, in Afghan tribal society, simply good manners. Of course we don’t want American officers running around with open-ended slush funds. But friends help friends. And “gold is honorable.”

Such transactions must be conducted with extreme delicacy and respect, however. No condescension. No strings. And no after-the-fact monitoring.

"The bearded Americans" had success in Konar province

If you leave five grand in an envelope for Tony Soprano (the mob is a tribe too), it’s in poor taste to come back and ask him what he did with it.

Never give them guns

Weapons carry big juju in any tribal society. The gift of arms is an act of honor and a profound statement of trust. Conventional wisdom says hell no, give ‘em guns and we’ll wind up promoting warlordism–or get our guys shot with weapons we ourselves put into the shooters’ hands. But a tribesman never forgets a favor or an insult and is honorbound to requite such exchanges in kind.

It worked in al-Anbar.

What makes Bizarro bizarre

The through-the-looking-glass aspect of certain COIN precepts in a tribal setting derives from the contradictions between the Western way of seeing the world and the tribal way. What seems irrational to our eyes often makes perfect sense through the tribesman’s.

Their minds [wrote T.E. Lawrence of the Bedu tribesmen he came to know so well] work just as ours do, but on different premises. There is nothing unreasonable, incomprehensible, or inscrutable in the Arab. Experience of them, and knowledge of their prejudices will enable you to foresee their attitude and possible course of action in nearly every case.

If our mission hopes to succeed in the tribal areas of Afghanistan, we must learn to speak the cultural language–the street lingo of tribalism.

Lastly, the poppy

In the Bizarro World of tribal logic, let me venture the following proposition:

In dealing with issues around opium, whatever course we think makes the most rational sense … do the opposite.

Near Camp Joyce, Konar province. Photo by Andrew Lubin.

In the videos (and posts) on this site, we’ve talked about the characteristics of tribes and the tribal mindset. Among these are respect for elders, hostility to outsiders, the obligation of revenge, a code of honor rather than a system of laws, hospitality, capacity to endure hardship and the suppression of women. These qualities appear to be universal, or nearly so, across all continents during all periods of history. They seem to hold true for Native Americans, Africans and Amazonians, ancient Celts and Gauls, Scottish highlanders and the savage tribes that fought Alexander, Cyrus and Xenophon.

Today I’d like to address another aspect of the tribal mind: how it measures power. 

Men with guns

How do tribes assess their own strength? Studies seem to indicate that it’s not by wealth or property (including number of wives or livestock) or even by possession of land (which is often held communally or semi-communally.) The measure seems to be the number of armed men that can be put into the field. The more of these a leader can call upon, the more powerful he is.

From Special Forces Maj. (then-Capt.) Jim Gant’s OPSUM [Operation Summary] of a 2003 shura with tribal elder Noorafzhal in Mangwal, Konar province, Afghanistan:

After the meeting was adjourned, [Noorafzhal] asked to speak with me privately.  So my terp [interpreter] and I went out back with him.  He took my hand in his.  “I want you to know, Commander Jim, that you have my loyalty.  If you need men with guns you come see me.”  He promised 800.

A July 22, 2009 article by Alex Rodriguez in the L.A. Times assessed the power of Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban chief in South Waziristan:

Analysts say he has about 20,000 militants at his command, a much larger contingent that the 4,000 fighters believed to be loyal to the Swat Taliban leader Maulana Qazi Fazlullah.

Critics may of course protest that the Taliban are not a tribe. I would argue that they’re a super-tribe.  (See tribal characteristics in paragraph one above.) In any event, the natural measure of their power seems to be not wealth or property, but men with guns.

Men with guns compared to what?

Here’s where it gets interesting. Tribes measure their strength not in isolation but versus their most immediate and proximate rivals. The Blackfeet of the 1870s judged their mojo in comparison to the Sioux, and the Comanche rated their power vis-a-vis the Apache.

From an e-mail from Col. C.M. “Chipper” Lewis, Commander of the 174th Infantry Brigade:

I would add that the tribal system has a key vulnerability that can be exploited. Tribes first look at their power and influence relative to other competing tribes. I saw this when I was negotiating with the Jennabi and Zobay tribes in Baghdad. Both groups of Sheiks told me in separate discussions … that the key to turning them away from AQ [al-Qaeda] was that they were losing too many men and had lost much influence and capability relative to other tribes.

 How our men with guns can influence theirs

 Col. Lewis’ method was to “get kinetic” on them.

The bottom line was that the coin of the realm for [the tribes] was the number of males in the tribes they could count on.  Once we attrited that … relative to other competing tribes they quit and came to us.

In other words, one tribe could be played off against another. If the relative strength of Tribe X could be lowered enough so that they feared becoming vulnerable to rival Tribe Y, Tribe X became more likely to ally itself with Tribe Z–i.e., us. Theoretically, this could also work by augmenting the power of Tribe X, thus making Tribe Y feel more vulnerable and more disposed to turn.

[The tribes] didn’t give a shit what anybody else was doing except watching and gauging the relative power of others in their own area of interest.  [But if you're going to turn them], you gotta do it one tribe at a time.  If you’re trying to influence or to attrit all of them simultaneously, they gain or lose power simultaneously and they fight on playing both sides of the fence.  Take ‘em on one at a time and we could probably stack them up like cord wood and every subsequent tribe that turns will turn faster and with less casualties because they see what is happening around them.

Would this work in Afghanistan? Col. Lewis is dubious, because of Afghan and U.S. politics. Leaving that thorny issue aside for the moment, the point I would stress is the same one that this blog has put forward from its inception:

Work with the tribal mind, not against it

The tribal mind thinks tribally. It considers and weighs options from a completely different point of view than the western “national” mind. This can be leveraged to our advantage (and ultimately to that of the tribes, despite themselves) if we make the effort to understand the mechanism–and pick the right place to set the crowbar.