The Pitfalls of Steamrolling the Muslim World- II
By Frankie Martin and Hailey Woldt
American University
Washington, DC
The Mahsud situation, an echo of the past, has confounded analysts like Kurtz who seem to stubbornly repeat the one-track policy — partly because they have no other answers and partly because they see a false dichotomy. According to this common misperception, there are only two options available to handle the situation in Waziristan and in the Muslim world: to “surrender” which would result in the beginning of a nightmare scenario of a world caliphate with nuclear weapons and daily stoning, or to crush them before what Kurtz calls the “Islamist revolution” succeeds. Kurtz frames his review of Ahmed’s work with this worldview and decides that Ahmed represents the former, and he the latter.
Yet this dichotomy never existed on the ground. In Waziristan, Ahmed was the iron fist in the velvet glove and through this method was able to implement effective policy. In Resistance and Control in Pakistan it is evident that Ahmed had the full power of the state and military behind him should he choose to use it, and the tribal leaders he was dealing with knew it. Whenever he met with tribal leaders, snipers and thirty-three armed bodyguards surrounded him. But he always went personally unarmed to build trust with the leaders. Ahmed, you could say, “spoke softly but carried a big stick.” It was his ability to use this “gentle, honor-based rule,” as Kurtz calls it, that he was able to control the situation and ultimately be successful. This policy is so far removed from the discourse on Islam today that it almost is inconceivable. Instead, US policymakers have embraced an irrelevant paradigm perpetuated by ignorance of the Muslim world that is the main cause of so many American foreign policy failures worldwide. It must be revised.
Ahmed reinforced, through his effectiveness, the authority of the state. For the first time in history Ahmed extended the Pakistani government’s authority all the way to Birmal on the Afghan border. He built schools and medical clinics which were greatly appreciated by the people and enhanced the effectiveness of negotiation. Ahmed faced a full-on rebellion from the Wazir and could have easily unleashed the full force of the Pakistani military, but instead he used the threat of force combined with efforts to gain the respect of the tribes by reaching out to them and working within their cultural framework. Threats to law and order were dealt with strictly by the political authority. This patronizingly called “gentle” method worked.
Global experts on Islam agreed. When Resistance and Control in Pakistan was first published the noted American expert on Pakistani tribal society Dr. Stephen Pastner declared Ahmed “quite simply one of the most extraordinary anthropologists alive today.” Professor Francis Robinson, Britain’s leading authority on South Asian Islam, wrote in the foreword to the 1991 edition of the book that it should be read wherever the modern state confronts restive tribal societies. “Thus one man using the incisive key of knowledge unlocks the barriers of another culture without bloodshed and in circumstances where regiments of soldiers might have failed.”
Indeed using simple knowledge of the tribes to transcend this false dichotomy would make the American project in Pakistan and Afghanistan much easier. When the US and NATO invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they allied themselves with the Northern Alliance — composed mainly of Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazara — the historic enemies of the Pashtuns of southern Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan, including the Wazirs and Mahsuds. Instead of the Americans being impartial actors and reaching out to the Pashtun who viewed the Taliban in their midst to be an alien entity — and there were many — the US revived and became an actor in a fierce tribal war. For many Pashtuns to work with the United States or the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan now would be a violation of their tribal honor and a betrayal to their families. The Pashtun tribesmen feel under siege on multiple fronts, attacked, they think, simply because of their ethnicity. Because they are Muslim, they also feel Islam is under attack and seek to defend it. This ethnic component has been frequently neglected by policymakers and analysts of the region, to disastrous effect.
Kurtz calls Ahmed’s conclusion that Islamic tribal groups can be brought into the fray and engaged without Kurtz’s “bad cop” presence of shock-and-awe military force “dangerously misleading and incomplete.” But it is Kurtz who is dangerously misleading. The US reliance on what Kurtz approvingly calls the “steamroller” has led to disaster, not only in Waziristan but also Iraq, Afghanistan — and beyond.
Competing Legacies
But Ahmed’s approach was not altogether new. In his quoting of Lord Curzon, Kurtz gives the impression that the British ruled India with a brutal iron fist, but this is not accurate. In Resistance and Control in Pakistan, and later books like Discovering Islam: Making Sense of Muslim History and Society, which Kurtz does not review, Ahmed pays tribute to several British officials from whom he inherited a legacy of innovative and culturally sensitive administration. After the 1857 rebellion in India, where Muslims and Hindus rose up en masse against colonial authority, the British decided that another strategy was needed. Instead of antagonizing the tribes and brutally suppressing them, the British began to send elite officers who dressed like the tribes, spoke their language, and understood their culture. Many of these political officers had great success and were loved by the tribes. The tribal areas were still dangerous, however, and at times political agents were killed, as Kurtz correctly notes. After one such killing in 1905 Sir Evelyn Howell, a twenty-seven-year-old officer began his post in Waziristan. He would go on to become one of the most well-liked political agents and translate some of the great Pashtun poets into English, along with Sir Olaf Caroe, another political officer who wrote the classic The Pathans. In Resistance and Control in Pakistan and again in Discovering Islam: Making Sense of Muslim History and Society,Ahmed relates an exchange between Howell and a typical Mahsud elder. In response to a statement from Howell where he speaks of the political agent as “custodians of civilization dealing with barbarians,” the elder replies :
A civilization has no other end than to produce a fine type of man. Judged by this standard the social system in which the Mahsud have been evolved must be allowed immeasurably to surpass all others. Therefore let us keep our independence and have none of your law and your other institutions which have wrought such havoc in British India, but stick to our own custom and be men like our fathers before us.
“After prolonged and intimate dealings with the Mahsuds,” writes Howell, “I am not at all sure that, with reservations, I do not subscribe to their plea.” It was clear to Howell, who was able to get to know the tribes well enough to begin to empathize with them that one way of life was not going to win over the other. So, if the tribes of Waziristan were not going to freely accept Western civilization and the British were not going to permit disorder and challenges to their rule in strategic Waziristan, where was the middle ground? It is clear from the statement that the tribes would not respond to shows of overwhelming force, which they would interpret as a government effort to ram “Western civilization” down their throats at the barrel of a gun, a strategy that was as ineffective in 1905 as it is now. The only answer, then, is the approach favored by Howell and Ahmed after him. Coexistence is possible, but only if there is mutual respect and competent administration. If the tribes do not respect, honor, and trust the political agent, and by extension the government of Pakistan and today the United States, there is next to nothing any of these parties can accomplish in the tribal areas. (To be continued)
