The news has been reporting in the last few days, that the Pakistani government released intercepted communications with a Pashto speaking militant leader from the region of Waziristan. The militant leader was said to be named Baituallah Mehsud. In a book review by Stanely Kurtz's (which is the subject of this post) it is noted that there are two prominent Pashtun tribes in Waziristan: the Wazirs and the Mashuds and that a century ago the Mahsuds were part of the Wazirs, but have since split off and gained their own identity:
“The government released a transcript Friday of a purported conversation between militant leader Baitullah Mehsud and another militant.”
"It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her," Mehsud said, according to the transcript. The government did not release an audiotape.
“Cheema described Mehsud as an al-Qaida leader who was also behind most other recent terror attacks in Pakistan, including the Karachi bomb blast in October against Bhutto that killed more than 140 people. Mehsud is thought to be the commander of pro-Taliban forces in the tribal region of South Waziristan, where al-Qaida fighters are also active.”
“In the transcript, Mehsud gives his location as Makin, a town in South Waziristan.”
On-line link to cited news release:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071228/ap_on_re_as/pakistan
I think that Kurtz in his review treats his subject accurately. I agree that Waziristan has become a center for al-Qaida. And because of the political arrangement with Pakistan the U.S. military can not directly oppose them there.
In his book review, Kurtz makes quite a few spooky observations about the situation, one of them being:
"With a third of Pakistanis in a recent poll expressing favorable opinions of local jihadi terror groups, the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan may yet conquer Pakistan."
The focus of Kurtz's review is examination of several books by Akbar S. Ahmad. Ahmad was a Pakistani governmental official who served in Waziristan. In his book “Resistance and Control in Pakistan,” Ahmad makes the argument that essentially the people of Waziristan have chosen a culture of political violence and that any who wish to entertain a political dialogue with the region must be prepared engage in such discourse:
“Politics in Waziristan is inseparable from violence. A British official once called firing on government officers the local “equivalent for presenting a petition.”
Though, many books on Afghanistan, lionize the Pashtun ethical code of Pashtunwali, I’ve had mixed feelings about it. I think there is truth to the condemnation of the code by Winston Churchill, (whom Kurtz quotes), as a “system of ethics, which regards treachery and violence as virtues rather than vices.”
And I agree with Kurtz that more often than not honor should be looked to as the motivation for violence against the West as opposed to lack of economic opportunity:
“Economic development might well “tame” these tribesmen, yet poverty is less the cause of their warlike ways than the result of a deliberate decision to preserve their traditional way of life-their Pushtun honor-even at material cost.”
Excellent article.
One sentence caught my eye: “Unfortunately, a people who petitions by sniper fire seems poorly suited to democratic citizenship.”
You can get some sense of these people by reading novelists who have written about British India.
Kipling, of course.
And I have always gotten a kick out of Talbot Mundy. “King of the Khyber Rifles” is his best known romance. And they are romantic, in the H. Rider Haggard vein. But lots of fun.
More serious as a historian is John Masters, who wrote a whole series of novels on the history of British India, from the earliest days through the great revolt to the end of colonial rule. I had a cousin, long since deceased, who knew him, and who put me onto his books.
Stewpid, all of it. The explanation defies logic.
Waziristan sounds like Islamic “culture” in its purest form. Islam arose out of the awful feuding, plundering tribal culture of pagan Arabia. Mohammed simply used his phony syncretic plagiarized religion to amalgamate the savage tribes and make himself the no. 1 warlord. If the problems of this region are not due to Islam, then why do we see the same phenomena all over the Muslim world, from North Africa, where Christians were kidnapped and enslaved or sold for ransom for centuries, to Sudan, where Muslims commit genocide against other groups, to Thailand and the Philippines?
I do believe the "Emirate" of Waziristan can destabilize Pakistan and perhaps even for a time form a Taliban-like shadow government. I do not believe it can hold Pakistan. Within that country is a long-standing tradition of southland hostility to the aggressiveness of the tribes and this wouldn't be the first time by far that the tribes overstepped their actual power. The British were experts at playing that game better than the tribals.
It is ironic but absolutely consistent that oil wealth has fomented Islamism within the tribes. Oil wealth has done so everywhere it has enrichened an undeserving people. I use the term "undeserving" precisely - those who received the money weren't the ones who worked for it. Revolutionaries never are, and that is true within Western societies as well.
We are not risking a blood feud with those of these tribes who have decided to shelter our enemies, we're already in one. That has had a certain cost to us in terms of the aura of invincibility it has conferred on such cockroaches as Osama bin Laden. It has had, so far, no cost to the tribes. That will change, because the notion that we do not understant codes of honor and blood feuds is entirely erroneous - we play that game quite well, as well as any tribesman with an AK-47.
The difficulty will be that Lord Curzon was correct - it will take a steam-roller to convince the tribal elders that it's a game they cannot win. We have the steam-roller, but have we the will to use it? I do not think we should make a Saddam-style eradication of the villages a lynchpin of political policy - it didn't, after all, work for Saddam besides being wasteful and immoral. And so the quick solution is likely elude us.
But there is a lifeline that can be cut at will, and that is the flow of oil wealth to those tribes who insist on using it to make war against us. That will mean a cut in the flow of weapons and munitions as well. It's a straightfroward enough plan but its execution will have to account for the fact that this is the home of some of the worlds most successful smugglers and has been for centuries. But they haven't faced a full-court press of drones and long-tailed special forces operators such as we can field at will. And so the issue will remain at the mercy of that will. We'd better make up our minds before the jihadis make them up for us. IMHO, of course.