There are several major obstacles to a rapprochement, too many to go into here, though I think the government of Pakistan would have a terrible time justifying its own corruption and incompetence if it did not have a perpetual “war scare” with India to justify its existence.

It is interesting that our supposed Allies in the “GWOT”, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, are the two biggest sources of the problems we face? Again, a topic too big for this comment.

Mark, this is the key to much of what has happened.

Pakistan’s leadership lives in mortal terror of a final showdown with India that it cannot win. When a country is confronted with a strategic situation that is hopeless, there are various ways they can try to whistle past the graveyard. A realistic one is to say, “we will lose the first round, but we will take to the hills, we will never surrender.” The Swiss deterred the Germans with that strategy. Churchill more or less said this in 1940. We thought the Germans would do this in 1945, with a mythical Bavarian Redoubt. Similarly, the Pakistanis decided to do a conventional-defense-followed-by-guerilla-resistance model. As you note, Afghanistan with its inhospitable errain was to be the zone of guerilla resistance. A less realistic but typical response to substantive inferiority is to try to gain some kind of moral or spiritual advantage. Germans are Aryans, hence a match for any number of Judeao-Bolshevik untermenschen — so they told themselves — hence making Barbarossa look plausible. Sons of the Yamato race and knights of Bushido cannot be beaten by piddly things like steel mills and railroads and shipyards and finance and factories — making Pearl Harbor look plausible. The republican ardor of our troops, their elan vital, can overcome the mere numbers of Germans, making the defense of France in 1914, with no major land commitment from Britain, seem plausible. Similarly, the Pakistanis sought a spiritual foundation for their planned protracted popular struggle. They built their hoped-for moral superiority on fundamentalist Islam, taught in thousands of madrassas financed by Saudi money. This would radicalize both the Pashtuns as well as others. This religio-strategic policy was articulated in Brig. S.K. Malik’s The Quranic Concept of War.

The situation is a nasty briar patch. I worry that the American leadership is wandering rather aimlessly there. I see no evidence to the contrary. I agree with Shannon that the Pashtuns are “hillbillies”, in the taxonomic and not pejorative sense. All the more reason to learn their language, both literally and more broadly, figure out how to cooperate with them and coopt them — solely for the purpose of defeating our enemies the Taliban, then ratchet back our involvement, build down our visible presence there, and allow the Pashtuns to run their own affairs as they have done since time out of mind. We should not stay in Afghanistan for 100 years, even in the purported government asks us to. No foreign power has had a happy experience staying for a long time in Afghanistan. Secure the destruction of our current enemies, make as many friends as possible, in case of a later need to investigate or otherwise work in the area, and scram.

I hope some of what you suggest will happen.

“In fact, I’m at a loss as to WHAT our strategy and end-state really are in Afghanistan.”

I think it is a football between different parts of the government. Maybe Petraeus will impose unity of aims as well as superior methods.

The Pashtun brand of Islam, although extremely conservative, actually has little in common with the Islam of al Qaeda, and is an expression of the mountain culture of Afghanistan. Until the Taliban came to power in the 90s, seeing women without Burqa or Hijab-type headgear was not uncommon. Suicide bombing–a fixture of Arab jihadism since at least the early 1980s, was actively discouraged by the Taliban through at least 2004.

If we can better-understand the Pashtunwali it may be possible to ostracise the Taliban–who are currently using some remarkably non-Pashtun methods–from their fellow Pashtuns. This may be easier than you think. American military units esteem honor nearly as much as Pashtuns, and personal interaction between American military men (they must be men in this case!) and Pashtun may allow some openings which will allow the seperation of Taliban Pashtun from other Ethnic Pashtuns. This is a grand-tactical approach that may allow for tactical victory over the Taliban fighting units.***

This grand tactical approach would require a strategy of making peace with the Pashtuns as the rightful rulers of Afghanistan–at the expense of the Taliban. We are currently not operating with this strategy. In fact, I’m at a loss as to WHAT our strategy and end-state really are in Afghanistan.

*** Unlike Iraqi insurgents, the Taliban actually operate in platoon, company, and very occasionally battalion- or larger sized units that, if they can be identified, may be engaged and destroyed. Personal experience with these units says they know how to use cover and concealment with terrain better than perhaps any force the US has ever fought in battle. This will require something of a revolution in American ability to track light infantry units. Iraqi insurgents tend to operate using a cellular structure, not the triangular structure of traditional military units. The Taliban tend to be Triangular in organization, with cellular auxiliary troops (IEDs and suicide bomber cells, for example).

I think you misunderstood what I wrote. I was merely addressing the problem of trying to solve the problem by engaging the local culture. While in theory a good idea, in reality it is very hard to do so.

It requires a finely balanced carrot and stick approach. You need to curry favor with the general population with material benefits but you also need to make it clear that you’re not doing so out of fear of the hostile elements. Otherwise, the hostiles can claim that they are ultimately responsible for the benefits. Instead, you have to create an environment in which the hostiles are seen as preventing further material progress. At that point, the population will turn on them.

That is the threshold we have passed in succession in the Sunni and Shia areas of Iraq. Most of the population now views the anti-democratic forces as impediments to their well being.

The problem we face in Pakistan is analogous to what we would’ve faced in Iraq if we allied with the Sunni against the traditionally oppressed Shia. We would have trouble convincing the Shia that we meant them well while we were allied with their historic oppressors. Pashtuns are the hicks in the sticks in Pakistan and have long suffered discrimination at the hands of the low land ethnic groups.

Pashtuns are hillbillies. We see this same culture pattern reassert itself \ repeatedly in the world’s mountainous regions. The physical isolation creates an independent nature and the dependence on easy to steal livestock leads to a feuding culture.

I am frankly dubious that there is practical solution to the problem. Every similar conflict has come with a plethora of advice about how to deal with the problem based on indigenous culture and most of the recommendations by people with great experience in the area contradict each other.

Sensitivity to culture never hurts. For example, we seldom think to offer enemies or fence sitters monetary incentives to do what we want because (beyond the danegeld problem) in our culture it is an insult to suggest that one will fight for matters that could be settled with money. In other cultures, however, giving money or gifts is a sign of respect.

The authors were right to focus on both the preeminence of the Pushtunwali as well as the erosion of tribal mechanisms under the pressure of violent Islamist extremism that cuts across clan, sub-tribe and tribal groupings. The complexity of the region is underlined by the little known fact ( in America at least) that Hamid Karzai and his influential “royal” clan originally supported the Taliban, turning on them when a Taliban commander murdered Karzai’s father.

The crux of the issue is this:

1)That Pashtuns, pro or anti- Taliban, see themselves and not the Hazaras, Uzbeks or Tajiks or other minorities as “the Afghans” and the entirety of their tribal region and much of Afghanistan proper as “theirs”. Everyone else from ourselves to the Pakistanis and Uzbeks are outsiders.

2)The Pakistani Army regards Afghanistan as it’s defense in depth, a redoubt, against an invasion by India and the Karzai regime as hostile to Pakistani interests because it is not dependent upon Pakistan.

If the Taliban leadership and Al Qaida in northwest Pakistan are tro be captured or killed, it will only be done by American troops raiding or bombing against Pakistan’s wishes or if we have the incredible good fortune of al Qaida provoking a powerful Pushtun sub-tribe into hostlities the way AQI irritated the Sunni Arab tribes of Anbar province.