September 23, 2001
The real Afghanistan A poor country with the will to fight
By Jeff Key Associate professor of government and international affairs, Sweet Briar College

For centuries, the outsiders have found Afghanistan a deceptively easy country to invade. Once there, however, they found that its people are impossible to control and that it's a hellishly difficult place from which to withdraw. The country's modern history is replete with failed efforts by great powers to bend the Afghans to serve their interests. British colonial forces fought and lost three wars there in the 19th century and the Soviets' decade long debacle is still fresh in the world's mind.

America seems poised to embark on a military venture in Afghanistan that will likely involve the use of ground forces in as yet undetermined numbers. However, U.S. soldiers will operate among a people who are vastly different from the Afghan stereotype popularized by the British colonial writers and reinforced by the Western media in the 1980s.

The stereotypical Afghan is a bearded, craggy faced mountain warrior. A turban or round, rolled wool "Khyber cap" adorns his head and a rifle is clutched in his hands. In earlier days, the rifle would have been a long, highly ornamented flintlock. British colonial photographers captured these images in black and white. Television footage from the war against the Soviets shows the Afghan holding a modern AK-47 or, more chilling, a Stinger missile.

The imaginary Afghan prefers fighting to any other human activity, ceasing his blood feuds with neighboring clans and tribes only when there are outside invaders on whom to make war. He makes his living usually through theft, ransom or robbery. This Afghan is also full of contradictions. In social relations, he is at once the most gracious of hosts and a traitorous betrayer of loyal friends. In battle, he is capable of unparalleled feats of daring matched by equal acts of cowardice when he deems, like the Afghan hound going limp when grabbed by the throat, it is better to give up and live to fight another day. Taken together, these characteristics make the Afghan a wily, formidable foe. As with most stereotypes, this one is salted with just enough truth to guarantee its consumption.

The largest segment of Afghan society is composed of the various Pathan tribes. They make up nearly 40 percent of the population and have long controlled most political power. Afghanistan's Pathans live in the mountainous region adjoining Pakistan. The Afghan-Pakistan border runs squarely through the heart of the Pathan population. In fact, there are more ethnic Pathans in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province alone than there are in all of Afghanistan.

Efforts to distinguish an "Afghan" Pathan from a "Pakistani" Pathan are as meaningless as the border between the two countries. Stereotypes of Afghans are loosely based on Pathan society and its particular social code of conduct. While conducting research in Pakistan in 1988, a Pathan businessman I met socially in Islamabad invited me to visit his village near the Afghan border. I readily agreed. A friend from Sindh province in western Pakistan learned of my intention to go and earnestly warned that the Pathan gentleman might be intent on kidnapping me and holding me for ransom. He urged, "That is one of their favorite ways to make money."

When I told my Pathan host the story, he smiled and arched an eyebrow and said, "Maybe I will." Both Pakistanis were sophisticated, well-educated professionals acting according to very old stereotypes.

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban are poorly understood in the West. They are often mistakenly referred to as a 'militia' as if the organization was created solely as a fighting force. Though there are armed fighters loyal to Mullah Umar, the Taliban is best understood as a religious revivalist movement whose followers gained control of the government and are well armed.

The Taliban movement is composed largely of ethnic Pathans. Many of its leaders and strongest supporters are former war orphans educated in religious schools in the Northwest Frontier Province operated by Pakistan's Jami'at-i Ulema-i Islam political party. The sheltering and hospitable treatment of guests seeking refuge is a feature of the Pathan social code. This tradition reinforces Islamic injunctions about the treatment of guests and travelers. The Taliban's willingness to harbor Osama bin Laden is thus a matter of honor as well as a religious obligation.

If the popular picture of the Afghans is distorted, what then should Americans know about the country's people? Afghan society is much more diverse than the image above suggests. Sixty percent of the population is non-Pathan. Northern Afghanistan is populated by ethnic Uzbeks and Turkmens related to those across the borders in the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. They are Sunni Muslims like the Pathans but speak Turkic languages.

In central, western and northwestern Afghanistan are ethnic Tajiks and Hzara who speak Dari, a dialect of Persian. Tajiks are Sunni Muslims like those in the former Soviet Tajikistan while Hazara are Shi'a as in neighboring Iran. The Northern Alliance, the primary opposition to the Taliban, controls 5 percent of Afghanistan, and is made primarily of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks. The alliance has pledged 15,000 troops to fight alongside U.S. forces against Taliban militiamen. The value of such support should be discounted. The alliance has not been successful in fighting the Taliban because it is ethnically divided while the Taliban are unified by their shared Pathan identity and religious fervor.

Afghans differ from their popular image in other important ways. The overwhelming majority are not well-armed holy warriors but subsistence farmers armed only with rustic implements. They struggle to eke out a living under the worst imaginable conditons. The suffering caused by several years of a U.S.-led economic embargo of their backward, war-ravaged economy has been compounded by terrible droughts. Mobilizing Afghan farmers to fight American troops who have limited objectives and no intention of staying in Afghanistan might prove difficult for Afghanistan's leaders. Moreover, it is not clear how far the influence of the Taliban extends into the countryside where 80 percent of Afghans live.

Though the heroic Afghan warrior is largely a fanciful literary and media creation developed over centuries, the country's ability to extract a terrible toll on invaders should give American strategists pause for reflection. In 10 years of fighting, the Soviets suffered 13,000 dead and many times that number wounded. Any incursion by U.S. forces in Afghanistan will certainly result in casualties. The number of U.S casualties will depend on how large a force we send, how they are deployed and how long they stay. The number of Afghan casualties will depend on those factors and on what methods the United States might choose to employ.

Terrorists, in their Sept. 11 attack on the United States, acted on the basis of stereotypes they had been taught about America. Our response to their actions cannot be based on simply a different set of stereotypes. We must face realities as best we can, even when they are inconvenient or do not lend themselves to quick solutions


 

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