FIRST POINT

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Drawing on 20 months of UDA research in Afghanistan and Pakistan, this issue of First Point examines the relationships between the Pashtun tribes, the Taliban and al-Qaeda. In line with client interests, UDA considered fieldwork on this topic to be timely, given that international forces in Afghanistan have re-committed to doing their homework on tribal factors in the Afghanistan and Pakistan insurgencies. Moreover, the Pakistani Government is now dealing with some Pashtun tribes in an overtly hostile relationship, a situation it has not experienced for several decades.

There are general variations between the main Pashtun tribal confederations in terms of their internal governance traditions. This primarily reflects the economy and geography of the areas they dominate. A history of Pashtun conflict with the Afghan and Pakistani states highlights that tribalism is conservative: Pashtun tribal leaders had no particular demands of the state system, other than that it should not demand too much of them.

In its relationship to extremist ideologies such as that propounded by al-Qaeda, Pashtun tribalism is not naturally receptive. Syncretic interpretations of Islam have been dominant in tribal areas for centuries. However, the Taliban built on Pashtuns’ defensiveness towards threatening insecurity and advanced a more expansionary ideology, building on Pakistani Government interests and the maturation of a generation steeped in war and Deobandi Islamic education.

The clash of foreign, anti-tribal ideologies – communism and liberalism against pan-Islamism – since the 1970s has undermined tribalism as a social system and reconfigured tribal governance in much of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pan-Islamism, which has become increasingly radical over this period, has been able to establish itself within tribal areas, whereas attempts to extend governments (usually with foreign encouragement) work from outside. This distinction has given radical ideologies the key advantage in competing to co-opt, convince and coerce members of Pashtun tribes, particularly in the context of 1) conflict pressures on tribal structures and 2) a groundswell of young men.

Importantly and often overlooked, the mujahideen parties of the 1990s highlighted that extremist and internationalist Islamic ideologies could evolve indigenously among Pashtuns. These groups, not the Taliban, invited Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan and assisted training camps for foreign jihadis. They provided ideological and infrastructural platforms upon which al-Qaeda was able to build. Some of their members and supporters are now in power in the Afghan Government.

In the short-term melee of interests seeking to exploit, strengthen or over-ride Pashtun tribalism, al-Qaeda and the Taliban share a range of strategies but also diverge in illuminating ways. Both movements use tribal marriages as a niche tool, widespread coercion and, most fundamentally, radicalisation through education, incentives and manipulation. Ultimately, both are hostile to tribalism, although the Taliban have a more organic relationship to Pashtun governance mechanisms and are therefore less determinedly or hurriedly destructive towards them.

In terms of its approach to tribalism, the Pakistani Taliban sit somewhere between al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. A younger, more socially radical constellation of groups, the Pakistani Taliban consists of de-tribalised individuals with little stake in or memory of Pashtun tribalism. As a movement, the Pakistani Taliban is in some ways an accelerated version of the Afghan Taliban and in that sense is a warning about the future of radicalisation among the Pashtun tribes.

Given the differing relationships with tribal governance mechanisms, it is unsurprising that each group diverges in some of its strategies for subordinating tribalism. In terms of economics, foreign jihadis inject external resources whereas the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban are parasitic. A partial exception is in access to local government money: the Taliban’s access has been constrained but remains superior.

An important divergence is also in the use of the Taliban as a proxy by foreign jihadis such as al-Qaeda, both to navigate tribal issues and to coerce tribalism. Indeed, on a macro level, from al-Qaeda’s perspective the Taliban is the primary guardian of the jihadi sanctuary. The insurgencies in Pakistan are familiar for their tensions between locally-focused extremists and global ideologists.

Planning for the longer term, UDA advises that there is little prospect of returning the tribal areas to some vision of a tribalised past. The tribal system has been in decline in recent decades. Bolstering tribal leaders has been a staple tactic of all sides to the region’s conflicts, but it is a short-term tactic that swims against the tide of alternative ideologies and practical systems that appeal, in particular, to those growing up in stagnant economic circumstances, among extremist madrassas and with their alternative option for conformity being a stultifying tribal system.

That prediction leads to some daunting conclusions. In developing a comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy, UDA advises the client that a suitable timeframe is 10-15 years. In that time, support for tribal leaders can help to stabilise some local conflict theatres. However, by the end of that period the objective is to align tribal leaders’ interests with a strengthened state framework. This will be easier to achieve in Pakistan than Afghanistan.

Disentangling al-Qaeda and extirpating its ideology from the Taliban and other groups is not impossible but time and shared experience have strengthened religious bonds of kinship while eroding ethnic/cultural differences. The (neo-)Taliban is becoming more like al-Qaeda in both word and deed. Perhaps the worst outcome would be a disrupted society of de-tribalised Pashtuns under illegitimate rule, which could create a “running sore” of radicalised Pashtuns divorced from their homeland and turning to global jihadi targets elsewhere. As far as the Afghan Taliban is concerned, all politics are still local and while UDA believes the first generation of Taliban to be reconcilable, the successor to Mulla Omar may be indistinguishable from any al-Qaeda leader.