Tribal Engagement: The Way Forward in Afghanistan
Tribal Engagement:
The Way Forward in Afghanistan
by Steffen Merten
Download the full article: Tribal Engagement: The Way Forward in Afghanistan
Following the cooption of the powerful Shinwari tribe of eastern Afghanistan last week, it seems defense planners have finally realized the unsophisticated reality that tribes form the fabric of Afghan society. The compounded impotence of the Karzai regime and the recent successes of direct tribal engagement have highlighted the potential of empowering tribal institutions, but years after the success of the Anbar Awakening in Iraq, why are we only now choosing to tap the power centers that have driven the history of Afghanistan for centuries? Perhaps it is Afghanistan’s imperial legacy, which speaks to the “ungovernable” nature of tribes that have devoured armies whole, or perhaps naive political hopes for a robust central government, a situation more or less unknown in Afghan history. A third possibility may lie in the popular myth that the “backward and anarchic” habits of tribes preclude their integration within the institutions of a modern nation-state, lest their inherently belligerent and barbaric nature lead to its ruin. Whether stalled by daydreams of a different political reality in Afghanistan or by recalcitrant Afghan elites in Kabul, recent developments suggest that warfighters and scholars like Major Jim Gant, author of “One Tribe at a Time” and an outspoken advocate of tribal engagement, seem to be gaining traction within the defense establishment. But the question remains: what will a tribal strategy spell for the future of Afghanistan?
Download the full article: Tribal Engagement: The Way Forward in Afghanistan
Steffen Merten is a Human Terrain researcher specializing in Middle Eastern tribal systems and a former social network analysis researcher at the Naval Postgraduate School Core Lab. Merten served in Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2003-2004 and is currently developing an integrated methodology for modeling tribal systems.
