I will genuinely be shocked if you can show me evidence of lashkars, real ones, not just people forming posses to get vengeance on people, outside of FATA since 1947. Because lashkars are formed to fight wars.

Ian, for starters, there have been lashkars in the NWFP at least up to the 1940s, when the Khan family managed to make increased integration into the Pakistani state one of the terms under which they’d vote to join Pakistan (this was while the King of Afghanistan was intensely lobbying them to vote for independence). Even then, because the FATA and PATA were technically legally autonomous regions within the NWFP, there were still lashkars in the countryside around Peshawar up into the 1970s. The entire NWFP is not as developed as its few big cities.

As for my comments about Caroe and Ahmed, the terms they use to describe the Pashtuns in their areas are not nearly as chaotic and fractured as, say, Bareifld would use to describe the Eastern Afghan Pashtuns. I was drawing a comparison between the two—things in Pakistan are chaotic, but they are relatively more cohesive, especially in terms of primary identity, than the Eastern Afghan Pashtuns.

Best I know, Barth didn’t discuss Lashkars, since they weren’t his concern. Keiser, however, mentions them in both Swat and Dir in his 1994 study, “Organized Vengeance in a Kohistani Community.”

Whether or not the British ever were successful in utilizing Lashkars is beside the point. Here I am arguing against seeing the creation of a Lashkar as a sign of hope that the Pakistani government will finally get serious and adopt a strategy we want to destroy the Taliban. I’m arguing they won’t, and it won’t matter. I actually think we’re on the same page, just talking past each other.

Smalls, I think it’s a combination of intransigence on the part of the military—whose leadership rejects the idea of the Taliban as an insurgent force—and simple logistics: they don’t really know how. The ISI has experience in coopting small, local movements to strategic effects, but not like this (they can destabilize, not hold or rebuild), and certainly not against their former clients. So it’s more faceted than simply wanting to stabilize the Taliban.

There is a huge difference in cultures between, say, Swat, and anywhere in the FATA in terms of the degree of what Ahmad called “encapsulation.” He would never have said that what he called “TAM” (Tribal Area Mohmands) are cohesive as Josh says, not sure where he’s getting that from him. Yes, the settled Mohmands (“SAM”) he studied near Peshawar were probably more cohesive, but that would be expected since they were more detached from traditional Pashtun culture. And I’m trying to remember where Barth talks about lashkar. Also, specific examples of the British *successfully* using lashkars to do something that lasted more than a year would give this concept some case studies to work with; unfortunately I am stumped to come up with one.

Josh can easily help clarify his research claims with some page number refs to Barth, Ahmad, or whomever.

However, the distinguishment is very fuzzy. A lot of it depends on who you talk to. But the way I described Lashkars, especially in terms of their relationship with the central authority in Pakistan or British India, is from literature on the subject.