Pressfield’s episode 3 is remarkable: a discussion of what a “tribesman” actually is, only it is ignorant of actual research into the nature of tribalism. Pressfield wants to make this about Afghanistan, and it is obvious he cherry-picked his tribal attributes to support that, but he is trying to make a broad point so he won’t be criticized for being ignorant of Afghanistan (which he is). The trouble is, even in a general sense, Pressfield has substantial gaps in his knowledge of tribalism, and doesn’t seem to realize—as perhaps a real historian would—that drawing broad conclusions about a single society you’re not describing very well is actually deceptive.
So color me surprised that ZenPundit—Mark is smart, hence the surprise—actually reserved some praise amidst criticism for Pressfield. Pressfield sets up a straw man (he can’t define “tribalism” or “citizenship” or even “soldier” in a consistent way), declares that the one thing we need to realize to understand our enemy, and, despite ignoring the religious aspect of it, which everyone seems to argue is vitally important, still gets praise for doing everyone a service. How does that wash?
It’s best to have him explain himself:
I say it is useful tactically in that most 18-21 year olds in military service are not cultural anthropologists and speaking from nearly 20 years experience in teaching, young Americans are breathtakingly egocentric in their worldview, even when they adopt a pose of critical antagonism toward their own country, it tends to be blindly self-referential. Walking a mile in another’s shoes is not something they do naturally and unprompted. That other people have radically different conceptions of “normal” is often a mind blowing epiphany for them when it sinks in, usually in their late 20’s, if at all.
In that Pressfield conveys the generalized and simplified basics of a generic “tribal mindset” in sound bites digestible to the average twenty year old from a dying Mill town or small Deep South rural county is a feature, not a bug. We can’t send all the recruits straight from boot camp to do a few years at Oxford or Yale before they deploy to Khost or Anbar – we need “good enough” for a starting point, not perfection. Pressfield gets an “honor culture” and “primary loyalty identity” across effectively and that could, possibly, save some lives. Let’s keep that point in mind.
Secondly, Pressfield’s point that tribal mentality is significantly different from that of a Western citizen is fundamentally correct. Different political economies and social hierarchies rest on different value systems and alternate psychologies. Col. Pat Lang wrote that most tribesmen could “escape to be cab drivers” if they chose to do; tribesmen prefer tribal life and believe it to be superior to a ”civilized” society that is bereft of honor, even if it is materially richer. We are unlikely to convince them otherwise and they will resent us for trying.
He also notes that ignoring or discounting religion, as Pressfield does, is dangerous and misleading. But what he doesn’t seem to get is that the initial bits, about “tribalism,” are deeply misleading too. And that, instead of doing anyone a service, because of Pressfield’s reputation they will make all those 20-year old kids far worse off. My previous employer found some success in weaning the Army off focusing only on “tribes” (what the hell is “tribal mentality?” Pressfield’s definition defines Kansas as much as it defines Afghanistan), precisely because focusing only on tribes—I’ve lost track of how many soldiers got lost in the weeds trying to “map the tribes” or “understand the tribes” in the belief that would give them the key to victory—has led us to near-disaster. Hell, I used to give a presentation that specifically argued we need to start ignoring tribe in Afghanistan for the specific reason that obsessing over tribes missing the point.
So, I still don’t get it. “The Tribal Mentality” doesn’t really make its way into modern tribal studies (the British stopped trying to define people according to savagery and tribalism when they realized doing so was in fact deeply racist and not terribly accurate), and even within tribal studies, Afghanistan is singled out for being especially difficult to understand from a tribal perspective. Hell, in 1983 or so Anthropologists were arguing that tribe was a useless analytic construct when examining Afghanistan. 1983! We should not be heaping praise on Pressfield for deceiving people into thinking his ignorance is insightful. We should be scorning him.
Update: Good comments about the need for a baseline for understanding Afghan society. Here are a few things I’ve written recently that explain this further, followed by a VERY brief bibliography:
Provinces Like Khost Need More than Just Troops
“Tribal” Engagement, or How We Lost Kapisa… and Are (Slowly) Regaining It
Misinterpreting “Tribal” Sabotage
Breaking the Tribal Model
What “Intimate Knowledge?”
The Myth of Taliban Tribalism
That’s a good start. Meanwhile, here are three good (and easy to find) overviews that argue against the idea of Afghanistan as a “tribal” society:
Glatzer, Bernt (2001). “War and Boundaries in Afghanistan: Significance and Relativity of Local and Social Boundaries.” Weld des Islams, 41, 3, pp. 379-99
Glatzer, Bernt (2002). “The Pashtun Tribal System.” in Pfeffer, G., and D.K. Behra (eds.), Concept of Tribal Society (Contemporary Society: Tribal Studies, Vol 5), pp. 265-282.
Giustozzi, Antonio (2007). Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan 2002-2007.
Shahrani, Nazif (2002). “Factionalism, and the State in Afghanistan,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 104, No. 3.
There are obviously more — a LOT more. But this is a start.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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Instead of “dumbing down” tribal anthropology and Afghanistan historiography for the unwashed enlisted masses, wouldn’t it be more logical to “smarten up” at least the Lts and Cpts in the military to send the message down?
If it is being decided that the US + NATO armed forces need to “get” Afghanistan, a little run through wikipedia would be dramatically more effective than anything Pressfield says. And sure, enlisted folks probably don’t need anything more than just some basic vocab, but lower-level officers could sure do a lot to help. I’m just not sure how socially acceptable that would be in the military (I admittedly only know anything through my relationships with people who’ve been through ROTC)
I’m missing something here. The Army needs an approach built on a model. The model that’s being pushed is look at Afghanistan as a tribal society first, then segment & cluster tribes that are favored, and finally position the Army positively with those favored tribes and take positions against AQ, the Taliban, and the other tribes.
Is that about right?
Are you saying that Afghanistan can’t be reduced to tribes? Why not? Is it because, as I’ve read on other blogs, there is so no such thing as a tribe in the country or because there are even greater discriminants within tribal, family, and individual structures?
Because at the end of the day the decision makers have to segment, target, and position the people of Afghanistan from some form of clustering method. The Army can’t decentralize resources to the most granular level. It doesn’t have the logistics, personnel, materials, information technology, or the money to do it. Only the Navy MIGHT be able to do it.
I’m taking a very corporate approach to this debate because that’s how enterprise systems like the Army take. I don’t think it works well in COIN but that’s just a gut feeling.
What approach would you take?
I find the criticism regarding the omission of religion as a factor in the sociocultural landscape to be telling. If one has been in an area studies, anthropology, or poli sci class recently, you would also notice that religion is seriously down-played vis-a-vis the constellation of cultural factors that form the societal and political discourse. In a sense, religion has started to be treated in a similar fashion to the way post-modernists treat genes – it has little or no causal bearing on behavior, and is ‘somehow’ a separate entity from the larger concept of ‘culture’.
I think that this is typical of the direction that things are going – there are simply variables that are factored out of the analysis due, in the main, to social factors in the academy. We are simply starting to add religion to that list.
AJK, I think you’re right. What matters more isn’t an insulting reductionism, but just basic education. While it’s not necessarily intuitive, I’ve seen Army officers get it after just a few hours of conversation about how social relationships work in Afghanistan. It is possible, the Army just has to care enough to train its people.
Jenson, please see my update: I’ve added some stuff that should help to explain why tribe is an inappropriate unit of analysis in Afghanistan. What all of those sources point to, however, is the idea of community as a useful construct. This is not academically rigorous, but seeing things in their local contexts STILL allows for that imposed segmentation the Army wants. It also allows conflicts to be described in their own terms, and the parties to those conflicts on their own terms, so you can arrive at a much more accurate picture of what’s going on. That way things in, say, norther Sabari District of Khost don’t seem to just be a Mangal v. Sabari conflict, but really a localized dispute over who gets access to a productive patch of land that has coincidentally fractured along tribal lines. That POV lends itself still to the Army way of modeling things, but allows for a much more granular view of the dispute that isn’t “tribal” (even though, and this is important, there are tribes involved).
(even though, and this is important, there are tribes involved)
And I would just add to that caveat, “in that tiny patch of Khost.” Because 5 clicks to the south, “tribes” may not be how the microsociety their defines itself. And how a microsociety defines itself may change from day to day, even among Mangals and Sabaris.
Rather than saying the word “tribe,” try just saying the word “group.” We don’t know for most of Afghanistan what makes groups stick together–some places it seems to be kinship, but they are very few and far between these days.
The approach to take is a slow, patient one that doesn’t expect a 5-minute conversation with a “key leader” to solve a 70-year-old dispute over a patch of good land.
As I noted when we were having that discussion a year or so ago with William S. McCallister, I think the key motives behind the “Afghanistan is tribal” discourse can be described in fairly simple terms. It’s that “Afghanistan should be tribal,” i.e. “we want Afghanistan to be tribal.”
(Because, as Ian says, some expect that they then, overnight, will be able to program good global gouvernementalité into key leaders’ heads over chai and naan, to then exit-strategy back to their good old watan.)
Excellent update, Josh.
Péter, I do agree that the desire for tribes explains *some* of the discourse, but I also think there’s some genuine ignorance and a general preference to stick with what work in the most recent iteration, whatever it was.
Joshua,
I haven’t followed up on the updated links but will do so tomorrow. Your addition with the community construct makes sense and it fits in well with the COIN and Army logistics needs well. I think.
I am still a little shocked that the concept is community but when I think of how long Afghanistan has been at war maybe I shouldn’t be.