One country, two worlds

Tenth in a series

Out my back window are the Spanish Pyrenees, dusted this morning with the season’s first snow. Beyond them lies France, a stiff hike (especially for these old legs) but do-able in a long day. France speaks a different language, waves a different flag, and (until Euro 2002) spends a different currency. Robert Frost intended irony with his “Good fences make good neighbors,” but the phrase is often true of nation-states. Spain and France are real countries, separated by the Pyrenees fence. Lucky Spain and France.

Now imagine a country whose fence – the Hindu Kush – run down the middle and is five times higher than the Pyrenees: Unlucky, bifurcated Afghanistan. Hindu Kush means “Hindu Killer,” a name which speaks to the ancient role of these mountains in separating Central Asia from the Indian sub-continent. Unfortunately for would-be Afghan nation builders, this gigantic range – actually the westernmost ridge of the Himalayas – also separates one “country” into two worlds.

First let’s take the North if only because U.S. forces are already there and “among friends,” albeit it friends of temporary convenience. Northern Afghanistan is part of the vast Eurasian plateaus – desert and steppe – which stretch from the Urals to Siberia. Its continental climate features freezing winters, sweltering summers, and not much spring or fall. Water is at a premium, especially in the past three years when at least a million northern Afghans have been displaced by drought.

(A parenthetical paragraph: The last severe drought was in 1971-72. U.S. Ambassador Robert Neumann mobilized Peace Corps volunteers to distribute American food aid which saved tens, probably hundreds of thousands of lives. Peace Corps volunteers, not Special Forces. “Operation Help,” not “Enduring Freedom.” Those Peace Corps kids used to crash on my floor when they came back to Kabul after weeks of round-the-clock service in remote valleys all by themselves. They were so proud! And the Afghans were equally grateful. Exactly three decades ago: How far away those days seem. And how few Afghans have survived to remember.)

Ethnically, the North is a patchwork quilt whose patches are ever less well defined on the ground … but whose loyalties in heart and mind still run deep. (Stay tuned for “Blood, Ideas, and Afghanistan” in the Bangor Daily News.) The larger groups – Tajiks, Uzbeks, and the mountain-dwelling Hazaras – have lived there for centuries. A smaller Turkoman population (and a tiny Kirghiz community in the extreme northeast) came later, mostly as refugees from first Czarist, then Bolshevik Russia.

For the past century or so, Pushtun governments based in Kabul have both rewarded and punished their own ethnic brethren by granting choice land to favorites (reward) and forcibly locating dissidents (punishment) in the North. Hence the enclaves of Pushtun settlement scattered across the area. Whether rewarded or punished in the first place, these Pushtun newcomers amassed disproportionate pre-war power and are resented by the older, dispossessed populations. They’re not welcome. And remember: All Pushtuns may not be Taliban, but all top Taliban are Pushtun.

Result: The newly famous Northern Alliance, while not very allied, is most certainly northern. There is only token Pushtun presence. The real players are Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras. Pushtuns down South regard the Northern Alliance almost (not quite, but almost) as we regard Osama bin Laden.

The North, being ethnically fragmented, presents a less than “United Front” (ironically, another name appropriated by the Northern Alliance) against the presence of outsiders like us. And in terms of “cultural ambience” or “cultural temperament” (concepts usually disdained by anthropologists like me), the North is milder, less tribal, and therefore more open and fluid. Three languages – Farsi, Uzbeki, and Pashto – were spoken in “my” small research village (Kunduz province, mid 1970s). People got along, squabbling as villagers do everywhere, but they got along. All had tribal ancestries. Significantly, only the Pushtuns still spoke of their particular ancestral tribe – their khel – as a living, determining force.

The Pushtun South is simply a different world: milder climatically, but narrower and harsher sociologically. Pushtuns remain tribal, divided into patrilineal khels which, in turn, are organized in larger groupings going back and back across generations to some founding (always male) ancestor. You are who you are born, at least in terms of fundamental group identity. Pushtuns are united as a whole, but divided into two main groups (Durrani and Ghilzai), and then subdivided again and again.

The whole is what anthropologists call a segmentary lineage system. Does it seem complicated? Every single Pushtun knows it cold. Everyone knows exactly who’s who. And acts accordingly. So would you if other institutions had proven weak and/or predatory, time after time, and all you had left to trust was family. When do the families and Pushtun khels unite? Against outsiders like the British or the Soviets … or us unless we know how their game is played.

The South, not the North, is where this war will be won or lost. The South contains Kabul, the capital city controlled (almost) without interruption for two centuries by Pushtuns. Note the “almost”: Two brief and bloody exceptions (northern warlords in 1929 and again from 1992 to 1996) remain as catastrophes in Pushtun memory. They explain why the Pushtun South, given only two choices, will stick with the Taliban rather than welcome the Northern Alliance.

The tribal, Pushtun South also contains Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. So let’s know what’s what down South:

Here things are not done by bombs or Special Forces. They’re done by family and money. Hence the importance of what Abdul Haq tried to do among the Ghilzai Pushtuns: inducing, via family ties and promised spoils, defections from the Taliban. (The precise details of his betrayal and capture are still unclear. Stay tuned.) Hence the importance of another brave Afghan and friend, Hamid Karzai, who’s been attempting the same thing among Durrani Pushtuns further west. The Taliban claim (November 1) the capture of 25 of Karzai’s men. They’ll be “questioned” and executed. What will have become of Hamid Karzai by the time this piece appears?

Are we helping him? Have we helped him? Did we help Abdul Haq? If not, why not? Some questions, such as these, are better not answered out loud. That’s fine … so long as the decision-makers are clear on three points:

The North and South aren’t the same.

The South, ultimately, is where it’s at.

Family and money – not bombs and troops – are the only way to go down South.

From The New York Times of Oct. 18: “Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who signaled the decision to lend more support to the Northern Alliance last week, has expressed frustration with the faltering efforts to build Pushtun resistance. “We do not have the kinds of interaction with some elements in the south that I would have to see progress.””

And from the irresistibly named Pentagon spokesman Adm. Stufflebeem: “In terms of U.S. support of those tribes, it would be premature to paint for you a picture that would describe our relationship that we’re having with the forces in the north. It’s not the same in the south yet.”

It will never be the same in South. Afghanistan is not one country. It’s two worlds. They’re not the same. The same rules don’t apply. Let’s bomb if we must. Let’s deploy troops, including Turkish troops, up North.

But let’s go with family and money where it counts: down South. And let’s support those few brave and friendly Pushtuns who know how to do it.

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world.