Game Theory

With winter sports in full swing – following fall sports and preceding spring sports – so also is the language of athletic metaphor. There is, to cite a general phrase, the so-called “game of life” … for which, according to the sports lobby, youthful games prepare us.

Time to test that theory. Our question: To what extent can the game metaphor be applied to real life beyond football (context of numerous U.S. political expressions as well as pretzel asphyxia) or middle-distance running (my sport…in which, figuratively, I’m now gathering a finishing kick) or buzkashi (the Afghan game which this column has used to explore US progress in Afghanistan)? Take war, for instance. How is war, certainly a big part of life these days, comprehensible as a kind of game?

Quarterback W and Coach Poppy would do well to consider this question as they chart the second quarter of our War on Terrorism. They’ve got a team of veterans, but many (notably Colin Powell) won their varsity letters in the 1991 Gulf War … which differed from our present conflict in two key game respects: A) participant identity and B) spatial definition. Let’s examine this pair of attributes in turn.

First, note that games have designated and recognizable players. Sometimes (albeit very seldom in my beloved buzkashi) there’s a scorecard. More often, players wear special dress. (Even in folk game buzkashi, the top riders wear a unique, shaggy helmet, made of fur-fringed lambskin and called telpak.) These outfits do more that facilitate physical activity. They tell everyone – teammates, opposing teams members, mundanely dressed onlookers – who’s who. Sometimes a player – No. 23 leaps to mind – changes teams in mid-career, but thanks to his special dress, his uniform, we still know that he’s a player and for whom. (Michael may not be the best example; he could come to the gym in street clothes and ski mask … and we’d still know in the first 15 seconds.)

We knew who was who in the Gulf War because all the on-field players wore uniforms: U.S. troops, coalition troops, Iraqi troops (including the hard core and specially garbed Republican Guard). Keeping score was easy. We knew by their clothes who won and lost – and when.

Second, note that games have fixed boundaries in space. These are called “sidelines” or “the centerfield wall” or “the ropes” beyond which one tries not to be knocked. When play passes beyond these boundaries, it’s no longer play. Temporarily or permanently, the game stops.

The Gulf War, a decade ago, had spatial boundaries. Indeed, it was all about international boundaries, albeit wacky ones determined by Britain, which partitioned segments of Ottoman territory at the end of World War I. Once independent, Iraq never really recognized the separateness of Kuwait. Saddam Hussein, having misread signals from an (apparently muddled) American ambassador in mid-summer 1990, marched in. Petro-biggie Saudi Arabia was next door – across a similarly arbitrary border – and Bush One came to the oil field rescue.

The principal aim of Desert Storm was phrased, like those of a game, in terms of recognizable players and spatial boundaries: Push the unmistakably uniformed Iraqis back across a “Line in the Sand” and out of Kuwait. Some of those uniforms were ragged, especially towards the end, but enemy dress was still distinctive. The exact boundary location was in some dispute, but we had at least the semblance of a clear line. Once we’d pushed the Iraqis back across it, the only question was how far to pursue them and to what purpose. General Colin Powell, whom the war transformed into a national hero, counseled restraint, and we’re still living – for good and ill – with presidential acceptance of those game-boundaried suggestions.

Now for a third consideration. Notice that the phrasing of Gulf War objectives in terms of A) recognizable players and B) clear spatial boundaries served to facilitate C) closure in terms of time. This time element is likewise a key characteristic of games. There’s usually a clock (football, hockey, basketball), and the clock is up there on the scoreboard for all to see. Closure in other games (golf, tennis, baseball) is organized according to equally manifest accomplishments. We can see the clock run out in Super Bowl. We can see the final inning end in the World Series. In both cases – because of agreed conventions regarding duration – game time stops. And, unequivocally, the game ends.

The Gulf War ended, unequivocally and with at least short-term victory, on March 3, 1991. Its commander-in-chief lost re-election on Nov. 3, 1992. Keep that 20-month interim in mind. Prediction: It won’t, for whatever reason, happen again.

The task for our new CNC is both harder and easier – depending on what’s meant by “task.” It’s harder because this War on Terror, unlike a game and unlike the Gulf War, has no uniformed enemies and no clear spatial boundaries. What’s “victory” without a clear slate of losers and without territorial definition?

Unlike the Iraqi army and even the regular army of North Vietnam three decades ago, Islamist militant terrorists shun up-front identities symbolized by distinctive outfits. Osama’s players blend into the background as well – even better – than enemy civilians in South Vietnam. Better because some of our new enemies are also quite at home in Western suits (and, for all we know, Western skirts as well).

Likewise the absence of spatial clarity. For starters, there’s the famously porous so-called “boundary” between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This “Durand Line,” charted in the 1890s by (yet again) a British official, has never been wholeheartedly accepted by the Afghan government. In any case, the facts on the ground are tribal, not governmental, and this area is locally known as “Yaghistan,” the Land of the Unruly. Hence all those Al-Qaeda and Taliban escapees from Afghanistan including, most likely, Osama. No one called “Time Out” when he went out of bounds.

Then consider Islamic doctrine – as interpreted by militant Islamism – which foregrounds the umma (universal Muslim community) rather than our convention of nation-state. For Islamists, as for the Yaghestan tribes, there is no Durand Line and never was. Their playing field, rather than lined and “level,” is round and amorphous. It covers the whole world.

That’s the bad news for W. His good (re-election) news is that this war’s lack of clarity in A) player identity and B) spatial boundaries makes its C) time scheme far more flexible. All wars last, for the victors, “as long as it takes,” but because of A and B blurriness this war can last indefinitely, can take as long as the winning captain wants. And, as long as that bellicose game clock ticks, the fans on our side will tend to root (vote) for their team on the field.

I would put more credence in our War on Terror clock if, while hunting Islamist enemies, we also at least acknowledged their reasons for enmity. Plainly and repeatedly, they state outrage at the excesses of Israel against Palestinians…and at the US support for Israel without which, undeniably, those excesses could not long continue. Not to acknowledge such grievances virtually guarantees ongoing Islamist terror and thus our “need” for war until well after November 2004.

Nor is the Muslim sense of grievance limited to suicide bombers. Here’s a story from my own (now restricted) world of games.

No longer a runner, I’ve taken to kayaking – along, for instance, the Maine Island Trail. Last week I stopped in mid-paddle to talk with four young men who sat by a Spanish lakeside and looked North African (rail-thin, darkly handsome, sadly furtive). We told our nationalities: four Moroccans, one American. We spoke of Afghanistan, of which they’d heard much and where I’d spent much time. The moment felt a bit Afghan because they (poor and possibly illegal immigrants) kept offering me food: bread, french fries, a chicken drumstick. They could not have been nicer. Finally I asked about Osama bin Laden. “What do you think has happened to him? Is he alive?”

“It doesn’t matter,” one man said. “He’ll die one day. We all die. You think only of Osama and of what one man has or hasn’t done. What about the things that Israel does, openly, to Palestinians everyday? How long will you Americans ignore that terrorism?”

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