Charles Ferndale

No two people could be less alike than are the Pakhtun and the Americans. And when a technologically defenceless people — who are nevertheless a resolute, united, tough people, who have a persistent tradition of fighting off intruders — possess what others with deadly war technology want, the conflict is likely to be uncompromising

If only the Americans would listen to at least one of their wise experts on the causes and nature of insurgencies, they might feel less inclined to commit war crimes in the furtherance of their desire to control the territory and resources of regions that have the misfortune to be located in important geo-political areas, and, regrettably, where huge reserves of oil and gas are also located. The American expert from whose wisdom the US government might benefit most is William Polk, whose book Violent Politics — A History of Insurgency, Terrorism and Guerrilla Warfare (2007) ought to be required reading for everyone who makes decisions concerning what to do about the conflict in this region. In this excellent study of insurgencies, Polk gives clear reasons why the US’s aim of suppressing the insurgency in the region is bound to fail, if not nationwide, then certainly in the Pakhtun-dominated areas of both Afghanistan and Pakistan; unless the Americans commit genocide there. The reason is simple: all the oppressive measures the US and its allies take simply create for them more opponents; opponents who by nature and culture will never surrender. The Pakhtuns are a proud people, loyal to their families, clans, tribes, histories and to co-religionists, not to abstract notions like ‘democracy’, especially when the proponents of those abstractions show daily how fraudulently they are applied in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And especially if the proponents of those values are committing appalling crimes against Pakhtuns and are destroying all they hold dear. In the Pakhtun areas, the only way to effectively suppress what is actually a national liberation movement (with religious overtones) would be to so devastate the lives of Pakhtuns that they cease to be a coherent nation; in short, it would be genocide. The US has frequently resorted to local genocides in order to enforce its will on a reluctant, but brave people (such as the Japanese in 1945), so we should not imagine that the genocide of the Pakhtuns is unthinkable to them. To me it seems to be well on the way.

Using mostly his own words, I shall summarise Polk’s arguments before extending some of them to the conflict that now so tragically engulfs Pakistanis and Afghans. From the summer of 1961, William Polk was employed by the US Department of State to study insurgencies, both in the field and throughout history. For years he lectured on the subject at US military academies, but he appears now to be ignored, just when his wisdom is needed most.

In the introduction to Violent Politics, Polk gets straight to the point, “That the heart of insurgency is…anti-foreign is the central thesis of this book…a single thread runs through [all insurgencies]: opposition to foreigners.” And he is of the opinion that the basis of this opposition is, “[The] propensity to protect the home community [which] arises because all human beings are territorial”. People in the small communities in which we evolved, and in which most Pakhtuns still live, “…are bonded by the absolute imperative to protect the resources that sustain their lives…The way they live is how our ancestors lived for millions of years, conditioned over millennia to turn inward to rally support and outwards to repel intruders. As people settled down, first to become farmers, then townsmen, and finally to amalgamate into nations and even larger agglomerations [such as the Islamic Ummah]…territoriality has become more abstract, so that people who are no longer bound together by kinship may indentify with one another without close physical contact, as fellow members of an emotional, ideological, religious, or cultural ‘neighbourhood’” [for example, the Khalifat and, ultimately, the Ummah]. It would be hard to exaggerate the explanatory power of these simple statements. Here I shall explore only a few of their implications. These words describe the essence of humanity: the need to belong to a community that lives somewhere and shares common values, the chief of which requires them to unite against common enemies in defence of their own resources. Polk’s words give a basis for understanding what happens when the essential features of human communities are attacked by non-community based, fragmented, capitalist, depersonalised, powerful groups, who are armed with the most sophisticated methods of killing ever devised. Such an attack should properly be called attempted genocide.

Everything that biologists, geneticists, ethologists, and historians have to say about the territoriality of humans is truer of the Pakhtuns than it is of almost any other people on earth. What all those scientists say is that people who are closely related are less likely to kill one another than they are likely to kill strangers who are genetically distant from them. And those who study social behaviour have discovered repeatedly that when members of any species are protecting their own territory they are more effective fighters than when attacking the territory of others. In the ancient societies in which we evolved, genetic closeness, physical closeness, and cultural closeness usually correlated. The more cohesive the social group, the more ready its members will be to die to preserve and defend it. Cohesiveness has many dimensions, but genetic closeness is certainly one of its central defining features. Defence of the home turf brings out something special in fighters. There appears to be conclusive evidence that defence of territory is an inherited propensity that ranges throughout most animals and is especially strong among complex predators, like humans. Without such a propensity, many species would not have survived. And, within a given species, like humans, there are likely to be statistically significant differences between the dispositions to fight for territory found amongst different ethnic groups. Some people are born territorial fighters. The people of Afghanistan and the borders of Pakistan are the descendents of people who have survived more violent conflicts over territory than have most people on earth. It would be irrational to imagine that they do not possess the genetic inheritance of effective, resolute fighters who will die before giving up the effective control of their home territories. So what the Western forces are opposing in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan is the inherited disposition of its people. Such people will never accept defeat; they would prefer to die. Their history supports this prediction. So they can only be defeated by genocide. Throughout its history America has had a propensity towards the genocide of any group that opposes its will. These genocides are always accompanied by moral cant. The ‘war on terror’ is just such moral cant. In more dissipated human societies (like the US), being a member of a group can be defined in ways that cut across genetic kinships: such as belonging to a group with shared financial interests, other interests, nationality, history and beliefs. But, in early, pre-city, parochial, isolated societies — like the Frontier — shared genes (common ancestry), shared territory (memory space), shared struggles (history and legend), languages (usually marking with great precision where one comes from), customs and values (related historically and practically to local needs) and religion (adapted to local customs and needs) usually coincide and so jointly reinforce hostility to occupation by outsiders. Such is the nature of tribal society among the Pakhtuns, even now, after the catastrophically damaging effects of 30 years of continuous war and its disruptions, that they will fight to the last person standing. Nearly everything binding such communities together is peculiar to the locality where they are found. Central government is meaningless to such people. Even the village on the other side of the hill may be alien. For Pakhtuns, society is not an abstraction: it is who you know. Politics consists of alliances with people you know. Honour and loyalty, to them the greatest virtues, are demonstrated by the defence of your own people. Everything in tribal societies is personal. Notions of nationhood and patriotism are unintelligible.

Now contrast Pakhtun tribal society with American city-based society. In American cities, few people know who their ancestors are. Few people even know who their neighbours are. The US is a society based upon forgetting your past, on relocating every few years, and on forgetting your neighbours and relatives. Their only common bonds are patriotism and shared commercial experience. For them self-advancement is the triumphant value. Honour and loyalty are just quaint notions. A person’s value is measured ultimately by wealth.

No two people could be less alike than are the Pakhtun and the Americans. And when a technologically defenceless people — who are nevertheless a resolute, united, tough people, who have a persistent tradition of fighting off intruders — possess what others with deadly war technology want, the conflict is likely to be uncompromising. This is likely to be especially true when the well-armed group has fabricated convenient cultural and religious antagonisms towards the terrorists, al Qaeda and the Taliban, and has the means to foster prejudices efficiently by control of the media. Then the stage is set for self-righteous murder on an industrial scale. Neither side will compromise, but, as usual, the technologically weaker side will suffer far greater casualties, which will not be reflected in the news bulletins of the aggressors. This is the tragedy we are seeing unfold in what is now being called the Af-Pak region. All good and courageous people, led by a reformed media, should oppose this slaughter and force the foreigners to leave immediately.

The writer has degrees from Oxford University and the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. He can be reached at charlesferndale@yahoo.co.uk