What Went Wrong in Afghanistan? Understanding Counter-insurgency Efforts in Tribalized Rural and Muslim Environments (Wolverhampton Military Studies) by Metin Gürcan

Author:Metin Gürcan [Gürcan, Metin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Helion and Company
Published: 2016-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

Map 2 Ethnolinguistic groups in Afghanistan. (Global Security, ‘Afghanistan Maps’. <http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/afghanistan/maps.htm> (accessed 13 February 2007))

With respect to the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the land is inhospitable to ‘the outsiders’ with mountain ranges, narrow valleys, desert plains, and rocky, barren wastes. The physical feature of this land makes it impossible to draw a definable border. Like veins on a leaf, there are hundreds of small valleys in the region, the total control of which are absolutely impossible to count even with aerial surveillance, which perfectly serve as safe corridors for small groups. The difficult terrain of the country coupled with dispersed population settlements renders a great number of people isolated from the urban centers and from each other. While the circle highway built by the Americans and the Soviets in the 1960s connects the urban centers, as well as the population that resides within proximity of the highway, the rest of the population are ill-integrated in the national system. As a result, many of the rural populations are isolated and poorly integrated. Dispersed rural population and the control of which is merely possible, donates safe havens for the insurgents who seek for logistic support, intelligence and recruitment. Furthermore, the isolation of a great section of the population necessitates the rise of alternative forms of support affiliations. The tribal order, as a local governance model, is thus a result of both the experiences of these people within the context of the physical features of their land and the perceived malice of the central authority. This diversity or heterogeneity in the rural society has been further exacerbated due to the legacy of war and external proxy interference over the past three decades.

In the light of the facts stated above, rural Afghan society would be regarded as a complex assortment of ethnic, linguistic, religious and tribal cleavages more intimately united at the local level than under the flag of the ‘Afghan’ identity at the national level. It should also be stressed that this trend of tribalization/localization is continuing in rural Afghan society in a less intense manner in contributing to the persistence of the insurgency.13

In the same vein, one may note that the ‘decentralized’ nature of insurgency, as an antecedent condition mainly rooted from the varying political aspirations and objectives of different political movements and interest groups, perfectly fits for the continuation of tribal characteristics of the society. Since tribal order would best be characterized as a system of different armed groups with different political agendas, decentralized insurgency would facilitate a fertile ground for the tribal confederates to play their triple roles. That is, the tribal confederates ally with the Taliban, tribal confederates ally with the CF and the ones which sit on the fence and the everlasting flow of switching alliances, which hinders to figure out whose hands are in whose pockets.

What is said about the primary features of the Taliban-led insurgency? In the light of the aforementioned facts stated above, and the map below, which shows the Taliban presence as

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