Working with the tribes of Afghanistan

Christian Science Monitor:

With sticks, knives, and 600 men drawn from his own tribe, Hajji Malik Zahir did what the armies of Afghanistan and America could not: He drove the Taliban from his district.

Now, the United States increasingly wants to encourage other tribal elders in Afghanistan to do the same. In what is taking shape as a substantial policy shift, it wants to use tribes to bring law and order to the vast areas of the country beyond the government's authority.

The successful uprising of tribal chiefs in Iraq against Al Qaeda – the "Anbar Awakening" – has created momentum, as has endemic corruption in President Hamid Karzai's government.

The government is not competent enough to deal with the dire threats now facing Afghanistan, says Seth Jones, an analyst at the RAND Corp., a security consultancy in Arlington, Va., that works with the Pentagon. "This means working with the tribal leaders," he says.

Such a policy promises great risk and reward. Done carelessly, it could unleash the tribal and ethnic forces that led to civil war in the early 1990s, warns tribal leader Mr. Zahir, as well as analysts. Yet his experience – and that of aid agencies and local law-enforcement officials – suggests that tribal elders can often deliver results that the government alone cannot.

In a Pentagon briefing last week the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, said: "It seems to me that, with the lead of the government of Afghanistan, engaging those tribes and connecting them to governance – whether it's at the provincial level or the district level – seems to be a smart thing to do to assist with the security of a huge country."

It has taken Washington seven years to get to this point, largely because of the tremendous dangers and complications inherent in such a policy.

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A year ago in Nangarhar Province, they were sorely needed. Taliban fighters had returned to the caves of Tora Bora – the last known Afghan hideout of Osama bin Laden in 2001. From Tora Bora, they struck American forces in the district. In one ambush, they disabled an American Humvee that later had to be recovered by Afghan soldiers, says Zahir, the elder.

Then, after an attack on the district headquarters itself, Governor Gul Agha Sherzai asked Zahir, a member of his administration and an elder from the area, what could be done.

First, Zahir talked to the elders of the district. Then he delivered his message to Governor Sherzai: "I told Sherzai to go back to Jalalabad, and I will be able to defend my area."

"I don't need a tank, I don't need a plane, I don't even need a single bullet," he recalls saying to the governor. "I will use sticks and I will use the guns my people have to defend themselves."

Together with the elders, Zahir collected 600 volunteers. "But as soon as they [the Taliban] had learned what we decided, they left," Zahir says.

It is efforts like these that the US is seeking to formalize and make part of a coherent Afghan strategy – a dramatic shift from even a year ago.

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The grass roots effort worked in Iraq and it could possibly do so in Afghanistan. It has not so far been effective in Pakistan. It appears that Gen. Petraeus is looking for a way to turn the tribes and the Taliban among them and it will be worth watching in the coming months. It is an important component of counterinsurgency warfare.