MAREK JAN CHODAKIEWICZ | SELOUS FOUNDATION FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH
To defeat the Islamists in Afghanistan, we should learn how to divide and rule. We must pursue a number of policies that may seem contradictory. First, we should strengthen the royalists, the republicans, and the nationalists not just at the center in Kabul but in the areas where they enjoy the most support: among the ethnic groups, tribes, and clans. Setting the tribes against one another and against various Islamic radicals, reformers, and nationalists formed the basis of Britain’s colonial policy in Afghanistan. Self-paralysis of the Afghans meant safety for the Empire’s policy there. Missing from my list is the liberal democratic orientation as it is naturally absent at this stage of Afghanistan’s development. First things first. We should get rid of the Islamists and, ideally, restore a modernizing monarchy. Then other good things will follow. Inshallah.
“America’s longest war” cries out for a suggestion of a way out. Here’s one. Let us use non-jihadi Muslims to eliminate the Islamist jihadis. This would entail enabling forces at local, regional, and national levels inimical to the ideology and practice of Islamism. We can deploy this strategy successfully if we realize that the Islamists are interested primarily in the control of the state, in particular at the moment the Taliban, mostly Pashtun, radicalized in Saudi funded Wahhabi madrasas of the Pakistani refugee camps, and their Al Queda and related allies and enablers. Their detractors either compete with them for the command of the state or are suspicious and even inimical to it. This reality is quite obscured by the current convergence of most Afghani forces in the jihadist camp, which reflects not so much the Islamist predilections of most of the contenders but the persistence of Afghanistan’s ongoing holy war, the jihad.
No Reason for Jihad
Practically the only way to put paid to jihad in Afghanistan is for non-Muslim foreigners to leave. Then the Afghans take care of themselves, i.e., the theological grounds for jihad are no more; they simply fight among themselves until a viable power configuration emerges. Sometimes it is a king; sometimes it is a religious order (e.g., Sufi or Taliban); and most of the time a collection of warlords bound by a tacit agreement of a love-hate relationship: you leave my dominion alone, and I shall do the same for you. Usually, it is a combination of above factors. This is what the history of Afghanistan suggests.
Theoretically, of course, one could disagree with the lessons of the past and conjure up an a priori, abstract solution. For example, let us suggest stopping the jihadis by democide: killing all Muslims there. Why such an extreme solution? The jihadis are like fish; they need an ocean to swim in. Even if the Muslim ocean does not share the political goals of the Islamists, it shelters them or, at least, it allows them to camouflage themselves within its depths. They draw strength from among its elements; and they are a part of its Muslim cultural aura, a segment of an all-embracing community, the umma, joined by the universalism of the sharia. Therefore, barring legitimate concerns about the radioactive fallout, a nuclear holocaust would be probably the most efficient way to get rid of the jihadis. The by-product would be unfortunately a mass murder of the inhabitants of Afghanistan. Hopefully, this Swiftian provocation has you riveted now.
Terrorists or Muslims?
Since we are neither Nazis nor Communists, we not only refuse to consider such an apocalyptic option, but we are indeed repulsed by it. Yet, both Muslims and non-Muslims continue to harbor a perception that all within the umma essentially appear as one: Muslims. That includes the Islamists. It is mostly an unspoken presumption of a majority of the non-Muslims. Publicly, we declare something different altogether, however. Political correctness dictates that we insist that the Islamists, Salafist, Jihadists, and Caliphatists are “not true Muslims.” They allegedly have nothing to do with Islam. Yet, if Islam enjoys no central authority and it is divided into myriad sects and mutations within both the Sunni and Shia orientations, then what is the orthodoxy here?
Who decides who is orthodox? Indeed, who is orthodox? Why would your imam, alim, or pir be better than mine? This, incidentally, is the grounds for the persistent civil war within Islam, a sanguinary conflict that has raged since the death of their Prophet Mohammed in the 7th century.
Other than a nuclear strike or wishful thinking, is there a way to separate the wheat from the chaff? Can we distill the non-jihadi Muslims from the jihadists? Yes, we can, but we must first leave Afghanistan so as to remove the conditions for the persistence of the jihad. Once we are invisible there, we can manipulate the situation, directly and indirectly, with the help of our special forces, intelligence operators, select diplomats and their native collaborators at the local, regional, and national level. In other words, we can get the Muslims to fight other Muslims.
Muslim Collaborators
Aside from the usual suspects eager for our money, there will be also others. Likewise, happy to accept our funds, rather than out of mercenary motives only, those collaborators will share our animosity toward the Islamists. There are at least nine kinds of potential collaborators we can enlist.
First, the dissident Islamists have quarreled with the mainstream, dominant Islamists. Usually, the split stems from some tactical differences and, even more often, the personalities of their leaders. Second, there will be minority Islamists, who resent the mainstream Islamists for tribal reasons (e.g., Uzbek vs. Pashtun or Baluch vs. foreign fighter multi-ethnic Islamists). Sometimes the first and second categories of dissident/minority Islamist overlap.
The third group of enemies of the Salafists are the royalists, who also vie with them for the control of the state. The royalists tend to be allied with the fourth group, the traditional aristocracy, previously strong in the countryside, which, however, like the monarchists, were greatly weakened under the Soviet and native-Communist rule. Fifth, secular republicans and post-Communists, both post-Stalinists and post-Maoist, would like to seize the command of the state to introduce their brand of modernization in opposition to the Islamists. In particular, nationalism in any form (including military socialism or national bolshevism) is a grave challenge to Islamism.
The Tribal and Traditional
Then, sixth, there are plenty of non-Pashtun ethnic groups who, during the Soviet occupation either developed a distinct identity or greatly strengthened it. They oppose not only the traditional political leadership, which, whether monarchist, republican, or post-Communist, tended to be Pashtun. For similar, tribal reasons, the minority ethnic groups also oppose the Islamists. The non-Pashtuns fear centralization and, hence, the state. They enjoy the self-sufficiency or, at least, neglect bred by the war and disorder.
Paradoxically, seventh, the majority Pashtun can be turned against the jihadis, if the former continue to adhere to the tribal model. In fact, re-tribalization is the key to weaning the Pashtuns away from the Taliban and other jihadis. This is because tribal law and custom, in particular Pashtunwali, are particularist devices that tend to override in everyday importance the universalism of the sharia.
Eight, the strengthening or the restoration of traditional social structures at the local level shall weaken the Islamists. There are the maliks and khans, provincial officials, village elders, and community mediators between the local population and the state bureaucracy. Each prominent man in his locality takes care of his immediate social group (qawm). According to astute French scholar Olivier Roy, qawm is a “communal group, whose sociological basis may vary. It may be a clan (in tribal zones), a village, an ethnic group, an extended family, [or] a professional group.”
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Dr. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz is the Kościuszko Chair at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. where he conducts research on East Central Europe and Russia. His expert areas include History, Democracy Building, Communism, American Foreign Policy and International Relations. His most recent book is “Intermarium: The Land Between the Black and Baltic Seas” was published in 2012 by Transaction Publishers.
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