The Thistle and the Drone: How America's War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam

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&217,18('21%$&.)/$3³ I n the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the United States declared war on terrorism. More than ten years later, the results are decidedly mixed. Here world-renowned author, diplomat, and scholar Akbar Ahmed reveals an important yet largely ignored result of this war: in many nations it has exacerbated the already broken relationship between central governments and the largely rural Muslim tribal societies on the peripheries of both Muslim and non-Muslim nations. The center and the periphery are engaged in a mutually destructive civil war across the globe, a conflict that has been intensified by the war on terror. Conflicts between governments and tribal societies predate the war on terror in many regions, from South Asia to the Middle East to North Africa, pitting those in the centers of power against those who live in the outlying provinces. Akbar Ahmed’s unique study demonstrates that this conflict between the center and the periphery has entered a new and dangerous stage with U.S. involvement after 9/11 and the deployment of drones, in the hunt for al Qaeda, threatening the very existence of many tribal societies. American firepower and its vast anti-terror network have turned the war on terror into a global war on tribal Islam. And too often the victims are innocent children at school, women in their homes, workers simply trying to earn a living, and worshipers in their mosques. Battered by military attacks or drone strikes one day and suicide bombers the next, the tribes bemoan, “Every day is like 9/11 for us.” In The Thistle and the Drone, the third volume in Ahmed’s groundbreaking trilogy examining relations between America and the Muslim world, the author draws on forty case studies representing the global span of Islam to demonstrate how the U.S. has become involved directly or indirectly in each of these societies. The study COVER IMAGES © ISTOCKPHOTO JACKET BY SESE-PAUL DESIGN provides the social and historical context necessary to understand how both central governments and tribal societies have become embroiled in America’s war. Beginning with Waziristan and expanding to societies in Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere, Ahmed offers a fresh approach to the conflicts studied and presents an unprecedented paradigm for understanding and winning the war on terror. AKBAR AHMED is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, D.C. He was the former Pakistani high commissioner to the United Kingdom, the first Distinguished Chair of Middle East Studies at the U.S. Naval Academy, and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Among his previous books are Journey into Islam and Journey into America, both published by Brookings. He is also a published poet and playwright. the thistle and the drone Ahmed.indb 1 2/12/13 8:34 PM Praise for The Thistle and the Drone “In the end, like the Kurdish observers of Noor in Sulaimani in the book, I was close to tears. Lagrimas caudales or “flowing tears,” to use the apposite phrase of Blas de Otero, seems to be what the book’s conclusions lead to. This is particularly true if, like me, you have been very, very close to the center of decisionmaking in the U.S. and you know how incapable it is of embracing such sophisticated reasoning, let alone developing and applying strategies in accordance with such reasoning. Thus lagrimas for the tribes, for the soldiers, and for the United States. If one extrapolates from Professor Ahmed’s findings and from the history of torture as well, ‘bug splat’, as the victims of drone strikes are called, and torture live in the same house. Ahmed makes clear that, like torture, the creation of such profound fear wounds the creators as well— destroying their liberties, polluting their democracy, and devouring their souls. Professor Ahmed gives us the only way out of this dangerous dilemma, a way to coexist with the thistle without the drone.”—Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary “Riveting in its original description of events we thought we knew and revealing in its trenchant analysis of their contexts, Akbar Ahmed shows us how vital are the world’s tribes to our understanding of and interactions with the Muslim...