Misunderstanding Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Area?

To the Editors (Kimberly Marten writes):

In “No Sign until the Burst of Fire: Understanding the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier,” Thomas Johnson and Chris Mason argue that Pashtun tribal identities explain the lure of the Taliban and the shortcomings of the initial U.S. approach to the war in Afghanistan.¹ They carry this argument too far, however, and engage in cultural reductionism by portraying the Pashtun tribal code as the determining factor behind politics and preferences in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). Johnson and Mason make the following errors: (1) treating Pashtun identity as if it were set in stone; (2) failing to consider that today’s radical Islamists rely on different sources of support than did the mullahs (Islamic religious leaders) who led jihads against the British Empire; and (3) misinterpreting the role of the official maliks (tribal and village leaders) in the FATA.

Idealizing an Identity

Johnson and Mason state that “Pashtuns identify themselves in terms of their familial ties and commitments, and have a fundamentally different way of looking at the world” (p. 51). The authors assume that a shared identity determines Pashtun preferences and actions. Yet the literature on ethnic conflict and nationalism has established that individuals have multiple identities; the influence of any one identity on particular thoughts and actions depends on its salience at the time.² Different aspects of identity can be brought to the forefront by people’s socioeconomic circumstances or can be bolstered by political entrepreneurs seeking populist support.

This remains true for the Pashtuns despite the supposed overwhelming authority of their tribal code. Pashtuns have proved remarkably mobile; they have often adapted successfully to circumstances far outside their stateless homeland; and they are known for their success in migrating both socially and geographically.³ They have been a major source of recruits for both the British Imperial and Pakistani armies. Many have labored on construction projects in urban Pakistan. In addition, Pashtuns dominate the trucking and transport trade in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. During the 1970s’ oil boom, virtually every family in the FATA is believed to have sent at least one of its young men to work in the Persian Gulf.⁴ Pashtun refugees from rural Afghanistan have become deeply embedded in the urban Pakistani economy as skilled laborers.⁵

These commercial and employment activities are at odds with the Pashtuns’ tribal code. The code scorns the pursuit of business and commerce as something lowly and not Pashtun (the word for “shopkeeper” is an insult in the Pashto language). Real Pashtun men are supposed to pursue agnatic (cousin) rivalry in their barren mountain homeland, spurning life in the “settled” regions and using their incomes primarily to support the hospitality they show in competition with their cousins.⁶

Even more tellingly, the vast majority of Pashtuns inside Pakistan live not in the stateless FATA tribal region (with a total population of slightly more than 3 million, according to the latest, 1998 census data⁷), but in the settled North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), whose population includes around 14 million Pashtuns.⁸ Well-to-do Pashtun families often have homes in both the FATA and the NWFP. Those living in the NWFP are integrated into the politics and business of the state, participating in universal adult suffrage and joining political parties at both the provincial and national levels. Pashtuns also dominate the NWFP’s provincial bureaucracy. Since the February 2008 parliamentary elections, one of the key issues on the FATA agenda has become whether and how the FATA might become a “normal,” integrated, state-penetrated province of Pakistan.⁹

Furthermore, Johnson and Mason’s statement that Pashtuns have a “fundamentally different way of looking at the world” begs the question: Different from whom? Clan ties and the importance of upholding family honor are far from unique to the Pashtuns, having played an important role in violent insurgent behavior in areas of the world including Iraq, Somalia, and Chechnya.¹⁰ Yet most of these areas have also witnessed periods when statehood flourished. Saddam Hussein held Iraq...