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A.S. Ahmed wrote an early book The Tribal Areas recounting his experience in the N.W. Frontier Province. I haven't read that book, but James W. Spain, former US Ambassador to Sri Lanka, whom I worked with in the '80s and who gave me a copy of his book The Way of the Pathans[which he kindly inscribed to me "To David Mangan, another frontier devotee"] mentions Sir Olaf Caroe as the best expert who wrote on the subject. I was lucky enough to find his map-filled masterpieceThe Pathans: 550BC-1957AD, whose original St. Martin Press 1958 edition I was lucky enough to buy in an old London book shop. It is absolutely absorbing on Waziristan, and has great trivia, such as the fact that Airman Shaw [AKA Lawrence of Arabia] was stationed at Miranshah airfield deep in Wazir territory, living as usual on the margins of imperial destiny, in the late '20s, early '30s. Caroe spoke the Wazir & Mahsud dialects fluently and endlessly discusses fine points of the various dialects.
Back to Stanley Kurtz & his discussion of A.S. Ahmed's works and positive take on approaches to Islam.
Foreign journalists are now banned in Waziristan, and most local reporters have fled in fear for their lives. Because scholars have long neglected this famously inhospitable region, Waziristan remains a dark spot, and America remains proportionately ignorant of the forces we confront in the terror war. Yet an extraordinary if neglected window onto the inner workings of life in Waziristan does exist--a modern book, with deep roots in the area's colonial past.
The British solution in Waziristan was to rule indirectly, through sympathetic tribal maliks (elders), who received preferred treatment and financial support. By treaty and tradition, the laws of what was then British India governed only 100 yards on either side of Waziristan's main roads. Beyond that, the maliks and tribal custom ruled. Yet Britain did post a representative in Waziristan, a "political agent" or "P.A.," whose headquarters was protected by an elite military force, and who enjoyed extraordinary powers to reward cooperative maliks and to punish offenders. The political agent was authorized to arrest and jail the male kin of miscreants on the run (particularly important given the organization of Waziristan's tribes around male descent groups). And in special cases, the political agent could blockade and even destroy entire settlements. After achieving independence in 1947, Pakistan followed this British scheme, indirectly governing its many tribal "agencies" and posting P.A.s who enjoyed the same extraordinary powers as under the British.
Actually, several windows into the region, including diplomat Jim Spain's who still lives in DC and Caroe's masterpiece, give perspecgtive, but Kurtz obviously likes his fellow academe Akbar Ahmed. But despite his admiration, Kurtz ends thus:
In a sense, global Islam is now Waziristan writ large. Mr. Ahmed rightly spots tribal themes of honor and solidarity throughout the Muslim world--even in places where tribal social organization per se has receded. Literally and figuratively, Waziristan now seeks to awaken the tribal jihadist side of the global Muslim soul. This has effectively thrust the leaders of the Western world into the role of British and Pakistani P.A.s (a famously exhausting job, Mr. Ahmed reminds us). With technological advance having placed once-distant threats at our doorstep, the West may soon resemble South Waziristan's perpetually besieged encampment at Wana. Perhaps it already does. Yet Waziristan was ruled indirectly, without ordinary law or policing. Preventing terror plots and the development of weapons of mass destruction requires a more active hand.
Muslim society will have to reform far more profoundly than Akbar Ahmed concedes if the worst is to be avoided. Our best option may be to reintroduce somehow the Aligarh University tradition of liberal learning and merit-based employment (independent of kinship ties) to the Muslim world. With our strategy in Iraq now reinforcing tribalism, the obvious front to try this is Europe, where concerted efforts must be made to assimilate Muslims to Western values. Globalization may then work for us, as cultural changes bounce back to the Middle East.
Even in the best case, we face a long-term struggle. Simmering tensions between modernity and Muslim social life are coming to a head. Yet all our present recent schemes are patchwork. And someday, perhaps at the peak of a post-emergency civil war between the army and the Islamists in Pakistan, the military steamroller may be called upon to settle the Waziristan problem once and for all. Who knows if, even then, it will work.
Obama's off-the-cuff solution that US military should march into Waziristan just won't cut it, and the complexity of the problems defies any simple solutions.
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