Daily Times

In my 2013 book The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam, I examined Muslim tribal societies living on the periphery of modern states such as the Pukhtun, Yeminis, Somalis, and Kurds and the ways in which they have been drawn into the war on terror with devastating effects for local people.

In the study I wrote about the adversarial relationship that often exists between tribes and central governments, which can reach a critical point when “terrorists” are understood to hide in tribal regions. The state tends to use overwhelming force against these terrorists and militants, assisted by technologies like the drone.

Yet from the perspective of the tribes, this approach is often counterproductive because the tribes have their own ways of administering  their areas, apprehending troublemakers, and negotiating and dealing with central authority. Tribes function and govern themselves through councils of male elders, who governments must deal with in order to be successful in tribal regions. It is certainly possible to enforce the writ of the state in such regions but it must be done with the culture of the tribes in mind. Using  overwhelming force in tribal areas can antagonize the public at large and trigger the tribal code of revenge, thus contributing to the never-ending cycles of violence we are currently seeing in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region and indeed in Muslim tribal societies across the world.In this case study,I was able to apprehend hostile figures to government through working with the tribal elders and by respecting local customs.

The general, a friend of mine, challenged me either to “bag Safar Khan” or let him use his tactics. As civilian head of the agency, I strongly felt that the use of military force to solve a tribal problem implied a failure of the civil administration and would complicate matters further

Here I present a fascinating case study of administration in a tribal society from which we can learn. In this case it is from my time in charge of South Waziristan some four decades ago. Although things have changed in significant ways from the time of the case study, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the rise of the Taliban, 9/11 and the American led War on Terror,the excessive use of drones in the area,  the merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the repeal of the Frontier Crimes Regulation, we can perhaps still take lessons about how to conduct government affairs in a tribal society from the case study.

On the eve of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s as Political Agent in charge of South Waziristan Agency, I was faced with bringing in the outlaw Safar Khan, the most wanted man in my area. Like the terrorists and militants in the same region in the current era,I believed Safar Khan needed to be brought to justice for the safety of the agency.

As it happened, I got my man alive without a single shot being fired. The writ of the government was established, justice served, and the guilty man brought to book, all without antagonizing the local people or disrupting their lives. The difference with what appears to be happening these days was that I worked entirely within the tribal framework and traditional social structure.

Safar Khan (pronounced Sappar Khan), a Pukhtun of the Mando Khel clan from Baluchistan, had resorted to an infamous life of crime, raiding, and kidnapping after concluding he had been treated unfairly by the Political Agent of his agency following a land dispute with a neighboring clan. I had discovered that breaches of law such as shooting at or even kidnapping government officials were sometimes a desperate attempt to draw attention to an imagined or real grievance. It was the equivalent of presenting a written petition for redress to the administration.Safar Khan was involved in outright criminal acts, however, and had to be dealt with accordingly.

Safar eventually allied himself with the Kharoti Pukhtun outlaw Nemat, a”most wanted man” in both Zhob Agency in Baluchistan and South Waziristan Agency for having killed two officers of the Zhob Militia, a paramilitary force linked to and manned by the Pakistan army. In the 1960s and 1970s, Safar Khan’s notoriety grew as the major offenses attributed to him mounted, among them the destruction of railway bridges and the abduction of government officials, both civil and military. Various councils of elders, or jirgas, and raiding parties had failed to capture him as he moved adroitly between distinct tribal, agency, provincial,and international boundaries.He crossed provincial and even international borders to always keep one step ahead of the law.

Then, in a daring and perfectly executed operation in November 1979, Safar Khan kidnapped Lance-Naik (Lance Corporal) Baramat Khan of the Zhob Militia and escaped with his prey across the border into Afghanistan. The militia’s colonel and the inspector general of the Baluchistan Frontier Corps, General Alam Jan Mahsud, were furious about Khan’s apparent ability to operate without check. Both officers were Pukhtun themselves-in fact, Alam Jan was from South Waziristan-and felt that their honor was at stake. They threatened to conduct commando raids.

The general, a friend of mine, challenged me, half in earnest: either to “bag Safar Khan” or step aside and let him use his tactics. As civilian head of the agency, I strongly felt that the use of military force to solve a tribal problem implied a failure of the civil administration and would complicate matters further. Advising the general to be patient, I concentrated on the capture of Safar Khan.Once word got out, I simply had to get my man and do so within a certain time frame. My prestige was on the line. It was a high-risk strategy. If I failed, my administration would have been considered ineffective, and others would have been encouraged to challenge it. The tribes would have said I could not live upto my word, that my threats and promises were hollow.

The writer is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC, and author of Journey into Europe: Islam, Immigration, and Identity

Published in Daily Times, December 8^th 2018.