Brain Food
Here is a great read by one of my favorite authors, Steven Pressfield. I highly suggest reading Gates of Fire and The Afghan Campaign. For those who have not seen this, check it out. I will follow it with a follow up article tomorrow. Enjoy…
IT’S THE TRIBES, STUPID
Forget the Koran. Forget the ayatollahs and the imams. If we want to understand the enemy we’re fighting in Iraq, the magic word is tribe.
Islam is not our opponent in Baghdad or Fallouja. We delude ourselves if we believe the foe is a religion. The enemy is tribalism articulated in terms of religion.
For two years I’ve been researching a book about Alexander the Great’s counter-guerrilla campaign in Afghanistan, 330-327 B.C. What struck me most powerfully is that that war is a dead ringer for the ones we’re fighting today — even though Alexander was pre-Christian and his enemies were pre-Islamic.
In other words, the clash of East and West is at bottom not about religion. It’s about two different ways of being in the world. Those ways haven’t changed in 2300 years. They are polar antagonists, incompatible and irreconcilable.
The West is modern and rational; its constituent unit is the nation. The East is ancient and visceral; its constituent unit is the tribe.
What is a tribe anyway?
The tribe is the most ancient form of social organization. It arose from the hunter-gatherer clans of pre-history. A tribe is small. It consists of personal, face-to-face relationships, often of blood. A tribe is cohesive. Its structure is hierarchical. It has a leader and a rigid set of norms and customs that defines each individual’s role. Like a hunting band, the tribe knows who’s the top dog and knows how to follow orders. What makes Islam so powerful in the world today is that its all-embracing discipline and order overlay the tribal mind-set so perfectly. Islam delivers the certainty and security that the tribe used to. It permits the tribal way to survive and thrive in a post-tribal and super-tribal world.
Am I knocking tribalism? Not at all. In many ways I think people are happier in a tribal universe. Consider the appeal of post-apocalyptic movies like The Road Warrior or The Day After Tomorrow. Modern life is tough. Who can fault us if now and then we entertain the idea of going back to the simple life?
The people we’re fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan live that life 24/7/365 and they’ve been living it for the past ten thousand years. They like it. It’s who they are. They’re not going to change.
How do you combat a tribal enemy?
Step one is to recognize that that enemy is tribal. We in the West may flatter ourselves that democracy is taking root in Iraq when we see news footage of blue-ink thumbs and beaming faces emerging from polls. What’s really happening has nothing to do with democracy. What’s happening is the tribal chief has passed the word and everybody is voting exactly as he told them to.
What is the nature of the tribe? What can sociology tell us about its attributes?
The tribe respects power.
Saddam Hussein understood this. So did Tito, Stalin, Hitler. So will the next strong man who ultimately stabilizes Iraq.
The tribe must have a chief. It demands a leader. With a top dog, every underdog knows his place. He feels secure. He can provide security for this family. The tribe needs a Tony Soprano. It needs a Godfather.
The U.S. blew it in Iraq the first week after occupying Baghdad. Capt. Nate Fick of the Recon Marines tells the story of that brief interlude when U.S. forces were still respected, just before the looting started. Capt. Fick went in that interval to the local headman in his area of responsibility in Baghdad; he asked what he needed. The chief replied, “Clean water, electricity, and as many statues of George W. Bush as you can give us.”
The tribe needs a boss. Alexander understood this. Unlike the U.S., the Macedonians knew how to conquer a country. When Alexander took Babylon in 333 B.C., he let the people know he was the man. They accepted this. They welcomed it. Life could go on.
When we Americans declared in essence to the Iraqis, “Here, folks, you’re free now; set up your own government,” they looked at us as if we were crazy. The tribal mind doesn’t want freedom; it wants security. Order. It wants a New Boss. The Iraqis lost all respect for us then. They saw us as naive, as fools. They saw that we could be beaten.
The tribe is a warrior; its foundation is warrior pride.
The heart of every tribal male is that of a warrior. Even the most wretched youth in a Palestinian refugee camp sees himself as a knight of Islam. The Pathan code of nangwali prescribes three virtues–nang, pride; badal, revenge; melmastia, hospitality. These guys are Apaches.
What the warrior craves before all else is respect. Respect from his own people, and, even more, from his enemy. When we of the West understand this, as Alexander did, we’ll have taken the first step toward solving the unsolvable.
The tribe places no value on freedom.
The tribe is the most primitive form of social organization. In the conditions under which the tribe evolved, survival was everything. Cohesion meant the difference between starving and eating. The tribe enforces conformity by every means possible–wives, mothers, and daughters add the whip hand to keep the warriors in line. Freedom is a luxury the tribe can’t afford. The tribesman’s priority is respect within the tribe, to belong, to be judged a man.
You can’t sell “freedom” to tribesmen any more than you can sell “democracy.” He doesn’t want it. It violates his code. It threatens everything he stands for.
The tribe is bound to the land.
I just read an article about Ariel Sharon (a tribal leader if there ever was one.) The interviewer was describing how, as Sharon crossed a certain stretch of Israeli real estate, he pointed out with great emotion the hills where the Biblical character Abigail lived out her story. In other words, to the tribesman the land isn’t for sale; it’s been rendered sacred by the sagas of ancestors. The tribe will paint the stones red with its own blood before letting itself be evicted from the land.
The tribe cannot be negotiated with.
Tribes deal in absolutes. Their standards of honor cannot be compromised. Crush the tribe in one century, it will rise again a thousand years from now. We’re seeing this now in a Middle East where the Crusades happened yesterday. When the tribe negotiates, it is always a sham — a stalling tactic meant to mitigate temporary weakness. Do we believe Iran is really “coming to the table?” As soon as the tribe regains power, it will abrogate every treaty and every pact.
The tribe has no honor except within its own sphere, deriving justice for its own people. Its code is Us versus Them. The outsider is a gentile, an infidel, a devil.
These are just a few of the characteristics of the tribal mind. Now: what to do about this?
How to deal with the tribal mind.
You can’t make deals with a tribal foe; they won’t be honored. You can’t buy them; they’ll take your money and despise you. The tribe can’t be reasoned with. Its mind is not rational, it’s instinctive. The tribe is not modern but primitive. The tribe thinks from the stem of its brain, not the cortex. Its code is of warrior pride, not of Enlightenment reason.
To deal successfully with the tribe, a negotiator of the West must first grant it its pride and honor. The tribe’s males must be addressed as warriors; its women must be treated with respect. The tribe must be left to its own land, to govern as it deems best.
If you want to get out of a tribal war, you must find a scenario by which the tribe can declare itself victorious. The tribal mind is canny; it knows when it’s whipped. But its warrior pride is so fierce, it cannot admit this. The tribe has to be allowed its face.
How Alexander got out of a quagmire.
It took Alexander three years, but he finally got a handle on the tribal mind. (Perhaps because so many of his own Macedonians were basically tribal.) Alexander produced peace by marrying the daughter of his most powerful enemy, the princess Roxane. The tribe understands such an act. This is respect. This is honor.
Alexander made the tribesmen his equals. He acknowledged their warrior honor. When he and his army marched out to their next conquest, Alexander took the bravest of his former enemies with him as his Companions. They rode at his side in stations of honor; they dined at his shoulder in the royal pavilion. (Of course he also beat the living hell out of the Afghans for three years prior, and when he took off he left a fifth of his army to garrison the place.)
The outlook for the U.S. in Iraq
In the end, unless we’re ready to treat them they way we did Geronimo, the tribe is unbeatable. They’re just too crazy. They’re not like us. Tolerance and open-mindedness are not virtues to them; they’re signs of weakness. The tribe is too rigid to bend, and it can’t be negotiated with.
Perhaps in the end, our leaders, like Alexander, will figure some way to bring the tribal foe around. More likely in my opinion, they’ll arrive at the same conclusion as did Lord Roberts, the legendary British general. Lord Roberts fought (and defeated militarily) tribesmen in two bloody wars in Afghanistan in the 19th century. His conclusion: get out. Lord Roberts’ axiom was that the farther away British forces remained from the tribesmen, the more likely the tribesmen were to feel warmly toward them; the closer he got, the more they hated him and the more stubbornly and implacably they fought against him.
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How’s this for cortex thinking? Drop big bombs on major population centers. Eyeze da big nigga, now.
December 18th, 2007 at 11:04 pmWOW
December 18th, 2007 at 11:10 pmGates of Fire is one of my all time favorite books. The Afghan Campaign is sitting on my shelf right now, though I’ve not had time to read it.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:30 amForget the Koran? I disagree. The Koran, Hadith and Sira are the political, military and societal compents of Islam.
The stubborn, insane Arabic tribal mentality has been around since Ishmael. That’s more than 5,000 years old. The Koran and Muhammed just feed into and justify that old hatred.
Appealing to the tribes is only a temporary stopgap. You won’t make a permanent impression on these people unless you can reach into the local mosque and change the messages being preached.
Reforming the Koran and injecting sanity and modernity into its interpretation is the long-term solution to the GWOT. Countering AQ’s propaganda with the correct interpretation of the Koran and Hadith, along with a reformist counter-propaganda message is key to winning hearts and minds IMHO.
The only other alternatives are all-out war or conversion to Christianity. Islamics who embrace modernity or who convert, lose the tribal component.
Islam is all about conquest, imperialism and supremacy. You can conquer that on the ground with bombs and bullets. But you can never reach the hearts of these people without offering them an alternative long-term to radical Islam.
Muzzies may behave when a strong-man is present. But as soon as he turns his back, hudna kicks in…
Dismissing the Koran is a mistake. Reforming it is not. Appealing to the tribes is a great idea. But long-term, appealing to the hearts and reforming the philosophy of Islam is the better track.
Get inside the mosque and you will rule over Islam. Counter AQ and Taliban propaganda and you will destroy their raison d’être.
“As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”
December 19th, 2007 at 4:29 amAdd Raphael Patai’s “The Arab Mind” to your reading list. Then read “Gates of Fire and The Afghan Campaign” and tell me what you think.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:42 amOne last point and then I’ll STFU. The tribal mentality of Islam is not the Gordian Knot of Islam. It is the Koran and it’s supremacist philosophy and social disorder.
The Gordian Knot of Islam can be found in the mosques wherever Islam is present. Change their philosophy and you will change their minds and win their hearts…permanately.
But good luck. These pinheads don’t even trust their own. And reformists are just kafir and takfir to them.
Islamic supremacy is in the words of Rita Katz “It’s a steady, stealthy indoctrination aimed at creating a whole new generation of jihadists. And scandalously, it is unopposed”
Until that changes, the Gordian Knot will remain intact.
December 19th, 2007 at 5:05 amThough tribalism is deeply entrenched in the Middle East, Dan does have a point too. I actually agree with what Ann Coulter said:
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.
Hmmm…But Mohammad did covert the former pagans by the sword.
Rudemeister
December 19th, 2007 at 5:33 amOn a complete side note, am I the only person that thinks Ann Coulter is hot? Shes a very strong-willed woman, I wonder if that carries over to the bed?
Anyway, if it is possible, I agree with everything, everyone has said. If you check the recent history of Iraq, the entire Al Anbar province (Fallujah, Ramadi, Haditha, and Al Qaim, were basically taken without a shot in april 2003. It wasnt until we accidently killed one of the Sunni major tribal leaders (who had cooperated with the CIA pre-invasion) that they started to get pissed at us.
December 19th, 2007 at 7:13 amThe west still covets a tribal culture, it is in many facets of our lives.
The most prominent display is in sport, and the allegiance to a team. Soccer riots are made up of loyal tribes/fanatics/fans seeking to gain dominance over an opposing tribe. The face painted NFL fan hurling batteries, threats and obscenities at opposing an tribe member is looking to show his strength and allegiance to the tribe. Ever been around the Michigan Ohio football rivalry? The ohio state police are known to pull over Michigan plated cars en mass on the way back from Columbus following the game. They are defending their tribe.
My Family, my blood is my immediate tribal members. They will be defended above all else. It does flow from there, to my religious affiliation, to my neighbors, to my town, political affiliations, business associations, etc.
From your local town, to state and nation you hold a tribal allegiance. When directly threatened you align to them unquestioningly.
The scene on the steps of the Capital on September 11 when Congress came out and sang God Bless America, is that of the nation/tribe leaders showing allegiance above less important differences.
The national fracturing over the Iraq war is in part due to the fact that not all members of the national tribe, known as America, see Iraq as a direct threat to the tribe and have dropped back to allegiances to a smaller tribal groups, primarily political in nature.
The national tribe known as America aligned with other national tribes following 9/11 in a common defense. That alliance has now has dropped back to separate national and political tribal interests.
The success of the United States of America is due to the federation of individual states, or smaller tribes, with the freedom for them to self govern for their own benefit while still being part of a larger tribe for a greater common benefit. This self governance goes all the way down to the city and village level of our society, where they can make their own laws and/or ‘rules’ applying to the local tribe.
The recognition of the tribes and their importance in the governing of Iraq is essential. A federation of the tribes intertwining with larger segments may be the way forward. The fact that it is in the tribal level that the progress is being made does bode well for the future. Their customs and way of life do not have to be threatened by a rule of law implemented from the ground up.
The tribes are working together for a larger common benefit, the Sunni and Shia tribes that are working to improve society overall are learning that cooperation is possible across differences.
……..
December 19th, 2007 at 7:30 amThanks Iggy
December 19th, 2007 at 7:33 amI don’t see the issue in tribal terms. It is a philosophy issue. For example, once upon a time the US and Europe were essentially united in their Christianic view of the world. Not so anymore. And these divisions are driven by philosopy. That is the Judaeo-Christian ethos vs the Westaphobic socialist ethos.
In Islam that ethos is the Koran, the Hadith and the Sira. There is no other ethos, socialist, democratic or otherwise.
Change the ethos and you change the culture…tribalism not withstanding.
December 19th, 2007 at 7:38 amTribal aside we had better get an understanding on how to deal with these cultural ideas, some , of which, are penetrating our own country. Europe seems to be losing that battle and in time the scales tilt little by little against freedom and democracy. A country’s citizenry can be thrown into imbalance by birthrate and conversion. Muhammed overtaking Jake in England as the most popular name is such an example.
December 19th, 2007 at 9:21 amDespotism doesn’t appeal to western culture yet the willingness to excuse it on foreign soil seems to be something every liberal thinking pacifist is more than willing to do. From the comfort of an easy chair in the living room, a person’s level of tolerance grows as any sense of urgency shrinks. The absence of immediate threat will not result in much reaction. A “slow boil” approach can progress further before alarming anyone.
Conversion to Christianity in the prison system has not been viewed as a great threat to the general population however, this is not the type of religion that is rapidly growing behind the walls and razor wire of correctional facilities across the U.S.
If the tribal mentality is difficult to exchange with democracy, it seems the reverse is not.
Out of 167 countries, roughly half are considered democracies. Of that half, less than 30 are viewed as “full” democracies. About 40% of the world’s population live in “Authoritarian” regime countries.
http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/DEMOCRACY_INDEX_2007_v3.pdf
@Dan (The Infidel)
Gates of Fire is actually about Sparta and Thermopylae (ie 300) so I don’t think reading The Arab Mind would change much.;) (they’re both novels, just to be clear)
December 19th, 2007 at 10:39 am@newhumandesign
Novels or not. My point is that the Gordian Knot is not tribalism, but a mentality that is seared with a hatred of all things and peoples not a part of the Ummah which is codified and exacerbated by the tenants of the Koran, Hadith and Sira.
The GWOT is not confined to two AO’s. It is systemic, and world-wide. Cutting through the Gordian Knot of Pan-Arabic Koranic Imperialism trancends and goes beyond mere tribalism.
And any book, novel, or whatnot that enhances one’s education on the issue is a good thing. Tribalism is just multicultural apartheid with lip gloss IMHO.
The Koran is the achilles heel of Islam.
December 19th, 2007 at 10:53 am@newhumandesign
Correction, the book that I recommended is no novel. It is considered THE seminal work in ME studies. Even the JFK Warfare center recognizes it as THE Book to read to understand the Arab culture and mindset.
Haven’t read the other one. But will add it to my Christmas reading list. Love Alexander. Great military study.
December 19th, 2007 at 11:26 amMany of the urban Iraqi bloggers have objected to the tribal approach and influence, and said they neither knew nor cared who their nominal tribal sheikh was. The urban/rural and modern/Bedouin mindset contrasts were there and gradually moving in the direction of the former for some time before OIF. But in times of crisis their culture gets thrown back on some of the old forms. They are not inherently more powerful, though.
I believe Bremer was right, but too hasty in his effort to de-tribalize Iraqi society. There are some sheikhs like Sattar who are self-Westernized who will transition to wider viewpoints and concerns, and with the dynamics of power and economics at the national and supra-national level at play there, I think they will grow to meet it or be pushed aside — and they know it.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:21 pm