Pashtunwali as an antidote to Wahhabism in Afghanistan?

I came across this interesting if somewhat simplistic thesis suggesting that the modus operandi of the Taliban in its core area of influence (southern and eastern Afghanistan, and Pakistan's North West Frontier Province) is alien to the traditional social structures of the Pashtun population and these local traditions could be encouraged as a strategy to subvert Taliban authority. The interested reader can find the full document here .

Without my meaning it, the title of this blog post has potentially acquired the character of a research paper title, with opaque jargon that might alienate a reader who does not take an active interest in the geopolitics of the Middle-East and South Asia (Afghanistan is one of those fun places that defy easy regional categorization in scholarly essays - you never know if it's located in one of those or Central Asia).   So let us start by defining things :

Pashtunwali :  An ancient honor code that governs tribal tradition among the Pashtuns (the dominant ethnicity from which the Taliban draws its ranks and support base,  kind of like what Germans were to Nazi in the 1930s). It is one of those very quirky, medieval honor things that you have no doubt heard in a lot of other contexts - think Chivalry in medieval Europe or among the Rajputs of India, or bushido in the Samurai of Japan (ok sorry about more jargon!) - just think of the proud mountain warrior man and tribal patriarch and all his little quirks - "if you insult my country or women by so much as looking at them or saying foul things about my wife's fourth cousin twice removed, I will kill you and your brothers and sons and even if I can't manage to, my great grandson will go for your great grandson's throat "  - or  "our families and clans are great friends since my great grandfather sheltered yours from the British Indian army and I so I will help you fight the Uzbek cattle-thiefs who dare to steal your camel" - you get the picture, right?  Very primitive, very patriarchal - but with certain romantic associations for the White Man (from the British colonialists to the American soldier who wrote that article),  and to its credit ,at least lacking in very inherently malicious designs such as colonizing half the known world for its oil reserves or fighting most known civilized nations to impose some crackpot political-religious ideology.

Wahhabi : Ok I'm no Islam expert but this looks like some extremely radical and orthodox interpretation of Islam that seems to give this religion more than its fair share of bad name.  So all the association of terribly hateful misogynistic long-bearded Muslim men that want to bomb everything into obscurity apparently stems from modern incarnations of this 18th c. Saudi religious movement.  This was grafted onto the Afghan scene when Islamic resistance fighters congregated   to fight the Soviet occupation there.  This is where the largely Pashtun Taliban derives its whole  "women not allowed in school, kill off and enslave ethnic and religious minorities, stone adulteresses (including rape victims) to death" brand of rule.  To the simple-minded outsider like me, this is Nazism (the gold standard of pure and unquestionably Evil in modern Western discourse).

Before any Islamic scholar or Saudi expert points out the redeeming aspects of Wahhabism and how a 19th c. Arab peninsula  socioreligious reform movement is being blown out of proportion by Western propaganda, I will plead thorough ignorance in the subtle facets of Islamic theology and social jurisprudence that qualify one for participation in any such debate, and in fact also acknowledge that the tendency to pick on "Wahhabism" may be a cultural byproduct of the Western tendency to find keywords to blame things on (like "Nazism").  That said, stoning women to save family honor, or bombing innocents because they are "Infidel"  are extremely despicable practices and whatever ideology that seeks to justify them under whatever circumstance or pretext, needs to be decried.

The original point of the article is whether Pashtunwali could be used to undermine structures put in place by the Wahhabist Taliban?  Two distinct questions in my opinion could be asked here. a) Is it possible to do so, and b) Is it useful to do so?   The former is a question of  stoking nationalist sentiment, and inciting a people to go back to their centuries-old traditions by rejecting elements of a foreign system that was put in place in times of political turmoil.  This certainly seems doable, particularly by strengthening the old feudal guard, by arming and bribing the tribal elders whose authority has been undermined by the nouveau elite among the Taliban. The Afghan government could be supported to make suitable propaganda efforts in this count. The tribal, nationalistic appeal of the Pashtunwali could be used to good effect in a society that is still tribal and feudal, and particular points where the Taliban ideology  are at variance with these could be emphasized. The US army research paper gives a good example : criminal cases would be traditionally tried by tribal court called jirgas and the usual punishment would be fines. These have been replaced by the Taliban courts which employ the strictest interpretation of the Sharia and hand out punishments like flogging or stoning. This would certainly breed some popular discontent that could be used to good effect.  The paper itself however contains the germs of its own undermining.  It points out that traditional Pashtun reliance on pan-Islamic ideologies has tended to happen whenever the many tribes have had to unify against some external threat like British or Soviet invasion.  The original factors that stimulated this growth of the Taliban are however still present - as long as Coalition forces are present on Afghan soil, and civilians still die from drone attacks in the NWFP, the Pashtun are likely to rely on Talibanism as a legitimate mode of resistance.

And is it useful to revive and strengthen a primitive honor code that is at odds with modern notions of nation-building and women's rights, just because it is easy to do so in an ignorant war-ravaged population?  Maybe in the very short term, but that doesn't sound like a viable long-term strategy that will let Afghanistan develop as a modern nation immunized against the threats of fundamentalist religious forces.

Also the paper is very simplistic and Orientalistic, and that calls for a whole new post to analyze.

ps : There was some thought that went into the potentially irritating persistence of the very tenuous "Nazi" analogy.  Like most things in life, this is only half a joke. The "good guys" of world history have always needed their evil antimatter, and Wahhabism (the significant ideological influence behind the Al Qaeda and the Taliban) is the latest in the long line of illustrious names that have also included Fascism and more controversially, Communism.  Part of me pays jocular deference to this mighty tradition, and part of me actually sees serious merit in this argument behind the invasion of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. It sometimes becomes necessary to fight really evil regimes. It's a pity that this isn't usually done for the right reasons.