Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Tobias Gibson of Westminster College.
In recent days, there have been reports of U.S. drone strikes in North Waziristan, Pakistan. According to the New York Times article, these strikes killed at least two people. This remote area of Pakistan has long been subject to U.S. drone strikes.
The Times also reports that U.S. anti-terrorism efforts are shifting theaters from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Africa. This shift includes the expansion of the use of surveillance drones in Mali, flown from a new drone base in Niger. According to the story, the U.S. is partnering with France “to track fighters affiliated with Al Qaeda and other militants” (my emphasis). One of the points of the article is that the U.S. needs to acquire knowledge about local conditions. According to Michael R. Shurkin, a former CIA analyst who is now at RAND, “Effective responses… require excellent knowledge about local populations and their politics, the sort of understanding that too often eludes the U.S. government and military.” Without understanding local conditions, the author contends, the introduction of drones “runs the risk of creating the type of backlash that has undermined American efforts in Pakistan.”
In a post this week, Charli Carpenter discusses evidence that the civilian death count from drones has been drastically underestimated. She argues that if the death counts are higher than publicly estimated, any humanitarian argument about the use of drone as “precision” weapons “goes out the window.” (Side note: those interested in drones and the continued mechanization of war and security should read her (gated) article “Beware the Killer Robots.”)
All of these recent stories should lead to a more profound appreciation of Akbar Ahmed’s recent book The Thistle and the Drone. Ahmed has a simple, yet profound thesis: “it is the conflict between the center and the periphery and the involvement of the United States that has fueled the war on terror.” According to Ahmed, this conflict has played itself out for centuries, as evidenced by European efforts to “civilize” tribes throughout the world in their colonies, the U.S. efforts to in the west to pacify and relocate indigenous tribes, and current efforts by Russia to end separtist violence in Chechnya… and, Ahmed would argue, those discussed above in Pakistan and Mali. The drone is merely the newest weapon in the center’s arsenal.
Another important issued raised by Ahmed is that some of the customs of Islam that westerners find most shocking about the religion are tribal, not religious. For example, “[n]ot sanctioned by Islam, but widely percieved to be Islamic, are syncretic practices such as honor killings… which [is] a holdover from pre-Islamic tribal conditions…”. Indeed, if the this book is correct, it is not “militant Islam” which the U.S. fights, but tribal Islam. President Obama recognizes the tribal issue of Islam as well. In his May, 2013 NDU speech, Obama notes that “Al Qaeda and its affiliates try to gain foothold in some of the most distant and unforgiving places on Earth. They take refuge in remote tribal regions.” The implications of Shurkin’s quote above are clear.
In short, The Thistle and the Drone is an excellent critique of U.S. drone policy. It is timely, and as the recent articles and thoughts indicate, one that has weight. Indeed, given that President Obama sees drone strikes as particularly effective “[w]here foreign governments cannot or will not effectively stop terrorism” (also from his NDU speech), the power of the work is hard to deny. Although it has been overshadowed by the excellent Mark Mazzetti book The Way of the Knife, Ahmed’s effort should also be widely read. Given the international bent of Thistle, I think it may be more appreciated by regular readers of this blog.
The second-to-last paragraph is interesting. I’d like to see further discussion of the “tribal” issue. My impression is that a lot of social scientists may see “tribalism” — particularly as it’s being used here — as a loaded or pejorative word and hence avoid it. Is that right? If so, is that avoidance constricting or closing off possibly worthwhile avenues of research/analysis? In order to pre-empt responses on the lines of “you don’t know what you’re talking about” — true, I don’t. I’m asking for people who do know something about this to weigh in.
btw Ahmed’s center-periphery thesis, as summarized in the post, seems a bit too simplistic, or schematic, or something.
I’m no expert, but there is a neat literature in African Studies on the ‘invention’ of tribalism, both by westerners but more interestingly from peripheral groups who are resisting the encroachment of centralized state authority. In the latter cases, the salience of family and ethnicity can spike, ‘creating’ tribalism.
I’m not sure if this is responsive to your question though.
Partly it is, thanks. But Ahmed, acc. to the post, seems to be treating ‘tribalism’ as a source of customs/traditions/practices that are wrongly imputed to Islamic belief. (Haven’t the read the bk — I’m just going by the post.) Which raises, arguably, a somewhat diff. set of issues.
just read the exchange below, which does address (some of) the issues.
‘Another important issued raised by Ahmed is that some of the customs of
Islam that westerners find most shocking about the religion are tribal,
not religious.’
False dichotomy, Pre-Islamic norms and practices may persist, but the fact that they are articulated in Islamic language and typically understood by communities of Muslims to be ‘Islamic’ makes them religious.
Unless you want to say that it’s not the Real Islam. Which makes you a theologian.
‘Indeed, if the this book is correct, it is not “militant Islam” which the U.S. fights, but tribal Islam.’
False dichotomy. Different Islamic communities can have similar customs but also show differing degrees of militarisation or engagement in violent rebellion. The two are causally linked, but phrasing it in this way is sort of like saying ‘it’s not obesity we’re fighting but the taste for sugary crap’. Not all people who eat sugary crap are obese, and there are many other factors, both physiological and social, which play a determining role in determining whether one is obese.
Perhaps the author should have said “there is no causal relationship between Islam and some social practices often popularly linked to Islam.” After all, similar social structures that are no Islamic have had similar social practices (honor killings in the Christian or preIslamic world), and many Islamic societies with different social structures have had different practices (e.g., most of the Muslim world).
I see what you’re getting at. But Islam is neither monolithic nor abstract. There are many Islams, and they are defined by the principles and practices of Muslim communities. There is a story to tell about how Islam arrived in South-East Asia and how it assimilated pre-existing ‘tribal’ customs. But that doesn’t mean that Islam, as religion, has not played a causal role in maintaining those customs. Islam isn’t a discrete variable here; the fact that we might have had a Christian or Jewish ‘tribalism’ doesn’t mean that particular interpretations of Islam haven’t been essential in legitimising and enabling god-awful customs like honour-killing. It just means that there is a non-deterministic relationship between being a Muslim and thinking that being a Muslim means you have to do the things that Pashtuns do which make some of them our enemies.
To put it another way, religion is deeply involved the social mechanisms and dynamics that preserve gendered norms, marital practices, attitudes towards authority, when violence is legitimate, and so on, and differentiating between those things and the religion of a community is rarely coherent. Social scientists might observe similar patterns of action or similar social structures across different communities with different religions, but that doesn’t mean that you can ignore religion as a causal factor.
This certainly isn’t the first time I’ve heard the ‘it’s not Islam, it’s culture’ line from people seeking to distance Islam from practices such as honour killing or even burka-wearing. It relies on an essentialised and singular conception of what Islam is, and I suspect it’s designed either to be a rhetorical move for undermining perceived bigotry against Muslims or for undermining the encroach of those highly restrictive practices into less conservative Muslim communities. Either way, it’s not a useful perspective for a social scientist to take.
Apologies for being long-winded; this is a particularly passionate topic for me.
ok, this exchange gets at some of what I was asking about above.
I see your point. I interpret the crucial question to be whether there is a causal link between practices such as honor killings and Islam. I take your meaning to be that from within the mind of an ‘honor killer’ there is a unified worldview that incorporates religious beliefs and some of these practices. Is that a fair statement of our differences?
On a sidenote, I have been reading quite a bit lately about the Muskogee (Creek Indians). They often engaged in honor killings (esp. of spouses), vendettas, etc. From a social science angle, the neat part is that the Upper Creeks practiced more ‘traditional’ or at least revival religious practices, whereas the Lower Creeks largely converted to Christianity. The latter, however, continued to have honor killings etc. The social system–including culture but especially kinship networks, markers of prestige etc.–largely remained in place for the Lower Creeks, possibly explaining why religion appears to have made little difference wrt violence.