Tribal codes backfire on Pakistan

Pakistan’s attempts to control the narrative in Afghanistan have provoked the Taliban Government.

In the deeply tribalistic and fiercely independent world of Pashtuns, there are inviolable codes that must be honoured, irrespective of their eventual cost. Pashtunwali or Afghaniyat is their sacred way of life that predates the advent and adoption of Islam.

In Leonard Schonberg’s book, Morgen’s War, a character recounts, “We have melmestia, being a good host, nanawatai, giving asylum, and badal, vengeance. Pashtuns live by these things”. Beyond all other reasons, it is the sanctity of these revered codes that led the reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Omar to refuse handing over their ‘guest’ i.e., Osama Bin Laden, to the Americans. The cost of upholding that sworn commitment was the invasion by the United States in the ‘longest war’ spanning 20 years, costing over 2,400 American lives and tens of thousands of Afghan fatalities, with over $2 trillion burnt.

But the ramification of Pashtunwali was not just reserved for the Americans, but in the ‘graveyard of empires’, earlier powers like the Soviets and the British were made to bite similar dust in the unforgiving swathes of Afghanistan. However, there was one regional power i.e., Pakistan, that always sought to surreptitiously control the narrative in Afghanistan, not by force, but through proxies.

As the annals of history bear, this is a serious lapse in judgement by the Pakistanis that they could subjugate these indefatigable and warlike Afghans, into a vassal state. Today, Pakistan joins the ranks of the despised and ousted foreign powers made to face the inevitable consequences in seeking to override traditions and tribal codes.

As the Taliban re-stormed Kabul in 2023, Islamabad prematurely assumed that its writ would run hereinafter. In its second coming to governance, the Taliban seemed more aware of Pakistani designs and of the popular mood in Afghanistan about the Pakistanis per se. Clearly, Pakistan had gatecrashed the party and attempted to control the narrative, to the subsequent dislike of the Afghan Taliban Government who wanted a moment of reconciliation, dignity, legitimacy, and even Afghan unity – therefore, increasingly Islamabad was getting seen as a usurper and spoiler.

The pivotal moment came when Pakistan decided to extract its pound of flesh in the Afghan Taliban’s takeover by seeking to neutralise its internal threat via the Pakistan-facing faction of the same ideological fount i.e., Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP) which has been taking on the Pakistani establishment with deadly results. The Pakistani establishment had mounted substantial military campaigns in its Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region but met with blunt resistance. TTP fighters are estimated at 6,000-7,000 and they moved across the Durand Line with impunity as they got ready shelter from local tribes who made common cause with them against the Pakistani establishment.

The TTP tangle

Today, the TTP leadership is under Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud who fought alongside the Afghan Taliban and has now directed the ire of his specific faction against Pakistan. For ideological, tribal, geographical, and traditional reasons, the TTP is considered a part of the ‘own’ by the Afghan Taliban leadership, and any attack on the TTP does not sit well in Kabul. The fact that the Pakistani establishment has frequently crossed over to the Afghan border to hit the TTP ranks and encampments is an embarrassing compromise on the territorial sovereignty and pride of the Afghan Taliban Government, that further coalesces their patronage of TTP as a counterweight to Pakistani overreach and perceived indignities.

Pakistan has repeatedly asked Kabul to ‘control’ the TTP elements across the Afghan border, but the reaction of the Afghan Taliban has gone from denial of TTP existence to now refusing to act as a payback to Pakistani machinations. With at least 3 million Afghan Pashtun refugees (and about 40 million native Pashtuns) in Pakistan, it is a tricky situation to rile this tribalistic populace given to sacrosanct and time-honoured codes which thumb their nose at non-native authorities. The Pakistani establishment runs the risk enflaming passions in the ilaq ghiar (land beyond Pakistani laws), if it is sensed to be violating the sanctity of its societal codes and commitments.

The Afghan Taliban Government in Kabul too is made up of tribesmen who subscribe to these tribal codes of honour. It would be an unthinkable and unpardonable act of surrender to potentially push the TTP under the bus and hand them over to the non-native Pakistani establishment.

The Afghan Taliban know that the average Afghan on the street can withstand unbelievable levels of pain and deprivation, but not affront to its tribal sensibilities and codes that bestow legitimacy to rule. The Pakistanis are caught in their web of patented tactics of divide-and-rule in Afghanistan, through proxies. The history of Afghanistan repeats, and this time, Afghan tribal codes are backfiring on Pakistan itself.

(The writer is a former Lt Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and
Puducherry)