Since 2002, the Afghan borderland has presented a resurgent political and security challenge to the Pakistani and Afghan states. Aside from the near permanent state of inter-tribal siege that perennially characterises much of the borderland, the last nine years have seen a pan-tribal insurgency against elements of the Pakistani state in the borderland on a greater scale than the insurgency of the early 1960s,11 and greater in scope than the uprising of the Faqir of Ipi prior to and during Partition.12 This pan-tribal insurgency has been lent a global jihadist character brought to it by transnational jihadist elements engaged in the insurgency in Afghanistan against US led NATO forces and their Afghan allies.
Prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, tribal insurgency in the borderland was a function of tribal militarism as a root component of pashtunwali. This type of insurgency typically erupted suddenly, was short lived, and usually dissipated within weeks as clan based fissures soon eroded any element of tribal unity. Exceptions to this have been the millennial uprisings of the ‘Pathan revolt’ of 1896-1899,13 and the less extensive pan-Pashtun insurgency of the
11 In 1961, diplomatic relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan were broken off as Pakistan alleged Afghan involvement in a series of tribal raids across the Durand Line. Afghan missions at Peshawar and Quetta were closed. See Durrani, Mohibullah and Khan, Ashra Pak-Afghan Relations: Historic Mirror, Qurtuba University Peshawar, 2009 p. 16 (unpublished).
12 The Faqir of Ipi‟s uprising against the British colonial presence in the North-West Frontier was centred around North Waziristan. At its peak it attracted around 1000 tribesmen, drawing a force of 40,000 troops to counter it. See Hauner, Milan „One Man Against the Empire: The Faqir of Ipi and the British in Central Asia on the Eve of and during the Second World War‟ Journal of Contemporary History, Vol.16 No.1 (Jan. 1981) pp. 183-212.
13 Most accounts place the scale of the 1896-99 tribal uprising at around 30,000 insurgents at its peak in 1897. For a contemporary analysis of the revolt from the British military perspective see: Mills, Woosnam H. The Pathan Revolt in North-West India (1897) Sang-e-Meel, Lahore 1997. See also Johnson, Robert A. The 1897 Revolt and Tirah Valley Operations from the Pashtun Perspective, Tribal Analysis Centre, Williamsburg VA, 2009.
early 1960s fomented by the Afghan government.14 All of these were insurgencies against the presence of the state in tribal zai, and were termed a jihad by tribal leaders. Even in these examples, the notion of jihad in the Afghan borderland was a largely local affair, a view afforded by the myopic world view of the tribesman whose existence revolved around khpal, kor, khel.15
The 1980s saw the expansion of that element of jihadism, almost exclusively limited to the Karlanri tribes of FATA in the preceding decades, to the entire Pashtun belt and beyond in the form of the anti-Soviet jihad. Having begun as an extension of the ongoing struggle between the predominantly rural and conservative Ghilzai against the progressive and more urban Durrani who had largely associated with pro-Soviet interventionists,16 the Afghan insurgency of the 1970’s expanded by 1980 into a pan-tribal jihad against the officially atheist Soviet Union and the Moscow-aligned government in Kabul. US and Pakistani materiél assistance soon saw the development of a jihadist front17 that brought together Ghilzai, Durrani, Karlanri and Tajik elements in Afghanistan.18 Incorporating Arab elements that fought for global jihadist objectives, the mujahideen as they came to be known were forged in the Afghan borderland in a crucible of pan-Islamist ideology and American materiél assistance. This period saw the Afghan borderland take on a strategic salience of global import, and the Afghan borderlanders become prime agents of transport, accommodation, intelligence and insurgency as the seven agencies of FATA became the staging ground for a barely covert, decade long operation to firstly reverse the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and then to uproot any remaining Soviet influence.19
14 Durrani, Mohibullah and Khan, Ashra Pak-Afghan Relations: Historic Mirror, Qurtuba University Peshawar, 2009 p. 16 (unpublished).
15 Pashto expression translated as „one‟s own, one‟s homestead, one‟s clan‟ in reference to the defensive priorities of a khan or malik.
16 Interview with Professor Shaista Wahab, University of Nebraska Omaha, 18th December 2008.
Professor Wahab provided an analysis of how the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan patterns of tribal alliance and opposition.
17 It should be noted that competition between the elements of the jihad front, known as the Ittehad-e- Islami da Mujahideen Afghanistan or the Islamic Unified Mujahideen of Afghanistan, laid the foundations for what became the inter-mujahideen civil war between 1992-96.
18 For a comprehensive treatment of the anti-Soviet insurgency see; Alam Mohammed Tauqir The Betrayal of Afghanistan: An analysis of the Afghan Resistance against Soviet Invasion University of Peshawar and Hans Seidel Foundation, Peshawar 2008.
19 Operation Cyclone was a decade long CIA program to arm, train and financially support what came to be known as the Afghan Mujahideen between 1979 and 1989. The longest such operation of its kind, it grew to over $600 million in annual assistance, the bulk of which went to Pakistan. For detailed analysis see: Bergen, Peter Holy War Inc. Free Press, New York 2001; Rashid, Ahmed Taliban Pan Macmillan, London 2001.
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Following the Soviet withdrawal and the subsequent failure of the mujahideen government in Kabul by 1992, the Karlanri tribes of the borderland continued to function as a source of support for the newly emergent Taliban who were relatively successful in subduing opposition to their rise to power in Afghanistan in the mid 1990s.20 Incorporating many elements of the Ghilzai who had fought with the mujahideen in the 1980s, the Taliban continued to receive support via FATA, including tribal manpower and Pakistani materiél assistance.21 By 1997, it became apparent that the Taliban were facing severe resistance from the Northern Alliance, particularly the Tajik militias under Ahmed Shah Masoud in the Panjsher Valley. Despite having taken Kabul in 1996, to gain full control of Afghanistan the Taliban would need to attract significant Tajik and Uzbek elements away from the Northern Alliance. In order to do this, the Taliban had to demonstrate a degree of autonomy from Islamabad, the regime’s principal benefactor. Between 1994 and 1998, Afghanistan was a virtual protectorate of Pakistan and, despite the Islamist nature of the Taliban, an acceptable policy permutation for the US.22 But the Taliban’s increasing distance from Pakistan between 1999 and 2000, and increasingly anti-US rhetoric, forced Pakistan to initiate a policy shift away from the Taliban in Afghanistan by early 2001,23 a direction cemented by General Musharraf in September 2001.24
In the borderland, however, tribesmen had been enjoying an unprecedented period of trans-FATA traffic in trade, population movement and the illicit trade in opiates and weapons.
Pakistan’s pro-Taliban policy of the 1990’s had brought a ‘boom’ period to the borderland economy.25 The mass movement across the borderland of the refugee diaspora, and re-emergence of pan-tribal militarism that had been a core component of the anti-Soviet insurgency, had led by the mid 1990s to the re-emergence of the borderland as the historical gateway to Afghanistan, controlled by the tribes that controlled the passes through the Suleiman Range and Safed Koh. Hence, Karlanri tribal militarism had gradually given way to tribal entrepreneurialsm as FATA came to benefit disproportionately from the unique
20 For a comprehensive analysis of the emergence of the Taliban see: Nojumi, Neamatollah The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan Palgrave, New York 2002.
21 Ibid. pp.120-5, 130-3.
22 In 1997, a senior delegation of Taliban was hosted by Unocal at the company‟s headquarters in Texas. At the time, both US company Unocal and Argentine firm Bridas were competing for the rights to build a trans-Afghan pipeline. See: „Taleban to Texas for pipeline talks‟3rd December, 1997;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/west_asia/36735.stm . Accessed 9th October, 2010.
23 Interview with Brigadier A 17th March 2004, undisclosed location.
24 On September 19th 2001, Musharraf gave an address to the Pakistani nation outlining his decision to support US action against the Taliban as a matter of strategic compulsion for Pakistan. Address heard by author on Radio Pakistan, September 19th, 2001 Islamabad.
25 Interview with Muhammad Awan, customs and excise official, Peshawar , 16th August 2008.
constitutional provisions afforded it by the Pakistani state on account of its strategic importance.26
All this changed with the decision by Pakistan to abandon the Taliban in late 2001, a decision that had been looming for over a year.27 With the deployment of the Pakistani military in FATA in early 2002 for the first time since Pakistan’s emergence, the tribal autonomy of the Karlanri tribes of FATA had been severely compromised. The initial response of the tribesmen was to join the Taliban opposition to the US led invasion of Afghanistan.28 Reeling from the failure of that opposition, the tribesmen focused their militancy by 2003 upon preserving the autonomy of their respective tribal zai against encroachment by the US allied Pakistani military.
Hence, since late 2003, the Afghan borderland has seen an intensifying insurgency against the presence of the Pakistani military in FATA. This insurgency has expanded from two initial nodes, one in northern South Waziristan and the other around Bajaur, to include the whole of FATA. Beyond FATA, the insurgency and the associated tribal autonomy from the state has extended to Dir, Malakand, Swat, Kohat, Dera Ismail Khan, and the environs of Peshawar.
Contiguous areas on the Afghan side of the border which are tribally populated have also been subsumed by the greater tribal autonomy that is the associated result of the insurgency.
This dynamic of tribal militancy in the borderland against the state is not unique to the Afghan borderland. The case of the Kurds, for instance, offers parallels as well as notable differences with the example of the Afghan borderland. The Bedouin experience in Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia is another area of particular similarity with the experience of the Afghan borderland, again with notable differences. The principal commonality, however, between the Kurdish, Bedouin and Pashtun experience is that they represent tribal polities, transected by international borders that configure postcolonial states, with whom these tribal polities compete for survival, legitimacy and influence. A natural place for this study to proceed from, therefore, is the discourse addressing postcolonialism and borderlands.
26 Article 247 (3) of the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan establishes that FATA lies outside the legislative authority of Parliament (Majlis ash-Shura). This extends to immunity from right of the government to exact taxation. See: „The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Section XII, Chapter 3, Article 247.
27 Interview with Brigadier A , Islamabad, 17th December, 2001.
28 In October 2001, „several thousand‟ armed tribesmen moved from northern FATA into Afghanistan under the leadership of Sufi Muhammad‟s TNSM. See: Dawn International „TNSM men leave for Afghanistan today‟; 25th October, 2001 http://www.dawn.com/2001/10/25/nat26.htm. Accessed 11th October, 2010.
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