HOW RADICAL ISLAM IS EXPLOITING TRIBAL ETHICS IN THE KHYBER PASS
August 12, 2010
Pashtunwali is the code of ethics used by the Pashtuns – Afghan natives who have practiced Sunni Islam – over a thousand years in the isolated valleys of Hindu Kush mountains around the Khyber Pass. Today, Islam has become a convenient vehicle for tribal customs that predate the arrival of Mohammad and his message.
While all other religions follow the ’to forgive is divine’ principle, the Pashtunwali stresses revenge. Because it is not derived from a religious system the way Christianity, Sikhism and Judaism are, the emphasis on revenge persists from generation to generation. Hatred never ends. Another aspect of the Pashtunwali, the honor due to women, has resulted in overprotective policies that keeps them out of the educational system and workplace. See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/world/asia/05afghan.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
The geographical isolation of the Khyber Pass area has been responsible for an absence of new ideas in this traditional society. The Frontier province of the Pashtuns was renamed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in the spring of 2010 to honor their aspirations, but it is still bypassed by the modern world.
When the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the Americans protecting their Cold War stronghold in Central Asia, assisted the Pakistanis in ejecting the Russians. Radical Islam of Wahabism, was encouraged in the region both to woo the Pashtuns into fighting for the American/Pakistani alliance and to being Saudi money into the conflict. Once fundamentalist Wahabism took hold, this radical ideology was embraced by students from the Taliban. The Al Qaeda, which uses terrorist tactics to break the alleged Christian-Jewish conspiracy to destroy Islam, was founded in 1989. It’s also funded by the Saudis.
Once the Russians were thrown out, the Americans withdrew from Pakistan. In the three years before September 11, 2001 Pakistan received only $9 million in American military aid. In the subsequent three years after 2001, the aid increased to $4.2 billion. The terrorist measures of the Taliban and Al Qaeda have reinforced the ancient practices of Pashtunwali cruelty: holding grudges and physical violence.
For centuries, Muslim military success was aided by with great technical and scientific knowledge. The then Muslim armies had the most up-to-date weapons. But today Muslim activists in Pakistan do not have access to the latest weapons. They advance their political ideas with primitive methods like bombing and kidnapping, and used guns that are thirty years old. In my opinion, if there is any hope for Muslims of the world to regain their past glory by stepping into a modern frame of mind, it is necessary for them to interpret the Koran more pragmatically. Islamic scholarship, like their military technology, has also stagnated in recent centuries. A little pragmatism there might help radical Islam step out of the past into the present.
It’s not fair to blame Islam alone for the violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. On the contrary, Muslims like the Sufis, for instance, promote love through songs of devotion to God Almighty. This standard feature of major religions, from Judaism to Sikhism, is anathema to the Sunnis all over. Their stark religious practices and rigid fundamentalism undermine the honor of the traditional Pashtunwali way of life. Young Pashtun men are recruited by foreigners to fight for extreme religious ideals in the name of their traditional code of behavior. The traditional tribal society of the Pashtuns in the Khyber Pass is being exploited by hard-line Islam, which is not fair.
To North Americans, a turban identifies a Muslim terrorist. They have not yet learned how to “read” a turban, the way residents of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Punjab in northern India do. To these people, the turban a person wears identifies his religion, his region and the language he speaks.
A native of Afghanistan who has settled in the area around the Khyber Pass, called a Pashtun in American English, wears a turban with one end left loose so that it can be wound around his face for concealment or protection. His turban style identifies him to his fellow citizens in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. And there are many different ethnic groups in this area, including Afghan refugees, Persian-speaking Hazaras from the Shia branch of Islam and mountain-top farmers who speak Dardic languages.
Last month, the ethnically diverse area, called North West Frontier Province for more than a century, was renamed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa by an amendment to the Pakistani constitution.
This inhospitable land around the Khyber Pass and the Hindu Kush mountain range has been inhabited for millennia by Pashtun tribesmen. Its extreme temperatures and rocky soil forced the Pashtuns to live by plunder rather than agriculture. They charged tolls, robbed travelers passing through the mountain passes to get to India.
And whenever the Pashtuns became desperate for resources, they would invade India and take home, jewels, livestock, women and children as slaves, weapons and gold.
Today, the area has become a breeding ground for a growing Islamic militancy that threatens the stability of Pakistan – a U.S. ally in the struggle against terrorism. Instability here threatens NATO’s strategic Khyber Pass lifeline to Afghanistan, where 37,000 U.S. troops are trying to contain the Taliban insurgency.
In the map below, you can see how this area around north India, Pakistan and Afghanistan has poorly defined borders. A similar map of America would show the individual states marked by the straight lines of a surveyor or the clear boundaries of rivers. The random boundaries you see here are the result of people settling with their tribes that shared a language and a religion over thousands of years. And since ancient times, local politics has been closely intertwined with tribal loyalty. Identity has been a core issue for centuries among the Pashtuns – who make up eighty percent of this area’s population, and fifteen percent of Pakistan’s total population.
The north India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan region.
The Pashtuns, having ruled over North India for nearly a thousand years, were finally thrown out by the Sikhs by the end of eighteenth century. Since then, they have seen their region succumb to turmoil through wars and intervention by international powers.
A young Pashtun girl
Their tribal ethos, the Pashtunwali, (see the chart below) has kept them from participating fully in modern diplomacy. Instead, it has further entrenched Islamic fundamentalism among them.
Eager to be recognized politically, the Pashtuns have been urging the Pakistani government to designate them as a geographical area – as Balochistan is for Balochis, as Sind is for Sindhis and as Punjab for Punjabis – for a hundred years.
The amendment to the Pakistani constitution that established the new name of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, an ancient expression meaning “grazing land of the Pashtuns at the Khyber Pass” was deemed less controversial than Pashtunistan, which had been proposed for decades as the name for this territory. Using an older variant of the name was meant to confer dignity upon an area that even now is constantly at war – with rival factions of the Pashtun tribe, with other ethnic groups and now with international troops.
PASHTUNWALI PRINCIPLES OF BEHAVIOR
| QUALITY | DEFINITION |
| Melmastia (hospitality) | Profound respect to all visitors |
| Nanawatai (asylum) | Protection must be given to a person against his/her enemies |
| Badal (justice) | Take revenge against the wrong-doer for injustices committed yesterday or a thousand years ago |
| Tureh (bravery) | A Pashtun must defend his land |
| Sabat (loyalty) | Loyalty must be paid to one’s family, friends, and tribe members |
| Imandari (rightousness) | Pashtuns must behave respectfully towards all creation, including people, animals and the environment around them |
| Isteqamat (steadfastness) | Trust in God in keeping with Islamic idea of belief in only one god |
| Ghayrat (self-honor ) | Pashtuns must respect themselves and others |
| Namus (honor of women) | A Pashtun must protect women from vocal and physical harm[] |
Don't Mistake Me for a Muslim 