It's the Tribes (merged thread)

[Tom Odom]

I hear ya guys.

But I would also say that even if his ideas as Marc points out are outdated 19th century mishmash, certain points that he makes are valid and are not completely without value, those being on exporting ideas on freedom amd democracy and freedom (as if those are necessarily the same). The same holds true with points on different mental frameworks.

Finally I would point out that in offering what is a simplified (grossly) view of a complex subject, he does offer a counterview to equally (and grossly) simplified view of the world that has gained a great following among those seeking such views. If someone who believes that an Iraqi's (or Afghan's) view of freedom (or democracy) is the same as an American reads this little piece and at least pauses to think for 15 seconds, the author has done that reader a service.

Best


Tom

[marct]

Hi Tom,

I hope the fishing was good!

But I would also say that even if his ideas as Marc points out are outdated 19th century mishmash, certain points that he makes are valid and are not completely without value, those being on exporting ideas on freedom amd democracy and freedom (as if those are necessarily the same). The same holds true with pints on different metla frameworks.

Oh, I have no difficulty with that part of what he said . Afterall, "freedom" may just mean the freedom to carry out a longstanding feud without some twit intervening.

Finally I would point out that in offering what is a simplified (grossly) view of a complex subject, he does offer a counterview to equally (and grossly) simplified view of the world that has gained a great following among those seeking such views. If someone who believes that an Iraqi's (or Afghan's) view of freedom (or democracy) is the same as an American reads this little piece and at least pauses to think for 15 seconds, the author has done that reader a service.

You know, most of the time I would agree with you on that. I think the reason I don't in the current piece is that the 15 second reader is also likely to pick up on terms such as "savage", "primitive" and "crazy". What really bugs me is that he is constructing tribesmen as "unknowable" and setting "them" up in permanent opposition to "us". I'm just waiting for the "Axis of Savagery" comments to start appearing...

Marc

[Tom Odom]

You know, most of the time I would agree with you on that. I think the reason I don't in the current piece is that the 15 second reader is also likely to pick up on terms such as "savage", "primitive" and "crazy". What really bugs me is that he is constructing tribesmen as "unknowable" and setting "them" up in permanent opposition to "us". I'm just waiting for the "Axis of Savagery" comments to start appearing...

Marc

Oh I know and I understand your concerns; simplicity holds those risks whoever is using it for whatever point they are trying to make.

no fishing. just hunting Bambi. early season though and I still hope to have venison in the freezer before too long. it's that "savage" side of me

best

Tom

[marct]

Oh I know and I understand your concerns; simplicity holds those risks whoever is using it for whatever point they are trying to make.

True, I just wish that he wasn't so - oooh what's the word I'm looking for? Hmm - "stupid" just about covers it <wry grin>. Seriously, thought, he could have made the same general pints and then proceeded to show just how Alexander won the Afghan tribes over to him. He was also confusing the magazine states of Sumeria (modern souther Iraq) with the tribal groups. Now, if he had talked about the Sogdians....

no fishing. just hunting Bambi. early season though and I still hope to have venison in the freezer before too long. it's that "savage" side of me

Hey, roast loin of Bambi is one of my favorite meals! Nothin' "savage" about it - just, hmm, how do my eco-friendly friends put it? Oh, yeah - just an "appropriate and ecologically sound use of resources" 'sides that, ever since my wife got forced off the road by one of them, I've been enaged in a feud with the species (hey, not a "tribal" one!!!! Perish the thought - just good old highland Scot's "inter-familial rivalry").

Now there's a thought - "how to win [triball] friends and influence people with a little shared hunting"! Love it!

Marc

[Stu-6]

My question for those who would find fault with this piece’s over simplification is do you know of a better work on the subject of a similar length? Obviously complex ideas have been simplified but if they weren’t any discussion of the effects of tribalism on the current conflict would be hundreds of pages in length.

[marct]

My question for those who would find fault with this piece’s over simplification is do you know of a better work on the subject of a similar length? Obviously complex ideas have been simplified but if they weren’t any discussion of the effects of tribalism on the current conflict would be hundreds of pages in length.

Hi Stu,

Well, the Sahlins book Tribesmen is pretty short and there is another in the same series call Pastoralists that would also work. You could read either one of them in a couple of hours with a six-pack .

I do agree that complex ideas need to be simplified depending on the audience, but there is a real difference between simplification and drek. Probably the best model of what I think would work for most people involvced in Afghanistan and/or Iraq would be something similar to the old quicky ethnographies produced by the US Army Special Warfare School at Ft. Bragg. I believe there was an even simpler version produced for the various Pacific Islander groups during WWII in comic book form, but I've never seen any of them.

Marc

[Stu-6]

Hi Stu,

Well, the Sahlins book Tribesmen is pretty short and there is another in the same series call Pastoralists that would also work. You could read either one of them in a couple of hours with a six-pack .

Well Amazon had a copy of Tribesman for $1.95 so it is on order,the six-pack is chilling in the fridge.

[Jedburgh]

My question for those who would find fault with this piece’s over simplification is do you know of a better work on the subject of a similar length? Obviously complex ideas have been simplified but if they weren’t any discussion of the effects of tribalism on the current conflict would be hundreds of pages in length.

Well, not a "similar length", but certainly not hundreds of pages either...

The article jcustis posted the link to is well worth the read, as is this other material...

Earlier SWC threads:

Wars Less About Ideas Than Extreme Tribalism

An Adaptive Insurgency: Confronting Adversary Networks in Iraq

3rd Generation Gangs and the Iraqi Insurgency

SSI: Tribal Alliances: Ways, Means, and Ends to Successful Strategy

USIP: Who Are the Insurgents? Sunni Arab Rebels in Iraq

Blog Excerpts: Iraq's tribal society: A state within a state , 4 parts

[jcustis]

http://www.comw.org/warreport/fulltext/03alexander.pdf

[marct]

http://www.comw.org/warreport/fulltext/03alexander.pdf

Kudos for posting this link!

I just finished reading it carefully, and I'll tell you right now that I will be using it as a text / example in any course I teach on applied Anthropology. While it misses some of the bells and whistles so beloved by those of us in the academy (mainly those 5-sylable, Greek derived words that no one understands), it really does capture the basic structures and their operations.

The only additions I would really like to see are in two areas:

1. What are the specific Rituals of Reconciliation?
2. How does "historical memory" operate in these tribes?

On the specific rituals question, this is important not only for ethnographic detail but, also, for both theoretical and pragmatic reasons. On the theoretical side, any ritual of reconcilliation is a structural repair mechanism evolved to maintain a homeostatic condition withing a cultural group (cf. Max Gluckman (The Utility of the Equilibrium Model in the Study of Social Change, American Anthropologist, 70(2), April, 1968; Custom and Conflict in Africa; Lewis Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict). Or, translating this into plain English, all conflict resolution models serve to justify and reinforce a particular political and social model, and you have to use the approriate one for the culture you are operating in. On the pragmatic side, what are you going to tell the troops (and administrators!) to do in order to try and strat one of them?

The second question is more tricky but, actually, gets at the heart of the larger GWOT. How a culture constructs historical memory, both the mechanisms of that construction and the content, influences how current events will be interpreted. As one example, consider how the "Crusader" construction has been used agains both the forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now let's flip it around and ask "How will the Coalition forces be constructed in the future?" as a result of current actions, and how will this influence future interpretations?

Well, enough of commenting on this paper. It is excellent, and I can't recommend it highly enough. The three authors get a fictive "A+" and a hearty "Well done, guys!".

And now, I have to go off and sing for three hours...

Marc

[Jedburgh]

Marc,

This paper addresses conflict resolution as influenced by Islam at the local level. I believe you will find the portion on Sulh and Musalaha of interest (beginning on page 11 of the pdf file).

Islamic Mediation Techniques for Middle East Conflicts

Of course, there are significant variations in conflict resolution/mediation rituals and traditions between ethnic groups (i.e. Arabs vs Kurds) as well as regionally (i.e. the Levant vs the Gulf), that go along with the clearer rural-urban divide.

Roger Fisher and his work in the field of negotiation and conflict resolution was mentioned in another thread. I've found his work, and other material from the Harvard Program on Negotiation to be useful in training HUMINT'ers (with some modification for both integration with HUMINT collection methodology and application in the target culture). His book Getting to Yes, has been very influential in the field, and certainly has broad application. Prior to my retirement, I had some success in modifying and integrating aspects of Fisher and Urtel's Getting Ready to Negotiate with conventional interrogation planning and preparation methodology.

As has been stated many times and in several threads on this board, the problem with many in both the civilian and military arenas is lack of understanding when it comes to application. They just don't "get it". In my perspective "getting it" means far more than simply understanding the realities of the current conflict and the effective application of lessons learned - it means having the breadth of understanding necessary to implement valuable insights from multidisciplinary inputs with necessary adaptations for current context. Where the aforementioned lack of understanding enters into the picture is when inputs from fields outside the military - such as conflict resolution and reconciliation methodologies - are simply taken as a blunt whole without any real attempt to integrate and modify application in accordance with local realities and elements of existing methodologies that are proven to work. "Reinventing the wheel" and "throwing out the baby with the bath water" are more than just trite sayings.

...all conflict resolution models serve to justify and reinforce a particular political and social model, and you have to use the approriate one for the culture you are operating in. On the pragmatic side, what are you going to tell the troops (and administrators!) to do in order to try and strat one of them?

What usually happens is that the troops & administrators are given a simple block of instruction on local culture and traditions (often repeatedly), but lacking any real insight or instruction into how to effectively synchronize culture and tradition with their operational methodologies.

I believe its a people issue - we don't have nearly enough people with the appropriate background and experience to leverage that sort of training and the scale required and those that we do have are fully engaged in doing other things.

Well, so much for Saturday morning rambling. Time for pancakes.

[marct]

Marc,

This paper addresses conflict resolution as influenced by Islam at the local level. I believe you will find the portion on Sulh and Musalaha of interest (beginning on page 11 of the pdf file).

Islamic Mediation Techniques for Middle East Conflicts

A very interesting article, and you're right, the parts on sulh an Musalaha were very interesting. Thanks for posting it. It was especially apropos, since I had just finished re-reading the first lecture in Gluckman's Custom and Conflict in Africa called "The Peace of the Feud".

As has been stated many times and in several threads on this board, the problem with many in both the civilian and military arenas is lack of understanding when it comes to application. They just don't "get it". In my perspective "getting it" means far more than simply understanding the realities of the current conflict and the effective application of lessons learned - it means having the breadth of understanding necessary to implement valuable insights from multidisciplinary inputs with necessary adaptations for current context. Where the aforementioned lack of understanding enters into the picture is when inputs from fields outside the military - such as conflict resolution and reconciliation methodologies - are simply taken as a blunt whole without any real attempt to integrate and modify application in accordance with local realities and elements of existing methodologies that are proven to work. "Reinventing the wheel" and "throwing out the baby with the bath water" are more than just trite sayings.

What usually happens is that the troops & administrators are given a simple block of instruction on local culture and traditions (often repeatedly), but lacking any real insight or instruction into how to effectively synchronize culture and tradition with their operational methodologies.

I think that this goes back to the culture of the military. In general, it makes a lot of sense to create a "book" and then get people to "play by the book". This is esecially important in building militaries in cultures that otherwise have "individualism" as a central value, and has been a hallmark of armies since the Napoleonic era (okay, William the Silent if you will).

The problem with this, in this type of fight, is that all the training expectations, the "patterns of expected behaviour" are rote-learning - read this manual, follow these 6 points, use the following steps in the proscribed order, etc. Do you think it is a lack of insight or a lack of institutional support for insight? (I'd bet on the latter, myself, but I could easily be wrong).

I believe its a people issue - we don't have nearly enough people with the appropriate background and experience to leverage that sort of training and the scale required and those that we do have are fully engaged in doing other things.

It could well be, I honestly don't know. Even if it is mainly a "people issue", I suspect that there are lots of institutional factors stopping it as well. For example, if a Sulh ritual is considered leagally binding as the Irani article points out (by tribal law if nothing else), then what happens if a unit that engages in one rotates out and is replaced by another unit?

Things to think about but, for me at least, not today <wry grin>. I just finished singing three hours of Baroque and Rennaisance music and I now get to spend the rest of my weekend building a web site - Oh Joy! Oh bliss! Oh rupture!!!

Marc