THE THISTLE AND THE DRONE

How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam

By Akbar Ahmed

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS

Copyright ©2013 Akbar Ahmed
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8157-2378-3

Contents

1 The Thistle and the Drone…………………………………………12 Waziristan: “The Most Dangerous Place in the World”………………….433 Bin Laden’s Dilemma: Balancing Tribal and Islamic Identity……………964 Musharraf’s Dilemma: Balancing Center and Periphery………………….1345 Obama’s Dilemma: Balancing Security and Human Rights…………………2556 How to Win the War on Terror: Stopping a Thousand Genocides Now……….300Appendix: Of Tears and Nightmares……………………………………361Notes…………………………………………………………….371Acknowledgments……………………………………………………403Index…………………………………………………………….407

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Thistle and the Drone

“The Jonas Brothers are here. They’re out there somewhere,” a smilingand confident President Barack Obama told the expectant and glittering audienceattending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington onMay 1, 2010. “Sasha and Malia are huge fans, but boys, don’t get any ideas. I havetwo words for you: ‘predator drones.’ You will never see it coming. You thinkI’m joking?”

Obama’s banter may have seemed tasteless, given that he had just beenawarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but this was not a Freudian slip. The presidentwas indicating he possessed Zeus-like power to hurl thunderbolts from the skyand obliterate anyone with impunity, even an American pop group. One reportsaid he had a “love” of drones, noting that by 2011 their use had accelerated exponentially.It was also revealed that Obama had a secret “kill list.” Having readSaint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, and their ideas of the “just war” and”natural law,” which promote doing good and avoiding evil, did not deter Obamafrom a routine of going down the list to select names and “nominate” them, touse the official euphemism, for assassination. I wondered whether the learnedselectors of the Nobel Peace Prize had begun to have second thoughts.

As its use increased, the drone became a symbol of America’s war on terror. Itsmain targets appeared to be Muslim tribal groups living in Afghanistan, Pakistan,Yemen, and Somalia. Incessant and concentrated strikes were directed at whatwas considered the “ground zero” of the war on terror, Waziristan, in the TribalAreas of Pakistan. There were also reports, however, of U.S. drones being usedagainst other Muslim tribal groups like the Kurds in Turkey and the Tausug inthe Philippines, and also by the United Kingdom against the Pukhtun tribes ofAfghanistan, by France in northern Mali against the Tuareg, and even by Israelin Gaza. These communities—some of the most impoverished and isolated inthe world, with identities that are centuries-old—had become the targets of thetwenty-first century’s most advanced kill technology.

The drone embodied the weaponry of globalization: high-tech in performance,sleek in appearance, and global in reach. It was mysterious, distant,deadly, and notoriously devoid of human presence. Its message of destructionresounded in its names: Predator and Reaper. For its Muslim targets, the UAV,or unmanned aerial vehicle, its official title, had an alliterative quality—it meantdeath, destruction, disinformation, deceit, and despair. Flying at 50,000 feetabove ground, and therefore out of sight of its intended victims, the drone couldhover overhead unblinkingly for twenty-four hours, with little escaping its scrutinybefore it struck. For a Muslim tribesman, this manner of combat not onlywas dishonorable but also smacked of sacrilege. By appropriating the powers ofGod through the drone, in its capacity to see and not be seen and deliver deathwithout warning, trial, or judgment, Americans were by definition blasphemous.

In the United States, however, the drone was increasingly viewed as an absolutelyvital weapon in fighting terrorism and keeping America safe. Support forit demonstrated patriotism, and opposition exposed one’s anti-Americanism.Thus the debate surrounding the drone rested on its merits as a precisely effectivekilling machine rather than the human or emotional costs it inflicted. Dronestrikes meant mass terror in entire societies across the world, yet little effort wasmade on the part of the perpetrators to calculate the political and psychologicalfallout, let alone assess the morality of public assassinations or the killing of innocentmen, women, and children. Even those who rushed to rescue drone victimswere considered legitimate targets of a follow-up strike. Nor did Americans seemconcerned that they were creating dangerous precedents for other countries.

Instead, boasting with the pride of a football coach, CIA director, and latersecretary of defense, Leon Panetta referred to the drones as “the only game intown.” Fifty-five members of Congress organized what was popularly known asthe Drone Caucus and received extensive funds for their campaigns from dronemanufacturers such as General Atomics and Lockheed Martin. The drones’enthusiastic public advocates even included “liberal” academics and self-avowed”hippies” such as philosophy professor Bradley Strawser of Monterey, California.Americans exulted in the fact that the drone freed Americans of any risk. It couldbe operated safely and neatly from newly constructed high-tech, air- conditionedoffices. Like any office worker in suit and tie, the “pilot” could complete work inhis office and then go home to take his family bowling or join them for a barbecuein the backyard. The drone was fast becoming as American as apple pie.

Typical of its propensity for excess in matters of security, by 2012 Americahad commissioned just under 20,000 drones, about half of which were in use.They were proliferating at an alarming rate, with police departments, internalsecurity agencies, and foreign governments placing orders. In September 2012Iran unveiled its own reconnaissance and attack drone with a range of over 2,000kilometers. The following month, France announced it was sending surveillancedrones to Mali to assist the government in fighting the Tuareg rebels in the north.In October 2012 the United Kingdom doubled its number of armed drones inAfghanistan with the purchase of five Reaper drones from the United States, tobe operated from a facility in the United Kingdom. It was estimated that by theend of the decade, some 30,000 U.S. drones would be patrolling American skiesalone. There was talk in the press of new and deadly varieties, including the nextgeneration of “nuclear- powered” drones. Despite public interest, drone operationswere deliberately obscured.

Ignoring the moral debate, drone operators are equally infatuated with theweapon and the sense of power it gives them. It leaves them “electrified” and”adrenalized”—flying a drone is said to be “almost like playing the computergame Civilization,” a “sci-fi” experience. A U.S. drone operator in New Mexicorevealed the extent to which individuals across the world can be observed intheir most private moments. “We watch people for months,” he said. “We seethem playing with their dogs or doing their laundry. We know their patterns likewe know our neighbors’ patterns. We even go to their funerals.” Another droneoperator spoke of watching people having sex at night through infrared cameras.The last statement, in particular, has to be read keeping in mind the importanceMuslim tribal peoples give to notions of modesty and privacy.

The victims are treated like insects: the military slang for a successful strike,when the victim is blown apart on the screen in a display of blood and gore, is”bug splat.” Muslim tribesmen were reduced to bugs or, in a Washington Posteditorial by David Ignatius, cobras to be killed at will. Any compromise withthe Taliban in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, officially designated as the FederallyAdministered Tribal Areas (FATA), is “like playing with a cobra,” he wrote. Anddo we “compromise” with cobras? Ignatius asked. “No, you kill a cobra.” Bugs,snakes, cockroaches, rats—such denigration of minorities has been heard before,and as recent history teaches, it never ends well for the abused people.

It is these tribal societies that form the subject of this book. Each is to beunderstood within its own cultural and historical context, with the main focus onfour major groups: the Pukhtun, Yemenis, Somalis, and Kurds. Like their ancestorsbefore them, these communities lived by an ancient code of honor embodiedin the behavior of elders and, over the centuries, orally transmitted fromgeneration to generation. According to anthropologists, these societies are organizedalong the principles of the segmentary lineage system, in which societiesare defined by clans linked by common descent. All four societies have becomeembroiled in different ways in America’s war on terror. The Pukhtun, Yemenis,and Somalis have been the main targets of American drone attacks, and there arereports of similar strikes against the Kurds. These various populations have beentraumatized not only by American missiles but also by national army attacks,suicide bombers, and tribal warfare, forcing millions to flee their homes to seekshelter elsewhere and live in destitute conditions as hapless refugees. “Every day,”say Muslim tribesmen, “is like 9/11 for us.”

These societies live in areas administered by central governments whose abilityto bomb, kidnap, humiliate, and rape tribal members at will has been enhancedby U.S. financial and military backing in the war on terror. For the tribes, this hasbeen the worst of fates, leaving them emasculated and helpless, with every moralboundary crossed, every social structure attacked. The wholesale breakdown oftheir tribal system is not unlike the implosion of a galaxy, with fragments shootingoff in unpredictable directions.

With their ancient practices, these tribal communities represent the very foundationsof human history. In the most profound sense, they allow all societies a glimpseof their origins. The disruption of these fragile societies is a high-stakes gamble forcivilization. Unless urgent and radical steps are taken to prevent this process andensure a modicum of stability, the future for these communities looks grim; theircodes of honor and revenge will lead to escalating global violence that, in the end,may well bring about the destruction of one of the oldest forms of human society.

The Thistle and the Drone

Just as the drone is an appropriate metaphor for the current age of globalization,the thistle captures the essence of tribal societies. It was aptly introduced byLeo Tolstoy in Hadji Murad, a fictionalized account of a Muslim tribal leader’sstruggles under the yoke of Imperial Russia. Tolstoy himself had witnessed thearmy’s attempts to subjugate the independent Muslim tribes of the Caucasus inthe nineteenth century and likened their courage, pride, and sense of egalitarianismto the prickly thistle. On a walk, while collecting a bouquet, the narrator ofHadji Murad leaned down “to pluck the flower. But this proved a very difficulttask. Not only did the stalk prick on every side—even through the handkerchiefI wrapped round my hand—but it was so tough that I had to struggle with itfor nearly five minutes, breaking the fibres one by one; and when I had at lastplucked it, the stalk was all frayed, and the flower itself no longer seemed so freshand beautiful.” At the end of his musing about the thistle, the narrator concludes:”But what energy and tenacity! With what determination it defended itself, andhow dearly it sold its life! … ‘What energy!’ I thought. ‘Man has conqueredeverything, and destroyed millions of plants, yet this one won’t submit.'”

One of the hardiest, most self-reliant of flowers, the thistle has a beauty all itsown, despite its lack of sparklingly bright colors, soft petals, or fragrance. Somefind its cactus-like air of defiance, clearly a warning to passersby, rather appealing.The tribal Scots were impressed enough to make it their national symbol.In it they saw something of their own character as a proud, hardy, and martialpeople ready to protect their independence with grit and determination.

Indeed, the Scottish clans are frequently compared with other thistle-liketribes such as the Pukhtun, Somali, Kurd, and Bedouin. Sir Walter Scott in theearly nineteenth century, for one, was “forcibly struck with the curious points ofparallelism between the manners of the Afghan tribes and those of the ancientHighland clans. They resembled these Oriental mountaineers in their feuds, intheir adoption of auxiliary tribes, in their laws, in their modes of conducting war,in their arms, and, in some respects, even in their dress.” The British administrator-scholarand former governor of the North-West Frontier Province ofIndia, Sir Olaf Caroe, who knew the Pukhtuns well, also compared them to theScots in his classic book The Pathans. More recently, Kurds holding trainingexercises in the hills and caves of Qandil in northern Iraq have tried to inspirerecruits with showings of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, a film about William Wallace,the legendary Scottish freedom fighter. In the film’s final scene, Wallace is torturedto death but refuses to compromise, instead shouting with his last breaththe one word tribesmen everywhere find closest to their hearts—”Freedom!”

Love of freedom, egalitarianism, a tribal lineage system defined by commonancestors and clans, a martial tradition, and a highly developed code of honorand revenge—these are the thistle-like characteristics of the tribal societies underdiscussion here. Moreover, as with the thistle, there is a clear correlation betweentheir prickliness, or toughness, and the level of force used by those who wish tosubdue these societies, as the Americans discovered after 9/11.

For all that these thistle-like tribes knew, the Americans who arrived in theirmidst could have been from Mars, a reaction not unlike that captured by the 2011Hollywood film Cowboys and Aliens, set in the Old West of the nineteenth century.In the opening scene, some Americans are attacked without provocation by alienswho use unknown technology to capture humans and fly them away for tortureand interrogation. To the tribesmen, the Americans who came from nowhere inflying machines no one had seen before and abruptly disappeared with their catchwere seen as aliens, with their abnormally large frames covered in strange padding,protruding wires, protective helmets, and peculiar weapons. These invaderscould see at night through their glasses, speak into those wires, and commanddeadly airstrikes while resting on the ground. They appeared to have few socialskills and neither offered nor received hospitality. Americans were loud, rude, andviolent and expressed no interest in the land or its people. The tribes thought thereasons the Americans gave for invading their regions were incomprehensible: forexample, 92 percent of the people surveyed in the Pukhtun-dominated areas ofKandahar and Helmand a decade after the war began in Afghanistan had neverheard of 9/11 and therefore had no idea of its significance for Americans.

The Americans, even the few who stopped to remember their own NativeAmerican tribes, considered the Muslim tribes they encountered after 9/11 aremnant of the past and did not quite know what to make of them. In theirdusty settlements—outside Kandahar, for instance—the Americans saw them asprimitive characters living in God-forsaken regions, some families still inhabitingcaves or mud huts. Their unsmiling men wore turbans and had long beards, thewomen were covered from head to toe and restricted to domestic chores, donkeysand camels were the main means of transport, and their code of behaviordemanded savage forms of revenge. Stories circulating of the brutal slaughter ofenemies or “honor killings” of women weighed heavy on many American minds.Most worrying of all, every one of these tribesmen was a potential al Qaeda sympathizerand therefore a terror suspect. In other words, the Muslim tribesmanwas at best a relic from another time and at worst an enemy to be eliminated.

These perceptions of each other are not mere cinematic or literary conjecture.They are confirmed by an authoritative American survey of Afghan and Americansoldiers in uniform that indicates a large chasm exists between the two andexplains the alarming increase in the number of Afghan soldiers attacking Americanand NATO forces. These incidents are described as “green on blue”—colorcodes that are accepted by modern Western armies to denote neutral forces (green)and friendly forces (blue). By August 2012 these attacks had become the foremostcause of death of NATO troops. The frequency, unpredictable nature, and implicationsof these attacks have had a devastating impact on the morale of internationalforces. “Green on blue” attacks can only be understood in the context ofhow Afghans and Americans view each other. Afghans thought this of Americans:

They always shout and yell “Mother Fucker!” They are crazy.

U.S. soldiers swear at us constantly, saying “Fuck You!”

Their arrogance sickens us.

We [the Afghan National Army, ANA] once loaded and charged our weaponsbecause we got tired of the U.S. Soldiers calling us “Mother Fuckers.”

We have been ordered not to react to their insults; but we very muchwant to.

For years U.S. military convoys sped through the streets of villages, runningover small children, while shouting profanities and throwing waterbottles at people.

U.S. soldiers kill many innocent civilians if attacked. They kill everyonearound.

They don’t care about civilian casualties.

They take photos of women even when we tell them not to.

They tried to search a woman. We aimed our guns at them to stop it.

They pee all over, right in front of civilians, including females.

They pee in the water, polluting it. We told them to stop but theywouldn’t listen.

Two U.S. Soldiers even defecated within public view.

[U.S. troops] constantly pass gas in front of ANSF [Afghan NationalSecurity Forces], in public, in front of elders.

They obviously were not raised right. What can we do with people likethat? They are disgusting. They are a very low class of people.

They don’t meet with the elders very often.

Often the U.S. lets itself get involved in personal feuds by believing anunreliable source. These people use the U.S. to destroy their personal enemies,not the insurgents.

Many ANSF respondents, the study found, “denigrated the personal integrityof U.S. Soldiers, and declared them to be cowards hiding behind their MRAPs[mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles], their close air support and overwhelmingfire power.” The Afghans thought that “U.S. Soldiers would not bebrave if they had to fight under the same operational conditions as the ANSF did,without body armor, with older weapons, light-skinned vehicles, poor logisticalsupport, and no dedicated air cover.”

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