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Peace Talk
Peace Talk
Afghanistan: Mountain Trails to Peace
Related to country: Afghanistan

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic



Afghanistan has become the object of tough talk in the midst of gentler feelers toward negotiations. A revived US air war with its casual concern for civilians has also begun. More troops, notably American, are in the pipeline. The familiar calls to build the Afghan military and police force, the routine mantra to every invasion, is heard as regularly as the call of the minaret among the foreign forces stationed there. And finally the hand wringing over the slow pace of development and its cousin corruption is always present.

Behind these cheerless calls for nation building is the shadowy ghost of Al Queda and the opium trade. What are we to make of this? How can people with a commitment to lowering the level of violence, advocate in any positive direction? In the short span of a century three great empire builders, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States and allies in succession have fallen short of their goals for victory over or within the Afghan nation’s multi-ethnic collection of 32 million peoples in seven primary ethnic groups. Should we choose to do so we may learn from these experiences.

Afghanistan, particularly its southern and eastern sector is made up of an interlocking quilt of Pashtun tribes, clans, villages, alliances and overlays of larger movements like the Taliban and other religious or economic connections. These groups have a long history of work together, vendettas, violence and complex formulas for dispute settlement that sometimes require generations to conclude. They know how to negotiate with each other and usually believe, like most people in the world that violence must be answered in kind - an eye for an eye. This cacophony of expectations, assumptions and cultural patterns are not the expertise of visiting soldiers, distantly trained development sages or the long arms of central governments. Even the Pakistani government has learned to tread lightly in these tribal areas and has been known to get burned from thoughtless policies. Who are these Pashtun people?

The Taliban is not the only supra tribal militant organization to appear among the Pashtun in the last century. Badshah Khan, a child of a Pashtun elder near Peshawar, Pakistan burst on the scene less than a century ago and organized his people into the100,000 person Khudai Khidmatgar (Servents of God), one of the largest nonviolent armies the world has known. This pan tribal movement that allied itself with Gandhi’s freedom work was highly disciplined and its members were often arrested, beaten, jailed and even killed by the British imperial forces. After the Salt Satyagraha (Salt March) organized in India in 1930, over 200 Khudai Khidmatgar were shot and killed by British Imperial forces in Peshawar. When people joined the Khudai Khidmatgar they took an oath.

“I am a Servant of God, and as God needs no service, serving His creation is serving Him,
I promise to serve humanity in the name of God.
I promise to refrain from violence and from taking revenge...
I promise to live a simple life, to practice virtue, and to refrain from evil.” (See below for complete oath)

Badshah Khan, the movement’s leader, led a long life. When he died in 1988 the civil war then raging in Afghanistan was temporarily suspended and two hundred thousand people gathered in Jalalabad, Afghanistan for his funeral. He was a strong independent minded leader who was fearless in struggle, spent years in prison under both British and Pakistani rule. His pan Pashtun movement kept the Pashtun people, long feared and on the fringe of the British Raj, knitted to the larger political and social developments of the region during the period of the independence struggle. Taliban leadership is more diffuse and reflects a second generation working through negotiations, pressure, force and traditional alliance to craft a coalition. Both built international alliances as part of the long term struggle for security.

Today the tribes of south and eastern Afghanistan want to be able to feed themselves and even improve their lives a little. They want to sell crops or other items to earn money. In general they know how to farm, organize irrigation and care for the land. They are no more inclined to give up their opium crops that bring a good price than other farmers around the world are about to give up high priced corn, or cattle which may also be unhealthy.

Of course their love affair with opium as a cash crop might be reconsidered if they were to receive the kind of subsidy that some farmers around the world receive to plant their more desirable crops. In order for any of this to happen they believe that they must have at least a semblance of peace. Experience has taught them, like it is preached elsewhere, that peace comes through force, strength and resistance to the silly outsiders, crazy with bullets, brawn and new trinkets for war. When the Taliban appear with an organization, a strategy and a vision consistent with at least some deeper religious values there is little wonder that support unfolds. But this support is not aimed at a permanent state of war. It is to achieve a state of peace. Like President Bush many Pashtun believe in peace through force.

All conflicts do eventually end. Some end when one side is able to overwhelmingly defeat the other side. This is most unlikely in Afghanistan where grievances are passed from generation to generation during which the international supporters always lose interest. Usually there are negotiated ends to armed conflicts. This occurs especially when one side or both just get tired of the battle and are collectively exhausted. Practitioners of conflict resolution and diplomacy believe that a resolution can happen faster when their science is applied in a sustained way over time often with the help of various confidence building measures.

Two of the many sides of the Pashtun character in struggle are revealed in the strategies of the Khudai Khidmatgar and the Taliban. We can say confidently that the Taliban will never be permanently defeated on the battlefield. Their predecessors, The Servants of God, were also never defeated by British bullets. Today if you travelled the bazaars of Peshawar and Afghanistan as I have, you will find the children of the Khudai Khidmatgar still bringing the fruits of nonviolent struggle to the people, evolving traditional methods of conflict resolution often worked out in village classrooms by village suras (councils). Without the threats from the air and enemy soldiers they know how to find a way across enemy lines to fashion thousands of local treaties. Like their ancestors going all the way back to Alexander the Great they may even discover a tentative tolerance of central governments if those governments learn the lessons of history - leave their culture to unfold as it will so that those hearts that were formed by the two strategies of active resistence can inform real solutions.

The opium problem can find its own demise based on the convictions of Pashtun tribal people. In the end their solution arising from the character of lived culture will be faster than the high tech chemical defoliants manufactured in distant factories. As for Al Queda, it would have fewer allies among Pashtun peoples if the US government and its allies were less insistent that their modern nation building vision was so right. The message of the US, Canadian, and NATO guns and air planes is that the tribal way will be destroyed. This is not a message that Pashtun people or people anywhere welcome. Nations do not get built by foreigners weighted down with heavy advice. Nations get built when the internal time is right.




The Oath of the Chad Khidmatgar (Servants of God)
I am a Servant of God, and as God needs no service, serving His creation is serving Him,
I promise to serve humanity in the name of God.
I promise to refrain from violence and from taking revenge.
I promise to forgive those who oppress me or treat me with cruelty.
I promise to refrain from taking part in feuds and quarrels and from creating enmity.
I promise to treat every Pasthun as my brother and friend.
I promise to refrain from antisocial customs and practices.
I promise to live a simple life, to practice virtue, and to refrain from evil.
I promise to practice good manners and good behavior and not to lead a life of idleness.
I promise to devote at least two hours a day to social work.
I put forth my name in honesty and truthfulness to become a true Servant of God.
I will sacrifice my wealth, life, and comfort for the liberty of my nation and people.
I will never be a party to factions, hatred, or jealousies with my people; and will side with the oppressed against the oppressor.
I will not become a member of any other rival organization, nor will I stand in an army.
I will faithfully obey all legitimate orders of all my officers all the time.
I will live in accordance with the principles of nonviolence.
I will serve all God's creatures alike; and my object shall be the attainment of the freedom of my country and my religion.
I will always see to it that I do what is right and good.
I will never desire any reward whatever for my service.
All my efforts shall be to please God, and not for any show or gain.



October 15, 2008 | 8:44 PM Comments  0 comments