William S. McCallister is a retired military officer. While on active duty, Mr. McCallister served in various infantry and special operations assignments specializing in civil-military, psychological and information operations. He has worked extensively in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
AGORA
The Learning Curve
By Steven Pressfield | Published: July 16, 2009
By Mark Safranski—aka “Zenpundit”
Steven Pressfield invited me to do a guest post here at “Tribes” and give my assessment of the vigorous debate that greeted the entry of “It’s the Tribes, Stupid: War & Reality in Afghanistan” into the blogosphere. Or, at least the corner of the blogosphere that is concerned with COIN, military affairs, foreign policy, terrorism, Afghanistan and Iraq. The following opinion is my own and does not necessarily reflect that of Mr. Pressfield.
This “Tribes” blog attracted an unusual amount of attention for a new blog primarily for three reasons:
The blogger, Steven Pressfield, is a celebrity, with an established audience who enjoy his novels.
The blog enunciates a general theme or meta-concept—“Tribalism”—and applies it to a complex and politically controversial war. Moreover, Pressfield applied the concept of “tribalism” in a way that contradicts academic usage as articulated by many subject matter experts.
The blog, in a technical sense, is very well done with the video blogging episodes constituting a powerful, psychological “hook” in terms of attention economy incentives.
Unsurprisingly, fireworks ensued.
With any activity, there is a “learning curve” and while bloggers usually make their maiden efforts in virtual anonymity, Steve jumped in to the deep end of the pool and consequently, took some lumps with criticism that, fair or foul, was entirely in keeping with the rough and tumble nature of blogging. As with every blogger before him who raised a ruckus, Steve reflected in the aftermath and moved up the learning curve.
That was process, but there is also an issue of substance: the question of “Tribalism” itself.
There was enthusiastic praise for ‘Tribes”, naturally, but the criticism was equally as strong because Pressfield’s theme of tribalism as a general explanatory model is a powerfully attractive one. Too attractive, in the view of subject matter experts (SME) who drill down to a very granular level of detail and see all of the particularistic caveats or limitations of tribalism that exist in a given society. Tribalism among the ancient Gauls was not a carbon copy of 21st century Afghanistan, the artificial kinship network of the Yakuza or Shaka Zulu’s Impi formations. Yet, some similarities or congruencies remain even among such historically diverse examples because a tribe is a durable social network. In terms of resilience, a tribe may be the most adaptive and secure social structure of all.
Social Science SME’s are, in my experience, far more uncomfortable with explanations that cut across their disciplinary boundaries than are their counterparts in the hard sciences. Furthermore, arguments that are predicated on psychosocial-cultural premises, like Ruth Benedict’s Chrysanthemum and the Sword or Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind are especially suspect in today’s politically correct academic culture, not for their flaws (both works have serious flaws) but for their approach of constructing generalizations, which inevitably come laden with implied or explicit value-judgments. Because generalizations apply best at a panoramic level and become increasingly less relevant as you get down to the gritty details where other variables conflict or interact, SME seize on these caveats to justify throwing the baby out with the bathwater to avoid having to deal with the politically messy aspects that can easily derail academic careers.
Well, that’s not right, analytically speaking. The limitations, conflicts and contradictions are not usually categorical refutations of the proposed generalization, in this instance tribalism, but rather critically important feedback to understanding the complexity of the phenomena as it applies or fails to apply to a specific scenario. To reject either the exceptions and limitations or the generalization itself out of hand is to stop thinking about ideas and to begin chanting an ideology. Weighing the factors with as much intellectual honesty and analytical objectivity as you can muster, reorienting your views in light of empirical evidence and constructing a synthesis, is how you move up the learning curve.
Blogging is not a journal article or a book, formal and frozen in time. It should be a dynamic conversation, a learning curve for all involved with the understanding that all the participants engage and leave the conversation at different levels of understanding and views should change. One of Steve’s more controversial original points was the supremacy of the tribal mindset over Islamist radicalism or jihadist theology. There’s a serious conflict between the two, as the works of Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel have detailed, but there is also, both in societies and in individuals, degrees of coexistence. Very seldom is something as complex as a social system reducible to an either-or equation. Steve went on to address the juxtaposition of tribalism and radicalism in his recent post, an example of how the blogosphere can move as a conversation instead of as an echo chamber.
Therefore, I welcome Steven Pressfield and “Tribes” to the conversation without end that is the blogosphere, and look forward to watching his blog evolve over time. I don’t expect to agree with him all of the time or him with me, but I know that I will learn something from the give-and-take as we all try to move up the learning curve
Zenpundit, you seem like a well educated individual. You are able to use a lot of words…that don’t seem to move anywhere, at least for me. I maybe more pragmatic in my approach or thought process than you (I do not mean this as a criticism of either of us just an observation). I strive for workable concepts…things you can apply, that get results. I believe Steven Pressfield has presented a workable concept that can be applied to folks with “boots on the ground”. In fact most of what I read from these brave individuals compliments what Steven has presented. I agree with your statement that most social sciences are uncomfortabel with discipline crossover, hence they want to nit pick any working theory due to some generalization it my present or politically incorrect implications it may carry. However, when your life is in danger, how much politically correctness do you care about? You need a working theory to at least get you in the door with the headman then figure out his unique situation.
hi Wisner,
I can be wordy, point taken. Sometimes clear language is better so let me try again.
From reading your comment, I do not think that we disagree very much about what Steven Pressfield is doing here. I think it is aimed at people, especially service personnel, who have a need for a practical rather than an academic understanding of tribalism and trying to provide that information is a good thing. My points were basically:
A) More academic critics are coming at Steve’s blog at a level of detailed knowledge that is not digestible to someone reading about tribalism for the first time.
B) Blogospheric debate, when civil, helps all of us learn more and refine our ideas – it is a valuable exchange.
Wisner or Mark , what exactly is the theory Steven is proposing? What are its testable claims? What predictions does it make about Afghans’ behaviors?
At best, I understand this to be a descriptive model, and one that is hopelessly broad. When we start making the argument that we’ve all got a little tribesman in us, we should probably realize that we’ve hit on a category with weak explanatory power — it’s far too broad a category — and that “tribe” probably describes informal networks all humans create to deal with insecurity and uncertainty and that there is probably an inverse relationship between security in society outside the netowrk and the strength of bonds in these networks. The implication we should take away about Afghans isn’t that we are civilized like Alexander’s shining armies and that they are base tribes like ancient Bactrians, but instead that Afghans are people dealing with insecurity the way that we Westerners might — very similar, to name one example, to the way that Missourians responded to violence and insecurity during the Civil War.
I’m very keen on the need for concepts and theories that can help us understand and more intelligently interact with culturally diffferent societies. But we need to be sure that these concepts and theories have actual utility. I’ll avoid being too granular, but suffice it to say that Afghan society does not work in the stereotypically classical tribal sense. (Mark, this is where I think you’re being dead wrong. If we say in COIN theory that we should know the population, we shouldn’t stop halfway with a nice theory that doesn’t have sufficient predictive or explanatory power because of an aversion to academic particularism.) Coincidentally, some colleagues and I were recently trying to turn up academics who specialize in Afghanistan who say that tribe is the critical or even very useful factor for understanding how Afghan society organizes and behaves. We can’t find a single one. (That’s not to reinforce my point; I’d love examples if people have them.)
As a final comment,
Mark, so what? This is a huge pet peeve of mine. I know I fall into that category, but from where I sit, I see neither interest nor inclination to engage or respond to these criticisms.
I should clarify regarding the citations for which I am looking. I am interested in finding the tribal argument being put forth by Afghan specialists with field research experience — people who put together a research plan and can describe their methodology. Again, this is not a rhetorical request. I really want to know if I’m missing something.
The rhetorical side of this is that the academic opinion is unanimous that tribe should not be the central unit of social analysis in Afghanistan. It is irresponsible for the generalist to dismiss this opinion for being too granular or because the theory is “neat.” This literature is either right or wrong. It is not even being discussed here.
We were just made aware that a few people have had problems posting to the comments section. The following is being posted at the request of Zenpundit:
Hi Nathan,
Alexander’s armies had quite a few Persians…..but they were probably shiny, moreso than the Macedonians toward the end.
Good to have you here. For Steve’s readers who may not be familiar with Mr. Hamm or Registan, Nathan has been an important voice on Central Asian affairs in the blogosphere for years on a number of respected regional sites and has extensive experience living in the region.
Let me try to address your concerns in reverse order:
The latter statement has to be addressed by Steven Pressfield rather than me. On the other part, as a learning aspect, when SME are writing to the uninitiated, there’s often a too large assumption about what the laymen know and a tendency to bring an overloading amount of complexity to the discussion. I am guilty of this myself at times when teaching or writing about my research interests. Pressfield is probably not writing for a typical reader at Registan but his readers may become interested enough in Afghanistan or tribalism that they may start reading articles, books and sites like yours as a result. Where you see a static end-state, I see a gateway or a hook.
Richard Tapper has written on the negotiation of identity, with one of the major components being “qaum”, which if I recall has (or can have) a loose “tribal” meaning. I’m not qualified to rate experts in your field Nathan, but Nojumi describes the Parcham-Khalq Communists in Kabul thinking the tribes were important enough to warrant sending out the meddling Marxist officials to their villages ( incidentally, the Soviet advisers had cautioned the Taraki regime against it). Flipping through Ewans’ Afghanistan: A Short history, the tribes are present as at least a background political factor from Ahmed Shah Durrani to the fall of the Taliban. Here’s an analysis of warlordism and tribes in Afghanistan by Antonio Giustozzi and Noor Ullah (2006):
http://66.102.1.104/scholar?q=cache:_-hFB7AFp5gJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en
I suppose point in the argument hinges on what you mean by “critical” or “useful”. That Afghanistan (or any society) is far more complex than one variable, is something I’ll agree with but for an “unimportant” factor, tribal structures in Afghanistan seem to enjoy considerable longevity.
First I am not suggesting we stop halfway. I think that you and Josh fear that will happen with some readers. It will happen with some of them, you’re right. I’m more interested in those readers who are inspired to go further and keep learning.
I think also, on a methodological point regarding Social Science. “Predictive” is a high bar more suitable for hard science that can have appropriate experimental controls. For SS, I’d use “descriptive”, “speculative” and perhaps at best “probabilistic” analysis.
Tribes are a type of network structure and they can be artificial (social, legal, political) as well as being based on lineage. Most historical lineage tribes had provisions for adopting new members who were unrelated by means other than marriage ( though that was the most convenient device). Within sufficiently large tribes you can have both weak and strong ties or even other kinds of network structures present ( modular, hierarchy, scale-free etc). Network analysis is a useful tool for examining how people seek security and advantage within a group.
Being a long time advocate of horizontal thinking, I like broad comparisons and recognition of patterns and congruencies. They give us data that compartmentalizing, isolating and drilling down often does not ( those are useful tools as well. Granularity is a good thing -it is just not the only thing).
Hey Mark,
Thanks for the post. And I’m sympathetic to the idea of making some of these concepts—especially in a uniquely complex place like Afghanistan—understandable to normal people. Hell, I’m even a big fan of trying to craft large, cross-cutting theories onto the world.
That’s my problem here. There is substantive academic consensus that, though existent, tribe is not a useful analytical construct for Afghanistan. Which, to my discredit, I did not explain in my curiously unmentioned critiques of Pressfield’s project. No one would ever deny that there is such a thing as tribe in Afghanistan. But is it important?
Richard Tapper, one of the world’s foremost experts on tribalism, wrote specifically that “tribe” is not a useful analytical construct for understanding Afghanistan… in 1983. More recently, Berndt Glatzer in 2001 (but before 9/11!) wrote that tribe is only one of the many salient identities Afghans call upon depending on the context. He broke down most important identities to local ones, which he took pains to distinguish from the tribal identity.
In your own criticism of Pressfield’s fundamental thesis, you noted that he discounts religion as an organizing factor. Pressfied responded by saying religion is tribal. By that definition, all social groupings are tribal—as Nathan said, it becomes defined so broadly as to be meaningless.
Here’s where I scratch my head: rather than discussing how people reacted to the tenets of this theory, including those pesky experts with their “facts” and “details,” something which can be done, especially if you’re talking about the bloggy learing curve, you’ve decided to write that actual experts on the topic are wrong to note that the theory does not have explanatory power.
As a man who prides himself on such things, how does that wash?
Zenpundit, points taken. About point A… I guess we should make a distinction between pure academic exercise (which in any field tends to depart from practical, measurable results over time) and a workable, applicable, practical, measurable over time, evolving with more experience on the ground, “generalization”.
I find it interesting that academic opinion and expert analysis have found that tribalism should not be the central unit in social analysis in Afghanistan. Yet, in Pakistan the areas ungovernable by central authority because of the strong tribal order are called the Tribal Areas, Tribal Frontier etc… So, while in Pakistan its called tribalism yet when they cross the Hindu Kush it is something else…according to the experts. That is academic exercise at its finest!
Wisner, without using the words “tribe,” “tribal,” or “tribalism,” please describe the social and political structure of FATA and NWFP. This is the issue I’m trying to get at. We might as well say that Pashtun society is “hooflehopplist.” Without a clear defintion of the phenomenon, it’s just as useless. Also, please point me in the direction of “strong tribal order” in FATA or NWFP. There are plenty of places in which one finds plenty of insularity, conservatism, and hostility toward outside rule, but from where I sit, there seems to be as much intra-tribal disunity and factionalism as in Afghanistan.
Those areas on the other side of the Durand Line are governed, though differently and far more indirectly than the rest of Pakistan. The government of Pakistan adopted the British imperial approach to governance per the Frontier Crime Regulation. One of the results of the British and Pakistani approach to governance of these areas is the institutionalization and formalization of certain aspects of Pakistani Pashtun tribal society. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the last century, and especially the last several decades, these same aspects of Afghan Pashtun tribal society have been under assault. So, yes, there are some differences. State-tribe interactions and different histories matter.
I’ll clarify a little more. Tribalism — a very specific form of it — is an important part of the social fabric in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is not, however, the alpha or omega, let alone both.
Nathan, your use of acronym and academic muscle flexing is impressive, sincerely. Yet it falls into the category of academic exercise or at least argument for agument’s sake (which isnt’ bad if both parties know what they are engaged in). Where does all of this get you? How does your definition further the sfety, security and effectiveness of our troops? Does it help the young Marine or seasoned SF vet get in the door to the headman in the village? Will it help the American at home understand the cultural and societal differences and difficulties we face? What I feel Steven Pressfield has done is provide a basic, working context from which to understand the Afghan (I hope this doesn’t offend our host). Once you have this in place you can then build your specific context to the specific area of operation. After all isn’t this what the experts would do if they were doing field research or were embedded with our forces? I think you will have to break down your second paragraph more because I think you may have just made my point (I could be wrong so feel free to clarify).
Again, I think there is a difference in where we are both coming from and how we are interpreting Steven’s blog/work. I’m taking a more utilitarian approach.
Wisner, my concern is entirely about utility. Mischaracterization of the situation leads directly to bad policy. I want to know what tribe actually means because it in turn defines how our Soldiers and Marines engage the Afghan population. The problem I’m seeing throughout these posts is that the goalposts move; tribe ends up explaining anything we want it to explain.
Do tribes have structure and leaders? If so, then we need to find out who they are so that we can engage them. To answer the question for Afghanistan, they usually don’t. At the local level there are influential men and a lot of the time, very influential men who are concealed from outsiders. In other areas, influence and authority resides with religious figures. Either way, local influentials open the door to engaging the population. We take a shortcut and go to someone akin to a sheikh to strike a deal with a large tribe. Instead, we have to go village by village.
If you want a competing understanding of Afghans, I propose it to be that Afghans organize locally and have local concerns regardless of ethnicity, language, or sect.
Wisener, that’s like complaining using “VA” for “Virginia” is elitist and academic. It’s a silly argument.
And Nathan’s point matters tremendously. If we cannot describe Afghan culture or social organization, then we cannot reliably influence or persuade it to win the war. It is a fundamental step: the Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield. If your intel, the context on which you craft plans, is wrong, then your plans are wrong, or worse still: counterproductive.
The point both Nathan and I have been trying to explain is that reducing everything to “tribe” does not accurately describe Afghanistan or the tribal areas of Pakistan. Thus, making plans that affect the soldier based on a mischaracterization will lead to everyone—”tribesman” and solider alike—being worse off, with significantly more dead that would otherwise be necessary.
Let’s start with this:
That even assumes there is a headman in a village (and that there are discrete communities called “villages”). Our point is that a proper understanding of Afghanistan demonstrates these are the wrong questions to ask because they don’t actually tell you anything.
Oh, and the Hindu Kush, despite what Robert Kaplan says, are not between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Again, the part about knowing what you’re discussing before you start discussing it. Rather than writing off detailed knowledge of these places as being “academic,” “theoretical” or “heavily bogged in the details,” there COULD be an effort to actually understand them. As it is right now, complaining that expertise is hard does not actually help anyone.
“Does it help the young Marine or seasoned SF vet get in the door to the headman in the village?”
Bu that’s the whole point of the controversy, the good/bad tribe theory doesn’t significantly help understand what’s happening on the ground. We’re not helping a young marine by giving him broad theories devoid of practical use. Really, how does this help a marine?