A Tale of Two Warriors

[Michin Khel]

Very good article , i agree with it....but was this part necessary ,

To remove himself from under the paighur, or ridicule, and regain his place in the tribe, he first gouged out his mother’s eyes then systematically killed every fighting age male from his cousin’s qawm before taking his seat as the ruler of the tribe until he died an elderly man.

He gouged his mother eyes? It doesnt make any sense....why he would do it?, once you are stained with an act of cowardice in your life, you cant wash it by gouging your mother eyes. It wont elevate your position in qaum, rather you would be remember as one who gauged his mother eyes.....this barbarism doesnt exist among pakhtuns and your are portraying false image of pakhtuns....

And this is 21st century, no competition between members of tribe takes place for chieftain-ship. Fighting between cousins erupt over other matters e.g dispute over land. And malaki is not a seat that you acquire after death match that you claimed in your article. Malaks and khans among pakhtuns are nasli, that is son of a malak becomes malak. Malak doesnt control tribe but he has wealth, lands and respect. An ordinary person in a tribe can earn same or more respect than malak by his personal achievements..... Hakimullah mehsud was a driver and he wields more power among mehsuds than any malak in waziristan....

[Wowra]

Michen Khel,

Whether that act made sense or not, it occurred in the time of Amir Abdur Rahman among the Safi in Kunar. His son, Safiullah Wakil Khan (former MP 1970s) is the one who recanted the story and why to David B. Edwards in Peshawar shortly after the occupation. I used it to illustrate the story from the same time frame as the American Civil War to create a parallel, not misrepresent any one side. So essentially, it was necessary to show the parallel between a Warrior culture such as deep tribal Pashtuns and a culture that happens to fight wars (like the Americans). And I further went on to explain that this was an "extreme instance." He gouged out his mother's eyes, not to get out from under paighur, but to punish his mother for placing him in a position to be under paighur by stealing his opportunity to satisfy the blood fued. He killed his cousins to re-establish his family's honor and satisfy the badal.

I'm glad you read it and even more pleased you liked it. I hope that clears up any sort of misconception. I was working with a word limit on that one, so perhaps I should have expanded more to prevent misconceptions, brother.

Wrora -
Da kalay napoyhiggum - daga cheerta day? I really only know the villages along the river, mugar lug lug kalay nizda Asadabad. Kom qawm ye?

[Wowra]

But its fantastic you are so convicted in your beliefs.
Intensive research on combat stress/ PTSD began after Vietnam so I think there was a reson for it. US government still funds researches on this. McCain's case also contributed to that. Honestly, I don't think that your government would spend money on a non-existent disease.
But of course you can believe what you want.
I didn't say it doesn't exist; however, some psychologists believe it doesn't exist. That's the bane of soft sciences - there is no "right" answer. You can argue with whatever you like, though. As for American investment - Clinton invested 1m dollars into research for the mating patterns of houseflies - pretty sure they'll invest in anything haha

At no point in this essay was it intended to reflect Kabul - take your psychology to Chak, Wardak or Gowardesh, Kunar and let me know how you fair. I don't think the stretched and bedazzled jeans of Kabul necessarily aptly reflect tribal society.
Well, if C-PTSD was observed in Kabul, I can guess that situation is distant areas is similar or worse. When I have more time I will post in the kitabtoon results of another study, more representative for tribal society.

(Another issue is to what extent Western methodology can be properly applied to other, so different community).
You can guess - however, Weierstall et. al maintains that you shouldn't find anything. And my time spent all over rural Afghanistan, I never met a guy that exhibited any sort of classic PTSD symptoms. Both of the characters in the article are based on the behavior of real people. Nothing you argue can change that, I'm afraid. And the reasons that I have found as to why they behaved in such a manner can also not be altered as they were my observations of real people. Like I said, this isn't empirical data - but the story of how veterans from each side internalize the fight and my observations of why.

Sorry I missed this post when the thread went to 2 pages! Hopefully this fills any gaps.

[Michin Khel]

Wowra, this story is a special, unique and extreme case thats why it made into book of son of amir abdul rehman..........

[Wowra]

I am unable to fully grasp your pashto but i think you are asking about my village and Qaum, is'nt?.....i belong to marwat tribe, machin khel is its branch...it has 7 villages in lakki marwat district....We are descendants of michin baba who a niazi pashtun.

Zma Pakhto haraptcha! Bakhena gwarhum - I was actually talking to my friend from earlier. We had a conversation going on about Kunar. Sorry for the confusion!

[Wowra]

Wowra, this story is a special, unique and extreme case thats why it made into book of son of amir abdul rehman..........

I agree - it is a crazy story, but it was a crazy time, and it shows the divergence of characteristics in the two cultures.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Gentlemen,

I just published this article over at the Small Wars Journal think tank illustrating the different way battle is internalized between American Soldiers and the insurgents they fight. Check it out and let me know what y'all think.

A Tale of Two Warriors: Finding Belongingness after Battle | Small Wars Journal

Wowra Khan

This is an excellent case report style approach to begin the discussion of how war affects both us and the other (from whichever vantage point one takes on being "us.").

Question:
Are the Qari and Mr. Harris real or symbolic?

The strengths are the following:
- Two contrasting cases of the average fighter on both sides is detailed.
- The notion of moral imperitive is nimbly danced around but never openly stated.
- Awareness of PTSD is encouraged
- The references to similar conflicts and the DSM criteria shows the depth and breath the author seeks to acquire on his way to expertise.

The questions I have are the following:
- Qari Abdullah and Sargeant Harris, can we assume they are representative figures, or even within the rural strata are there variations?
- Some say, and I think Abbassina tries to convey this as well, that the traditional design Elphinstone sort of popularized of the paramount khan (e.g. Zaman Khan Sadozai and Mir Wais and Musa Dunki etc etc) gave way long ago to the strongest man with the most guns. That is, the two may not eclipse.
- For instance, a traditonal Barakzai near paramount khan is Haji Hamidullah of Naway, but the father of Gul Agha Sherzai acquired a lot of guns and power... and then of course there are the multiple Kabul based branches of the Muhammadzai. Perhaps what Luffy means as a Marwat is that if we were to trace the results of even Marwat or Kandahar tribal jirgas and their elected leaders (poor record keeping makes this difficult) - whoever would be considered the current hereditary potential leader doesnt have as much clout as one would think. Or for that matter - let us take up the idea that if Zahir Shah's son or Haji Hamidullah gave an order to Gul Agha - the heirarchial nature of the tribe that is discussed in academic circles doesnt really impact Gul Agha's response unless its in some big meeting in Kandahar and covers his interests.
- Yet I do think that your point is very important regarding all politics being local. Many villages vote wholesale on their collective familial interests even if government officials switch the name of their party.
- Do you think that the moral imperitive is the underlying issue regarding PTSD responses? What I mean is that Bush and Co tried immensely to create a moral imperitive. Ann Coulter and other jingoists did the same. For example, when Pat Tillman died she did not realize he had begun to question the moral imperitive of the Afghan conflict and she tried to paint him as the virtuous spartan warrior dawning his armor to defend his soil abroad.

Yet we both know that there is a mass of confusion here regarding what the moral imperitive of all our conflicts are these days. The Veitcong for instance may not have been a tribal society and Ho Chi broke down the traditional elite clan structures and communized the Veitnemese right? Yet these folks had the moral imperitive on their side and their outcomes may also mirror Qari's.

If say Sargeant Harris were fighting on his own soil against an outsider power and a narrative emerged where he was defending his bill of rights and way of life against a true threat internally - would his outcomes be different? Would he mirror Qari and take refuge in the local family and baptist faith of his brethren?

Also, is it the sensitivity and specificity of the diagnosis that needs to be refined. Its somewhat easier to quantify a lab test level of normality and alter a tests sensitivity and specificity... but a psychiatric diagnosis is a bit of a different beast.

Humor me though. So cardiologists are devising criteria that is beginning to recognize that the way we treat different ethnicities for their risk factors may set up different criteria. For instance a westerner eating a western diet laced with carbs and fat may have a different adaptation and response versus a south and central asian who deposit their adipose centrally and have thinner limbs peripherally. So the waist circumference and BMI proposed by WHO and other organizations are different for these groups. Do PTSD criteria need to be refined in the same way?

So perhaps if we compare Luffy as an indigenous Marwat or Toramana as an indigenous Yusufzai to the local who get swept up in the conflict - would that PTSD manifested by those there perhaps manifest differently to a certain degree?

I refer you to Abdul Salam Zaeef's book published by Columbia. There is chapter where he gives good detail of an encounter on the road with a child soldier of a Kandahar militia that stopped a bus and robbed it violently. Would this child's rearing and response to violence be a manifestation of sorts?

Or are out approaches sensitive and specific enough to pick up on symptoms in a society where psychiatric ailments are not seen as real diseases? My personal anguishing interactions treating refugees is that when we discuss certain illnesses they have told me that they stopped taking medications because their aunts told them a Pir informed them the disease state had nothing to do with organic causes but was a piryaan possessing the person. It took months of interaction and gaining a comfort level with that refugee to get that out of him after he began to see that I viewed him through a western prism, including his disease state.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

The commentary under the article is very good. The people reading it are picking up on the nuances. We are privileged to have someone of your caliber weighing in on PF. Over time, if you meet other authors such as yourself it would be great to have an authors section here at PF where Admin and others could try and publish, in the style of nonintervention.com, some primary work.

I know that you guys work in the enviroment of publish or perish that derives academia and journal impact factor matters - but maybe such an effort will centralize online Pashtun interactions and offer access to primary data you guys collect that will bypass these journals in the way that Aaron Schwartz and others have wanted to do.

In my personal opinion, the idea of an editorial board of some academic journal altering your primary work can lead to major controversial articles being censored. And maybe PF can be the outlet for that. We already see that the Associated Press, when it publishes, gets permission from the military brass and intelligence agencies - something that Sy Hersh and reporters of his era would view as utterly contemptible.

Maybe a guest author's section would host a monthly contributer like Miraki, yourself, and even controversial figures to all sides of the conflict.

Perhaps we can think up authors whose work we would like to read and invite them to contribute a short piece each month or every 2 months or so.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Maybe the thread could be called "The Afghan War Journal" and would start as a subsection here and then springboard off eventually into its own individual thing.

The whole pitch would be that these folks get to furnish their own unadulterated opinionated view without an editorial board demanding revisions and reviews.

Folks off the top of my head that might provide interesting insights and might be accessible:
Matthew Hoh
Hekmat Karzai
Miraki
Professor Marwat
Former Zahir Shah era ambassador Ayyubi Popalzai
More work from Matt Snow
Fida Yunus

There could be a brief question and answer section that would allow 1 on 1 interaction with these authors (though admittedly some of these questions would require prescreening but should be controversial so that the readership would understand truth is more important than butt kissing).

[Michin Khel]

We should also invite farhat taj anderson lol

[Michin Khel]

Barakzai what are your opinions about saleem safi?

[BarakzaiAbdali]

We should also invite farhat taj anderson lol

Lol so long as she uses her full name as she does in Europe I think it would be interesting.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Barakzai what are your opinions about saleem safi?

Not familiar with him, any sample articles you suggest?

[Michin Khel]

Not familiar with him, any sample articles you suggest?

All stories / articles Saleem Safi

[Michin Khel]

Afghan probabilities and Pakistan - Saleem Safi