“Every tribesman has a blood feud with his neighbor. Every man’s hand is against the other, and all are against the stranger.”
Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand [Pakistan] Field Force (1898)
“We come from the desert; our culture is for revenge.”
Amer al-Khuzaie, Iraqi Adviser on Reconciliation, New York Times, Sept. 3, 2014
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North Africa/Middle East-Political
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Debate over arming moderate Syrian rebels and bombing the Islamic State inside Syria has heated up, leaving a friend to question how to distinguish moderate from “immoderate” rebels and, in the case of Iraq and Syria, where one country ends and the other begins. All this is enough to make one’s hair hurt. But a couple of related examples from Africa and the Middle East might help explain why this situation is so vexing.
The first example concerns current political boundaries in these regions, practically all of which were drawn by European powers: in Africa beginning in 1884-5, and for the Middle East during World War I. In Europe’s international reckoning, both regions were political black holes ruled by no one. As such, these new political boundaries were, and remain, based solely on the Western concept of the 17th century Westphalian state: a sovereign entity where solid boundaries separate domestic from international arenas.
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https://en.wiktionary.org/
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Unfortunately, the colonized never heard of the Westphalian state and would have found it irrelevant in any case. For example, the boundaries—if one can even call them that—of many traditional African and Middle Eastern political entities states reflected a ruler’s power as it waxed in the capital and waned into the hinterlands, in the same way one color gradually blends into another on a color wheel. Think spheres of influence vs. solid lines on a map.
Of course few 19th-20th century European diplomats had any idea of the dynamics of African and Middle Eastern political systems (Lawrence of Arabia was a one-off, and a military guy to boot.) The result is that Western pseudo-states abound within such lines in the sand, with various groups in a winner-take-all scrum for colonial and foreign aid, jobs, roads, clinics, schools, wells, money and power. Today’s poster children for this plight? Mali, Nigeria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan and (of course) Iraq, just to name a few. States by “diplomatic courtesy,” one observer called such entities. Empire’s corpses that “stink as nothing else,” in the words of another.
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North Africa/Middle East-Geographic
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A lesser known but more important example also reflects the disconnect between political cultures of the west and these imperial holdings. This is most apparent along the the hot, arid ecozone that runs across Africa from the Mediterranean Sea south through the Sahel (the “shore” between the southern Sahara and the savanna), and from the Saudi Peninsula to Pakistan.
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Beja Nomads, NE Africa
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:
Bedscha.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Bedscha.jpg
Original uploader was Nikswieweg at de.wikipedia
(Original text : Klaus Polak, Pseudonym Nikswieweg)
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
via Wikimedia Commons
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For communities in these areas, movement is essential for survival, and the borders that matter are not European-drawn lines on a map. Rather they are control over kinship-based alliances that allow access to water, grazing and trade goods, and that change with the vagaries of rainfall patterns. These kin groups (nuclear and extended families, clans, lineages) separate during rainy seasons to graze their herds, and merge during dry seasons (not always with the same groups) around water holes, oases, and river beds. Fission and fusion are constant.
The upshot is that there’s no permanent boundary between internal (domestic) and external (foreign) affairs here, no “state” in the western concept. Even more, as the composition of these kin groups changes, so do their politics. Alliances among the groups’ segments, or branches, are situational and always shifting, and there is no permanent political “office” to regulate disputes. Since resources are scarce, intra- and inter-clan fighting is endemic. Raiding is a well-established activity. In these so-called stateless or segmentary societies, government is by arbitration, not command. No wonder the British, French and Italian colonial rulers found such groups difficult to deal with, let alone conquer and govern. The old saw “take me to your leader” doesn’t really work.
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Balanced Opposition
A dispute between P and his brother (not shown),
or between Q and his brother (not shown),
will remain in their respective nuclear families.
But if P quarrels with cousin
Q, their respective segments L and M
will fight, and so on up the line:
if the lineage B and C fight,
the members of each segment will become involved.
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Order in this complex, ever changing milieu is maintained by a balance of power among kin groups, what anthropologist Phil Salzman (Culture and Conflict in the Middle East, 2008) calls “balanced opposition.” Whatever the size of the foe, an equivalent group has one’s back. A desert proverb puts it thus: "I against my brother; I and my brother against my cousin; I and my brother and my cousin against the world.”
Two other values are embedded in this cultural DNA. The first is individual honor. One must be willing to fight and die for one’s kin, because one may need them to fight and die for you. The second is deterrence. One has to be willing to inflict violence; friend and foe must understand this. Perceptions of weakness only invite greater mayhem. If you draw a red line, make sure you’ll back it up; segmentary societies know full well the implications of Napoleon’s maxim “If you’re going to take Vienna, take Vienna.” And results matter: As Salzman puts it, “…attempts do not bring honor. Success brings honor. Winners gain honor; losers lose honor.”
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Bedouin Family, Oman
"Bedouin family-Wahiba Sands" by Tanenhaus from Brooklyn -
Bedouin family, Wahiba Sands. Licensed under Creative Commons
Attribution 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File
:Bedouin_family-Wahiba_Sands
.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Bedouin_family-Wahiba_Sands.jpg
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Such values still pervade sedentary and urban populations according to Salzman, and he cites compelling examples, such as the persistence of traditional desert life as the model to emulate; the memory of Islam’s “Golden Age” when nomads spearheaded Islam’s spread across North Africa and the Middle East; the continuation of lineage feuds in otherwise urbanized and modern areas. It helps to remember that the Sunni-Shia divide, which gets all the attention these days, originated between two lineages in Mecca.
Seen from this down-to-earth perspective, Islam is but an overlay to a far deeper and more intense dynamic. Religion is one—but only one—manifestation of culture. Tough physical environments shaped strict and complex codes of behavior in these regions, and those codes endure.
Given all this, it shouldn’t surprise that political artifice reigns supreme in “failed states” like Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Somalia. Yet, what really failed is the western concept of “state” as imposed on segmentary societies in Africa and the Middle East. “Tribe to nation” and “nation-building” are nice sounding but empty tropes. And so we have, and will continue to have, the likes of Boko Haram, Séléka, al Shabaab, al Qaeda, al Nusra, and ISIS filling this void of Western political ineptness and intellectual myopia.
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Oasis, Hoggar Mts, southern Algeria
"Hoggar8" by Bertrand Devouard ou Florence Devouard
Licensed under Creative CommonsShare Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
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Unfortunately, First World countries, buffered from the effects of such Third World environments, and glued to the paradigm of the sovereign state with its solid, international-domestic boundaries, just don’t get it. Moderate rebels? Immoderate rebels? States and borders? Good luck with all that. Rather: No permanent friends; no permanent enemies; just permanent interests. Now, there’s a concept everyone can understand.
And maybe everyone's hair will stop hurting, if just a bit.
