The Thistle and the Drone: How America's War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam

by Akbar Ahmed

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the United States declared war on terrorism. More than ten years later, the results are decidedly mixed. Here world-renowned author, diplomat, and scholar Akbar Ahmed reveals an important yet largely ignored result of this war: in many nations it has exacerbated the already broken relationship between central governments and the largely rural Muslim tribal societies on the peripheries of both Muslim and non-Muslim nations. The center and the periphery are engaged in a mutually destructive civil war across the globe, a conflict that has been intensified by the war on terror.

Conflicts between governments and tribal societies predate the war on terror in many regions, from South Asia to the Middle East to North Africa, pitting those in the centers of power against those who live in the outlying provinces. Akbar Ahmed's unique study demonstrates that this conflict between the center and the periphery has entered a new and dangerous stage with U.S. involvement after 9/11 and the deployment of drones, in the hunt for al Qaeda, threatening the very existence of many tribal societies.

American firepower and its vast anti-terror network have turned the war on terror into a global war on tribal Islam. And too often the victims are innocent children at school, women in their homes, workers simply trying to earn a living, and worshipers in their mosques. Battered by military attacks or drone strikes one day and suicide bombers the next, the tribes bemoan, "Every day is like 9/11 for us."

In The Thistle and the Drone, the third volume in Ahmed's groundbreaking trilogy examining relations between America and the Muslim world, the author draws on forty case studies representing the global span of Islam to demonstrate how the U.S. has become involved directly or indirectly in each of these societies. The study provides the social and historical context necessary to understand how both central governments and tribal societies have become embroiled in America's war. Beginning with Waziristan and expanding to societies in Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere, Ahmed offers a fresh approach to the conflicts studied and presents an unprecedented paradigm for understanding and winning the war on terror.

The Thistle and the Drone was the 2013 Foreword Reviews Gold winner for Political Science.

Genres: Politics, War, History, Nonfiction, Middle East, Islam, Religion

424 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Akbar Salahuddin Ahmed, is a Pakistani-American academic, author, poet, playwright, filmmaker and former diplomat. He currently holds the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies and is Professor of International Relations at the American University in Washington, D.C.Immediately prior, he taught at Princeton University as served as a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He also taught at Harvard University and was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Anthropology. Ahmed was the First Chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. In 2004 Ahmed was named District of Columbia Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. A former Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland, Ahmed was a member of the Civil Service of Pakistan and served as Political Agent in South Waziristan Agency and Commissioner in Baluchistan. He also served as the Iqbal Fellow (Chair of Pakistan Studies) at the University of Cambridge. An anthropologist and scholar of Islam. He completed his MA at Cambridge University and received his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He has been called "the world's leading authority on contemporary Islam" by the BBC.

Reviews

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ahmed starts out reframing the way the West views the Muslim world. Instead of looking at interactions in the world as a “clash of civilizations,” he posits that we should be looking at the Muslim diaspora as a set of tribal communities in conflict with their central governments. While some may think this is accepted thought already, it certainly was not when we went into Iraq in 1990, nor in 2003. Ahmed makes a compelling case with examples extending from Albania and Turkey to China and Indonesia, highlighting different models of organization and center-periphery relationships that apply throughout this huge area.

Once the framing is stated, it almost seems obvious, which is perhaps the strongest argument for reading this book. Ahmed goes further to explain how the West has exacerbated regional tensions by inserting themselves into this conflict under the aegis of “the war on terror,” and turned the fight into a global affair against westernization and globalization as defined by Tom Friedman. The unintentional “bug splat” of drone strikes, or the civilian deaths coincident with targeted killings of terrorists, means tribal leaders have a moral responsibility to fight back, aligning with whomever has the strength and willingness to see that fight through. As long as the drone strikes and collateral damage continues, the fight will continue.

The author uses the metaphor of the drone to represent Western technology and power and points out that the thistle captures the essence of tribal societies. The thistle is prickly, hardy, and very hard to uproot. It has an unusual beauty, and it roots in poor soil. Long after all is destroyed, the thistle will abound. Ahmed tells us that the West was used in some cases by “central governments who cynically and ruthlessly exploited the war on terror to pursue their own agenda against the periphery.” We know it is true.

”It is in the interest of the United States to understand, in all the tribal societies with which it is engaged, the people, the leadership, history, culture, their relationship with the center, their social structures, and the role Islam plays in their lives, These issues are, in face, the subject matter of anthropology…Without this understanding, the war on terror will not end in any kind of recognizable victory as current military actions and policies are only exacerbating the conflict."

Ahmed has met Presidents Bush and Obama in his role as academic and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

"Bush’s administration, I felt, was spectacularly wrong because it was imposing a prefabricated frame of different cultures and societies…Obama’s administration was spectacularly unsure…Both administrations were driven by issues almost wholly on a political level, neglecting the moral and social dimensions and their implications."

Ahmed’s insights may be one of the reasons President Obama did not bomb Syria when the conflict began there. But much damage had been and continues to be done to the relationship tribal groups have with the United States. When the U.S. government put human and civil rights to the service of security, any admiration the U.S. had garnered began to erode.

Ahmed is a huge fan of America’s founding fathers, and the U.S. Constitution. He points out that America itself has wrestled with the center-periphery issue itself in dealing with Native American Indians. Benjamin Franklin wrote that Europeans could learn a great deal from tribal societies: when a Native American elder was offered the opportunity to have several of his tribe educated at a local Virginia college, the elder thanked the government and replied:

"Our Ideas of this Kind of Education happen not to be the same with yours…Several of our Young People were formerly brought up at the Colleges of the Northern Provinces; they were instructed in all your Sciences; but when they came back to us, they were bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in the Woods, unable to bear either Cold or Hunger, knew neither how to build a Cabin, take a Deer, or kill an Enemy, spoke our Language imperfectly; were therefore neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, or Counsellors; they were totally good for nothing… however…if the Gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their Sons, we will take great Care of their Education, instruct them in all we know, and make Men of them."

The rise of “instant terror experts” that arose in and around the think tanks sprinkling Washington after 9/11 fueled a distorted view of Islam and seeded Islamophobia throughout the U.S., mistakenly defining Islam as the enemy in the global war on terror. Ahmed gives the U.S. Army credit for gaining a greater understanding of the importance of tribal culture as the war in Afghanistan dragged on, but the strategy of working with tribes as a partner came too late: “The United States did not have the time, the resources, or the temperament to create an effective and neutral tribal administration…”

The solution, according to Ahmed, is using the tribal structure and code to repair “mutations into violence:”

"If the tribal code promotes the notion of revenge, then it just as surely advocates the resolution of conflict through a council of elders based on justice and tradition…While the state must express its ideas of nationhood by providing education and other benefits to its peoples, the leaders of the periphery need to encourage their followers to participate in the processes of change and take advantage of them. The state must understand that its components have different customs and traditions, and it needs to acknowledge them, granting communities on the periphery the full rights and privileges enjoyed by its other citizens…however good the intentions on both sides, there is still the matter of how the each sees the other…each side must appreciate the perception the other side has of it.

"...People on periphery have been traumatized beyond imagination in recent years…They face widespread famine and disease and are voiceless and friendless in a hostile world…They have been robbed of their dignity and honor…Yet the world seems indifferent to their suffering and is barely aware of its scale…The test is to see a common humanity in the suffering of others.”

Ahmed is an academic and he writes fulsomely, with many examples and vignettes. The argument is strong and logical enough to be stated simply in a few pages, though, and we quickly recognize the value of this recast of the conflict in which we are embroiled. I really appreciate his taking the time to write his thesis and I come away with a fresh perspective and appreciation of conflict and amity in our world.

This book is Part III of a trilogy examining relations between America and the Muslim world. It is self-contained, however, individuals may find it worthwhile to look at Ahmed's previous work, Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization and Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam. Colonel David Kilcullen, author of The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One blurbs praise on the back: "...required reading..."

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this was a great book. It completely changed the way I thought about 9/11 and the War on Terror.

Ahmed's thesis is that contemporary violence (in and around Muslim tribal countries, nations, and territories) stems from a mutation of tribal structures and codes in response to heavy handed (to put lightly) policy directed at terrorists. While the mutations in tribal societies have many impetuses, Ahmed focuses mainly on the War on Terror, starting with 9/11, to show how unmitigated state violence in pursuit of terrorist organizations is subjecting the peripheral people to imperial-like violence and corruption, leaving these once autonomous tribes in destitution and structural ruin. He uses the metaphor of the "Center" encroaching on and subjecting the "Peripheries" through brute force to explicate the similar tactics that states use in trying to dominate the tribes and ethnic (Muslim) minorities.

Ahmed gives us a deep and important history of the Muslim world as it various across Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. Knowing this history of violence helps us to form a deeper conceptual understanding as to why brute force may be fueling more terrorism rather than stopping it. When growing up in the United States, it's easy to paint he Muslim world with a single brush and think of them as largely homogenous, pious societies, although Ahmed invariably shows that this is an ignorant frame of thought, fitting perfectly into the American War on Terror metanarrative. For example, he nuances to us the effects that the rise of the Taliban and the Afghan mujaheddin had on Afghan tribal societies such as Waziristan. The Taliban and the mujaheddin were funded and revered by the United States in the 1980s as freedom fighters, as they battled the Soviet Invaders. As the war drew in more and more tribes and people from different ethic backgrounds, these new ideas of religious war and new definitions of Islam began to take place. He documents how the local tribes such as the Pukhtuns that once welcomed them in through their strong codes of hospitality and had a hard time expelling them afterwards. The US's and West's lack of investment after the war to help build lasting democratic institutions and schools also left the tribes of Waziristan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other sovereign territories at the mercy of these new groups as they embedded themselves into the region, undoubtedly changing the tribal structures and codes of honor.

Ahmed describes the breakdown of tribal structure and code of honor as being an integral motivation for extremist violence. He shows time and time again (and from personal experience) that these tribal people have specific social structures and ways of dealing with conflict. He describes Tribal Islam in a slightly ambiguous way: "The tribesman defines himself by his Islamic faith as much as by blood, clan and loyalty to the code" (27). The tribesman is dominated by the notion of "honor" and "tribal lineage." Ahmed makes the distinction that some practices in some Muslim tribal regions are purely pre-islamic and not to be affiliated with Islam such as honor killing and female circumcision, revenge killings, etc. Further, he also documents that many of the rights that women are denied in these tribal societies are at odds with the teachings of Islam such as the right to inherit property, initiate divorce proceedings, and give their permission before marriage. These tribal structures vary across regions; however, Ahmed shows the Waziristan model as an example as to how to work with the tribes to accomplish things. The Wazir model "posits three distinct, overlapping and in some ways mutually interdependent, though often in opposition, sources of authority: (1) the tribal leader, or malik; (2)the religious leader, or mullah, and (3)the political agent representing the central government" (49). By navigating the tribal structures, honoring the tribal codes, and treating the tribesman with dignity, one can usually accomplish a diplomatic solution to problems; however, with the use of drones, brute force, and the indiscriminate nature of killing "terrorists" and civilians, the tribal code is not being honored and the tribes are not being treated with dignity. This lack of understanding, honor, and dignity is causing the tribes to react with violent revenge on a massive scale. With the vast asymmetry in weapons technology today, the use of suicide bombers has risen as a desperate attempt to enact revenge for the widespread regional destabilization and indiscriminate, extrajudicial killings by Western powers and many Muslim state governments.

The fourth chapter (and most important in my view) gives a non-stop history of genocides and violence taking place in and around Muslim regions. He covers a broad history that I will not even try to explain here, but it is a must read. It is almost 100 pages of violence that one doesn't learn in school history books. Understanding the brutal history of the Center's violent attempted rule of its peripheries is integral to building a historical perspective for today's War on Terror and Drone War.

All in all, Ahmed's books puts the US War on Terror in perspective by adding the much needed nuance that is largely left out of our national and global western discourse. He illuminates how the growing quagmire in the Middle East is heading towards more chaos as alliances become contradictory, the power of global economic aid becomes an incentive for countries to wrongly persecute their peripheries under a false guise of "counter-terrorism," torture becomes normalized, hundreds of thousands of civilians are murdered, and entire ethnic populations are slowly eradicated.

Ahmed writes:

"Yet for anyone who doubts the tenacity, ferocity, courage, and moral purpose of Americans at war, they need to look at them in action in the last century, at Iwo Jima, for example, and in landing on the beachhead at Normandy—where ground was won through hand-to-hand, inch-by-inch fighting, with enormous casualties. During the Second World War the Americans led the allies in a global conflict against the Germans and the Japanese, two of the strongest and most disciplined armies wreaking havoc across continents. While the United States represented democracy, human rights, and civil liberties, the Germans and Japanese were bent on domination based on their notions of racial superiority and the use of concentration and labor camps. To lead the allies to victory, the Americans had to show resolve and honor. In contrast, after 9/11 the United States was fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, two Asian nations already shattered by starvation, corruption, and civil strike, and steadily expanding the theater of conflict to other similar nations. Even the reasons for the wars appeared weak. America had no clear moral purpose for these wars and was therefore divided and unsure about them" (326).

The framework and argument developed in this book make it very hard to find this era of infinite war moral or just; however, he does offer an alternative route and a way to move forward.

[Muhammad Ahmad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote this review for The National:

Last May, a Syrian insurgent told The National’s Phil Sands about a meeting with US intelligence operators in Jordan. The rebel commander was hoping to procure weapons to resist a regime bristling with Russian arms. But he was surprised to learn that the Americans were more interested in the composition and activities of the opposition group Jabhat Al Nusra. Until the regime provoked the US with its use of poison gas, checking its serial atrocities was a secondary concern. The CIA was collecting coordinates of potential targets for its drones.

This hierarchy of concerns might seem at odds with the US rhetorical posture. But Damascus – until recently a preferred destination for CIA rendition flights – has successfully sapped US sympathy for the opposition by deploying the spectre of Al Qaeda. The opposition comprises myriad elements, most of them non-violent; foreign jihadists too have joined its ranks. But the regime and its backers in Tehran and Moscow have consistently exaggerated their strength. Consequently, the US, though not keen to see President Bashar Al Assad triumph, is less keen to see the opposition win and potentially add to the insecurity of Israel.

In the post-9/11 paranoia, many rogues have endeavoured to portray their local adversaries as part of a global terrorist threat. Russia did it with the Chechens; China with Uighurs; Israel with Palestinians – they all claimed to be fighting a “war on terror” against the same Islamist menace that threatened America. Others have followed the template. “Painting their peripheries as associated with Al Qaeda,” writes Akbar Ahmed in his remarkable new book The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam, “many countries have sought to join the terror network because of the extensive benefits that it brings. They use the rhetoric of the war on terror to both justify their oppressive policies and to ingratiate themselves with the United States and the international system”.

This failure to distinguish regional struggles from global militancy allowed many states to harness US power to settle local disputes. The conflict between a centralising, hierarchical state and a recalcitrant, egalitarian periphery is not unique to Pakistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). In the multi-ethnic Orient, geography rarely corresponds with identity. Many tribal societies have been left excluded on the margins. In turn they have resisted modernisation, seeing it as the centre’s tool for expanding its authority. Some of these conflicts, as in Chechnya, have simmered for centuries. But in most places, modus vivendi were evolved guaranteeing the autonomy of tribes while upholding state sovereignty.

The war on terror has disrupted this balance. The Fata, Yemen and Somalia represent the most obvious ruptures. But in his exhaustive study, Ahmed considers 40 cases, ranging from Africa and the Middle East to Eurasia, where the war on terror, or its local franchise, has upset the equilibrium to unpredictable, often atrocious effect. In turn, unable to match the power of central governments that are backed by the lethal technologies of a superpower, the tribes have resorted to asymmetrical warfare. The drone has been answered by the suicide bomber.

Ahmed draws the metaphor of the thistle from Tolstoy’s Hadji Murad to represent the resilience and prickliness of tribal society. The drone, on the other hand, is both the symbol and the instrument of the war on terror. The resentments sown by the drones have sprouted a new harvest with all of the thistle’s nettles but none of its beauty.

Tribal customs are well established and predictable. But the insertion of the war-on-terror dynamic has fragmented and strained ancient cultures. Generosity and hospitality have yielded to defiance and revanchism. This, paradoxically, has reinforced the belief that the opposition is made up of implacable killers, unfit for dialogue.

By failing to distinguish between the band of jihadis under the mantle of Al Qaeda – a brand used by diverse actors to give their anti-western struggle ideological coherence – and tribes who for centuries have resisted central authority, the US is inheriting remote antagonisms. “Americans have never been clear,” writes Ahmed, “as to where Al Qaeda ends and where the tribe begins and why they resort to violence.” Before 9/11, none of these tribes had grievances against the US: there is now an overflow of rage. The brunt of their fury is borne by communities abutting the tribal region since the tribes lack the means to inflict damage on the US.

But the use of drones increases American insecurity in unpredictable ways. Freelance retribution of the kind attempted by Faisal Shahzad at Times Square and the Tsarnaev brothers at the Boston Marathon are harbingers of the blowback to come. None of them had any connection to the Fata, but the relentless killing in Waziristan and beyond outraged them all. The more “collateral damage” accumulates, the vaster will be the reservoir of resentment, the greater the willingness to retaliate.

The US is in effect creating the demons it is out to slay. President Barack Obama’s drone war is baiting new enemies and swelling the ranks of the old. Akbar notes: “92 per cent of the people surveyed in the Pukhtun-dominated areas of Kandahar and Helmand a decade after the war began in Afghanistan had never heard of 9/11”. To them, the causes of the US war remain opaque. They have no desire – or capacity – to hurt America; but they, like their forefathers, are committed to repelling overbearing intruders.

If a “small number of Al Qaeda operatives, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, found these tribes to be receptive hosts”, writes Ahmed, it was partly out of the tribal tradition of hospitality and partly because the tribes had been “clamouring, or even fighting, for their rights from central governments for decades”. They saw the new arrivals as potential allies. The failure to understand this relationship and to discriminate between the two has helped Al Qaeda compensate for its dwindling numbers by harnessing tribal resentments.

Pakistan’s version of the war has been an unmitigated disaster. The founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had astutely withdrawn troops from the tribal regions, promising autonomy. But Pakistan’s military dictator Pervez Musharraf took his post-9/11 proximity with Washington as a licence for spurning history and sent in the army. The collective punishment that ensued provoked bloody reprisals – and far from taming the tribes, it brought strife to the heartland.

The delicate institutional set-up that had upheld the state’s writ over the region was eroded. Tone-deaf military managers replaced the civilian administrators, who had used their historical knowledge, cultural sensitivity and subtle political skills to maintain order. In a society where dignity and honour are considered paramount, the prodigious use of sticks rankled even potential allies. Mercenary politicians at the centre used precipitate incursions into the Fata to ingratiate themselves with Washington. And Washington replied with drones. The economic costs of operating drones are low; their human costs borne entirely by others. The secrecy that governs their use shields leaders from political consequences. Obama has used them in lieu of a strategy. He has used the sanguine assertion of Hellfire missiles to mask the political cowardice that keeps him from rolling back a clearly doomed policy. Meanwhile, the drones have spawned their own congressional caucus, with lobbying efforts underwritten by arms manufacturers like General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

The biggest, most organised interest group, however, is the CIA, which has enjoyed unprecedented influence under Obama. With its institutional fortunes tied to drones, the CIA’s capacity for finding hostile intent will likely grow more acute. Military-age men in the Fata are already considered fair game; rescuers and mourners aren’t spared either. In a place where “a man’s gun is his jewellery”, the CIA has infinite pretexts for killing. The periphery has been “unable to come to terms with this new era”, writes Ahmed, and “the prickliest of the tribes are the ones now suffering the most”.

This dismal reality will only change if decision makers – and the publics with influence over them – acquire a subtler understanding of regional dynamics and the tribal roots of many of these conflicts. The rigour of Ahmed’s analysis is addressed to this end. In its conceptual clarity, it may be the most important contribution to the war on terror debate. Ahmed warns against ill-judged US interventions and calls for an end to the drone war. More important, he calls for attempts to reconcile centres to tribal peripheries by rebuilding mediating institutions. As a former scholar administrator, with a record of successfully resolving complicated tribal disputes using peaceful means, Ahmed speaks from authority. The Thistle and the Drone is a compelling antidote to the prevailing military metaphysics and a timely call for restoring the primacy of politics.

[Murtaza · Rating 4 out of 5]

The United States post-9/11 war on terrorism has somehow expanded from being a conflict directed at a small band of known terrorists, to a global war against amorphous groups with new fronts popping up all throughout the world. In this book Akbar Ahmed does a vital service in explaining that what is happening is not a civilizational war between Islam and the West, but primarily a war within Muslim states between central governments and tribal groups on their peripheries, with the United States drawn in as an ally to the central authorities.

There is a long history of imperial interactions with their peripheries, going back to Roman, Mughal and Abbasid histories of their relations with distant tribes. But the era of the nation state has ushered in an unprecedented period of coercion and warfare by central government authorities looking to expand their writ against the traditional tribes living in the remote territories under their authority. Colonial borders often trapped the tribes under the authority of hostile groups, while suddenly cutting them off from their kin in other lands. These Muslim tribes have been locked in a long war against these governments, while increasingly losing their own cultures to extremism and social collapse.

Looking at it this way the war on terrorism is not a war against an ideology for the most part but rather a consequence of the wars by the center against the tribes, who have begun gathering under different extremist banners as their way of life comes undone. As an ally of the center the U.S. now finds itself at war with an array of different tribal groups, whose tribal identities are often masked by names like "Boko Haram," "AQAP" and "Taliban". In reality these groups almost always correspond to one particular tribe, each with their own unique history. Even al Qaeda was born as a group from the Yemeni tribes of the Asir region, the longtime victims of the Saudi state when it was formed and annexed their territories.

Ahmed has long experience working directly with tribes as a political official in Pakistan, where he helped administer the government's relations with its Pakhtun and Baluch tribesman. In his time working as a government official, he admired these tribes for the codes of honor they held and the hospitality and courage the often displayed. But in recent years, the tribes of Pakistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world have entered a period of crisis. As homogenizing central governments begin to demand access to land and fealty to the state, the tribes have come under often violent pressure. In many places they face the risk of being eradicated, as the center has increased its technological ability to inflict violence beyond any comparison and in many cases eschewed the wisdom of negotiating agreements with the tribes based on autonomy and mutual respect.

Amid this extreme pressure, the beliefs of the tribes have begun mutating and giving birth to unprecedented acts of violence. With their elders killed and their traditional lands taken away, tribespeople have begun merging decontextualized bits of traditional tribal practices like vengeance seeking with bits of Islamic theology to justify violence that they would never contemplate in times that their code of honor was intact. Acts like suicide bombing, particularly by women, show how the traditional social structures of these people are falling apart amid the violence of the center as well as its erstwhile Western allies. Ahmed posits that the three traditional poles of tribal societies (the "Waziristan Model") are the elder, the mullah and the political official. This model has fallen apart in many places and the only way to save the tribes is by reconstructing it where possible before it is too late.

In addition to this refreshing thesis (compellingly substantiated with 40 case studies) Ahmed documents the ways that the terrorism discourse has been completely warped by the failure of analysts to incorporate the tribes in their analysis, obsessed as they often are with grand narratives of "civilizational" clash. Civilizations don't clearly exist, but tribes do, and looking at conflicts on the tribal level offers a tangible basis for helping actually fix chronic political problems. This requires some level of anthropological work to understand how tribal structures actually operate (i.e. the importance of honor, elders, blood feuds etc.) rather than merely securitizing everything or reducing it to superficial ideological analysis based on religion. Many "Islamic" practices carried out by modern terrorist groups are really tribal, which the tribespeople themselves often acknowledge though Western analysts are seldom close enough paying attention to pay heed.

Ahmed's case studies show country after country where Muslim tribes are facing effective genocide by central governments, while themselves devolving into unspeakable barbarism as their traditional social systems collapse. As he convincingly shows, we are witnessing the violent extinction of traditional societies that have existed for thousands of years. Tanks, drones and bombs are destroying the tribes from without, while nascent extremist movements are tearing them apart from within. The gullibility and bellicosity the United States has led it to also become a tormentor of the tribes, as central governments portray their tribal adversaries as belligerents in the post-9/11 terrorism discourse. While the U.S. was once seen as a protector of vulnerable people on the peripheries, it has now become their scourge and is helping central governments wipe out tribal groups all over the world. In such a hopeless environment for the tribes it seems obvious how groups such as al Qaeda and ISIS can win support for their franchise model, feeding on the desperation of marginalized and voiceless groups on the periphery.

Ahmed's books are all excellent but this one is unique because it provides a paradigm shift in how the war on terror should be viewed. As the war grinds and expands seemingly without explanation, he has managed to demystify it by explaining it in terms of the war between the center and tribes. As an anthropologist and former political representative to tribal groups, he can speak on this with authority and as his overall analysis is compelling. Until we force ourselves to understand who these people on the peripheries of modern and learn their cultures and history, we will remained trapped in this war with them that is leading to their annihilation and our own moral and material decay.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written by an anthropologist, this book looks at tribal groups in the peripheries of the Muslim world, and how they have been caught up in the War on Terror. He does an excellent job of presenting the different tribal groups, and this is the first book I've read that talked about these groups in such detail. Unfortunately, he neglects to provide any details as to how these groups found themselves in conflict with the U.S. In some cases, national governments tried to paint tribal groups as terrorists, and the author rightly explains that this is not always the case, but he neglects cases where tribes were indeed collaborating with terrorist groups, and this weakens his overall argument.

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than any other book I've read, this book has changed my thinking on matters related to the so-called war on terror. By giving sustained attention to the history and cultural distinctiveness of tribal societies in modern Muslim states and the interface between those societies and the central government of their states, Dr. Ahmed shows clearly--with example after example--that, rather than attacking al Qaeda as a global terrorist network with concentration in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq (!!), the U.S. military and the political leaders that guide it have been mindlessly complicit in internecine civil wars under the presumption that the sides we're supporting are themselves fighting al Qaeda terrorists. What the U.S. military thinks is a terrorist stronghold, based on drone and local intelligence, is in fact a tribal community intent on resisting the dehumanization and eradication strategy of their own central government. At the end of reading this book, I find my criticism of the Bush administration now more thoroughly includes the Obama administration, under whom the expansion of drone activity had resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.

[Laurel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot from this book, particularly about tribal Islam. It provides in-depth view of how tribal societies fit (and don't fit) within the nation-state framework. This perspective is critical to understanding the politics of areas with tribal societies, and it is commonly overlooked. However, I found the sections on the drone war to be more emotional appeal than logical argument. The thesis seems to be "drones are bad because they kill people," and it felt simplistic and obvious to me. The author could have spent more time discussing counterarguments and alternatives. My final criticism is that this book is needlessly wordy in places. It sometimes feels more like a data dump and it could benefit from some heavier editing.

[John T. Hickey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have not yet finished this book, because I was losing track of the substantial numbers of continents, countries, regions, and tribes which Ahmed describes, and took a break to absorb what I had learned and review other sources for those areas. However, I can already recommend the book highly for the insights which I have already gained into the realities of "tribal Islam."
Ahmed began his studies with his own experience negotiating with tribal groups on behalf of the Pakistani government, and continued with case studies (40+) around the world (the traditional "Middle East", sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, "the -stans") on the fate of tribal, usually Muslim societies in the peripheries (usually the mountains) who must coexist with postcolonial would-be central governments, sometimes several. As Ahmed notes in describing his central image for these peoples, the thistle, similar relationships appear in the British Isles and Appalachian USA, where the "tribal" definition can be applied to Scots-Irish in Scotland, Ireland, or the USA--independent-spirited people with little respect for authority which is not personally known to them and capable of fighting for itself. Jim Webb's Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America is a good introduction to this history. To return to Ahmed's work, he is describing tribal societies around the world, unrecognized by their "own" governments, living by values of personal defense and personal revenge, which are identified, or mis-identified, as terrorists and become the targets of "our" drones, frequently without cause.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read if you desire an understanding of the insanity of policy.

[Mbogo J · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is the last of the books that had been gathering dust on my To Read shelf for over 4 years now. That should speak to how the war on terror has lost currency in the global geopolitics. It was also written before ISIS so viewed through those lens it seems pretty dated but viewed on its own merits, it has some good points.

Its main thesis is that America in its war against terror has ignored the unique tribal societal architecture and proceeded on launching wanton attacks against the enemy real and imagined. In the process it has alienated the tribal areas and fallen prey to central governments who co-opt America to fight their own internal wars by labeling anyone they dislike Al Qaeda. I agreed with the main thesis but I felt Akbar treatment was a bit superficial. Other states such as Pakistan, Iran and Israel involvement should have been included in the analysis.

The crippling weakness of the book was the fact that Akbar did a research dump onto the book. Any journalist knows you never do that, you write the main narrative and use your research notes to buttress the main argument. Akbar did the opposite. Large swathes of the book involved him picking some periphery tribe, chronicle how it has been marginalized by the center and go ahead to paint us in macabre details how they have been tortured and killed. After a while the reader gets weary of this blood bath.

It unlikely that Akbar's suggestions will see the light of day in policy. His cool calm analysis will not be in good stead in the fog of war but will at least shine a light so that presidents can see a few feet ahead of them in the war against "terror."

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book, examining the different circumstances (using recent geographical history to support) in which the centre and the periphery can become incompatible.

I plucked out a quote that I think is poignant, and that makes it all too clear in reading it how even we in the UK demonise those on our periphery, and that no nation is innocent of this:

"Let me underscore the point: as anecdotal evidence suggests, societies have a blind spot when contemplating the despised smaller community on their nation's periphery. Talk to the most cordial, enlightened, and intelligent Pakistanis, Indians, Israelis, Russians, Moroccans, Turks, Egyptians, Kenyans, Thai, Burmese or Chinese from the center, and ask them about their countrymen - respectively, the Baluchis, Kasmiris, Palestinians, Chechens, the Sahrawi, Kurds, Bedouin, Somalis, Malays, Rohingya, or Uyghur - and too many will suddenly be transformed into either fire-breathing nationalists, coldly indifferent citizens or close-minded bigots. They are not prepared to see any good in these people and will assail them as backward, primitive, thieving, and violent elements of society, or simply terrorists. They are anathema, they will say, holding back or outright harming the development of the nation. These amiable companions become chauvinistic nationalists at the mere mention of a name, reminding one of Samuel John's dictum, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel"."

[Kurishin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a mind-opening book for me, who had treated this broad topic with intellectual laziness and too much emotion. Ahmed is not telling a story, per se, he is attempting to educate his reader, in my opinion, so that should be kept in mind when reading the book. For me, the broad topic-that modern terrorism is more about tribalism than Islamism, is the salient point that Ahmed successfully strives to prove in this work. He is looking for roots rather than branches, such that those looking at branches can poke holes in his thesis. I would think that misses the point.

[Adil Rafique · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read .... 📚 👌

[Jared · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Thistle and the Drone is a well-researched piece that reaches across various disciplines (geography, history, anthropology, politics, etc) in order to describe the current approach towards the 'war on terror'. At first, I simply thought that the book would be about radical Islamists and how the West is fighting them using advanced technology, such as drones. However, the author presented various case studies on how tribal cultures from around the world (referred to as the 'periphery') and central governments (referred to as the 'center') interact with one another.

The author presented case studies that primarily had to do with tribal cultures that adopted Islam, but the theme could be applied to essentially any marginalized culture. The author spoke about peripheral societies in Waziristan, Algeria, the Philippines, Somalia, Yemen, Iran, etc. The author provides well-researched material and is also able to provide his own real-world experience from having served as a political administrator to tribal areas in Pakistan.

I am not articulate enough to convey all of the prescient themes of the books, but the main take-away that I got is that we need to do more to understand peripheral societies (not just those in Iraq or Afghanistan), especially those that have tribal cultures. By understanding how those cultures work and by which methods they operate, we would have much less blood shed and misunderstanding. We need to understand the role of honor, revenge, hierarchy, etc.

Following 9/11, countries around the world have used 'terrorism' as a pretense for dealing with their troublesome periphery. In many cases, the US has provided, funds, weapons, and training to governments, all in the name of 'counter-terrorism'. As a result, the US and the world at-large often ignores oppression of peripheral societies. This has resulted in the loss of life, liberty, and property for many around the world.

The author points out in a compelling manner that the problem is not with Islam, but with how we interact with cultures that lie at the periphery of our modern world.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get an overview of marginalized societies, a greater understanding of current global conflicts, etc.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author makes a number of excellent points that are absolutely necessary for policy makers in both the west and in Pakistan to consider and be aware of. Additionally, the chapters and sections on tribal culture and tendencies are invaluable as a study on its own.
While there are certainly areas where I disagree with the author’s analysis and observations, I wish that this book had been published immediately after 9-11 so that the planners and decision makers could have avoided many of the mistakes that were made over the last twelve years; I’m not certain that many of the author’s recommendations will work now that the entire system in the FATA has been disrupted.

[P · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title (which uses Tolstoy to mock Tom Friedman) is great. The analysis of peripheral Muslim tribes (such as the Pashtos, Berbers, Sinai Bedu, and Yemeni tribes of Asir) is better. The author is a rare combination of scholar and administrator, and his experience helps him craft a paradigm-shifting book on American relations with Muslim tribes. Read this, along with “Seeing Like a State” and “The Tribal Imagination” if you want to understand how the rest of the world really works.

[Muhammad Shahid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Akbar S Ahmad an anthropologist gives an incisive insight into the problem of terrorism world especially pakistan facing today citing examples from history and of his personel experience as administrator of tribal areas of Pakistan .

[Scott F. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit of a slog, however great micro study of tribalism (author's term, not mine), terrorism, and Western propensity to lump very different religious groups into single categories.

[Angie Frisk · Rating 3 out of 5]

The case studies were worth reading.

[!Tæmbuŝu]

Reviewed by NYRB

[Khalid Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insight into tribal society and their resistance to change imposed from external forces.