A poisonous mix in today's wars

BACK IN the days when the Indochina wars were on everyone's mind, a droll newspaperman, Martin F. Nolan, observed that "when the American people have to know when a country's rainy season is, we are already in too deep."

I remembered that recently when I read about Saddam Hussein's tattoo. Hussein had three dots tattooed on his wrist to identify himself as a member of the Albu Nasir tribe. It was once all important to be an Albu Nasirman as the tribe dominated the government of Iraq in Hussein's era. His inner circle was made up of fellow tribesmen and family, for in Iraq tribe and family are often the only entities you can trust.

To understand the ebb and flow of today's wars, Americans have to know about the poisonous mix of familial, tribal, ethnic, linguistic, racial, and religious factions at play in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Bush keeps referring to Japan and Germany when he speaks of the kind of post-war settlement he hopes to get out of Iraq. But Germany and Japan after World War II were as homogenous as countries get, while Iraq and Afghanistan are crazy quilts of disparate and competing identities.

In times of stability and adequate prosperity, peoples from different backgrounds can forge a unified whole. The United States has been among the most successful in this endeavor. But in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, where colonial masters drew borders that had really nothing to do with their tribal and ethnic makeup, stress and the breakdown of the state cause people to retreat snarling into their primary identities.

It was probably a mistake for the British to create Iraq out of three different Ottoman provinces after World War I, lumping the Kurdish north into an Arab middle and south. Then there is the great Shi'ite-Sunni schism which Americans struggle to understand. Americans are just beginning to understand how tribal loyalties work, which the British had to learn when their armies invaded in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Families are important. You can't understand the Kurdish region unless you know the history of the Barzani and Talibani families, who are at peace today but have often warred. And there are Iraqis who will tell you that the Baghdad government's spring crackdown against the Mahdi Army was really about an enduring struggle between the Hakim family and the Sadrs.

Unity can be enforced, of course, and Hussein knew how to do it. But today, the Kurdish region is all but independent and accepts only what it wants from the authority of Baghdad.

Gertrude Bell, who had as much to do with building today's Iraq as anybody in British times, wondered more than once whether Iraq was not too tribal to make a modern country.

Afghanistan was a country formed, and condemned, by colonial cartographers as well. The so-called "Durand Line," named after Sir Mortimer Durand, marks the border between Pakistan, then British India, and Afghanistan. But Durand drew his line right through the tribal homeland of the Pashtun people, who now live on both sides of the border, the consequences of which are still being felt to this day. And the Pashtuns themselves are divided into a kaleidoscope of tribes, each with its own loyalties.

Afghanistan itself is a product of the Russians and British wanting a buffer state between their expanding empires in the days of the Great Game. There is also the "Wakhan Corridor, " that little pan-handle of land in eastern Afghanistan, a sliver of territory that runs all the way to China. It's only purpose was to keep Russia and British India apart.

To understand Afghanistan, Americans have to learn about Uzbeks, Hazaras, Turkmens, and Tajiks, as well as Pushtuns, and the families and loyalties of local warlords. Hamid Karzai may be president of the country, but as far as power and authority goes, people say he is only the mayor of Kabul.

Americans believe they are in a struggle with Islamic extremism, but for the countries in which they fight, it's more about power and identity than religion. Americans may not need to know so much about rainy seasons any more, but they have to mind the tribal tattoos on wrists.

H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.