Afghan tribe standing up to the Taliban

Elders from the Shinwari tribe, which represents about 400,000 people in southeastern Afghanistan, also pledged to send at least one military-age male in each family to the Afghan Army or the police in the event of a Taliban attack.

In exchange for their support, American commanders agreed to channel $1 million in development projects directly to the tribal leaders and bypass the local Afghan government, which is widely seen as corrupt.

“The Taliban have been trying to destroy our tribe, and they are taking money from us, and they are taking our sons to fight,” said Malik Niaz, a Shinwari elder. “If they defy us now, we will defeat them.”

The pact appears to be the first in which an entire Pashtun tribe has declared war on Taliban insurgents.

But the agreement, though promising, is fragile at best. Afghan loyalties are historically fluid, and in the past the government has been unable to prevent Taliban retaliation. The agreement may also be hard to replicate, because it arose from a specific local dispute with the Taliban.

While the Shinwaris are now united against the Taliban, if payments from the Americans falter or animosities flare with the Afghan government, the tribe could switch back just as quickly.

Moreover, it is not clear that the elders, whatever their intentions, will be able to command the loyalties of their own members. After 30 years of incessant warfare, many of the traditional societal networks in this country have been weakened.

In many places, the Taliban are stronger than the tribes.

Indeed, in the past, Taliban gunmen have killed or threatened tribal leaders who defied them, and the US military and Afghan government have largely been unable to protect them.

Many of the Shinwari elders said yesterday that they had received death threats. The brother of one elder, a district governor, has already been killed.

The pact is but one plank of a carrot-and-stick strategy toward the Taliban as the United States pours more troops into Afghanistan in hopes of inflicting setbacks that might make the Taliban willing to negotiate. While the Americans are rewarding tribes who confront the Taliban, today the Afghan government is unveiling its latest plan to woo back Taliban foot soldiers.

That plan is designed to compensate for past failures that were underfinanced, lacked the buy-in of allies, and did not prevent revenge killings.

The new plan has two tracks: to reintegrate Taliban fighters into Afghan society and to allow Taliban leaders to play a political role in Afghanistan.

The Karzai government wants countries attending an international conference in London today to back its plan and agree to finance it - at least initially.

In exchange for laying down arms and agreeing to abide by the Afghan Constitution, Taliban fighters would be guaranteed jobs and an enforceable amnesty.

The pact with the Shinwari tribe would complement the reconciliation effort. It echoes a similar phenomenon that unfolded in the Iraq war beginning in late 2006, which ultimately contributed to a substantial drop in violence there. In Iraq, tribal leaders from the country’s Sunni minority rebelled against Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia and joined forces with the Americans.

But no one expects to be able to duplicate the scale of the Iraq effort, because in many parts of Afghanistan the Taliban have insinuated themselves into the very fabric of the tribes.

Colonel Randy George, the senior American officer in the area, was encouraged by the recent events. “You’ve got to start somewhere,” he said.