Key to governing Afghans: the clans
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"If you give money to somebody in a tribe, you can get information; that is the main source of intelligence in Afghanistan," says a senior Afghan intelligence officer. "The information we get is from cousins, uncles, relatives. The first thing is trust, and for that you turn to your family. But the second thing is always there: money."
Yet American efforts to work with the tribal system have been spotty at best, US officials and academics say. The biggest hindrance is the practice of cycling American diplomats and soldiers in and out of Afghanistan on one-year assignments. Many US intelligence officers serve even less time. This makes it difficult for American diplomats - most of whom are already restricted to the heavily fortified US embassy - to establish the personal bonds of trust necessary in a tribal system.
"The British learned this lesson of tribal relations a long time ago," says Thomas Barfield, a sociologist at Boston University with extensive experience in Afghanistan. "They also learned the importance of keeping people on the ground for long periods of time as political agents so they could learn the system and try to manipulate it."
Mr. Barfield notes that the US "system of rewards focuses on the individual - characteristic of our culture - in a land where you need to involve the community. Thus, the people who shelter Osama may be unlikely to give him up, but their rivals might be happy to, not just for the reward but because of the embarrassment it would cause the next valley."
While UN officials and humanitarian groups say that involving tribal leaders is crucial to securing peace in Afghanistan, they caution against using tribal rivalries for military gains. "The last thing they want to do is create tribal animosities," the UN official says.
Already many of the attacks on aid projects in southern Afghanistan are attributable to tribal rivalries, rather than the Taliban. Aid agencies new to the region sometimes initiate projects without consulting tribal elders about their priorities. Some of these projects are later sabotaged, and blamed on Taliban forces, although UN officials say they suspect the elders may have organized the attacks themselves to avenge the slight.
With the central government unable to provide security, many tribes are starting to look after themselves. The Mangal tribe of Khost Province, for instance, has formed its own tribal militia, called an arbakai. During a recent day of voting registration in Tapia village, the local arbakai - four teenagers with Kalashnikovs - protected the village voter registration site - a local gas station.
"We are a strong tribe because we obey our elders," says Musa Khan, an 18-year-old with a gift for gab. He looks at the two truckloads of provincial soldiers sent to protect reporters on a trip toward the border. "We don't need soldiers like those, we protect ourselves."
