Political Tribes

by Amy Chua

  The last U.S. troops: Allen, Vietnam, 200–1.

  code name “X1”: Khanh, The Ethnic Chinese and Economic Development in Vietnam, 81; Ramses Amer, “The Boat People Crisis of 1978–79 and the Hong Kong Experience Examined Through the Ethnic Chinese Dimension,” in Chan, The Chinese/Vietnamese Diaspora, 41.

  250 wealthy Chinese: Khanh, Ethnic Chinese and Economic Development in Vietnam, 81–82.

  newspapers . . . hospitals . . . 70 percent: Ibid., 81.

  estimated $2 billion: Goscha, Vietnam, 379.

  relations between China and Vietnam: Chang, Beijing, Hanoi, and the Overseas Chinese, 21, 23–25.

  “the campaign against”: Ibid., 25.

  In the south: Ibid.

  fishermen, foresters, craftsmen: Ramses Amer, “Vietnam’s Policies and the Ethnic Chinese Since 1975,” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 11, no. 1 (1996): 85.

  “purifying the border areas”: Chang, Beijing, Hanoi, and the Overseas Chinese, 24.

  began under “X2”: Amer, “Vietnam’s Policies and the Ethnic Chinese Since 1975,” 80; Chang, Beijing, Hanoi, and the Overseas Chinese, 27.

  fifty thousand Chinese businesses: Chang, Beijing, Hanoi, and the Overseas Chinese, 27; Goscha, Vietnam, 379.

  “full of corpses”: Chang, Beijing, Hanoi, and the Overseas Chinese, 28.

  Similar raids took place: Ibid., 27.

  Chinese were purged: Amer, “Vietnam’s Policies and the Ethnic Chinese Since 1975,” 86.

  thousands of Chinese: Chua, World on Fire, 34; see also Amer, “Vietnam’s Policies and the Ethnic Chinese Since 1975,” 83–85.

  “My uncle was arrested”: Goscha, Vietnam, 380.

  “Hanoi is blaming”: James N. Wallace, “A Ray of Hope,” U.S. News & World Report, August 6, 1979, 50; see also Henry Kamm, “Vietnam Describes Economic Setbacks,” New York Times, November 19, 1980, A9.

  “China’s allegations have now”: Chang, Beijing, Hanoi, and the Overseas Chinese, 34.

  By late 1978: Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990, 306; Amer, “Vietnam’s Policies and the Ethnic Chinese Since 1975,” 80, 83.

  “Vietnamese boat people”: Yuk Wah Chan, “Revisiting the Vietnamese Refugee Era,” in Chan, The Chinese/Vietnamese Diaspora, 3.

  most of those refugees: Ibid., 4.

  three main waves: Ibid., 7–9.

  70 percent of the refugees: Ibid., 7.

  third wave . . . ethnic Vietnamese: Ibid., 3.

  85 percent were Chinese: Chang, Beijing, Hanoi, and the Overseas Chinese, 35.

  “intended to get rid”: Ibid., 55–56.

  at war with China: Maclear, The Ten Thousand Day War, 352; Chang, Beijing, Hanoi, and the Overseas Chinese, 53–56.

  Chapter Three: Afghanistan

  “In Afghanistan, you don’t”: Hermione Hoby, “Khaled Hosseini, ‘If I Could Go Back Now, I’d Take the Kite Runner Apart,’” Guardian, June 1, 2013.

  “May God keep you”: There are many versions of this saying, which is sometimes attributed to Alexander the Great. See, e.g., “May God Keep You Away from Revenge of the Afghans,” London Post, April 22, 2014 (remarks of Sir James Bevan KCMG, UK High Commissioner to India, to the Delhi Policy Group).

  longest in our history: See Andrew J. Bacevich, “The Never-Ending War in Afghanistan,” New York Times, March 13, 2017.

  “a foreign policy disaster”: Ann Jones, “America Lost in Afghanistan: Anatomy of a Foreign Policy Disaster,” Salon, November 6, 2015, http://www.salon.com/2015/11/06/america_lost_in_afghanistan_partner.

  a “never-ending war”: Bacevich, “The Never-Ending War in Afghanistan.”

  “Fifteen years, thousands”: Dana Rohrabacher, “How to Win in Afghanistan,” National Interest, January 18, 2017.

  Afghanistan’s national anthem: Barnett R. Rubin, Afghanistan from the Cold War Through the War on Terror (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 161. The other ethnic groups recognized in the anthem are the Turkmen, Baluch, Pashai, Nuristani, Aymaq, Arab, Kyrgyz, Qizilbash, Gujar, and Brahui. Ibid.; see also Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady, “The Decline of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan,” Asian Survey 35, no. 7 (1995): 621.

  history of animosity: Ahady, “The Decline of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan,” 631–34.

  For more than two hundred: Hassan Abbas, The Taliban Revival: Violence and Extremism on the Pakistan-Afghanistan Border (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 24.

  in 1992: Seth G. Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 43–44; Ahady, “The Decline of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan,” 623–24.

  The vast majority: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 5–7, 10; Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 59–60; Abubakar Siddique, The Pashtun Question: The Unresolved Key to the Future of Pakistan and Afghanistan (London: C. Hurst & Company, 2014), 56.

  It was founded: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 10, 62–63, 65; Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 283–87; Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 198.

  as “Eastern Iranians”: Michael Barry, “Afghanistan,” in Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, ed. Gerhard Bowering et al. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 20.

  a fifteen-hundred-mile-long border: Jayshree Bajoria, “The Troubled Afghan-Pakistani Border,” Council on Foreign Relations, March 20, 2009, http://www.cfr.org/pakistan/troubled-afghan-pakistani-border/p14905; see also Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 35.

  established in 1747: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 22; Peter Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts, and the Failures of Great Powers (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011), xxi.

  From 1747 to 1973: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 24.

  Europeans never conquered Afghanistan: Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 29, 37–39.

  Pashto is the mother tongue: Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 14.

  known as Pashtunwali: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 17–19; Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 14.

  often used interchangeably: Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 11.

  “Pakistan” is an acronym: See Choudhary Rahmat Ali, “Now or Never: Are We to Live or Perish Forever?” (1933), reprinted in Pakistan Movement: Historic Documents, ed. Gulam Allana (Karachi: Paradise Subscription Agency for the University of Karachi, 1967), 104; Willem van Schendel, A History of Bangladesh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 89.

  Punjabis have politically: Christophe Jaffrelot, A History of Pakistan and Its Origins (London: Anthem Press, 2002), 69; Theodore P. Wright Jr., “Center-Periphery Relations and Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan: Sindhis, Muhajirs, and Punjabis,” Comparative Politics 23, no. 3 (1991): 299.

  somewhere around half: See, e.g., CIA, “Pakistan,” The World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pk.html (44.7%); Irm Haleem, “Ethnic and Sectarian Violence and the Propensity Towards Praetorianism in Pakistan,” Third World Quarterly 24, no. 3 (2003): 467 (56%).

  Pakistan’s famous military: Alyssa Ayres, Speaking Like a State: Language and Nationalism in Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 70; Wright, “Center-Periphery Relations and Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan,” 299; Ayesha Shehzad, “The Issue of Ethnicity in Pakistan: Historical Background,” Pakistan Vision 12, no. 2 (2011): 132; see also Jaffrelot, A History of Pakistan and Its Origins, 69, 315; Anatol Lieven, Pakistan: A Hard Country (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011), 179.

  most state institutions: Ayres, Speaking Like a State, 65, 70–71; Farhan Hanif Siddiqi, The Politics of Ethnicity in Pakistan: The Baloch, Sindhi and Mohajir Ethnic Movements (London: Routledge, 2012), 43, 119; Wright, “Center-Periphery Relations and Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan,” 301, 305.

  they are highly endogamous: Hastings Donnan, “Mixed Marriage in Comp
arative Perspective: Gender and Power in Northern Ireland and Pakistan,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 21, no. 2 (1990): 208; Roomana Naz Bhutta et al., “Dynamics of Watta Satta Marriages in Rural Areas of Southern Punjab Pakistan,” Open Journal of Social Sciences 3 (2015): 166; R. Hussain, “Community Perceptions of Reasons for Preference for Consanguineous Marriages in Pakistan,” Journal of Biosocial Science 31 (1999): 449.

  leading to an “appalling”: Steven Swinford, “First Cousin Marriages in Pakistani Communities Leading to ‘Appalling’ Disabilities Among Children,” Telegraph (UK), July 7, 2015.

  Ever since independence: Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 38–39.

  only 15 percent: CIA, “Pakistan,” The World Factbook.

  more Pashtuns in Pakistan: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 14; see also Coll, Ghost Wars, 62; Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 12.

  most of Pakistan’s Pashtuns: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 14, 34–35; Bajoria, “The Troubled Afghan-Pakistani Border.”

  the Durand Line: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 27, 49–50; Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 35; American Institute of Afghanistan Studies, The Durand Line: History, Consequences, and Future (The Hollings Center, July 2007), 1–2.

  “[y]ou cannot separate”: Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 216.

  still identify themselves: Ibid., 11.

  when Pakistan’s Bengalis: Ibid., 39.

  In 1978, Afghanistan’s president: Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 112–13.

  pro-Communist rebels led the coup: Coll, Ghost Wars, 39; Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 119.

  “even the KGB”: Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 259.

  accelerated the contradictions: Rodric Braithwaite, Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979–89 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 43.

  no proletariat in Afghanistan: Ibid., 38; see also Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 117.

  a festering feud: Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 93, 106, 117, 119, 127, 131; Thomas J. Barfield, “Weapons of the Not So Weak in Afghanistan: Pashtun Agrarian Structure and Tribal Organization,” in Culture, Conflict, and Counterinsurgency, ed. Thomas H. Johnson and Barry Scott Zellen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 115; see also Anthony Arnold, Afghanistan’s Two-Party Communism: Parcham and Khalq (Stanford, CA: Hoover Press, 1983), 3–4.

  who “viewed ‘Afghan’”: Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 131.

  hunting down rival: Ibid., 133–34.

  “Afghan clients”: Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 143.

  Moscow feared that: Ibid., 16–18.

  “It’ll be over”: Ibid., 18; see also Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 142–43.

  Nine years later: Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 36–40.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s: Coll, Ghost Wars, 50–51.

  still stinging from Vietnam: Ibid., 59.

  “who got the most”: Ibid., 60.

  its geopolitical pawn: Ibid.

  longstanding rivalries and conflicts: See Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 30–31, 57; Barfield, “Weapons of the Not So Weak in Afghanistan,” 96–97, 115; Michael Barry, Kabul’s Long Shadows: Historical Perspectives (Princeton, NJ: Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, 2011), 69–70.

  largest tribally organized: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 11; Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 13; see also Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 29–31.

  virtually all Pashtuns are Sunni Muslims: Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 15.

  are more religious: See, e.g., Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 14–15, 24; Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 13–14; Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 258; Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, “Understanding the Taliban and Insurgency in Afghanistan,” Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs 51, no. 1 (2007): 71, 74–75.

  Zia shrewdly favored: Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 15, 39–40, 42–43; Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 9–10; see also Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 56 (the ISI deliberately favored the Ghilzai Pashtuns and marginalized the Durrani Pashtuns).

  He built madrassas: Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 56.

  “Pakistan set out”: Ahmad Bilal Khalil, “Pakistan, Islamism, and the Fear of Afghan Nationalism,” Diplomat, March 3, 2017, http://thediplomat.com/2017/03/pakistan-islamism-and-the-fear-of-afghan-nationalism (quoting Hamid Karzai in a 2003 conversation with U.S. representative Dana Rohrabacher).

  the United States romanticized: Coll, Ghost Wars, 91–92; Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 281–82.

  Congressman Charlie Wilson: Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 281–82.

  Between 1980 and 1992: Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 37.

  machine guns . . . Stinger missiles: Coll, Ghost Wars, 337, 340; Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 38.

  Mullah Mohammed Omar: Coll, Ghost Wars, 292–94, 312, 328; Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 52–54.

  brutal civil war: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 58; Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 46–49.

  U.S. government lost interest: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 59; Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 44–45, 48–50.

  caught completely off guard: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 61; Ahmed Rashid, “The Rise of Bin Laden,” New York Review of Books, May 27, 2004 (reviewing Coll, Ghost Wars, and citing former CIA officials).

  two thirds of Afghanistan: Coll, Ghost Wars, 335.

  Warlords ruled practically: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 61.

  Racketeers . . . and rape: Coll, Ghost Wars, 282.

  it provided security: Ibid., 335; Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 62–63; Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 60, 67; Barnett R. Rubin, “The Political Economy of War and Peace in Afghanistan,” World Development 28, no. 10 (2000): 1789, 1793–95.

  dress code and bans: Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 61.

  For hundreds of years: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 22–23; Ahady, “The Decline of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan,” 621–22.

  After the fall: Ali Reza Sarwar, “Ashraf Ghani and the Pashtun Dilemma,” Diplomat, January 18, 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/ashraf-ghani-and-the-pashtun-dilemma; Ahady, “The Decline of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan,” 622–24.

  the Tajik minority: Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 44–45, 59; Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, xxvi–xxvii, 486–87, 541–42.

  where Burhanuddin Rabbani: Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, xxvii, 526–27, 539.

  They had lost . . . Afghan military: Ahady, “The Decline of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan,” 621–24, 626.

  leadership . . . rank and file: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 10, 65; Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 176, 198.

  “lowest socio-economic rung”: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 65.

  “[t]heir Pashtun identity: Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 198.

  “The Taliban’s strategy”: Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 59.

  “[T]he Taliban’s Pashtun identity”: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 65.

  primarily in non-Pashtun areas: Ibid., 65.

  “more significant than”: Ahady, “The Decline of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan,” 621, 623–24.

  “was an unlikely heir”: Coll, Ghost Wars, 287–88.

  spring of 1996: Ibid., 328.

  Ahmad Shah Durrani: Ibid., 280–82.

  “Cloak of the Holy Prophet”: Ibid., 328.

  never succeeded in unifying: Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 198; Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 546–47; Sarwar, “Ashraf Ghani and the Pashtun Dilemma.”

  More moderate, pro-Western: Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 184; Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 546, 564–65.

  feared the “Pakistanization”: Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 546; see also Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 198.

  exploit Pashtun ethnonationalism:
Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 199; Sarwar, “Ashraf Ghani and the Pashtun Dilemma.”

  Taliban massacred 2,000: “Massacres of Hazaras in Afghanistan,” Human Rights Watch, 2001, https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/afghanistan/afghan101-02.htm; see also Sven Gunnar Simonsen, “Ethnicising Afghanistan?: Inclusion and Exclusion in Post-Bonn Institution Building,” Third World Quarterly 25, no. 4 (2004): 711.

  tried to starve: “U.N. Says Taliban Starving Hungry People for Military Agenda,” Associated Press, January 7, 1998.

  persecuted and killed Tajiks: Graeme Swincer, “Tajiks and Their Security in Afghanistan,” Blue Mountains Refugee Support Group, September 2014, 1.

  weren’t allowing girls . . . Buddha statues: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 69, 71; Coll, Ghost Wars, 362–63.

  it was the duty: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 73.

  refused to turn over: Ibid., 74.

  toppled the Taliban: Ibid., 76; Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 588.

  joined forces with the Northern Alliance: Coll, Ghost Wars, xvi, 467–69, 494; Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 199.

  led by Tajik and Uzbek: Coll, Ghost Wars, xvi; Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 199; Ahady, “The Decline of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan,” 626.

  “was known for such tendencies”: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 77.

  Although Dostum later insisted: Luke Harding, “Afghan Massacre Haunts Pentagon,” Guardian, September 13, 2002.

  “hundreds suffocated in”: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 77.

  anti-Pashtun mass killer: Sune Engel Rasmussen, “Afghanistan’s Warlord Vice-President Spoiling for a Fight with the Taliban,” Guardian, August 4, 2015.

  one of “America’s warlords”: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 85–86.

  alienating Pashtuns all over: Ibid., 82–83, 116; Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 199, 206.

  conference convened in Bonn: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 82–83; “Filling the Vacuum: The Bonn Conference,” Frontline, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/campaign/withus/cbonn.html.

  “remotely associated with the Taliban”: Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 206.

  more moderate Pashtuns: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 77; Sarwar, “Ashraf Ghani and the Pashtun Dilemma.”