doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT: Pashtun genealogy

LGF, all this was compiled before the internet and I don't think the internet has it. Those genealogy charts cannot be found anywhere except in bits and pieces...and now (uniquely and only) on this site. There is a company which was contracted by the USG after 9/11 to research tribes - they sent a team to London going through archives recording every tribal name and building charts of families and their connections to clans, Khel's, tribes, etc. They did a good job...but to tell the truth, my charts are better...one guy with 175 lbs of books.

Afghanistan is comprised of a lot of different ethnics - off the top of my head:
-- Pashtuns/Pakhtuns - Indo European language
-- Tadjiks - Dari/Farsi Persian speakers
-- Hazara - Mongol - Shi'ite Dari speakers
-- Baluch - Indo-Europen Baluch speakers
-- Brahui - Regarded as part of the Baluch nation but speaking a Dravidian language
-- Chahar-Aimak - Dari speakers
-- Turkoman - Turkish speakers
-- Uzbeks - Turkish speakers
-- Qizilbash - Shi'ite Dari speakers,
and elements in Kafiristan (Now Nuristan) who speak languages that are part of no known group.

Pashtuns have run the place since the Persians were driven out in 1709. First the Galji...then the Durranis, first the Popelzai Sadozai, and then the Barakzai Mohammadzai.

Generally no one there seems to care about Israel except the imported Arab fundamentalist Wahabbi.. (And 120 years ago Wahabbi's were so hated that they would have their houses burnt down). There is constant warfare..family against family, clan against clan, Khel against Khel, tribe against tribe. They are intensely superstitious and even the Pakistan upper classes (Punjabis are dispised) believe in Jinn's (Genies).

If I can get my scanner going I'll scan a few papers I wrote about some of the really interesting tribes for the record. And scan clearer copies of the above.

Whatever, the story of Afghanistan is never over. And frankly we fought the war the wrong way. It should have been a Vietnam style, Special Forces "CIDG" war with small camps of hired Pashtuns in each district and using the Phoenix Program model. We never should have had full bore heavy combat units like the 82nd, 101st, 10th Mountain Division, etc. in the country, We should never have had more than 10,000 troops in the country. And we allowed Pakistan to play a deadly double game with us.

The three things the villagers complain about are:
1). Good government
2) Safety in the countryside
3) Pakistan - (and that is synonymous with #2).

As for Pashtuns...they are the best and worst. But the custom most disgusting is boy child rape - which is wide spread. They live by the code of "Pashtunwali" - the way of being a Pashtun and in many respects it is un-Islamic. The four most important principles are:
1) Malmastia (Hospitality)
2) Nanawatal (Asylum/protection of a guest)
3) Badal (revenge)
4) Turah (courage)
along with Naanus (protection of women).

If you look at the genealogy charts...under Qais Abdurrashid's oldest son Sabrabr and his oldest son Sharkbun...take a look at the "Abdalis" (Durranis). Even though Mullah Omar was a Galji, the heavyweights in the Taliban were from the tribes of the younger son Panjpai (Nurzai, Alizai and Ishaqzai). But is all is a twisted mess. I usually have a list of about 7 books for people who get interested that can explain it better. But nothing replaces 40 years of reading.

Let me break it down for you LGF.

If you see someone with a beard wearing a man dress and packing an AK47, just start shooting and ask unrelated questions later.


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How�d Vietnam work out again?

Lonesome, Vietnam was a different problem, 1 million regular army North Vietnamese troops based in Cambodia and Laos. It was a conventional war disguised and promoted as a guerrilla war, which we fought without understanding Clauswitz thanks essentially to LBJ. Still, the principle of CIDG type camps would have worked along the Durrand Line. I asked captured Taliban from Ghazni Province if, had they had a choice, they would have enrolled in a militia controlled and paid by US (and mentioned the salary)...to a man they said, "yes."

The old saw of Pakistan is true.
-- "Lead a Punjabi,"
-- "Treat a Baluch with respect,"
-- "Buy a Pashtun"
-- "Shoot a Sindhi."

Ie. Buy a Pashtun.

And by the way, since in some measure this is a "tribal war", Karzai about 10 years ago was asked why it wasn't exploited - send people after the Panjpai tribes. Basically he said..."It's easy to start (tribe against tribe), almost impossible to stop." It would go on for a hundred years....the revenge and retribution attacks. It still might. And Pakistan which caused has a reckoning coming.

Let's look at the origin ...I'll make it simple:
-- 1972 the King Zahir Shah is overthrown by a professed "leftist" (modernist) Da'ud Khan from the same tribe and family (Mohammadzai Barakzai). Da'ud tries to modernize Afghanistan while playing the Cold War balancing game between Russia and USA (Pakistan)...(while at the same time claiming "Pakhtunistan" - down to the Indus and through Baluchistan to the Indus Ocean).
-- April 1978 Da'ud is overthrown by leftist army officers of the "Parcham" faction (Tadjiks) led by Hafizullh Amin. Da'ud was killed (I was living in Karachi - American School kids were up there for an athletic tournament. I was actually physically up in deepest Baluchistan where I wasn't supposed to be when the news hit - it was 29 April...same date the American Embassy in Saigon began to evacuate 3 years earlier).
-- Dec 1979: The Parchams start to worry about Russian involvement in all of this and start to talk to us (remember the context - Vietnam had fallen; hostages in Iran). So in December 1979 Russians invade and install the "Khalq" faction (Pashtun leftists-modernists) of Babrak Kamal (a Communist), later replaced by Dr. Mohammad Najibullah. The war began; it was brutal (to this day the Taliban call the Afghan government "Khalq'is".
-- 1981 - Reagan elected....payback time for Vietnam for the USSR.
-- 1986 US sends in Stingers...that was it.
-- 1989 Russians withdraw across Freedom Bridge
-- April 1992 Najibullah regime falls, he's executed.
-- 1993 Clinton and US Congress says, "thank you very much, good bye." No aid is given to reconstruct a devastated country. There were 7 major anti-Russian factions. The country descends into civil war. One of the factions was fundamentalist Hekmatyar, a former communist opportunist who puts 500,000 rockets into Kabul (supported by Pakistan) destroying the city.
-- 1994 - Pakistan, worried about the situation and as always thinking about nuclear war with India, under Benazir Bhutto, decided to create the "Taliban" supported by ISI to bring order. Taliban took Qandahar and by 1998 Kabul and that was it. Mullah Omar was illiterate but believed he was the "Mahdi." But the hard-world Pakistan reasoning behind the whole thing was bizarre and classic sub-continent:
. . . . .- When the inevitable war with India breaks out over Kashmir (the tail that wags the world dog), India can cut Pakistan in two by taking a bridgehead over the Indus.
. . . . .- Pakistan therefore would need "maneuver room" or "defense in depth" and needed to secure a safe base area in Afghanistan. So they created the Taliban to control it - or at least the area south of the Hindu Kush. (One can imaging lines of Pakistan tanks snaking up the Boland and Khyber passes...to "maneuver" in the Dast i-Margo with the fastest moving dunes in the world, all under air attack..the whole thing reminds one of Nazi libenstrum "living space" ideas).
-- 1997 UBL relocates from Khartoum to Kabul, as a "guest" of Mullah Omar (see the Pashtun concept of sanctuary/hospitality).
-- 1997 The Tadjiks faction digs in north of Kabul under Ahmad Shah Masood...trench warfare develops between the Taliban and the anti-Taliban elements..often Tadjik and Turkoman vs Pashtun, with Arab and Islamic extremist elements involved with the Taliban.
-- 2001 UBL attacks America. Masood is assassinated the same day. America gives an ultimatum to Omar - he turns it down and is overthrown in the most remote area of Asia in two months by our using Dostam and the Tadjik elements along with anti-Taliban (Zirak) Pastun tribal elements (Karzai) and the Baluch in SW Afghanistan. Major elements of the Taliban escape to Peshawar, Miram Shah, Quetta, (we refused to take out the long lines of vehicles) where supported by Pakistan they start the riposte. Iran supports them from the other side.

So that's pretty much it. Pakistan could have built a bridge to a moderate Muslim country, Afghanistan after the Taliban were ousted , but because of their fanatical commitment to "maneuver room" and hatred of India, they played a black game with us, killed hundreds of our soldiers, thousands of Afghans and cemented the hatred of Afghans for them. And no one wants the Taliban back (I used to ask Afghans what was the worst "sin of the day," - everyday under Omar there was a new one - pants too long, beard too short).

quite interesting analysis of an incredibly complicated dynamic. tribal politics combined with religious animosities yield a predictably unstable reality across the entire region. but the likely most unstable "tectonic plates" on the globe are those you have cataloged here.

i'm a texas boy, and live one congressional district north of lufkin, home of charlie wilson. i suspect the world would be a measurably safer place had he been placed in complete control of our dealings in the region....

i'm reminded of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY

G3. Charlie Wilson was a character and I knew the people dealing with him. He was pro Zia (And I was there when Zia overthrew Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto). Zia was an anti-communist and he and Charlie had an incredible relationship - the film is really good.

But after Zia's death, I don't think Charlie would have understood the Pakistan national goals. There were and are currents in Pakistan politics not mentioned by Charlie.

-- 1) The Pakistan original obsession was to "raise the green flag of Islam over the Red Fort in Delhi". Pakistan - the land of the pure - was created as an Islamic counter-foil to India to protect an Islamic dominance which had lasted for 800 years. The original 1947 "we're going to retake Delhi" is now just populist harang which concentrates on Kashmir. And the the liberal ideal of Mohammad Ali Jinnah for a Pakistan state has degenerated Into an Islamic theocracy which daily becomes more sinister. (When I was there 1970's, the Pakistan military could run without gas but not without Johnny Walker Red - the girls were a reason for the dramatic population increase - no more - sadly).

-- 2) The Kashmir problem - This has been the wedge which the Pak military, always the dominant force in Pakistan, has used to justify whatever they wanted....and be damned water, schools, roads, infrastructure, trade, whatever. (And I really really enjoy the company of Pakistan soldiers and officers).

I know the problem we have with "nation building.": It worked in Japan, Korea, Germany. But in Afghanistan, I think Charlie Wilson was righ in 1993. Look at those last scenes where he's trying to get some money for a burnt-out country, whose entire elite was executed or exiled...and there was no interest in America - the Cold War was over and regional politics took over.

I often used this Line in talking with Pashtuns after 9/11, i.e.:
1). "- Why are you here?"
2) "- First, Badal....revenge. We're going to kill those people who attacked us.
. . "- And, We walked away in 1993 and left you with a mess. This is to make amends. And Thanks for ousting the Russians."

(edited)

I also think that the way we handled aid to the Afghan government after 2002 was utterly disgraceful and just fostered corruption.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
What do you make of all this, Larry?


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1). "- Why are you here?"
2). "- We walked away in 1993 and left you with a mess. This is to make amends. And Thanks for ousting the Russians."
3). �Rolls eyes.�

2) "- First, Badal....revenge. We're going to kill those people who attacked us.
. . "- And, We walked away in 1993 and left you with a mess. This is to make amends. And Thanks for ousting the Russians."


_________________________
3). �When I was down you just stood there grinning.� Bob Dylan

So if I understand this correctly, it is most likely members of the Zahka Khel Afridi who were calling me several times a day, promising to lower the interest rate on my Visa or MasterCard to as little as zero percent.

They always had a thick Pakistani accent, yet told me their name was Michael Jones or Mark Smith. That was always a clue that they couldn't be trusted. When they asked for my card expiration date, I usually strung them along and told them I had to go get my card. I just set the phone down for about 10-15 minutes, and then found the thieving bastards still waiting when I picked up the phone again. I gave them a fake expiration date, and then they would ask for my card number, beginning with 5. So I would tell them, "5". Several seconds would pass and then they explained that they needed the rest of my card number. I acted confused, and asked if they meant the expiration date. When they told me they wanted my whole 16 digit card number, that's when I asked them if they just came out of a camel's ass. Then I proceeded to tell them how stupid they were for wasting time every day trying to get my credit card info, and getting nothing but verbal abuse. It was an enjoyable way to deal with them.

One got so pissed that he told me Osama bin Laden is still alive. But we already know that because Obama never showed us a corpse. Trump would never show respect to a murdering rat like that. Trump was also smart enough to cut aid to Pakistan, and Liberal Democrats felt he was wrong to stop sending our money to back-stabbers and crooks.

I think Argo44 came straight out of a Camels arse....


Truth is I pity the Camel.