The Thistle and the Drone: How America's War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam
By Akbar Ahmed
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the United States declared war on terrorism. More than ten years later, the results are decidedly mixed. Here world-renowned author, diplomat, and scholar Akbar Ahmed reveals an important yet largely ignored result of this war: in many nations it has exacerbated the already broken relationship between central governments and the largely rural Muslim tribal societies on the peripheries of both Muslim and non-Muslim nations. The center and the periphery are engaged in a mutually destructive civil war across the globe, a conflict that has been intensified by the war on terror.
Conflicts between governments and tribal societies predate the war on terror in many regions, from South Asia to the Middle East to North Africa, pitting those in the centers of power against those who live in the outlying provinces. Akbar Ahmed's unique study demonstrates that this conflict between the center and the periphery has entered a new and dangerous stage with U.S. involvement after 9/11 and the deployment of drones, in the hunt for al Qaeda, threatening the very existence of many tribal societies.
American firepower and its vast anti-terror network have turned the war on terror into a global war on tribal Islam. And too often the victims are innocent children at school, women in their homes, workers simply trying to earn a living, and worshipers in their mosques. Battered by military attacks or drone strikes one day and suicide bombers the next, the tribes bemoan, "Every day is like 9/11 for us."
In The Thistle and the Drone, the third volume in Ahmed's groundbreaking trilogy examining relations between America and the Muslim world, the author draws on forty case studies representing the global span of Islam to demonstrate how the U.S. has become involved directly or indirectly in each of these societies. The study provides the social and historical context necessary to understand how both central governments and tribal societies have become embroiled in America's war. Beginning with Waziristan and expanding to societies in Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere, Ahmed offers a fresh approach to the conflicts studied and presents an unprecedented paradigm for understanding and winning the war on terror.
The Thistle and the Drone was the 2013 Foreword Reviews Gold winner for Political Science.
Related to The Thistle and the Drone
Related ebooks
Enemies of All Humankind: Fictions of Legitimate Violence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEngaging the Muslim World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Security and Terror: American Culture and the Long History of Colonial Modernity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfter Newspeak: Language Culture and Politics in Russia from Gorbachev to Putin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Treaty of I: the Genesis: A Novel By Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shanghai Homes: Palimpsests of Private Life Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Curating Home Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLittle Women of Baghlan: The Story of a Nursing School for Girls in Afghanistan, the Peace Corps, and Life Before the Taliban Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBrewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer Activism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBorderland Capitalism: Turkestan Produce, Qing Silver, and the Birth of an Eastern Market Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerica in the World: A History in Documents from the War with Spain to the War on Terror Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond the Blue Horizon: How the Earliest Mariners Unlocked the Secrets of the Oceans Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5An Aran Reader Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBroad Is My Native Land: Repertoires and Regimes of Migration in Russia's Twentieth Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe American Response to Canada Since 1776 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGrand Improvisation: America Confronts the British Superpower, 1945-1957 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Confronting the Weakest Link: Aiding Political Parties in New Democracies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Scarlet Plague Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsColonizing Hawai'i: The Cultural Power of Law Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post–Civil War World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Woman Soldier's Own Story: The Autobiography of Xie Bingying Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEmpire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grassroots Fascism: The War Experience of the Japanese People Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Wars & Military For You
The Art of War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies: The Civil War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Daily Creativity Journal Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unacknowledged: An Expose of the World's Greatest Secret Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The God Delusion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wager Disaster: Mayem, Mutiny and Murder in the South Seas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Art of War: The Definitive Interpretation of Sun Tzu's Classic Book of Strategy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Kingdom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of War & Other Classics of Eastern Philosophy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Making of the Atomic Bomb Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sun Tzu's The Art of War: Bilingual Edition Complete Chinese and English Text Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Thistle and the Drone
1 rating1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ahmed starts out reframing the way the West views the Muslim world. Instead of looking at interactions in the world as a “clash of civilizations,” he posits that we should be looking at the Muslim diaspora as a set of tribal communities in conflict with their central governments. While some may think this is accepted thought already, it certainly was not when we went into Iraq in 1990, nor in 2003. Ahmed makes a compelling case with examples extending from Albania and Turkey to China and Indonesia, highlighting different models of organization and center-periphery relationships that apply throughout this huge area.Once the framing is stated, it almost seems obvious, which is perhaps the strongest argument for reading this book. Ahmed goes further to explain how the West has exacerbated regional tensions by inserting themselves into this conflict under the aegis of “the war on terror,” and turned the fight into a global affair against westernization and globalization as defined by Tom Friedman. The unintentional “bug splat” of drone strikes, or the civilian deaths coincident with targeted killings of terrorists, means tribal leaders have a moral responsibility to fight back, aligning with whomever has the strength and willingness to see that fight through. As long as the drone strikes and collateral damage continues, the fight will continue. The author uses the metaphor of the drone to represent Western technology and power and points out that the thistle captures the essence of tribal societies. The thistle is prickly, hardy, and very hard to uproot. It has an unusual beauty, and it roots in poor soil. Long after all is destroyed, the thistle will abound. Ahmed tells us that the West was used in some cases by “central governments who cynically and ruthlessly exploited the war on terror to pursue their own agenda against the periphery.” We know it is true.”It is in the interest of the United States to understand, in all the tribal societies with which it is engaged, the people, the leadership, history, culture, their relationship with the center, their social structures, and the role Islam plays in their lives, These issues are, in face, the subject matter of anthropology…Without this understanding, the war on terror will not end in any kind of recognizable victory as current military actions and policies are only exacerbating the conflict."Ahmed has met Presidents Bush and Obama in his role as academic and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Bush’s administration, I felt, was spectacularly wrong because it was imposing a prefabricated frame of different cultures and societies…Obama’s administration was spectacularly unsure…Both administrations were driven by issues almost wholly on a political level, neglecting the moral and social dimensions and their implications.” Ahmed’s insights may be one of the reasons President Obama did not bomb Syria when the conflict began there. But much damage had been and continues to be done to the relationship tribal groups have with the United States. When the U.S. government put human and civil rights to the service of security, any admiration the U.S. had garnered began to erode. Ahmed is a huge fan of America’s founding fathers, and the U.S. Constitution. He points out that America itself has wrestled with the center-periphery issue itself in dealing with Native American Indians. Benjamin Franklin wrote that Europeans could learn a great deal from tribal societies: when a Native American elder was offered the opportunity to have several of his tribe educated at a local Virginia college, the elder thanked the government and replied:"Our Ideas of this Kind of Education happen not to be the same with yours…Several of our Young People were formerly brought up at the Colleges of the Northern Provinces; they were instructed in all your Sciences; but when they came back to us, they were bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in the Woods, unable to bear either Cold or Hunger, knew neither how to build a Cabin, take a Deer, or kill an Enemy, spoke our Language imperfectly; were therefore neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, or Counsellors; they were totally good for nothing… however…if the Gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their Sons, we will take great Care of their Education, instruct them in all we know, and make Men of them."The rise of “instant terror experts” that arose in and around the think tanks sprinkling Washington after 9/11 fueled a distorted view of Islam and seeded Islamophobia throughout the U.S., mistakenly defining Islam as the enemy in the global war on terror. Ahmed gives the U.S. Army credit for gaining a greater understanding of the importance of tribal culture as the war in Afghanistan dragged on, but the strategy of working with tribes as a partner came too late: “The United States did not have the time, the resources, or the temperament to create an effective and neutral tribal administration…”The solution, according to Ahmed, is using the tribal structure and code to repair “mutations into violence:”"If the tribal code promotes the notion of revenge, then it just as surely advocates the resolution of conflict through a council of elders based on justice and tradition…While the state must express its ideas of nationhood by providing education and other benefits to its peoples, the leaders of the periphery need to encourage their followers to participate in the processes of change and take advantage of them. The state must understand that its components have different customs and traditions, and it needs to acknowledge them, granting communities on the periphery the full rights and privileges enjoyed by its other citizens…however good the intentions on both sides, there is still the matter of how the each sees the other…each side must appreciate the perception the other side has of it."...People on periphery have been traumatized beyond imagination in recent years…They face widespread famine and disease and are voiceless and friendless in a hostile world…They have been robbed of their dignity and honor…Yet the world seems indifferent to their suffering and is barely aware of its scale…The test is to see a common humanity in the suffering of others.”Ahmed is an academic and he writes fulsomely, with many examples and vignettes. The argument is strong and logical enough to be stated simply in a few pages, though, and we quickly recognize the value of this recast of the conflict in which we are embroiled. I really appreciate his taking the time to write his thesis and I come away with a fresh perspective and appreciation of conflict and amity in our world.This book is Part III of a trilogy examining relations between America and the Muslim world. It is self-contained, however, individuals may find it worthwhile to look at Ahmed's previous work, JOURNEY INTO ISLAM and JOURNEY INTO AMERICA. Colonel David Kilcullen, author of THE ACCIDENTAL GUERILLA blurbs praise on the back: "...required reading..."