Colonial effort

"This is highly similar to the methods of colonial administration through local "traditional" proxies deployed by the British throughout South Asia and Africa. It is also similar to American attempts to enlist "traditional" local power structures (churches, highland ethnic tribes, etc) in counterinsurgencies in Vietnam and elsewhere. There's a structural reason why such alliances are tempting: local tribes and traditional leaders rarely define their interests in ways that conflict with those of a faraway power like Britain or America. In contrast, state-building ideological movements like the Vietnamese Communists or the Taliban often do define interests that entail geopolitical conflict with other states. It's important to recognise that the Taliban are trying to build a state in Afghanistan—a bad state, one inimical to the values and interests of the free world, but a state nonetheless. To oppose a state-building movement by backing local power structures that maintain national fragmentation is a strategy that may run against the current of modernisation. There are a number of other disturbing elements in Major Gant's paper. On first meeting "Sitting Bull", he quickly decided to aid him in recovering territory the elder claimed had been seized by a rival tribe—a decision one critic called participating in "tribal cleansing". His description of his Afghan experience is shot through with an exoticist enjoyment of gazing at himself dressed up in local clothes, his arm flung around the shoulder of a tribal elder. But mostly, what the "tribal strategy" needs is a clearer sense of what exactly it is fighting for. In the age of empire, colonial support for tribal authorities gave the lie to the "white man's burden", "mission civilisatrice" fiction that European powers were running Nigeria and Vietnam for their own good. American and European state-building efforts in Afghanistan were initially sold as an effort to build a fairer, more modern, more prosperous, safer state for Afghans (especially Afghan women) to enjoy. If Afghanistan is instead to have a backward, traditional, patriarchal tribal society, should America be helping it to get there?" (thanks Laleh)