Yesterday, upon discovering the carcass of Ghosts of Alexander I re-read a couple of Christian's older posts, including Petraeus and McChrystal Drink Major Gant's Snake Oil and Gravediggers Disinter Tribal Militia Corpse. In doing so, I came across something that I had overlooked before. In his rebuttal of Jim Gant's paper on tribes, Christian posted this piece from the Human Terrain System, published in September 2009:
My Cousin’s Enemy is My Friend: A Study of Pashtun “Tribes”
I read through this and found it to be a good explanation for why tribes may not be a good conduit for us to work through and why it might not be productive to empower them as a means to our objectives. That is, I found it to be a good explanation if the observations are valid and the reasoning is sound. It made sense to me, but I am not an anthropologist and I have never been to Afghanistan.
I posted this question at SWJ, but did not get much of a response. So, I am reposting here to target the slightly different readership that visits here. My question is this:
Is anyone aware of any informed critiques of this paper - positive or negative? Or, for those with relevant knowledge/experience, what are your thoughts on the paper?
Comments, thoughts, links to other comments or thoughts, or any other input would be appreciated.