Description
This study tends to highlight the significance of culture and related concepts like ethno-
symbolism in the counter insurgency operations taking Afghanistan as a case study. I
hypothesize that if participants in an insurgency, the Taliban in this study, are not seen as a
monolith but rather a heterogenous group with different cultural traditions in different
geographical regions of the country bound by an ideological link, we are better placed to
make use of that cultural knowledge in strategy to counter an insurgency. However, the
literature that constitutes Afghanistan as an object of enquiry tends to fall into epistemic traps
that ‘others’ the Afghan populace. The Human Terrain System (HTS) was specifically
developed by the United States in their bid for cultural turn in COIN operations to reduce the
human cost of war and to ‘Win Heart and Minds’ (WHAM). Twenty years of costly and
unsuccessful intervention in Afghanistan and the mannerism of their exit indicates the failure
of HTS. Though they placed ‘culture’ as centre of enquiry but could not jettison the
underpinnings of Americentrism in their policy and adherence to rational choice theory which
made it impossible to see ‘war’ from within. There is a need for detailed study of diverse
tribal culture, prevalent myths, the code of conduct without othering the objects of enquiry,
without necessarily instrumentalizing the ‘tribe’, and by suspending the academic bias
towards violence. Though this article tends to be policy relevant, it is an attempt to challenge
certain ontological and epistemological determinants of rationalism when studying non state
armed groups.
