The Global War on Tribes

Mapping, Indigenous Research Ethics, and the “Global War on Tribes”

Zoltan Grossman

Native peoples around Indian Country were perplexed and angered by the use of “Geronimo” as a code word for Osama Bin Laden during the raid that killed him.

Native leaders have expressed similar concern about the naming of military weapons systems and operations after Native peoples and leaders--from Apache helicopters to Operation Crazy Horse. Such terms, they assert, do not honor Native people, but designate them as “savage,” equate them with an “enemy,” and dishonor the many Native people who have served in disproportionate numbers in the U.S. armed forces.

The military use of Native imagery is nothing new, and reveals a much deeper and historic use of the Indian Wars as a template and justification for foreign wars. This pattern has been repeated since the earliest days of U.S. military expansion. Manifest Destiny has always been always template for overseas expansion, as a divine mission to occupy foreign lands, undermine the sovereignty of foreign nations, divide and “civilize” foreign peoples, and exploit their natural resources. The “Indian Wars” have always been the model for foreign military interventions, the “Army forts” a model for foreign military bases, and the “Indian scouts” the model for foreign proxy troops.

U.S. colonization of Native lands was justified by “liberating” Native people from “paganism.” As Richard Drinnon states in his 1981 classic Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-hating and Empire-building, “In each and every West, place itself was infinitely less important …than what the white settlers brought in their heads and hearts to that particular place. At each magic margin, their metaphysics of Indian-hating underwent a seemingly confirmatory ‘perennial rebirth.’ ….All along, the obverse of Indian-hating had been the metaphysics of empire-building….Winning the West amounted to no less than winning the world”

The connection between internal and external colonialism have been evident since the expansion of the frontier, and the annexation of northern Mexico. Secretary of State William Seward foresaw that expansion “must continue to move on westward” to Alaska, Central America, and beyond “the shores of the Pacific Ocean,” in order to complete Columbus’s original vision of reaching Asia.

To prepare Americans for an overseas empire, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows were often accompanied by Pawnee Bill’s Great Far East shows.

The key moment in imperial expansion into the Pacific and Caribbean came in the aftermath of the 1898 Spanish-American War, when the U.S. annexed the Philippines and other Spanish colonies, Hawai’i, Samoa, and the Panama Canal Zone.Secretary of State John Hay described the “splendid little war” as part of a “general plan of opening a field of enterprise in those distant regions where the Far West becomes the Far East.”

Most of the generals who conquered these territories were veteran commanders in the Indian Wars, such as General Nelson Miles.

Troops returning from the Philippines were in turn used to suppress the Leech Lake uprising in Minnesota.

The War Department set up the Bureau of Insular Affairs (or BIA) to govern the island territories.

The Philippines as “Indian Country”

Troops had been sent to “liberate” Filipinos from Spanish rule, but then colonized the islands in the Philippine-American War. Many Indian War techniques, such as torture

and mass execution of rebel fighters, burning villages and crops, and rounding up survivors into reservation-like stockades, were perfected in the Philippines.

In response, rebels said they would “withdraw to the mountains and repeat the North American Indian warfare.”

U.S. soldiers were told that Filipinos were “savages no better than our Indians,” and ordered to “Apply the chastening rod…until they come into the reservation and promise to be good ‘Injuns’” As U.S. companies took over vast areas for plantations, the military armed Philippine Constabulary scouts to fight the rebels.

Theodore Roosevelt asserted in 1900 that “The presence of troops in the Philippines…has no more to do with militarism and imperialism than had their presence in the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wyoming during the many years which elapsed before the final outbreaks of the Sioux were…put down.”

Yet Governor-General William Howard Taft said of Filipinos in 1902 , “It is possible for us to govern them as we govern the Indian tribes.”Indigenous peoples from both North America and the Philippines were displayed like subhuman trophies of war at the 1904 St. Louis World Fair.

Despite opposition from anti-imperialists such as William Jennings Bryan and Mark Twain, the 14-year war left 4,000 US soldiers and a quarter-million Filipinos dead.

Throughout the 20th century, the connection between Manifest Destiny and overseas wars became abundantly clear, as Uncle Sam added more conquered peoples to his empire (in this racist cartoon, “His family is large and still getting bigger, the result of good work in snapping the trigger”),

US colonial authorities sought through residential-school style education to assimilate the new colonial subjects to capitalist values.

The concept of Asia as frontier was carried forward through the 20th century.

As General Douglas Macarthur stated (during the Korean War) at the 1951 Seattle Centennial, "To the early pioneer the Pacific Coast marked the end of his courageous westerly advance--to us it should mark but the beginning. To him it delimited our western frontier--to us that frontier has been moved beyond the Pacific horizon.”

Vietnam as “Indian Country”

Nowhere was “westward imperialism” as clear as in the Vietnam War, which U.S. leaders justified as “liberating” the people from Communism. One Admiral had a sign on his office door equating “Injun fightin’ and Counterinsurgency. U.S. Marines “considered all areas outside their small circular fortresses to be ‘Indian Country’.”

U.S. forces created “free-fire zones,” where they could open fire on anyone that moves,

and herded farmers within them into “Strategic Hamlets,” which were based on “the old stockade idea our ancestors used against the Indians.”

Agent Orange was described as the “U.S. policy of massive defoliation, crop destruction, bombing and plowing of Indochina…as a modern counterpart to the extermination of the bison in the American West.”

Many Native peoples recognized the similarity between the 1968 My Lai Massacre, in to the Wounded Knee Massacre. One of the infantrymen who carried out the shootings agreed he was motivated by “the Indian idea…the only good gook is a dead gook.”Has America’s historic driving wave westward crested?

Five years later, when Native fighters took a stand at Wounded Knee, some Native Vietnam veterans were among them.

The CIA armed highland indigenous peoples (such as Montagnards in South Vietnam and Hmong in Laos) to use as proxy troops and scouts against lowland rebels. In this divide-and-conquer process, the historic differences between the minority and majority ethnic groups were worsened, and the indigenous fighters were abandoned as the war went sour.

The Pentagon turned the fighting over to allied troops as part of President Nixon’s “Vietnamization” campaign to withdraw GIs out of harm’s way, to “change the color of the corpses,” but they lost in 1975.

Iraq as “Indian Country”

The frontier imagery was resurrected in the 1991 Gulf War, when U.S. forces were sent to “liberate” Kuwait from Iraq. General Neal wanted U.S. forces to be certain of speedy victory once they committed land forces to ‘Indian Country.’”

Soldiers were trained that Iraqis were “towelheads” or “hajis,” the new terms for “injuns” or “gooks.”

The U.S. also pit Kurds and Shi’a Arabs against Sunni Arab “tribes,” but then abandoned their rebellions. Like in previous wars, when oppressed peoples (with their very real grievances) are no longer needed, Washington quickly abandons its defense of their “human rights.” We love ‘em, we use ‘em, and then we dump ‘em.

After its 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. created a new Iraqi government and privatized most industries, much as Native lands had been privatized and allotted in North America.

As that occupation went sour, it stimulated insurgencies among both Sunni and Shi’a Arabs, and the Pentagon began to divide and conquer tribal groups within the Sunni provinces. The Military Review reported that “Tribal engagement …reflects the enduring strength of the tribes.”

In a repeat of “Vietnamization” and earlier wars, the U.S. also begun turning the fight over to Iraqi proxy troops.

In the Wall Street Journal, analyst and author Robert D. Kaplan brazenly compared Iraq to “Indian Country”: “…the American military is back to the days of fighting the Indians. …. Army and Marine field officers have embraced [the metaphor] it because it captures perfectly the combat challenge of the early 21st century….The range of Indian groups, numbering in their hundreds, that the U.S. Cavalry…had to confront was no less varied than that of the warring ethnic and religious militias spread throughout Eurasia, Africa and South America in the early 21st century.”

Afghanistan/Pakistan as “Indian Country”

After the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush repeatedly evoked the frontier, exclaiming “there's an old poster out West that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.’ ” The NATO occupation has focused on the Taliban insurgency in the Pashtun ethnic regions in Afghanistan, which straddle the border with northwestern Pakistan “frontier provinces.” Bush commented in 2007, “Taliban and Al Qaeda figures do hide in remote regions of Pakistan. This is wild country; this is wilder than the Wild West.”

The U.S. media still consistently refers to this “frontier” as a “lawless” tribal region. But the New York Times admits, “Led by councils of elders, tribes provided their members with protection, financial support, a means to resolve disputes.” The Council on Foreign Relations reported thatpitting Pashtun tribes against each other to defeat the Taliban “would renew tribal rivalries that had been dormant for years.”

Though American magazines describe the insurgents as “savages” in a lawless frontier, it is clear that the tribes have long exercised customary laws.

Of course, when Bin Laden was finally located, he was living in comfort far from the tribal “frontier.”

Tribal regions

Tribal regions are local areas where tribes are the dominant form of social organization, and tribal identities often trump state, ethnic, and even religious identities. Tribal peoples have a strongly localized orientation, tied to a particular place and clan kinship ties. Tribes are distinct from ethnic groups.

Ethnic group identity is based largely on language, such as Pashtun, Somali, and so on. In most countries, “tribes” refer to internal divisions within these ethnic nations, based on smaller and older regional clans and local dialects (such as Zubaydi in Iraq, Wazir in Pakistan, or Darod in Somalia). Within the U.S. itself, nations are downgraded as “tribes,” and tribes are often called merely “bands.” So the Wazir “tribe” within the Pashtuns is roughly equivalent to the Oglala “band” of the Lakota Nation, or the Nisqually within the Coast Salish Nation.

Tribes can be viewed as the building blocks for ethnic nations, but in many countries (even in Europe) the cement has never really dried. Tribal regions in the Middle East and Central Asia function as a layer below ethnic and religious territories, which in turn function as a layer below modern states and their colonial boundaries. Contemporary armed conflicts in the region can be best understood not as struggles between political ideologies, but between these different layers of collective identity. In Iraq, tribes can even straddle the divide between Sunni and Shi’a.

The New Battlegrounds

Tribal loyalties have become a key element in the expanding Long War, as the Pentagon is increasing missile and gunship attacks, Special Forces raids, and proxy invasions-- in the name of combating “Islamist terrorism.” First in Yemen, where the London Times reports the country’s “mountainous terrain, poverty and lawless tribal society make it a close match for Afghanistan as a new terrorist haven,”

and in Somalia (where clan or tribal identity still plays a role in the civil war),

in Libya, where Qadhafi and NATO-backed rebels competed for tribal loyalties, yet within all these countries, the main targets of the wars are predominantly “tribal regions,” and the old frontier language of Indian-fighting and alliances is becoming the lexicon of 21st-century counterinsurgency.

The “Global War on Terror” is fast morphing into a “Global War on Tribes.” Modern counterinsurgency doctrine only views tribal regions as festering cauldrons of lawlessness, and “havens” or “breeding grounds” for terrorism, unless the tribes themselves are turned against the West’s enemies. This threatening view of tribal regions is, of course, as old as European colonialism itself. In The Thistle and the Drone, Akbar Ahmed wrote that wars against such Tribal Islamic communities “may well bring about the destruction of one of the oldest forms of human society.”

As Dr. Daniel Wildcat states, “Given that the United States’ current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are often couched in terms of civilization versus tribalism, it may be hard for many Americans to imagine that something tribal or of indigenous origin could be anything other than primitive and uncivilized…” (p. 35).

In 2011, the U.S. submitted a brief in a military commission case reviewing the conviction of a War on Terror suspect, comparing Seminole resisters in the 1810s engaged “irregular warfare,” with al Qaeda.

Antiwar activist Tom Hayden traced back the language in new counterinsurgency manuals advocating divide-and-conquer strategies, directly to military training manuals from the Indian Wars.

John Hall’s 2009 book Uncommon Defense: Indian Allies in the Black Hawk War, examines how the divide-and-conquer strategy of tribal nations in 1832 Wisconsin resonates with counterinsurgency planners today. One Army Brigadier General comments that this book “is instructive as the United States and its allies confront tribal societies in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan while endeavoring to defeat transnational enemies and shape the course of local conflicts that predated our involvement there.”

As Arundhati Roy commented after visiting Naxalite rebels in India, “If you look at Afghanistan, Waziristan…the northeast states of India, the entire thing is a tribal uprising. In Afghanistan, obviously, it’s taken the form of a radical Islamist uprising. And here [in India], it’s a radical left uprising. But the attack is the same. It’s a corporate attack…on these people. The resistance has taken different forms.” As Roy told me at a Seattle Town Hall, “Resistance is possible in those areas because they have an imagination outside this bar-coded capitalist society that everybody else lives in...that's why there's huge resistance there…a whole bandwidth of resistance that has actually managed for quite a few years now to stall the corporate onslaught.”

The Global War on Tribes has some common characteristics in all these countries. First, the war is most blatantly being waged to steal natural wealth under tribal lands, whether Iraqi oil or Alberta tar sands. The rugged, inaccessible terrain that prevented colonial powers from eliminating tribal societies also made accessing natural resources initially more difficult.

Second, the war is waged against the very existence of tribal regions that are not under the centralized control of states, and (in words of Victoria Tauli-Corpuz) are “obstacles to their progress.” The tribal regions still retain forms of communal social organization that has not been solely determined by global capitalism.

Third, their “community solidarity and collectivity” enables tribal peoples to fight back against state control and corporate globalization. That is why the “lawless tribal regions” have to be “tamed,” so as not to become a “festering sore,” and a source of resistance to the corporate state. The only way for tribal leaders not to be crushed by the counterinsurgency war is to accept its aims, its money, and its weapons.

During European colonial expansion, tribal peoples who could not muster large military alliances were more vulnerable to conquest and occupation. In most countries, the colonization process left them divided and fighting each other. In the 21st century-- just as many remaining pockets of exploitable resources are located in tribal regions--the only successful pockets of resistance may be found in the mountains, deserts and forests where tribal peoples refuse to die.

Indian Country as “Indian Country”

The story comes full circle back to Indian Country. In South and Central America, powerful and growing Indigenous tribal movements are increasingly being targeted by U.S. military and intelligence agencies. The National Intelligence Council projected in its report Mapping the Global Future 2020 that “the failure of elites to adapt to the evolving demands of free markets and democracy probably will fuel a revival in populism and drive indigenous movements, which so far have sought change through democratic means, to consider more drastic means” In a Military Review bibliography, the Foreign Military Studies Office or FMSO at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, lumped together “Insurgencies, Terrorist Groups and Indigenous Movements,” and in another article warned of Indigenous rebellions and other “insurgencies” in Mexico (5-6/97).