For all of Slobodan Milosevic's bluster and disdain for America during the Kosovo war, the Yugoslav leader caved in because he got the message. The Taliban don't. And President Bush's ultimatums inflame Afghan passions against the United States. Even worse, they help Osama bin Laden.

The Pashtuns, Afghanistan's dominant ethnic group to which much of the Taliban belong, are a tribal society whose ancient culture and customs have evidently not been closely examined by the Bush administration. Roughly half of Afghanistan's population of 25.5 million is Pashtun. As many as 23 million Pashtuns live in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier and Baluchistan provinces, which border Afghanistan.

The Pashtuns live by an austere code of conduct known as the pashtunwali. If America's engagement in Afghanistan -- whether war or peace or nation building -- is to be productive, the Bush administration must consider this code and speak to the Afghans in a symbolic and cultural language they understand.

Pashtunwali evolved from Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past, from which elaborate codes and protocols of the tribal elders, now known as maleks, survived. Because the Pashtuns are the dominant ethnic and linguistic group in Afghanistan, its non-Pashtuns -- including Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Baluchis and Nuristanis -- also know the concepts.

Central to Pashtunwali is nang, or honor. The tribesman is taught that death is preferable to a life without honor. Anthropologists often mention nang in relation to "sexual property," a euphemism for wives and women whom the Pashtun is taught to defend with his life. But there are many ways of despoiling a Pashtun's honor. Wartime ultimatums served between bombs are one way.

The Bush administration may think it is giving the Taliban a way out, but the ultimatums heighten the Afghans' sense that honor is being challenged. Literally, Bush's offers add insult to injury. Their public nature, tone and uncompromising language cause the Pashtun to invoke the other major tenet of the code, badal, or revenge. The only way to redeem one's honor is to avenge it. The Taliban are vowing to do that.

In the ultimatums and counter-ultimatums that we are seeing on television, a choreography is emerging. President Bush's television ultimatum last Friday was followed on Saturday with a taped threat of more terrorist attacks from Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda that was broadcast on Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite television. Unlike the Bush administration, bin Laden knows the Afghans well and he acted within pashtunwali to exploit its third tenet, melmastiya, or hospitality. As we know and have heard repeatedly, he is a "guest" in Afghanistan. Bin Laden's hosts, the Taliban, are bombed and beleaguered and had no way of responding. Cleverly, their guest timed his Al Jazeera ultimatum so that in addition to being a terrorist threat it was also a token of gratitude.

Of all aspects of pashtunwali, melmastiya is the one to which U.S. policymakers need to pay the closest attention. A complex etiquette surrounds the treatment and status of guests such as bin Laden. In a tribal Pashtun house, the male members of a family, the host and his sons, serve food to their guests but remain standing all evening in a show of respect.

Melmastiya's other and perhaps most relevant dimension is the requirement (nanawati) of providing refuge to anyone within the confines of one's home or country. It is a code related to nang. It is also the reason why Osama bin Laden has found a home in Afghanistan when nobody else will have him.

Bin Laden's stay in Afghanistan is not made possible by Islamic brotherhood or by the hard-line Islam he preaches. It is made possible by melmastiya. In Pashtun culture, a host gains honor by serving and protecting his guest.

The Taliban's extraordinarily polite requests to bin Laden to leave Afghanistan earlier this month were interpreted as weakness, skulduggery and time-buying ploys by Washington. In fact, the Taliban were acting the only way they know how. If necessary, in Pashtun custom, a host must sacrifice his life in the course of extending protection or refuge to a guest. That is precisely what the Taliban are now continuing to do, and what Osama bin Laden wants.

But under the Pashtun code, the guest has obligations, too: to obey the national law and not to do something than endangers his host. Whatever bin Laden's motivations for being in Afghanistan, his presence has turned into a catastrophe for the Afghan people. The extremist Wahabi strain of Islamic fundamentalism that he preaches is popular in Saudi Arabia and Yemen but foreign to most Afghans, even to some members of the Taliban.

Bin Laden knows his true audience is in the Middle East. That is why his statements of hatred against the United States are taped in Arabic, not in Pashto or Dari, the languages of Afghanistan. They are broadcast for the Arab world on Arab television. Most Afghans get their news from the Pashto radio broadcasts of the Voice of America and the BBC.

The United States and Britain must tailor those broadcasts so that they are understandable within the Pashtun's code of honor and hospitality. What America's leaders and the leaders of the coalition say to the Afghans must be made understandable within the Afghans' cultural context.

It should be conveyed explicitly to the Afghans that bin Laden is a foreigner who is abusing melmastiya, and that Afghanistan is being taken advantage of. The United States has talked about helping to convene a loya jirga, or council of elders, as a way out of the crisis. The jirga is an expression of pashtunwali, but efforts to convene such a meeting must evolve from within Afghanistan, not from outside. The deposed king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, whom the United States proposes to bring back from exile at age 86 to head the meeting, has been out of Afghanistan since 1973. He is a stranger to most Afghans. A serious jirga would be inclusive, allowing even the Taliban to participate. Otherwise, the U.S. effort will again abuse the pashtunwali. A jirga without credibility would be a jirga without honor.

In the meantime, Washington cannot engage the Afghans in any meaningful dialogue by serving ultimatums and dropping bombs.

Hasan Jafri has covered Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan for the Jang and Dawn newspaper groups and for The Chronicle Foreign Service. Lewis Dolinsky has written frequently on foreign affairs for The Chronicle.

©2001 San Francisco Chronicle

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