Bury the Bloody Hatchet: Religion and Reconciliation in Afghanistan

Eric Patterson

December 21, 2010

When the US negotiated peace with American Indians just a few years after the American Revolution, they used religiously-inspired, culturally relevant symbols to “bury the hatchet.” However, the secularist approach to contemporary Western foreign and security policies has largely overlooked, or contemptuously disregarded, the highly religious context of war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, it is time to consider a religious approach to peacemaking in Afghanistan based on Islamic concepts of arbitration and mediation (sulh). This paper argues that the larger secularist bias in Western foreign policies have made the West blind to the religious aspects of contemporary global affairs and reports on the one-size-fits-all Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programs instituted in Afghanistan following the Tokyo Donor conference of 2003. Finally, this paper articulates Islamic religious concepts that could be the basis for establishing reconciliation between warring parties in Afghanistan.

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