A Tale of Two Markets

Unfortunately, all Cultures are not the Same

The Guns of Peshawar

In the north-western area of Pakistan, along the porous and long border that runs almost exactly south to north, and separates Pakistan from Afghanistan, at least in theory if not practice, lie the tribal areas of Pakistan.

In these areas, the idea of a central authority or government that rules by the law, and enforces it, is a meaningless and even laughable concept. The only law that applies here is that of Pashtunwali (the Pashtun code of honor), where the slightest infraction can result in blood feuds that can last for generations.

To call this area the wild west would be an understatement; there is no law except that of the gun, and no protection except that of the clan or tribe.

In the middle of this tribal zone lies the city of Peshawar, and very close to this city, perhaps sixty or so kilometers away, lies the gun market of the Afridi clan of the Pashtun people.

This market is located in a village called Darra Adam Khel, and the whole village is devoted to the marketing of one thing only: guns and firearms, in all shapes and sizes. You can buy handguns including World War II German 9 mm Mausers, all kinds of American and Russian machine guns including of course the Kalashnikov, as well as heavier ordinance such as anti-aircraft guns.

What is unique is that all the guns and ammunition that you see in the market are made right here in Darra, copied so faithfully from the originals that even the serial numbers are reproduced.

These guns are so accurately reproduced and manufactured, using nothing more than simple hand and machining tools, that they are virtually indistinguishable from the originals, down to the weight distribution and balance.

The Handbags of Shenzhen

Over four thousand kilometers away, in Southern China, a quick train ride across the border from Hong Kong will bring you to the thriving town of Shenzhen, which used to be a sleepy little village until 1978, when Deng Xiao Ping liberalized the Chinese economy, starting with four Special Economic Zones, where foreign investment was welcomed.

As the first of these four SEZ’s, Shenzhen grew at a rapid pace, with the economy of Southern China growing at an annual rate of 30% in some of these years, a rate that was unprecedented in human history.

Shenzhen is now a cacophonic city of gleaming towers and thirteen million people, noisy and congested and polluted, but also vibrant and lively.

It is also chock full of malls that will sell you copies, just like in Darra Adam Khel, except that the copies are not of guns and grenades, but of Gucci handbags, Armani sunglasses, Rolex watches, and so forth and so on, in a continuous parade of stalls and shops, in practically every nook and cranny of Shenzhen.

Behind Shenzhen lies the industrial hinterland of Southern China, an endless series of factories producing just about every kind of product you can think of, and exporting to a worldwide market.

Contrast

It is hard not to make the comparison, and highlight the contrast, between Darra and Shenzhen.

Both places are obviously full of entrepreneurial people who are highly skilled; in fact, it could be argued that the people of Darra are far more highly skilled as workmen, if only because a fake Gucci handbag is not likely to blow up in your hands, so the manufacturing tolerances are much less critical.

And yet, the people of Shenzhen chose to apply their skill to making copies of handbags, while the people of Darra chose to apply their skill to making copies of guns.

Why?

Ancient Threads

These two places represent two contrasting and opposing threads that run right back to the beginning of history.

For most of humanity’s existence, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years if not longer, our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers, living off the land, and constantly on the move. Even when a small group of modern humans migrated out of Africa, around seventy thousand years ago, and populated Eurasia (and later, the Americas), they remained as hunter-gatherers.

It was not until around ten thousand years ago, with the rise of agriculture, that humans started to settle down in organized communities, forming polities that gradually increased in size.

This changeover from the Paleolithic (hunter-gatherer) mode of production to the Neolithic (agricultural) one did not happen all at once; the Neolithic mode of production first took root in specific places, typically river basins in arid areas, so crops could be grown without having to clear forested land for agriculture.

As bronze and then iron tools became available, clearing of forests became more feasible, so farming started seeping out, so to speak, from these origin points, pushing hunter-gatherers into isolated and marginalized areas.

For most of humanity, the Neolithic mode of production was not actually an improvement. There was more food, and more certainty as to what the next harvest would produce; however, this also allowed the rise of a privileged ruling class which could live off the farmer’s back, extracting the agricultural surplus through tribute and taxation.

At the same time, relative food security also led to population growth, negating any residual gains from the increase in food production.

Farmers thus worked longer hours, and had to work harder, with far less variety of food than the average hunter-gatherer.

Conflict

However, the inherent unpredictability of relying on hunting and gathering meant that agricultural communities became tempting targets for hunter-gatherers whenever the forest failed to provide enough food. It was easy for hunters to raid the settled communities, and then disappear back into the forest.

A faint vestige of the continuous tension between these two different modes of production can be found in the story of Abel and Cain, which can be viewed (arguably) as an allegorical representation of this ancient clash between Neolithic and Paleolithic.

As human societies developed, the two threads changed in form while remaining the same in essence, manifesting themselves as tribal, nomadic (or partially nomadic) societies, the evolved version of Paleolithic, in opposition to the farming and herding, settled communities, the evolved version of Neolithic.

With time, the settled communities became larger polities, as these were easier to defend; this in turn allowed greater scope for the ruling class to extract the agricultural surplus, leading to the formation of empires and kingdoms.

Thus began the conflict of tribes versus empires, mirroring the ancient conflict between Paleolithic and Neolithic. The settled people bought space and peace through outright subjugation and slaughter of the tribes, or through the building of barriers, and when nothing else worked, through the payment of tributes.

For example, various Chinese dynasties built the Great Wall to keep the northern tribes out, while Indian kingdoms depended on a natural barrier — the Himalayas — coupled with a reliance on the border kingdoms, whose dharma (righteous path or responsibility) was to guard the routes that led into the Indian heartland.

The ancient Romans relied on rivers such as the Danube to separate themselves from the Germanic tribes, and in England, where there was no natural barrier, they built Hadrian’s Wall, a mini-Great Wall, to protect themselves from the Scots and Picts.

Tribes to Nations

In our contemporary and modern times, the distinction between tribe and empire may have metamorphosed further into tribes vs the nation-state, but it has remained fundamentally the same.

Tribal societies owe allegiance only to their own members, are intensely parochial and defensive, and lean towards fragmentation. This means that they are extremely resistant to central authority even when incorporated (for whatever reason) into a nation-state.

It took centuries of warfare in Europe before the tribes coalesced into nation-states, a process that African countries were forced to undergo in decades, with varying degrees of success. In some parts of the world, such as Iraq, the nation-state still totters at an uneasy junction between tribal and national, where the final outcome could go in either direction.

Which brings us back to Peshawar, and its tribal culture. Since tribal societies have no central government to protect them, or if there is one, they do not trust it, the tribal emphasis is on self-defense, and guns. This is why Darra’s craftsmen are making guns instead of copying Rolex watches.

It may be simplistic to see tribal in Peshawar, and nation-state in Shenzhen, and no doubt there are many other detailed factors at play, but in a fundamental way, the two markets represent a modern-day distillation of two different cultures, each representing a different and ancient thread of history.

If you had no choice but to live in Darra or Shenzhen, which place would you choose if you craved your children’s safety, and wanted to safeguard their economic future? If you had to place a bet for the future prosperity and well-being of its citizens, which culture would you chose?

To say that one culture is better than another is a value judgement, and therefore not appropriate. But we can say, with more certainty, that one culture is better suited to a modern world, and more likely to thrive in the future that is unfolding before us.