Marcus luttrell

Pashtunwalai,
which has kept them straight for two thousand years. 
They are also the quintessential supporters of the Taliban. Their warriors form the 
backbone of the Taliban forces, and their families grant those forces shelter in high mountain 
villages, protecting them and providing refuge in places that would appear almost inaccessible to 
the Western eye. That, by the way, does not include U.S. Navy SEALs, who do have Western 
eyes but who don’t do inaccessible. We can get in anywhere. 
It’s easy to see why the Pashtuns and the Taliban get along just fine. The Pashtuns were 
the tribe who refused to buckle under to the army of the Soviet Union. They just kept fighting. In 

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the nineteenth century, they fought the British to the verge of surrender and then drove them 
back into Pakistan. Three hundred years before that, they wiped out the army of Akbar the Great, 
the most fearsome of India’s Mogul rulers. 
Those Pashtuns are proud of their stern military heritage, and it’s worth remembering that 
in all the centuries of bitter, savage warfare in Baluchistan, during which time they were never 
subdued, half the population was always Pashtun. 
The concept of tribal heritage is very rigid. It involves bloodlines, amazing lineages that 
stretch back through the centuries, generation after generation. You can’t join a tribe in the way 
you can become an American citizen. Tribes don’t hand out green cards or passports. You either 
are, or you aren’t. 
Language, traditions, customs, and culture play a part, but, I repeat, you can’t join the 
Pashtuns. And that gives them all a steel rod of dignity and self-esteem. Their villages may not 
be straightforward military strongholds as the Taliban desire, but the Pashtuns are not easily 
intimidated. 
The people are organized strictly by relationships; male relationships, that is. The tribal 
lineage descends from the father’s side, the male ancestors. I understand they don’t give a damn 
for Mom and her ancestors. Inheritances are strictly for the boys, and land rights go directly to 
sons. 
They have a proverb that says a lot: I against my brothers; my brothers and I against my 
cousins; my brothers, my cousins, and I against the world. That’s how they do it. The tight 
military formation has, again and again, allowed them to knock eight bells out of more 
sophisticated invaders. 
The tribal code, 
Pashtunwalai,
has heavy demands: hospitality, generosity, and the duty 
to avenge even the slightest insult. Life among the Pashtuns is demanding — it depends on the 
respect of your peers, relatives, and allies. And that can be dangerous. Only the tribe’s principles 
of honor stand in the way of anarchy. A tribesman will fight or even kill in order to avoid 
dishonor to himself and his family. 
And killing throws the whole system into confusion, because death must be avenged; 
killers and their families are under permanent threat. Which puts a big air brake on violence. 
According to the learned Charles Lindhorn, a professor of anthropology at Boston University, 
homicide rates among the Pashtun tribes are way lower than homicide rates in urban areas of the 
United States. I am grateful to the professor for his teachings on this subject. 
The Taliban creed comes right out of the Pashtun handbook: women are the wombs of 
patrilineage, the fountainheads of tribal honor and continuity. Their security and chaste way of 
life is the only guarantee of the purity of the lineage. This seclusion of women is known as 
purdah, and it is designed to keep women concealed, maintaining the household, and it gives 
them a high sense of honor. 
Purdah represents the status of belonging. A woman’s husband can go fight the invaders 
while she controls the household, enjoying the love and respect of her sons, expecting one day to 

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rule as matriarch over her daughters-in-law and their children. That’s the basis of the Taliban 
view of women. And I guess it works fine up in the Hindu Kush, but it might not go over too 
well in downtown Houston. 
Anyway, there’s been a lot of terrible fighting on the Pashtuns’ lands, mostly by 
outsiders. But the ole 
Pashtunwalai
has kept them intact. Their tradition of generous hospitality, 
perhaps their finest virtue, includes the concept of 
lokhay warkawal.
It means “giving of a pot.” 
It implies protection for an individual, particularly in a situation where the tribe might be weaker 
than its enemies. When a tribe accepts 
lokhay,
it undertakes to safeguard and protect that 
individual from an enemy at all costs. 
I, perhaps above all other Western visitors, have reason to be eternally grateful for it. 
We were on our final approach to the enormous U.S. base at Bagram. Everyone was 
awake now, seven hours after we left Bahrain. It was daylight, and down below we could see at 
last the mountains we had heard so much about and among which we would be operational in the 
coming weeks. 
There was still snow on the high peaks, glittering white in the rising sun. And below the 
snow line, the escarpments looked very steep. We were too high to pick up villages on the 
middle slopes, but we knew they were there, and that’s where we were probably going in the not 
too distant future. 
The huge runway at Bagram runs right down the side of the complex, past hundreds and 
hundreds of bee huts, lines and lines of them. On the ground we could see parked aircraft and a 
whole lot of Chinook helicopters. We didn’t worry about whom we’d have to share with. SEALs 
are always billeted together, separate from anyone else, thus avoiding loose talk about highly 
classified missions. All of our missions are, of course, highly classified, and we do not talk 
loosely, but other branches of the services are not so stringently trained as we are, and no one 
takes any chances. 
Here we were at last, in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, a country the size of Texas, 
landlocked on all sides, protected by the granite walls of mountains, war torn for years and years 
and still at it. Just like always, warlords were trying to drive out the usurpers. Us. And we 
weren’t even usurping, just trying to stop another bloody tribal upheaval and another regime 
change from the elected to the dictators. 
Boy. It seemed like a hell of a task. But we were excited. This was what we joined for. In 
truth, we could hardly wait to get down there and get on with it. And in a sense, it was pretty 
simple. We somehow had to get out into those infamous mountain passes and put a stop to this 
clandestine infiltration of faceless tribal warriors making their way across the border, doggedly, 
silently, prepared to fight at the drop of a turban. 
We knew their track record, and we knew they could move around the mountains very 
quickly. They had dominated those slopes, caves, and hideouts for centuries, turning them into 
impregnable military strongholds against all comers. 

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And they had already faced the SEALs in open combat up there, because the SEALs had 
been first in. They would be prepared, we knew that. But like all SEAL operational teams, we 
believed we were better than everyone else, so the goddamned Taliban had better watch it. 
Danny, Shane, James, Axe, Mikey, and I. We were here on business, trained to the minute, 
armed to the teeth, all set to drive the armies of the Taliban and al Qaeda right back to where 
they came from, seize the leaders, and get rid of anyone too dangerous to live. And restore order 
to the mountains. 
I was eight thousand miles from home, but I could e-mail my family and loved ones. I 
was a bit light on home comforts, but I had in my rucksack a DVD player and a DVD of my 
favorite movie, 
The Count of Monte Cristo,
from the novel by Alexandre Dumas 
père.
It’s 
always an inspiration to me, always raises my spirits to watch one brave, innocent man’s lonely 
fight against overpowering forces of evil in an unforgiving world. 
That’s my kind of stuff. Backs to the wall. Never give in. Courage, risks, daring beyond 
compare. I never thought my own problems would very shortly mirror, albeit briefly, those of 
Edmond Dantès and the hopelessness of his years in the grim island fortress of Chateau d’If. 
And I never thought those unforgettable words he carved with flintstones, into the granite walls 
of the cruelest of jails, would also provide me with hope; a forlorn hope, but hope nonetheless. 
During the peril of my own darkest hours, I thought of those words over and over, more times 
than I care to admit: 
God will give me justice.