This chapter extends the economics in the movies literature by developing a vignette from the modern-day war movie Lone Survivor. Before turning to the development of this vignette, we first provide some historical background of the plot developed in Lone Survivor. The battle, and its aftermath, that makes up the subject of the movie took place in 2005 in northeastern Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. As it turns out, the sole survivor of the battle, a former U.S. Navy Seal named Marcus Luttrell, arguably owes his life to a centuries-old unwritten Pashtun moral code known as Pashtunwali. This code commits its followers (practitioners) to protect and provide asylum to any guest seeking the Afghan community’s assistance.
Before turning to Luttrell’s story of survival, we first provide some historical background on the military operation that sent Luttrell and his team members into the mountains of the Hindu Kush. It is this military operation that forms the main plot in Lone Survivor. After presenting the historical background for the movie, we turn to our game theory vignette.
Operation Redwing and Lone Survivor: some historical background1
In the early morning hours of June 28, 2005, a four-man team of U.S. Navy Seals disembarked from a Chinook helicopter into the darkness of the mountains of the Kunar Province of northeastern Afghanistan.2 Their mission, known as Operation Redwing (also referred to as Operation Redwings or Operation Red Wings), was to provide reconnaissance on Ahmad Shah, the leader of a Taliban militia known as the “Mountain Tigers.” The Mountain Tigers were responsible for the deaths of numerous U.S. Marines during the early months of Operation Enduring Freedom, the name given to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.3 The Seal team consisted of Michael Murphy, a 29-year-old lieutenant from New York, Matthew Axelson, a 29-year-old Petty Officer Second Class from California, Danny Dietz, a 25-year-old Petty Officer Second Class from Colorado, and Marcus Luttrell, a 29-year-old Petty Officer First Class from Texas. After passing successfully through a series of checkpoints named for popular brands of beer (e.g., Budweiser, Miller, and Corona), the team established a position on a mountain ridge from which to spot Shah and his militia.
After spotting Shah in an Afghan village below, the team experienced difficulties establishing radio communications with the quick reaction force (QRF) that was awaiting further details from Murphy’s team to assist in capturing Shah. Given that their spotting position was exposed, Murphy directed the team to a more covered location where they would rest and regroup while awaiting a successful communications link. There, a group of goat herders stumbled accidentally upon the team, thus compromising the mission. The goat herders were detained briefly, after which Murphy decided that the Seals would release them and relocate to a higher, more defensible position. Shortly thereafter, the four-man Seal team found themselves surrounded by a large Taliban militia and a gun fight ensued that lasted several hours.4 The lengthy engagement was characterized by a number of heroic actions, including an attempt by Murphy to reach the QRF by satellite phone – a choice that left him exposed to the enemy and ultimately cost him his life.5 Dietz and Axelson would also lose their lives during the battle as would 16 other Special Operations Forces who, as part of the QRF, later flew into the fight in an unguarded Chinook helicopter only to have it brought down by a Taliban fighter using a rocket-propelled grenade.6
Remarkably, despite multiple gunshot/shrapnel wounds and various broken bones, Luttrell survived the battle and spent the next several hours crawling (for miles) over the mountainous terrain. He was eventually discovered near a waterfall by a group of Afghans led by Mohammad Gulab. After convincing Luttrell that they were not associated with the Taliban, the Afghans picked him up and carried him to their nearby village. However, by the time Luttrell was rescued by Gulab and the other Pashtuns and carried back to their village, Luttrell and his fallen comrades were already the object of one of the largest search-and-rescue operations by the U.S. military since the Vietnam War (Zimmerman and Gresham, 2011). Surely such search-and-rescue activity was noticed by Shah and his Taliban militia who soon pinpointed Luttrell’s whereabouts and entered the mountain village.
Gulab has since informed documentarians that the Taliban first simply asked for custody of “the soldier,” after which they promised to “go about [their] way.”7 Gulab refused, citing an unwritten Pashtun code directing him to help those in need. The militia then offered Gulab money and then various in-kind perquisites, which, in each case, he again refused.8 At this point, the Taliban threatened Gulab, his family, and all of the residents of the Pashtun village – a threat Gulab knew would be followed by action. Still, he was unrelenting, citing the unwritten Pashtun honor code known as Pashtunwali. According to Gulab: “It is a tribal code – [a] code of honor – that we have. [If there is s]omebody that comes to you, you must help [them] if they are in need.”9 That honor code would ultimately save Luttrell’s life, even though it later cost the life of Gulab’s cousin and led Gulab into life as a fugitive until he and his family were finally given asylum in an undisclosed country.
Luttrell’s survival and the heroic acts displayed by all of the members of the four-man Seal team became a major feature of his written account of the episode (see Luttrell with Robinson, 2007). Luttrell’s written account eventually became the inspiration for director Peter Berg’s screenplay titled Lone Survivor, which was produced by 44 Films (and others) in 2013.10 Exactly how that motion picture depicts the game-theoretic element embodied by Pashtunwali is explained in the vignette that is developed in the section that follows.
Game theoretics in Lone Survivor
A few key scenes in Lone Survivor occurring after Luttrell’s rescue by Gulab and the other Pashtun villagers bring to light an important game-theoretic principle. One of these depicts how the large search-and-rescue operations carried by the U.S. military to rescue Luttrell and his fallen comrades likely helped Shah and his Taliban militia locate Luttrell in the Pashtun village. In the Hollywood adaptation, Taraq, Shah’s lieutenant, and a small cadre of Taliban fighters seized Luttrell and escorted him to the edge of the village to a large log that had previously been used by the militia to decapitate a villager who had been deemed by them as disloyal to the Taliban. It was there that Luttrell was readied for a similar fate, only to have that halted by Gulab and a group of villagers who, to Taraq’s (and Luttrell’s) surprise, fired weapons into the air as a warning to halt the exercise.
At this point in the movie, the following dialogue occurs between Taraq and Gulab, and later by Gulab and Luttrell:11
Gulab: This is my guest. Leave our village.
Taraq: For an American you will die? Do you understand?
Gulab: Yes … yes.
Taraq: Okay then … okay then. You will all be slaughtered! Let’s go.
Luttrell: Why are you doing this for me?
It is appropriate to end our replication of this portion of the movie’s dialogue with Luttrell’s question to Gulab given that the threat verbalized by Taraq was certainly intended to be carried out. In fact, from the account in the movie, the villagers would, however costly to the Taliban, almost certainly be overcome by Shah’s militia should force be used by the villagers in an attempt to protect Luttrell. The principle guiding Gulab’s (and the others’) actions at this fateful point in the movie (and in real life) is the more than 2,000 years old unwritten honor code of the Pashtun people known as Pashtunwali, which literally means “the way of the Pashtuns.”12
The code of Pashtunwali “governs and regulates nearly all aspects of Pashtun life, ranging from tribal affairs to individual ‘honor’ and behavior.” One of its tenets, known as Melmastia, covers “the notion of hospitality and asylum to all guests seeking help.”13 The related, yet even more forceful, tenet of Badragha is “a guarantee for the safety of a man who is either hotly pursued by his enemies or there is an apprehension of his being killed on his way home.”14 According to this tenet, “an armed party accompanies such a man as Badragha or ‘escort’ to ensure his safe return to the place of his abode.”15
A tribal code such as Pashtunwali does not survive multiple millennia through loose or convenient adherence. To the contrary, its age indicates that it is indelibly imprinted in the Pashtun ethos. In one scene in the movie, Gulab’s son is a keen observer of his father’s choices and actions regarding Luttrell, and an event like that which occurred in the days just after June 28, 2005, would leave an indelible mark on his son’s psyche.16 It is also likely that Gulab had similar, albeit less harrowing, examples in his own life as a young boy. In fact, one of the first things Gulab does once Luttrell is brought back to the village is to send his own father to the nearest U.S. Marine base – a perilous journey Gulab’s father made by foot – in order to relay news that a U.S. serviceman had been rescued by Afghan villagers from a fight with the Taliban.
A game-theoretic vignette describing the above scene(s) from Lone Survivor begins with a straightforward type of coordination game where the players want to avoid, not choose, actions with the same labels, such as the traditional game of chicken played by American teenagers during the 1950s that is illustrated in Dixit, Skeath, and Reiley (2015). As Dixit et al. (2015: 116) describe this situation, two teenagers drive their cars to the opposite ends of Main Street at midnight in a little town in middle America. At the start they begin to drive toward one another, and the one who “swerves” at the last moment is declared the “chicken” while the other, who decides to plow straight ahead, is declared the “tough” teenager and the winner of the “game.” Of course, if both teenagers drive straight ahead a collision occurs and both are injured (Dixit et al., 2015: 116).
In this particular game the consequences of one type of coordination failure are more dire than those of the other type, where the payoffs depend on how “negatively” each player rates the more dire outcome (Dixit et al., 2015: 116). Those payoffs are reflected in the game matrix shown in Figure 3.1, where the players are James and Dean (Dixit et al., 2015: 116). The first value in each of the cells represents the payoff to James, while the second value represents the payoff to Dean. For example, if James chooses to swerve and Dean chooses to plow straight ahead, James “loses” the game (and receives a payoff represented by the value of “−1” in the matrix) and Dean “wins” the game (and receives a payoff represented by the value of “1” in the matrix).
Figure 3.1 Game of chicken
Source: Dixit, Skeath, and Reiley (2015: 116–117).
As can be seen in Figure 3.1, the game has four essential features. First, each player has a “chicken” strategy and a “tough” strategy. Second, there are two pure-strategy Nash equilibria. These are the outcomes where exactly one of the players is either “chicken” or “tough” (Dixit et al., 2015: 116). Third, each player strictly prefers the equilibrium where the other player chooses to play “chicken.” Fourth, the payoffs when both players are “tough” are the worst for both players, which in each case is represented with a value of “−2” in the matrix.
The game of chicken described in Dixit et al. (2015) and presented above has historical links to work in evolutionary biology by Smith and Price (1973) who examine escalated conflicts between animals of the same species that are rivals over a resource for which one is a “discoverer” and the other a “late-comer” (Smith and Parker, 1976). Commonly referred to as the hawk-dove game, the animals have two strategy choices – display a threat (i.e., play dove) or engage in battle with the other (i.e., play hawk) – that mirror those of chicken and tough, respectively, in the game described above between James and Dean (Smith, 1982). The game of chicken also has its origins in the idea of nuclear brinksmanship (see Schelling, 1967 and 1981), as highlighted by game-theoretic expositions of the Cuban missile crisis by Dixit and Nalebuff (1991) and Allison and Zelikow (1999).
The game of chicken can be adapted easily to describe the situation occurring in Lone Survivor. In the game matrix presented in Figure 3.2, the choice of “Pass” represents the “Chicken” play for each player. In the context of the subject at hand, “Pass” would mean “not protecting Luttrell” in the case of Gulab, and “not pursuing Luttrell” in the case of Shah. Under the assumption that Pashtunwali is not a feature of Pashtun life (i.e., Gulab is not committed to the code of Pashtunwali), Gulab’s payoff is “0” in this case, reflecting the idea that Gulab and his family do not suffer (receive) any loss (gain) from this outcome, from either physical harm or loss (maintenance) of reputation. At the same time, a payoff of “0” applies to Shah, given that neither he nor any of this militia is harmed, nor is Shah’s reputation diminished as a result of Gulab’s choice not to oppose him. On the other hand, by not making a “Tough” play, Shah’s reputation as a militia commander is also not boosted in any way.
Figure 3.2 Game of chicken in Lone Survivor
The choices “Protect” and “Punish” represent the tough plays for both Gulab and Shah.17 The outcomes associated with “Pass, Punish” and “Protect, Pass” reflect, respectively, the loss of reputation to Gulab, who is not pro-Taliban, combined with the credit for capturing (and executing) Luttrell accruing to Shah, and the credit to Gulab for saving Luttrell combined with the loss of reputation to Shah. These outcomes represent the two Nash equilibria in the game. Lastly, the payoffs in the remaining outcome, “−2,−2,” reflect the potentially substantial loss of life associated with initiation of a military-style engagement between the Pashtun villagers and Shah’s Mountain Tigers aimed at either saving Luttrell or capturing (and executing) Luttrell.
As Dixit et al. (2015, 116) point out, in situations such as that facing Gulab and Shah in Figure 3.2, “the real game becomes a test of how to achieve one’s preferred equilibrium.” In this regard, Gulab perhaps has the upper hand, given his (and the Pashtun community’s) real-life adherence to Pashtunwali. Gulab’s adherence to this moral code, one that would have been widely known throughout the ranks of the Taliban, creates a first stage, whereby he can gain advantage in the second stage. This situation is depicted in the bottom portion of the version of the game presented in Figure 3.3. Adherence to the Pashtun code of Pashtunwali, with its accompanying tenets of Melmastia and Badragha, restricts Gulab’s (and the villagers’) freedom to act in a self-interested manner by altering the payoffs to him for a “chicken” play (i.e., “Pass”) by an amount equal to the loss of his reputation among the larger Pashtun community from failure to adhere to Pashtunwali.
Figure 3.3 Pashtunwali – commitment by restricting freedom to act
For the purpose of this vignette, the amount applied to Gulab’s payoffs from the loss of reputation from his choice of “Pass” is “−3,” thus changing the payoffs for “Pass, Pass” and “Pass, Punish” from “0,0” and “−1,1,” respectively, in the uncommitted case shown in Figure 3.2 and at the top of Figure 3.3, to “−3,0” and “−4,1,” respectively, in the committed case shown at the bottom of Figure 3.3. In this context, Pashtunwali and its tenets serve as a commitment device that guarantees Gulab’s (and the villagers’) choice to always “Protect” those who come to him in need of help.18 For Marcus Luttrell, that fateful day came in late June of 2005, when his life was saved by the honor code of Pashtunwali that was personified by Mohammad Gulab, the Afghan villager.
Concluding remarks
The first chapter in this volume discusses a series of studies by Mixon and Treviño (2004a and 2004b) describing how World War II-era German industrialist Oskar Schindler used the game-theoretic concepts of strategic behavior, player types, asymmetric information, and signaling to save, as depicted in the movie Schindler’s List, more than 1,000 European Jews from perishing in the Nazi Holocaust bureaucracy. The subject of this chapter extends that work by showing how the game-theoretic notion of a commitment device saved U.S. Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell from certain death accompanying his capture by Taliban militia during the Afghanistan War. Luttrell escaped death through the fortune of encountering Mohammad Gulab, an Afghan villager who was committed to the more than 2,000 years old Pashtun honor code known as Pashtunwali. The vignette presented in this chapter shows how powerful game theory models can be in describing how individuals can shape the realities that they face in both mundane and harrowing situations such as those encountered by civilians and soldiers who inhabit war-torn environments.
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