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This quote is associated with the Taliban in reference to the US occupation of Afghanistan.
I understand the metaphorical meaning of the quote — i.e. the point that it makes.
But I am intrigued by the literal meaning. In particular, I can't work out what it means to "have the watch", nor what the "watch" refers to metaphorically.
Anybody know?
For the record, I've done some searches, but have only turned up explanations of the metaphoric meaning, nothing about analysis of the literal meaning.
Several sources I've checked attribute this quote to an Afghan proverb.
The meaning of the second part is clear: time is on our side. But what does the "watches" in the first part refer to?
Benjamin Harman's answer argues that the saying is a double entendre between "watch" as in "wristwatch" and "watch" as in "stand watch".
However, given that "watch" ("timepiece") and "watch" ("lookout") / "watch" ("keep guard") seem to be completely different words in both of the main Afghan languages: Dari and Pastho, it is not possible that the original Afghan saying (which I've been unable to find -- see comment) used the same word for all of those.
The most reasonable explanation is that "watches" here refers to the instruments, the hardware, the material means of winning a battle; while "time" refers to the passing of time and the immaterial means of winning: political changes, losing local support, difficulty of economically sustaining a war in the long time, etc.
EDIT: It turns out there's another widespread rendering of the saying which uses "clocks" instead of "watches". This reinforces the meaning of "watches" as actual timepieces.
The earliest match I've been able to find for any close variant of "You have the watches, but we have the time" is in testimony by Ambassador William Taylor, identified as "coordinator for Afghanistan, U.S. Department of State," in Hearing Before the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives: Afghanistan Drugs and Terrorism and U.S. Security Policy (February 12, 2004):
Mr. TAYLOR. If I could just do one last comment on the Taliban. I have told this story once or twice before, but the Taliban, exactly as you have said Mr. Engel, have a saying that the Americans have the watches but we have the time. We need to prove them wrong. We need to be sure that they know that we are in this for the long term. Thy are not going to wait us out. We are going to be there, we are going to succeed. We are going to get this country, this government, this state on its feet so it can provide the services to its people and defend itself against the threat. Thank you.
Close observers of the U.S. political scene will recognize Mr. Taylor as one of the more impressive witnesses in the House inquiry into the Ukraine quid pro quo scandal that preceded the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
In any event, this earliest mention of the expression does not assert that it is an old Pashtun saying or an Afghan proverb, but rather that it is specific to the Taliban in relation to the war with the United States. A few later allusions to the expression attribute it to (different) particular individuals. For example, in a review of Seth Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan in Choice: Publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries (2009) [combined snippets]:
At the end, he [Jones] quotes a Taliban detainee who told his US captors that "You may have the watches, but we have the time."
From Dominic Streatfeild, A History of the World Since 9/11 (2011):
As Mullah Omar famously stated: 'The Americans may have the clocks. But we have the time.'
And from William Remsen & Laura Tedesco, "US Cultural Diplomacy, Cultural Heritage Preservation and Development at the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul in Afghanistan," in Museums, Heritage and International Development (2015):
You may have the clocks, but we have the time. —Taliban spokesman
But more often, writers attribute the expression to "Taliban commanders," "a Taliban axiom," "a Taliban saying," or (more fancifully) "a Pashtun proverb," etc.
It seems clear from these various references that the "watches" alluded to in the expression are timepieces—with the metaphorical implication of superior technological hardware and scientific advantage (as walen's answer points out). The expression probably reached English from Afghanistan within the past twenty years, and it may well have arisen in Afghanistan within the same time frame.
Update (August 17, 2021): An earlier instance of the expression
In a further search of Google Books today, I came across this interesting instance of a closely related wording, from Richard Twiss, One Church Many Tribes: Following Jesus the Way God Made You (2000):
I was talking to my Maori friend Monte Ohia of New Zealand one afternoon about the way indigenous people think about time. He related the following story of his visit to South Africa among the Zulu people. He and his host were driving to a meeting whee Monte was to speak. When Monte asked what time the meeting was scheduled o start, his host said in about half an hour. When Monte asked how far away they were from the town where the meeting was to be held, his host said about an hour. When they arrived more than an hour late, all the people were waiting as though nothing were wrong. His host told Monte, "Don't worry about it. The White people have the clocks and the watches, but our people have the time."
This instance appeared in print four years before William Taylor used the expression in his Congressional testimony, and it differs from the Taliban instances in seeming to be about a difference in one's cultural conception of time, rather than an assertion about having time on one's side, as it were. Since it reaches us from a Native American author quoting a South African source by way of a New Zealand intermediary, it manages to circle about two-thirds of the globe without ever coming terribly close to Afghanistan. I am inclined to see it as a purely coincidental occurrence, but the similarity in wording is striking.
"You have the watches, but we have the time."
The above is a double-entendre, meaning it has two meanings, a superficial meaning and a deeper meaning.
At first blush, or superficially, it looks like by "watches," it's referring to wristwatches, wristwatches almost always being simply called "watches."
When one doesn't have a watch but wants to know what time it is and sees someone who does have a watch, a common way of asking that person what time it is without being presumptuous is to ask, "Do you have the time?"
Based on this, people with watches (i.e., wristwatches) have the time (i.e., have on their wrist what time it is).
Therefore, since people with watches have the time, it's funny to say, "You have the watches, but we have the time." That funniness, that oddity, is how we get cued to this being a double-entendre, clued into the notion that the superficial meaning we would surmise at first blush isn't the deeper meaning that's actually intended. But what is that deeper meaning?
When you know the context, that it's being said by the Taliban in reference to the US military presence in Afghanistan, the other meaning becomes clear:
In the military, armies maintain control and keep an enforced peace by having soldiers keep watch in order to immediately respond to any uprising or disturbance of the peace. A single patrol or incidence of this is called a "watch" (e.g., There's a watch at Kabul's South Gate. Corporal Riley starts his watch at Kabul's at 0600.). In Afghanistan, thousands of soldiers are keeping watches all over the country to maintain the peace and keep the Taliban at bay.
However, the Taliban expects the US can't stay in Afghanistan forever, won't keep all its watches forever. Sun Tzu in the Art of War touches on this, essentially saying that the strategy for a domestic force to take against an invading force that has it outmanned and outgunned shouldn't be to win but should be to simply not lose, thus never giving up and turning it into a waiting game. For the domestic forces, it's their homeland, so they've got nowhere else to go or be, no real reason to give up, but that's not true for invading forces. Those soldiers want to eventually go home. The reasons for invading eventually dry up as the invaders' needs, wants, politics back home, leadership, etc. shift and change over time. So by never giving up and making whatever trouble can be made whenever and wherever possible, even if just a bit to let the invading forces know that they're ready to take the country back the minute their enforced peace through watches lets up, the invasion forces will eventually tire, will eventually reach a point where the cost of staying outweighs the benefits of staying, and while not beaten, will withdraw just from no longer wanting to be there.
With all that in mind, what "You have the watches, but we have the time" actually means is:
The US has the watches (i.e., soldiers keeping watch in thousands of watches all over the country to presently keep the Taliban at bay and without control of Afghanistan), but the Taliban has the time (i.e., the time to wait until the US gets tired of being in Afghanistan and goes home, at which point the Taliban is suggesting here that it will then be unopposed in Afghanistan and immediately seize back control of Afghanistan).
I suggest that both meaning of 'you have the watches' are valid and intended.
You have the high-technology wristwatches (as an ironic or even dismissive Synecdoche of 'watches' for the entire panoply of hardware), we can still outwait you.
You are standing watches, but we can stand here forever.
I think everyone has missed the most obvious interpretation:
You have the accurate means of measuring and quantifying time, while we have the actual time on our hands to do whatever it takes to succeed. You know it is 5 o'clock, yet to us it doesn't matter what time it is. You have schedules. We have the time to fight. Therefore, we have the time to win.
I'm not sure where the quote came from - it may be Afghan, it may just be the latest group to have it attributed to (see Sven Yargs's reference to South Africa in a book from 2000). For what it's worth, I just read Paul Theroux's 2002 article called The Seizures in Zimbabwe where a white Zimbabwean farmer says: "We have the watches, but Africans have the time," one of these farmers said to me. "Remember that. It's the key to living here."
Things like clocks and watches aren't really a part of Afghan culture. This is something that was commented on widely by US forces there, as our culture is very centered on time schedules. It's important for Americans to know what time it is. It's not important for Afghans. For example, there was a saying along the lines of "there's no such thing as a one hour meeting in Afghanistan", referring to the tendency for meetings with village elders and whatnot to last anywhere from 3-6 hours as there were no clocks and no urgency among the natives.
The Taliban see Americans with all of their technology, their clocks and watches, their need to do things in a timely fashion. They don't have any such needs and can wait as long as they need to. This is the origin of this witty quotation.
Interpretation of this profound statement from the context of strategy - Americans use milestones, KPIs to drive strategy(ie watch). Suntze, know your enemy, know your terrian, chose the time of day.
It could honestly be a metaphor referenced from a Kevin Gates song called "Time for That." Since the U.S. left everything (gave my watches away ain't got no time for that) then the Taliban now has the watches and the time...
