This is very, very smart. As Stephen Biddle at CFR noted in 2008, the Anbar Awakening happened, in part, because the local tribal leaders were fed up with Al-Qaeda in Iraq interfering with their traditional system of patronage.
This approach -- using existing systems of patronage -- appears to be harder in Afghanistan, in part, because those preexisting systems might involve the drug trade. Setting up a new system can work, but it's more vulnerable, especially to the tactics described in the article (intimidation and misappropriation).
I'm glad the Marines noted that the Taliban identity is strong in certain regions, and that it has to be separated from "the enemy". Identity is tough to change, but it can change -- if one is given something to replace it. I don't know what that is, but I'd disregard any proposal that does not address this need.
How to combat it? I'll ignore the obvious suggestions (improved security, improved tracking of who receives funds and their behavior). Let me try an approach that reminds me of solving a boundary value problem using a Fourier series. (One can either start with all components and throw them out, or start with none and add them until a solution is constructed.) In other words, I'm going to think of any idea,
1. Reinstate and regulate the poppy trade.
A political non-starter, it would probably fall to the CIA to do this. By making the drug trade work for the US, instead of against it, the CIA would defray some of the costs of their operations, and the locals would reap larger amounts of money through their patronage systems
Cost: World standing if word got out. Even if it were kept secret, a probable increase in corruption and embezzlement within the CIA section overseeing the operation, a few more dead addicts and families ruined by heroin, and probably some judgments that involve burning in hell for all eternity.
2. Offer something more valuable than Taliban coercive efforts
Related to (1). How do you compete with something that has perfectly inelastic demand (security)? You offer something instead that has perfectly inelastic demand and skews the discounting mechanism of personal preferences. In other words, you take a page from the British in China. Let me spell it out explicitly: addict the local population to heroin, and make US forces and/or the central government the only source.
Cost: Again, world credibility. Also, if the mechanism for supplying the drugs is unstable or disrupted, there could be particularly acute violence. Perfectly inelastic demand can be a double-edged sword, wrapped in razor wire, electrified and surrounded by pit vipers coated in digitalis. Also, more burning in Hell for all eternity, including for those of us who find out and do nothing. Oh, and read the later chapters and epilogue of the Opium Wars and tell me what happened. I never finished reading any history of that period, but I think they all go out for tea at the end in perfect harmony.
3. Kill everything and anyone.
"Ubi solitudenem faciunt, pacem appelant."
("Where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.")
- Tacitus
Cost: the moral standing of the Republic. A minor benefit in the form of Military Keynesianism (more bombs needed -> more contracts for defense contractors -> higher employment in CA, CO and other states that make munitions).
Even less extreme versions -- e.g. mass migrations -- would involve a lot of moral compromising and financial expense, and would probably create a fresh new set of reasons why disaffected individuals should join the Taliban.
4. A two- or multi-state solution
This assumes that borders can be defended, that there's a part of Afghanistan that is "salvageable" from the pov of US policy and interests, and that everyone will ignore the political reasons why "half a loaf is better than none" won't fly, either in Afghanistan or here. Pretty tenuous stuff, especially since America is over there precisely because internationally accepted borders aren't particularly effective at stopping international terrorism.
Cost: With all the caveats above, even if this were done, it would probably be pretty expensive, possibly violent, and in the end, quite arbitrary where the lines were drawn. Less of a public relations disaster than some of these other options, but also less likely to be effective.
Oh, and Russia might not like anything that seems like self-determination along ethnic/religious lines so near to its borders.
Conclusions:
My ideas are pretty bad.
More seriously, the security/economy/governance challenge is not amenable to easy solutions. As politically impractical a lot of ground forces might be, it seems like it might have a better shot than any other possible action under these circumstances.
Compared to "an offer you can't refuse", nothing America has to offer will be powerful enough in it of itself. Perhaps, given time, security, and luck in the form of gifted statesmen, something like an Afghan identity might emerge from the ethnosectarian boiling pot of today. But it looks grim if anyone who has courage to stand up and speak up gets shot up. Until something like a unifying set of principles and identity change the calculations, it will remain a calculation, an infinite set of "games" where the dominant strategy is to lay low and not commit.
Epilogue:
[on the Virgin Mary]
Elizabeth: She has such power over men's hearts. They died for her.
Sir Francis Walsingham: They have found nothing to replace her.
- Elizabeth (1998)
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