JOHN ROBB

 

 

TALIBANS E GLOBALIZAÇÃO

Muito interessante e muito bem informada esta abordagem de John Robb ao terrorismo no Afeganistão, seu financiamento pela economia da droga, sua inserção na “globalização negra” e estratégias a adoptar face a estas sólidas ameaças:

Afghanistan and Black Globalization

Through extortion and taxation, the Taliban are believed to reap as much as $300 million a year from Afghanistan’s opium trade, which now makes up 90 percent of the world’s total. That is enough, the Americans say, to sustain all of the Taliban’s military operations in southern Afghanistan for an entire year.  NYTimes

Globalization continues to melt the map.  Easy access to a huge ($3 trillion and growing), segmented (moving from a closed to an open source structure), and dynamic criminal economy has enabled a relatively impoverished Taliban to become an economic powerhouse in 5 short years.  It now lives off of an economy (opium production valued at $2-3.5 billion a year) the size of many small states and its ability to "tax" this production is estimated to be approximately 15% (strangely, this is just below the same level of taxation the US government has found to be sustainable, protection rackets?).   This economic success, in combination with fears that this "black globalization" will power the Taliban's successful open source insurgency in Pakistan, is driving a new US policy to eradicate poppy production. 

 

Eradication?

The Marine's BG Nicholson is thinking along the right lines:  “There is a significant portion of the enemy that we believe we can peel off with incentives... We can hire away many of these young men.” 

Despite this global guerilla thinking in the Marines, the advocated approach appears to be heavy handed and will focus on crop eradication and firefights with the Taliban (which means we haven't learned much from Iraq).  Further, the funds available for the construction of an alternative economy (most of which will be siphoned off by big companies and corruption) is a paltry $450 million to replace a $2-3.5 billion economy.  It's also a small fraction of what we are spending on troops in the area.  The likely outcome is a much hotter insurgency in Afghanistan, as the number of fighters swell due to newly impoverished farmers, and a spread of the violence to previously pacified areas as groups move to find new areas to grow.  It may even intensify the spread of the insurgency in Pakistan as members of Afghan groups opt to move to greener pastures in Pakistan.  

 

Here's some alternative strategies (to get the creative thinking going):   

• Replace.  Become the primary buyer of the crops at the local level.  Slowly ease the farmers into alternative crops at subsidized prices (this is MUCH less expensive than the current massive US troop deployment).
• Divide.  Anoint local militias with the ability to produce opium as long as violence is low and the money stays local.   Divide the groups based on levels of greed vs. fanaticism.

Posted by John Robb on Wednesday, 29 April 2009 at 05:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack (1)