The Estonians, British and US Marines have each in turn attempted to secure Helmand Province in Afghanistan, but without ultimate success. Now the USMC is trying again. What are they attempting to achieve? Helmand province is shaped like a narrow wedge running from the Pakistani border pointing north into the heart of Afghanistan. It is the single largest opium producing region in the world, “responsible for 42% of the world’s total production … more than the whole of Burma, which is the second largest producing nation after Afghanistan.”
The small British forces, the first to attempt to push their way down the Helmand, found themselves beseiged as Taliban forces, continuously reinforced from Pakistan, forced them into defensive positions. The arrival of US Marine reinforcements in April, 2008 allowed the British to go on a limited offensive. It was not enough. Now, additional USMC forces are engaged in physically driving the Taliban further down the Helmand River valley, which ultimately turns West to meet the crossroads at Zahedan; it is a chain of river towns leading from the heart of Afghanistan constituting an inner arc shadowing the Pakistani frontier anchored on the west by a major road. The ongoing USMC operations are the largest since Fallujah and are said to involve some of largest heliborne movements ever. The new mobility has allowed the USMC to attack from multiple directions at once. The stated goals of the operation are to secure more area in anticipation of the scheduled Afghan Presidential elections and to go on the offensive against the Taliban. But it’s likely that the current operation is aimed at the economic engine of the Taliban as much as anything else.
The fight is for dusty little towns whose major economic importance is probably their status as trading centers. Wikipedia says that “on August 12, 2009, U.S. Marines mounted a helicopter assault on the Taliban-held town of Dahaneh” as part of the over-all operation codenamed Strike of the Sword. “The assault began before dawn, with Marines entering the town as others battled militants in the surrounding mountains. The first wave of Marines was met with small arms, mortar and rocket propelled grenade fire. Marines said that they have killed 7-10 militants so far. U.S. Marine Harrier jets were also involved in the battle dropping flares in a show of force. After several hours fighting was still continuing and the Marines had by that point captured several militants and seized about 66 pounds of opium.” An AP article characterizes it as an attempt to control an opium route leading south into Pakistan, leaving no doubt that Strike of the Sword is meant not only to defy the Taliban’s boast that they would scuttle the elections, but to tie up the purse strings which sustain them.
A recent announcement that up to 50 “opium barons” have been cleared to be hit means that from one point of view, the campaign is an opium war. Taking these physical locations is probably less important than being able to control the trading network itself. There are estimated to be 1,500 small and 500 large opium traders in the Helmand. The ongoing USMC attack is taking place in the middle of the traditional trading season (from June to September) and may threaten, perhaps pointedly, to ruin it.
The seasonal dimension to opium trade must be emphasised. The key period of selling from the farmgate is during the months of production – from May to July in Helmand and July to September in Ghor. It was apparent from interviews with farmers and small traders that there are farmers in Helmand who retain small stocks of 2–10kgs as reserves that are slowly traded through the year according to need.
And the traders, if they are to trade, must come to terms with fact that the USMC is now astride their logistics channel just as the Predators are taking out the head office. In a previous post, I argued that the shift from attempting to outlaw opium cultivation to effectively vetoing who could control it, and perhaps who can ply it, might have the political consequence of forcing the Afghans at least in the Helmand to consider whether the continuation of their way of life was better served by allying with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, or with the Strongest Tribe.
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The turn around in Iraq started with the interdiction of the rat lines. Afghanistan is a different war but some things are basic. Petreaus knows his craft. Regarding the drugs, I repeat my desire that we can find some biological agent that will destroy the crop. Regarding the culture of the villagers, they exhibit the boundless self pity and fatalism that Islam teaches them. The long term solution is to introduce a moral agent that is the equivalent in the human heart of what the biological instrument will be to the economic threat of the opium. We need to insert and support missionaries and change the culture. We need to change the culture domestically also. We must make the world safe for free people with free thoughts. Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Tao, Bahia or Hindu; all must be welcome.
I love this kind of analysis, and I think it’s posts like this that really built the Belmont Club. Thanks, Wretchard!
Credit due to CJ of LGF for advertising this. Natan Scharansky has a new home, the Adelson Institute. http://www.adelsoninstitute.org.il/
Once I had the honor to shake his hand, after I inspected him. A handful of people brought down the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union, Scharansky, Reagan, Solzhenitsyn, Sakhrov and Thatcher. We are in their debt. Scharansky is the last still fighting the good fight.
Why not buy the poppies directly from the farmers for 10% more than they usually get, take it and burn it–minus what might be needed for medical reasons–and keep attacking the dealers, who will soon go out of business?
This should be cheaper than what we’re doing. It’s what we do with our own farmers.
Lately I have been reading “Kill Bin Laden” written by the officer that commanded the Delta force on the ground that tried to get OBL in the Tora Bora area in late 2001.
His description of our Afghan allies is interesting. They had all the fire discipline of a teacherless first grade class given a crate of rubber bands, the bravery of a flock of geese, and the work ethic typically displayed in a Redneck bar on Saturday night.
I guess things have improved since then, but I wonder how much Afghan forces are involved in this fight.
Gordon:
That’s not an unreasonable idea. CIA Factbook estimates Afghanistan’s annual opium income at about $3 billion. If we can do Cash for Clunkers, we can certainly afford Cash for Junkies. This would give us a leg up on helping the Afghanis with THEIR opium problem, with users comprising 20-25% of the population.
Why burn the opium? We could sell it cheap to registered junkies (US citizens only, please), recoup some of the inverstment, and cut the legs off much of the US drug trade. I suspect the sheer humiliation of standing in line every week at the government dope center might make rehab seem a bit more attractive.
Gordon: Yes, I’ve wondered about that myself. Or contract with them to grow vegetables or flowers and pay them above-market prices. My understanding is that the farmers themselves don’t make a lot from opium.
“Why not buy the poppies directly from the farmers for 10% more than they usually get, take it and burn it–minus what might be needed for medical reasons–and keep attacking the dealers, who will soon go out of business?”
I have no idea of the scale we would be talking about in doing this, but it’s a fruitless endeavor anyway. It might work temporarily, but the very INSTANT you stopped the payments farmers, distributors and dealers would mushroom right back up again. They’d mushroom sooner if there wasn’t a LOT of money spent monitoring to make sure they stuck to their deal, too.
The Afghani farmers don’t make much money from growing opium. The drug lords who control the smuggling make the money. Farmers would much rather grow food, but when the Taliban tell them to grow opium or die, they do what they are told. Ultimately, the only way to stop the opium trade is through improved security. Provide the farmers with security from the Taliban and the drug lords, and they will happily grow food again. Like so many other problems in Afghanistan, always comes back to security.
In a previous post, I argued that the shift from attempting to outlaw opium cultivation to effectively vetoing who could control it, and perhaps who can ply it, might have the political consequence of forcing the Afghans at least in the Helmand to consider whether the continuation of their way of life was better served by allying with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, or with the Strongest Tribe.
And an excellent argument it was.
Hopefully we will not again drift into the spurious argument about the morality of heroin growing, the banning of it, etc.
We are all free to go to hell in our own way.
Gordon, buy the poppies, me arse! Free up the supply; to coin a phrase – it’s a poppy supply, only it’s our poppy supply.
In fact the greatest danger to the use of the poppy control lever (which is brilliant)is that demand in the West will dry up.
For once, (Don’t) damn the pusher man.
ADE
Whiskey will appreciate this (a bit OT, but a recurring theme here at BC; scroll down to get to the relevant section):
http://tinyurl.com/the-absurdity-of-the-west
Jamie Irons
On a previous thread, the concept of legalizing narcotics in the US was debated. Now Gordon floats the idea of buying the opium yields directly from the farmers, which I think is an idea with some merit. But I don’t think it would be reasonable to believe that this change in tactics alone would end the trafficking there or here. This stuff has a very powerful effect on folks and very lucrative… an already thriving black market would be nearly impossible to stop.
As for changing the Afghan culture – I don’t think so. It would take imbeds two generations at least to make a dent: This in addition to the security issue. Islam won’t change simply because we want it to. It’s a free will thing.
Wretchard commented some months ago that for an individual to abandon his culture was very nearly impossible (I paraphrase). Try telling a Christian that Christmas is a pagan holiday & see what kind of reaction you get.
BTW: I almost lost my breakfast when I noticed that the Youtube clip was from NOW. Wretchard: please give us a heads-up next time you do something like that.
/
” … the political consequence of forcing the Afghans at least in the Helmand to consider whether the continuation of their way of life was better served by allying with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, or with the Strongest Tribe.”
Wretchard has already summarized the history of outside forces attempting to change things in Afghanistan. Recently Marines the first time with the Brits, before that missile strikes, before that the Russians, before that … ?
Now the Strongest Tribe is finally doing it. Only Political Will is in doubt, seems to me.
Given the resources they request, I have no doubt that the U.S. Marine Corps can and will annihilate the Taliban. Then common Afghans will get to know U.S. troops the way Iraqi’s do, and describe them the way many Iraqi’s do: “Our saviours and protectors.”
By far the most lethal and most helpful conquering force the world has ever known.
Buying the poppy crop at the field is an idea with some merit, but I am afraid that would merely encourage more cultivation. Remember that the U.S. is not the only user of the stuff. Other people got junkies, too.
But if we did buy most of it, maybe we could dump it at low prices in Bolvia and Venezeula, thereby undermining the narco-communists, greatly harming their societies and thus killing three birds with one stone.
Kenneth has it right – we can’t outbid the Taliban backed cartels for the product because the Taliban have almost certainly set quotas for the farmers and made it clear failing to meet the quotas is a serious health hazard.
What if we bought the poppies and turned them into biofuel we could use or sell back (cheap) to Afghanis? Pulls the crop out of circulation without wasting it.
Plastic Snoopy – could not agree with you more. Amazing that in all the MSM there is no one who makes the kind of strategic analysis that Wretchard does.
Regarding buying the opium, the true strategic move is legalize drug traffic and tax it. This is a flanking maneuver that cuts a global supply line (of money) to the bad guys.
JMH – Thank you for your reply on the previous thread.
My general feeling about the Obama-Petraeus plan is that it bears the hallmark of an overripe empire grown lazy and unwilling to undertake the massive mobilizations which alone would make a difference in the region. There is no glory for us in being the “Strongest Tribe.” Even if we succeed (which is certainly possible), it simply means that we’ve bought the money pit known as Afghanistan. The more we participate in this sort of corruption, the more corrupt we ourselves will become. I’m not sure how we can play the role of mafia don in the Caucasus and still respect ourselves. Eventually, public reulsion alone will force us to withdraw.
Making all allowances for the inevitable differences, this is more or less the manner in which the British Empire lost her colonies, especially in Africa. I don’t see how the same strategy will lead to a different result when employed by us.
Re: Buying poppies. I believe it was tried in Columbia, that is buying up the coca crop. If memory serves the results were short lived. The drug lords responded to it as a “labor action”, raised farmer income a bit (plenty of margin to do that with) and explained to the grower what came out of the barrel pointed directly at their faces.
PS I believe, also, that a lot of spec ops guys still do jungle time.
I renew my support for the long solution. Untill we take Islam on, directly, we can’t get there. Madness is also doing the same thing someone else did, that didn’t work.
We (the U.S.) already have an arrangement with Turkey. I believe we buy up about 80% of their crop.
One big, fat caveat, however: Turkey has — by general world standards — a stable working government, and regulates opium farming. Afghanistan’s circumstances are very different. This last fact is not a show-stopper, but it does mean that, if the U.S. and its allies wants to control and buy up the opium crops, it has to come up with a workeable system that will not resemble the arrangement it has with Turkey.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. I’m in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal. It is because it’s prohibited. See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.
Milton Friedman
Somewhere in Burma they are cheering on the Marines.
It might be cheaper to reclocate the Helmand population and declare the province Terra Annulus.
Yeah right, maybe Starbucks can set up their “Free Trade™” thingee there, and it will be in stores in an attractive bag, on an attractive stand.
We’re back to this again. See Wretchards previous post for a lengthy discussion of the merits/liabilities of drug legalization on what was a post ostensibly about Administration policy in Afghanistan vs a military strategy based on the idea of winning there.
I searched through the older archives but could only go back as far as April 11, exactly when stories, not just about Afghanistan, but al queda/Taliban success all over the place in Pakistan were popping up in profusion.
One post included a mention that 0bama admin was sending non-military agencies and agents, in fact ACORN to the Afghan theater. It seemed pretty obvious to me that 0bama was sending theses agents to the area to get a piece of the action where the opium crop was concerned, and with recent revelations such how SEIU works mano en mano with ACORN (here domestically, at Town Hell
BeatingsMeetings), the idea seems even far less far fetched.Especially when one considers just how [SEIU is the] Service Employees International Union is so gosh darned International and all.
Yesterday blert observed and queried about just how it was that administration policy was beginning to resemble belmont club posts of previous months. I think this strengthens that need for more scrutiny, especially when we’ve seen how acorn™ and SEIU™ are trying to double team us back here at home in our own districts.
Where Spector and Kathleen Sibelius, have the microphone and PA at one end of the room, and SEIU and ACORN have the bullhorn and their less gentler forms of persuasion at the back, or just outside, where they’ve corralled the constituents of that district who actually live there. As opposed to SEIU and ACORN enforcers who do not.
They get a source of non traceable plentiful cash going in the illicit market there, then they go after the rest here (domestically) in his wealth re-distribution (looting) scheme. One might ask, why go back and hit up the folks back at home (you know, the taxpayer) when you’ve opened up such a lucrative enterprise elsewhere? (see yesterdays comment section for figures on the level of profits to be made from this ‘product’)
And the answer is Avarice. Avarice not just for the money (which for a democrat, is never enough, they never shut up about the money, its always about “the” (your) money).
No, not just for the money, but for the power: All for Me, but None for You, except what I give you, and you’ll shut and eat that gruel, and turn your attentions back to “Sacrifice™, just like I told you before. (“I have always said…”, remember?)
Sound far fetched? Just follow the money. Now, they can import the stuff, through “government” agencies such as ACORN, in essentially broad daylight, and if anyone so much as bats an eye, MSNBC and all other electric megaphones™ , including even Camille Paglia for pete’s sake, can start screaming a chorus of- “That’s preposterous, you are crazy, you guys never stop with your wild conspiracy theories” etc, and so on. And cover it all up, knowingly or unwittingly, with enough noise pollution to “drown out the facts”. Enough noise pollution to kill a man.
I don’t trust these jerks to do anything but the wrong thing, and when I say the wrong thing, I mean the morally wrong thing.
this is not even a regime, its a cabal, a cartel, a fripping tumor and its penchant for what it perceives as “justified revenge” knows no bounds.
Its all gone to their heads, and they are temperamental and petulant, and they want IT ALL, and won’t accept anything less than IT ALL, not without exploring other options for revenge, when things don’t go their way.
Look for the H1N1 “Swine Flu” virus mass-mandatory inoculation campaign to be ramped back up and restarted (it was declared an emergency back in March, and has not been rescinded, when as few as 144 died from it, far less than the thousands who die as a result of common influenzas during any flu season.
When 0bama care goes down in flames, they are gonna want revenge, and mass mandatory inoculation will briefly satisfy that insatiable urge. But it won’t bring their fever down.
All this makes for pretty fertile auger for breeding drug addiction: think about it; you’ve got a younger generation undergoing a profound disillusion with what they voted for, not to mention contemplating their profound culpability in this flim flam that was the election, where up is down, when no one you trusted in this administration can be trusted to do anything but betray you, and when you succumb, there a whole lotta people who knew the whole time who can just smell the booty they see coming their way.
Even George Soros should be worried, because after these parasites have have sucked him dry, they’ll move on, just like a plague of locusts. And what are we supposed to do? Head back to the “promised land”, what, back in Europe? Wait for a gentile Moses to turn up?
I gotta give it to the administration on this one, they see Afghanistan in practical terms, of resources. Just as any empire-builder would. and drug profits dwarf the value of the previous commodities coveted by empires such as the value of gold. Who knows, we we may even see them setting up an opium standard at some point, as opposed to returning to a gold or silver one.
null/21; “the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel” At around 800,000 drug arrests per year, the taxpayer pays the police, the courts, and the prisons, but the perp pays the private lawyers. Who knows how much, but estimating a $10K/perp legal bill, that’s eight billion reasons for the lawyer lobby to throw its influence behind the WoD. At $50K/perp, you’d be talking a smooth $40 billion/yr.
I’m not agin the practice of creating demand for a service, but it sure would be nice to not wonder how much of a temperence movement we’d have if around 500 of 535 lawmakers weren’t rather than were, lawyers.
Put another way, & to entertain a hypothetical, suppose it were proved definitively that the WoD net effect on society & culture was bad; would the Bar then support repeal of the program –and give up all that sales revenue?
Frank Herbert states “He who can destroy a thing, can control a thing.”
The corollary of course, is if you can’t destroy a thing you can’t control a thing. Short term, the Afghanis can be dissuaded from behavior we don’t like. But Wretchard’s post here and in a prior post illustrates the need for a two track strategy. Provide penalties to Afghanis and/or Taliban for activities we don’t want. But we also must provide attractive alternatives to encourage acceptable behaviors.
Punishment with no opportunity for rewards only increases fanatical behaviors.
Regarding the suggestion that we outflank the Taliban by legalizing heroin in the US this seems a disastrous idea akin to shooting oneself in the head to avoid getting killed in battle. For a moment I would like to appeal to your conservative principles, let’s call it conservative civic morality (as distinct from any a priori Christian principles). Wouldn’t selling dangerous, indeed deadly drugs to American citizens constitute a violation of the social contract between the government and the governed violate that social contract? Depend on the situation and the cost/benefit? This is not consistent with a view of constitutional principles as bedrock. They are either meaningful and immutable or they are mutable and meaningless except as the situation dictates. Beyond being free to do something a wee bit (or a lot) unhealthy, selling heroin is an immediate assault upon a vulnerable (as well as dangerous and perhaps also repugnant) sector of society. It is not government’s role to save anyone from himself, but to harm someone like this is nothing less than a blow to the very basis on which our constitution rests. The government would then cease to be any more trustworthy than a decent hardworking drug pusher. That government is best which governs least: much agreed, but that is only true when there is a level of trust between the citizenry and in turn complete trust for a government. If you think that Obamacare will drastically harm this relationship between government and citizens, what about when the government becomes a pusher or the pushers’ supplier? I take second to no one in the pride I feel when I see the flag raised and hear of the heroism of our US armed forces, but when the government is a pusher…do I want to send anyone I love to fight and maybe die for a government that is selling heroin to my neighbors? Yes…RoevWade already put a crack in this relationship. Making the government a junk-supplier will collapse the whole thing.
There is no glory for us in being the “Strongest Tribe.” Even if we succeed (which is certainly possible), it simply means that we’ve bought the money pit known as Afghanistan. The more we participate in this sort of corruption, the more corrupt we ourselves will become. I’m not sure how we can play the role of mafia don in the Caucasus and still respect ourselves.
This makes me think of a book by Thomas F. Madden titled Empires of Trust. (I highly recommend the book). Madden sees the US and Republican Rome as similar, both empires but not of the conquest or mercantile types. Rather, they’re empires created by people who don’t really want an empire at all, just security from the dangers abroad. Achieving that security leads the empire to take responsibility for an ever increasing amount of territory, and the folks in those territories are (at least eventually) happy to have the empire in charge because they trust it to wield power more responsibly than any of the other alternatives. (Of course this does not prevent them from endlessly grousing about the empire, or making cheap local political hay from spitting in it’s eye, safe in the knowledge the empire won’t let junenile antics provoke it into an irresponsible reaction – that’s part of the “trust” factor, the empire can be trusted to be more responsible than the locals).
One point he makes, and I think there’s something good to be said of it, is that part of the Roman and American identy was/is accepting of a difference between things internal and external to the culture. Kings, for instance. Both Republics were formed when the rule of an outside King was thrown off, and monarchies were officially forbidden within the Republics. But both cultures accept that foreigners, those poor benighted but interesting fellows, would have kings and despots and Lee Kuan Yew’s. And that was okay, often even entertaining – so long as the foreign kings and despots made no war on Rome, the foreigners were welcome to keep their own customs, which perhaps worked best for them anyway. Romans, when dealing with foreigners regarding foreign things would tolerate foreign customs, even participate in them if necessary for the good of the Republic. But the customs were not welcome back at home. “When not i Rome…” you might say. So by Madden’s reckoning, we’re okay making unsavory compromises in the field, since our people understand no better can be expected when dealing with foreigners.
Internal politics are, as was the case with Rome, the real threat to the Republic and the culture that nourishes it. For instance, see Gaffe Prices post above. Getting rough the Afghani opium lords in the Hindu Kush is one thing. Getting rough with domestic political opponents in St. Louis (rightly) provokes a backlash.
GP/23; thunderous and courageous sounding of the barbaric yawp, my compliments. Re ‘International”, please search [ rathke sicily ] –
Put another way, & to entertain a hypothetical, suppose it were proved definitively that the WoD net effect on society & culture was bad; would the Bar then support repeal of the program –and give up all that sales revenue?
Well Luddy, er Buddy, I think if you replace “WoD” with “current medical malpractice law” you’d have your answer. The Bar would aggressively dispute anything that found decreased court cases to be a good idea. And agressively disputing things is what lawyers do best.
Put aside the legal vs illegal in the USA bit. What has to be done “over there” is the
same whatever happens “over here”.
Tactically, the current operation seems sound. It will disrupt Taliban logistics and finances. And cost them some manpower as well. Question is, what about next year, and the year after that, and the year after that and on and on?
Now securing the opium crop for yourself cannot be done by simply offering to buy. The farmers may not be able to entertain your offer. So the Marines have to go in when the crop is getting ready to harvest and make a most generous offer that they cannot refuse. Again, a tactical problem fairly easily solved.
Now what do you do with this year’s crop, and next years, and next next years and on and on?
Simply destroying it or taking it away will back fire on you. That is because all the post-harvest economic activity that normally goes on is short-circuited out of existence and, willy-nilly, you have just accomplished everything the USSR did. You have a wasteland and just as soon as our backs are turned, it will revert to being a privileged sanctuary for whatever foes happen to want it.
This is why I keep saying turn the opium plants, poppies, stalks, roots and all into petroleum. Pass the petroleum around and you get replacement economic activity that is in excess of the departed opium-based activity.
If your security is up to snuff, Taliban does not get any of this unless they try to frocibly seize earnings and goods thereby putting themselves into the looter position rather than the protector position. Try that and the populace becomes much more willing to offer resistance to their winsome ways.
Keep in mind that that we can manage to buy
bumper crops of poppies (or replacement crops???) year after year. Always a need for more oil. Once the Taliban gets a hold of large amounts of opium, they have a surplus that will take them two to three additional years to dispose of. During that time, their farmers have to endure starvation wages.
Advantage: US.
The other thing to do: That Soviet era did away with traditional livestock/animal husbandry. There is lots of pasture there.
If you build up new herds you can put locals to work tending said herds and doing other activities (in cooperation with neighboring tribes!) necessary to market the livestock.
New ethic in the region that benefits US, not Taliban.
Again, security most necessary to keep rustlers are bay. But this way you start running short of rustlers in due order about the time locals decide to take care of such pests themselves.
Afghanistan is not going to be neutral to our future. No way under the sun will that happen. It will either be a liability or an asset.
To make it the latter is a matter of logistics. Make that AUSTRIAN SCHOOL logistics would you?
And leave our homefront druggies out of it. For this problem, they are damned well irrelevant.
JMH, watch & see, when congress decides healthcare is dead, the admin will hail mary a tort reform proposal (“to insure that we get costs down for the American People”) in order to get it through –it’ll be dramatic and timed for a short sharp bandwagon effect. What admin will give back to the tort clan is a backroom wink go-ahead to get back to work and reclaim the ‘lost’ $$$ in New and Innovative Reforms the American People Demand. another rhetoric-enabled bait & switch. think about it –it’s practically inevitable.
RWE said:
“Buying the poppy crop at the field is an idea with some merit, but I am afraid that would merely encourage more cultivation.”
Buy something other than poppy but at an artificially inflated price. Use economics to induce the Afghan farmers to grow something that is labor intensive but doesn’t result in heroin, e.g. strawberries or tomatoes. The farmer gets his money and the Taliban gets nothing. We end up with expensive tomatoes that we don’t need but it’s simpler than dealing with poppy and/or pissing off the Afghan farmers.
JMH: good point bringing up Madden, and reluctant empires. Madden’s right, there IS a comparison to be made. But, we are possessed of something evanescent, something that is based on a far nobler vision of human dignity, our enlightened Christian anthropology. The internal for the internal market and everything else for the external can work for a time even if it contradicts our essential vision of what it is to be an American citizen, but only for so long. The Roman poet Catullus wrote lyrically to his high society friends about the pleasures to be had while in provincial government. Riding in sedan chairs…native concubines, even as he longed to get back to Rome. Sophisticated as it was, those extravagances were not to be OPENLY indulged in at Rome. Maybe it is that honoring of (the already betrayed) Republican ideals that made Rome a place to be longed for? It wasn’t “home” for Catullus…that was in the hills near Verona. How long can those governing a society enjoy exotic dainties foreign to the culture while still defending that culture? When does it catch up? The interior life of Catullus and his senatorial cohorts was a purple mess. The Republic simply could not be reborn when the governing class was split in its deepest allegiances between Persian peacock extravagance and Roman republican moderation and duty. Indeed, with Catullus we see that it really wasn’t split, the Republicanism was just a sham. Two truths, one for us, one for them does not = live and let live, as I’m sure Madden would agree. I also do not suppose you would argue for any such system of two truths, but there are those who would.
We can’t make Afghanis behave as anything but what they are or aspire to be based on their own native morality. We must only be sure not to become an instrument in FORWARDING any mores but our own, and that where it stands a reasonable chance of success.
Hiya Dave!
I wasn’t able to respond to you yesterday, non-public URL … I just happened to be trolling for the first time in weeks, I guess my ears were burning.
I agree with you, except that I would favor a Heifer International kind of approach (currently they have no projects in Afghanistan). A rural economy based in part on animal husbandry needs …. animals. And some veterinary support.
Afghanistan’s other major economic leg is fruit. Again, our Marxist friends, so fond of land mines shaped like children’s toys, also engaged in intensive scorched earth tactics aimed at orchards and vineyards.
By the time that the mujahideen evicted the Soviets, chaos was pretty well guaranteed because the country’s economic bases had been so thouroughly vandalized.
These are the kinds of things that common Americans could contribute to and participate in, given a realistic way to do so.
Cows, sheep and fruit trees might not immediately replace poppy production, but they would help to reconstitute something resembling the traditional mix back in the time of good king Mohammed Nadir Shah.
**
Many thanks to Wretchard for his trenchant analysis of the current USMC campaign in Helmand province. His narratives, and maps, are always light years ahead of the MSM.
Eggplant #33
That kind of stuff is hard to ship fresh out of a country without roads or railroads, otherwise, it would be ideal.
Afghanistan is perfect for raisins, though. Also, the dominant tree in the southwest is pistachio nut. All over the place …
Another, perhaps less ideal replacement for poppies would be cannabis. Afghanistan was noted for surperior hashish back in the day …
#25 DonB71inWA: “Frank Herbert states “He who can destroy a thing, can control a thing.”
Kind of depends on what the definition of what one means by “destroy” is, and what those entrusted with power mean when they say it- “destroy”
0bama lies about everything, just yesterday he said that the provision to send counselors to one’s house, to talk about “end of life” issues was written into the bill by a republican, and that he “was not for that”.
Whereas the part about the republican putting it in the bill might probably be true, he and his ilk as most certainly, for that.
Just ask Holdren, and Jones, who not only espouse this idea, but have written at length and published books (listed in their very resume’s, their CV’s) plans outlining euthanasia, forced sterilizations and neutering, and what amounts to government controlled genocides and mass internments, mass infections and quarantines, etc.
So when they tell you they are “destroying” something generally accepted as bad, what they are really telling you is they want to “control” it.
These freaks are obsessed with “control”: for example, ‘gun’- “control”, birth- “control”, just to name a few examples.
Government is about Law, so congress the lawmakers are lawyers. What if government were about plumbing? and we had 535 plumbers writing law? Everyone would already have, and nobody would even notice anymore, 600 toilets in their house, and the entire current energy of the nation’s politics would be pouring into the hot devisive issue of the 601st toilet. Is there a need for it? at what cost? and dammit who pays for it?
Mick #26:
Well stated.
I wonder how many innocents die in the US in traffic accidents due to drunk drivers. And how much property value, law enforcement/DOJ costs, inflated insurance rates, hospital costs due to medicating/providing ambulatory care for impoverished druggies, etc, etc just goes up in smoke?
Katie bar the door if opiates are legalized for recreational use. The US ATF, FDA, AMA et al will not be able to control the chaos.
O/T returning from Montana (like that’s a reason, hmm)
Montana was great. No TV, radio, cell phone etc for six weeks. Igot back to no surprise that little had change with the exception of obama’s popularity and some very , very hostile crowds at town hall meetings. That in my book is a great thing. It’s good to jaw -jaw but it’s much better to preserve the republic.
Talking time is over. If their goons want to bust heads, I’m ready willing and able to dish out all they can handle.
But the mid terms are coming so lets continue the heat electorally and pull some of obamas support away from him. If that doesn’t work and he continues to undermine the republic, which he is doing with great effectiveness, then we will have a civil war. No sane persons choice but history is coverd with at that act and ther is no reason barring it’s ressurection here … Thr FF’s would even applaud it.
obama is a clear and continuing present dabger to this country.
This is not about buying poppies. This is about men putting themselves in harm’s way for us.
From the hells of dark Fallujah
To the sores of Kandahar
They fight our nation’s battles
For each stripe and every star
They fight for right and freedom
For they know what freedom means
They’re the guys who keep us safe from harm
The United States Marines!
habu! i was afraid there was a dabger you’d never get back from Mogtana!
obama is a clear and continuing present dabger to this country
Having the t-shirt made up even as I type.
39. Enscout:
Mick #26:
Well stated.
Yes, well stated.
#37, and let’s not forget 0′bomba is promising that his health scare/death care
penetration,intrusion,annexation,bombardment,overhaul/overwhelm,invasion, plan only wants to “control costs”she said she didn’t love me no more, and it was like a dagber to my heart, ;=) but I’ll get over it, because I really only love typo’s. I live for them! ;=)
I’m afraid Obama has more than one dagber up is sleeve.
Therefore, I say we mustn’t let down our guarb.
As Woody Allen’s note to the bank teller in Take the Money and Run said, “Hand over the money. I have a gub!”
Welcome back, habu!
Jamie Irons
welcome back Habu and Konyok.
Dag-nappit…hey I had to relearn how to use a flush toilet ..spend a month plus in the Bob Marshall Wilderness (the BoB to the natives) with minimum support and life gets dagberous ! Nice to be back, Hope all contributors are healthy and in no dagber. Oh yeah..bought another patch of land, this one with a 3200 sq ft home on it and views of three mountain ranges.
I have some catching up to do in order to be a meaningful contributor so I’m starting out slow by watching the Hawaiian Tropic Bikini contest..I’ll be up on things in no time.
Excellent article, Wretchard. You gave me a new perspective about what’s going on in Afghanistan.
I still think US forces also might be preparing a ground attack into Pakistan if there is good intelligence about Bin Laden’s location.
Mr. Fernandez,
Thank you for allowing this personal indulgence..I’ll now begin to follow the thread.
Best regards,
Habu
This is a tough one. Where there is an opportunity to dominate the transport of the harvested product, opium, warlords will emerge to reap the higher prices paid further up the chain. The farmers don’t get very much at all of the piece of that pie, but it is something. The strategy of shifting to targeting warlords rather than the crop itself is a common sense conclusion and the right call.
Hitting now at the start of the harvest/transport time is, I hope (crosses himself) going to be very effective in shutting down the closest element (the local warlord) to the supply/demand part of the equation. If this keeps up maybe there will be enough dead warlords and dead opium traffickers to one day replace these crops with other crops they can eat and sell surplus for the money to buy things they need. What meager money the farmers make from selling an opium crop doesn’t seem to be much in the way of creating their own capital by increasing their wealth and buying abilities.
The quotation “bombing them OUT of the stone age” comes to mind when considering the marshall plan opportunity coasts of rebuilding japan, S. Korea, Germany after world war two: in these places any investment into rebuilding was balanced by what would result from this expenditure; they were pre-existing industrial countries and the point was to get them back to that productive level as fast as possible, and serve as ramparts against communist expansion.
Afghanistan is problematic because there is no preexisting infrastructure or skills to build on; we are basically starting from scratch, and the supplying of land locked Afghanistan with infrastructure and and industrial capacity to move them forward is a monumental undertaking
If there had been drug lord resistance to our moon landing we wouldn’t have lasted a second once we got there.
On this moonscape the question(s) such as- “Is this worth it?” and “Is it worth the cost?” will continue to dog us: it is the Manhattan Project question of our time.
Shutting down the transport/trafficking networks, especially at crucial times, goes a long way toward breaking the vicious cycle.
Setting up a transport network of legitimate produce business into markets elsewhere is a daunting task in what would be the next phase of our helping the Afghani nation or provinces move toward further independence from this illicit trade and the arms and killing and profits going to warlord/terrorism networks that are a feature and go along with the global drug “silk road” that gets and supplies Afghani heroin to such far flung places as Moscow, Europe (switzerland), Los Angeles (those who don’t want Mexican Mud) etc.
God bless the Marines, we are in a real opium war as long as the supply lines operate safe and unchallenged, and that means chopping off the head of the beast, the drug warlord and his supply line network.
`
An analogy:
The FCC says which network can broadcast professional football and which ones can not?
Makes the FCC the boss, doesn’t it?
maybe this is a prelude to establishing a quid pro quo — we let them do the poppies and they let us build up the infrastructure (and they get rid of the arabs in assghanistan).
luddy
That is a very minimalist comment at #52. Could you help us to understand further?
e. nigma, well i realized the thread had moved on from Montana, & one can’t delete so i had to make a mark. i had said something about having received habu’s new business plan.
@6. Mike,
Addicts have NO self esteem to humiliate. The dope kills it and their ability to care about anything but the next fix. If they thought they could get free dope they would stand naked in the street picking their nose to get it.
Changing the economics won’t work completely. It will tamp it down a bit but not enough to notice. See Amsterdam. What it will take is a resurgence of the puritan culture along with the economic pressure and an absolute unwavering commitment to killing the bastiches that transport and process and bankroll such enterprises.
The bankroll guys being the number one and most important target.
Mick,
RE: two sets of rules. Let’s relabel them to “Expectations”. The key thing is there can only be one set of expectations for Romans. There can be a second set of expectations for non-Romans, understanding that holding foreigners to a higher standard is folly – they won’t be able to met it. If they could, they’d be Romans…
But yes, the danger is that Romans exposed to the lax moral standards of foreigners will begin to adopt them. Look at the angst over Greek influence, for instance.
For my part, I think that the Roman character was the result of a self-sufficient midddle class of, mostly, yeoman farmers. My theory is that the fall of the Republic was caused, ultimately, by the war with Carthage. Hannibal’s march through Italy destroyed many of the family farms. The farmers fled to the cities and their lives were spared, but their prosperity was destroyed. The patricians’ wealth was mostly safely behind city walls. After the war, instead of making the farmers whole the patricians let greed trump duty and bought them out for pennies on the dollar. That pattern continued over other wars, turning most of the self-sufficient middle class into dependants, the start of the Roman Mob.
An independant middle class serves as ballast for a society, and with that ballast, Roman officials could be sent hither and yon to be exposed to bad ideas without fear of them taking too deep a root at home. Absent that ballast, it was Sulla and all that.
I wonder how well our ballast is doing here in the US? Anyone get bought out for pennies on the dollar recently?
UPDATE: oh, to address your point about America carries a higher moral standard, the result of Christian influence. Agreed, but worth pointing out that financial independence is a important ingredient in moral decency. A man who depends on someone else to feed his children will buy their food with his morality if that’s the price demanded. Replace “food” with “medical care” if you wish as well.
from the study..,”The articulation of Ghor’s opium economy with that of Helmand is clear”.
Given the price is high and opportunity abundant and the risk relatively low compared to Helmand then it only stands to reason that production would migrate to Ghor. With the skills already available to the migrating farmers, the relative peace in Ghor compared to Helmand, will create a temporary supply side adjustment.
The report does not definitively define the bazaar nor does it attempt to relate what Occurred to the market during the years of Taliban rule, when it was definitely not fashionable in Afghanistan to be a drug lord, transporter, trader, grower or user. I suspect the opposition to the Taliban was built upon the poppy, and the poppy was built upon the destruction of fruit, nut and livestock production in the preceding decades.
So once again we are faced with trying to manipulate a market to return to more labor intensive and less rewarding (compared to risk) production. If it is the credit and trade system that allow the markets to thrive or die, then it stands to reason that a micro loan system that rewarded appropriate risk would be in order. Providing an incentive to educate the women folk would be a big forward leap, but small steps there should be possible through the use of micro loan opportunities.
It took probably twenty years (1960′s through the 1980′s) to destroy Afghanistan’s agricultural base, rebuilding it in a manner that makes it less susceptible to fluctuations of weather or political winds would take at least as long as lost skills and knowledge would have to be rebuilt or at least dusted off significantly.
Even if control of the “who” can be achieved, ultimately a choice of “what” will have to be effected or we will never leave Afghanistan whole.
I suppose the following thread answers my suppositions @61. Here I thought I had an original thought…turned out to be an abbaridginal
I bu, hab you bu’d too?
Hey, Habu
Habu,
Good to see you back! I was beginning to be concerned with your absence.
Ned
“She speaks an Indo-Aryan language.”
“Urdu?”
“Yes, her do.”
This brings to mind the strategic air campaign in WWII. The initial strategy was to target vital, heavily defended centers of Germany’s industrial strength. This led to unacceptable losses and disappointing results. Ploesti, dam busters, ball bearing factories, etc. Changing the strategy we attacked the transportation network. Doesn’t matter how many ball bearings you make. If you can’t get them to where they are needed they are just paper weights. The Germans simply didn’t have the capacity to defend thousands of miles of roads and railways. That’s why you see so many videos of fighters blowing away trains.
Once again we are seeing the flexibility, almost unique to the American military, to adapt to the situation. Colonel Boyd called it staying inside the enemy’s decision loop. I am not denying that Petraeus is a rare military talent. I do believe that one of the prime factors of this is very close attention to the history of warfare.
All who have ventured into the valley of the shadow of primitive Afghanistan have been bloodied and shamed. If any are to succeed I would place my bet on the finest, smartest military the world has ever seen.
Welcome back to the asylum, wandering ones. Sure hope you are fully refreshed and ready for the accelerating fracas.
Fric-and-fracas
Wretchard’s article here is examining with his relentless rationality and discipline strategies we can use in a country in which chaos and calculated berserkery have governed in spasms for centuries. Maybe the difficulty I’m having in plowing through Mr. F’s prose is just on accounta it seems like America is being steered to a similar sort of chaotic savagery by the sociopaths of the present administration.
Increasingly unthinkable behavior by our leaders is leading the general population to start considering attitudes and courses that will be the choices of desperation.
Having lived through the “unrest” of both the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement, many of us have experienced the agony of watching friends on both sides awakening to feelings, expressing them with growing vehemence, and finally acting out.
We know that people in their alienation have justified escalating violence, culminating in bombings and murder, thinking they were on the side of history. The racial riots in Detroit and Watts in the mid-1960′s, the bombings by leftists radicals of the 1970′s, the LA riots after the trial of the cops taped beating Rodney King, are within living memory for close to half the population. Wherever you stand politically, you know with a sickening certainty that mobs can be roused to turn a city to ruin, because you’ve seen it.
There are people in positions of power who are including this potential in their reckoning, and seem to be making preparations both to goad people to violence AND then use any violence that occurs as justification for a new tsunami of regulations and graceless clerks with god-like authority to screw with people’s lives.
#29 Mr. Barsen:
Thanks for the link, another guy who thinks his pits don’t stink
Lifeof: @#1
The Army is burning bibles written in Pashto that an aid organization gives to soldiers to distribute.
As long as there is Demand in the West there will be Opium produced and supplied. Burma and Afghanistan just have been the most difficult to access until now and grow the opium poppies in seclusion.
Until there is a concerted effort to eradicate “Demand” in the west, and that would require elimination of civil liberties for vast millions of users and their suppliers …
Any disruption of “Supply” will be short lived.
The ChiComs eliminated Demand in three years after their opium wars. Europe and the Americas aren’t likely to use the same methodology.
GP/67; you’re quite welcome, and thank you for reading!