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Various Issues
1. Sorry for not posting. There was a family emergency I needed to attend and the place had no intertubes connectivity. Fortunately the emergency had a happy ending. I am an uncle now.
2. Spam filter: Dear Uncle$cam, one of your comments was caught about ten times. The problem should(!) be fixed now. Just in case you’d like to continue your valuable contributions.
3. As I am still on the road I can not write the piece on Afghanistan I had in mind. The situation for the imperial NATO/US invaders there is quite hopeless. This diary by Ben Anderson in the London Review of Books gives some impressions on the military and "reconstruction" situation.
I am surprised to see that some MoA-ites appear to have given in to the myth that the pay off by amerika to independence fighters through the awakening program has a ready acceptance, so acceptable now that they are advocating a similar program be adopted in Afghanistan.
Has everyone really thought this through?
If this is some short term strategy by amerika to get through the 08 elections without a continuous stream of disturbing news from amerika’s most recent colonial near-acquisitions, it may have reduced the immediate short term death toll. But temporary or permanent, amerika has created a really lethal rod for it’s own back while simultaneously destroying the micro-economic foundations of Iraq’s rural provinces. All without putting in a sustainable long term alternative. It is unlikely this program can be dismantled with the same aplomb that introduced it.
The money is being paid directly to end users probably to ensure that all ‘power’ associated with the giving is retained by amerika, if a local paymaster were appointed, then that power would reside with him. Eventually the paymaster will accumulate sufficient power to become a ‘thorn in the side’ aka pain in the butt.
In addition giving an ambitious person money isn’t likely to send them away happy and content. The person won’t say thank-you that’s fine, see you later. They will see the money as stepping stone to getting more and are likely to keep coming back with further demands, all this while paying bugger all out to the pointy end, the ‘former insurgents’. Such paymasters are easy to decry and difficult to empathise with but they are also unlikely to allow the same total disruption of the local economy that an outsider such as an amerikan officer would. The reason is as self serving as everything else such a person does. That is since they were already in a position of some power in the local community which is why the outsiders recruited them, they will have an investment in ensuring that at least some elements of the former structure remain.
Ordinary people are a little different they will take the money and find a shady spot. Not for nothing do rural Australian Aborigines call the welfare payments they get ‘sit down money’.
The same is true in Iraq or anywhere. Of course coming from an agrarian society, rural Iraqis will find more things to do with themselves than communities who have always lived a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but they won’t be nearly as driven to produce as they had been, since they now have that largely ‘covered’.
There is a major difference between these payments and more mainstream welfare payments. That is, piling injustice upon stupidity, only some families are being paid to ‘sit down’. The others are expected to survive in an already tough economic situation with less ‘real income’ competing against others who will suddenly have more ‘real income’.
Imagine for a moment a basic rural economy that was probably pretty unsophisticated before the murderous sanctions of Clinton and Major. The Awakening Payments will flush a great deal of cash into these small well-established trading systems. Since the money hasn’t been accompanied by any increase in productivity which might otherwise provide a simultaneous lift in the amount of tradeable goods, this cash is going to be sloshing around chasing pretty much the the same or less (see ‘sit-down’ above) goods and services than that which were available before the awakening dollars appeared.
The amerikans may plan on using the payments as a way to get Iraqis hooked on consumption, but that is unlikely to occur short term.
Remember the debacle of 03 and 04 when the spruikers for the corporates arrived in Iraq in droves to push the same Chinese manufactured amerikan intellectual property the rest of the world is learning to loathe, but ended up as the victims, just for a change?
I suspect the images of good old boys getting their heads sawed off are still firmly lodged in the amerikan psyche. While the “surge has worked” propaganda may have taken shallow root; will it have supplanted the hardy perennial of the last decade, “All Ay-rabs are crazy blood lusting killers who hate amerikans’ freedom”?
Somehow I suspect that even a Willie Lomax crossed with the most determined Horatio Alger character, and complete with his matched luggage set of sample cases, plus gloriously colourful power point presentations, will be jumping on the red eye to Fallujah for a while.
If left for ‘later’ then it will simply be too late.
So it is unlikely that even if Iraq had a transportation infrastructure which could support such a massive increase in imports, that anyone will come to sell them.
Consequently these dollars will be in the hands of some families, those who took up arms and then elected to become a concerned citizen or whatever, but not others. Inevitably the money will inflate and distort the micro economy leaving those who haven’t gotten onto the ‘payroll’ at a disadvantage as purchasers.
So these ‘others’ who for whatever reason weren’t included in the initial “Awakening program” are going to find out very quickly that they have to get onto it if they want their families to eat. Of course those families which didn’t participate in the insurrection will be at a disadvantage. That’s gonna be good for the empire. Those who didn’t fight it will quickly learn to resent it. Worse from the point of view of the empire, those who did fight against the empire but weren’t included in the program, the most committed nationalists, will have to join up too.
The reluctant converts will be extremely pissed even if they are let in without too much hassle. How would you feel if this happened to you?
So that you needed to be seen to side with the enemy to feed your family. Do you think it would make you a committed, loyal member of the new hierarchy?
If amerika doesn’t take these guys on, says they already have enough ‘awakened Iraqis’ the outsiders will create a few vacancies by killing off those already signed up.
This is a great imperial program. NOT! Those who didn’t fight the empire are being punished and those who did are being rewarded. Pretty soon even the least politically committed Iraqi will find that if they want to eat then they have to shoot some amerikans and get ‘awakened’ by the bosses of those they shot.
From the amerikan empire’s point of view it is rather like the joke about the bloke who used to hit himself on the head with a hammer all day long because it felt so good when he stopped.
From the Iraqi point of view which is the only one I care about, any amerikan in Iraq deserves what he/she gets IMO; the problems will be even worse.
There will be a massive increase in the size of the black market economy which has become more dominant with each hurriedly introduced, improperly thought through interference USuk have made.
The sanctions would have been the black market incubator, the black market was hatched by the oil for food program, and nurtured by the invasion which caused destruction of much of the agricultural production. Remember the vids of farmers being shot up by helicopters? That may be beyond the memory span of Faux news viewers but every Iraqi remembers.
A black market is a disaster for any new government, right when is struggling to be heard above the din as it tries to impose it’s will from the centre (Baghdad) out.
A lot of shit is talked in the west about democracy and what a great thing it is for ensuring governments are responsive to their population. The facts are that contrary to what we were taught most governments, totalitarian or not, require the support of a large section of the community to survive. The expansion of a black market will cause a further reduction for Green Zone Iraqis viability especially once the amerikan administration is all ensconced in the new embassy. The Iraqi puppets are still seen as largely powerless in the small administrative stuff. They may have the ability to sign or not sign the oil proposal that seeks to rob Iraq blind; but day to day permits and the righting of injustices (most often perpetrated by the amerikan invaders) remains in the hands of the illegal amerikan administration. The old saw ‘all politics is local’ comes to mind and the Iraqi central government will be isolated by the amerikans and the black-market, two of the most vital areas of the ‘new Iraq’ the two which they have absolutely no control over. If an administration can’t do any favours it has no community support, withers and dies. However it would be a mistake to imagine that all the ‘legislators’ in the Green Zone are replicas of the west’s shiny suited, combed over, shit-eating faced pols. Leaving those buggers feeling deserted will have consequences.
There is little doubt that plans are afoot to introduce a similar program to Afghanistan. It is difficult to know how much support they have but an early sign is Robert Gates bid to increase the US Marine deployment to Afghanistan.
Amerikan troops will have to supervise any awakening style program in Afghanistan. If it were to be attempted within the much looser NATO command structure the ‘leakage’ would be vast. The marines with their style of top down oppressive administration, far tougher than the Army were the early adopters of the awakening strategy in Iraq. Since thus far leakage hasn’t been an issue in Iraq (well not publicly but I bet that minds far more determined and wise in the ways of arcane amerikan military bureaucracy than any of us have developed all sorts of rorts), the marines will be Afghanistan awakenings early adopters.
With luck the shit will hit the fan in Iraq before the Afghanis, who have been subjected to every other form of indignity and brutalization by amerika in the last couple of decades, have to cop the ultimate indignity of seeing their boldest and toughest reduced to dollar junkies. Even if the former heroes do eventually turn on their tormentors, as they most surely will.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 19 2008 0:30 utc | 10
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