A Hot Summer In Afghanistan – Moon of Alabama

May 11, 2009

A Hot Summer In Afghanistan

McClatchy's Tom Lasseter has spend four weeks in Afghanistan and investigated the opium trade. He finds that not only the local resistance, or Taliban, tax the opium farmers but that everyone from the lowest policemen up various persons within the Karzai cabinet is taking a share of the loot. The export value of Afghanistan's opium trade is some $3.4 billion and makes up more than half of its GDP.

The new U.S. troops arriving now will have two tasks. The first is counterinsurgency operation against the Taliban through a population centric approach. The second is to eradicate the opium trade. The U.S. alleges that the Taliban make some $300 million through opium taxation and cite that as a reason to eliminate the trade.

But how can one do population centric counterinsurgency when one at the same time eliminates half of a country's GDP, the $3.1 billion that goes not to the Taliban, and thereby diminish the income of a lot of people? The farmers will make much less by planting wheat. The district governments and the police will loss a major financing source. Some quite important persons will have reason to sabotage political initiatives. They all will have good reason to fight the occupiers that put them into that position.

So this two pronged strategy seems contradictory to me. A massive eradication campaign will likely have the same result than the dissolution of Saddam's army and most of the state bureaucracy had in Iraq. A lot of people out of job or with much less income and with a social grievance towards the occupiers are the main ingredients of any insurgency.

It will be a hot summer in Afghanistan.

Posted by b on May 11, 2009 at 16:33 UTC | Permalink

Comments

b – could eradication of the opium trade be a cover? is it that maybe we are stepping up afghanistan because:
1. they have a common border with iran in case we have to invade or contain iran?
2. the shortest oil pipeline route to the arabian sea is from former soviet territories through afghanistan through pakistan (another current hotspot?)
didn’t obama’s change campaign include “ending the war”?
best regards.

Posted by: darkcloud | May 11 2009 16:55 utc | 1

So this two pronged strategy seems contradictory to me.
I’m not so sure. I think that by “eradicate the opium trade” they simply mean “eradicate the opium trade in Taliban controlled areas”. As far as the opium trade benefits US allies, it will thrive.
Think of Colombia. There too, the “war on drugs” has always been a way to destroy the FARC’s funding. But the US-sponsored paramilitary death squads are more deeply into the coca business, and that’s no problem.

Posted by: Qlipoth | May 11 2009 17:25 utc | 2

Darkcloud
Neither of your suggestions really stand up.
Iran cannot be invaded from Afghanistan. In reality, Iran is creating, or more accurately recreating, its own sphere of influence in the region around Herat, which used to be part of Persia. A few thousand extra US combat troops in Helmand and Kabul don’t change this at all.
The Central Asian republics don’t need to build pipelines to the Arabian Sea – they can simply do oil swaps by running pipeline spurs into Northern Iran to provide crude to the various refineries there in exchange for Iranian crude ( minus fees ) loaded at Abadan, and then shipped to the desired destination. Turkmenistan already does this. This arrangement is vastly cheaper, and generates cash much quicker, than the Afpak pipeline delusions that simply don’t make a lick of economic sense, as they would cost billions and would still take decades to complete IF stability could be restored to the region and the necessary basic infrastructure could be installed ( a ten-year plan all on its lonesome ).

Posted by: dan | May 11 2009 17:44 utc | 3

so the new General in Afghanistan is from the dark side.
special ops guys are now running major offensives. wonder how this is going to shake out. should be lots of fun for the guys who like to do this stuff. probably pretty bad news for everybody else though, except slothrop who will have to get a hold of himself much more regularly.

Posted by: dan of steele | May 11 2009 20:23 utc | 4

As with Iraq, US agribiz is trying to take over Afghani agriculture with patented, GMO seed.
Why should they be allowed to grow whatever they like, that commands a high price (opium) when they should be growing Monsanto’s Roundup-Ready soya and paying perpetual license fees (and ever-escalating pesticide costs) to big chem ag? I mean, what’s a colony *for* if you can’t grind its peasants into peonage?

Posted by: DeAnander | May 11 2009 22:00 utc | 5

“Our mission there requires new thinking and new approaches by our military leaders,” said Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates… “Nothing went wrong and there was nothing specific,” Mr. Gates said. It was simply his conviction, he added, “that a new approach was probably in our best interest.”

More white phosphorus, perhaps.
Will Obama have the guts to call his Afghanistan escalation a “surge”?
The U.S. replaces the top General in Afghanistan

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 12 2009 0:19 utc | 6

Pakistan president Asif Zadari is certainly showing rival Afghani prez Hamid Karkai just how to limbo under a snake’s belly whilst wearing a top hat to best curry favour for new amerikan prez and murderer in chief Stepinfetchit. His orders to attack the people of the Swat valley with whom he signed a treaty barely two weeks ago, has resulted in one million refugees and another 500,000 new refugees to be created over the next few days as the war zone expands. The indigenous people of Pakistan are being driven off their lands by the arriviste families from Bengal and the Punjab who flooded what was to become Pakistan during the ‘partition of India’ in 1947.
The elite amongst the arrivistes lost their shirts in the neo-liberal created world financial collapse, so are now waging a war of ethnic cleansing against the indigenous people who took them in all those years ago. amerika has offered Pakistan’s corrupt political elite a few dollars at a time when cash is tight and some particularly nasty greed heads led by the awful Zardari have jumped at the opportunity to proxy kill for profit.
Meanwhile back in Afghanistan, Karzai’s whining about 120 deaths in the Bala Baluk district of Farah province so embarrassed Stepinfetchit who had just completed a world tour claiming he is the acceptable face of amerikan imperialism that stepinfetchit felt obliged to force the commander of the amerikan military in Afghanistan, a scumbag by the name of general david mckiernan to resign less than a year into his top gig. An amusing if somewhat tawdry sideshow during the week between the resignation announcement and the news of blowing at least 120 women and children to smithereens, was when supreme commander of the murderers of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, one David Petraeus, claimed to be some sort of faith healer as he scuttled around like the cockroach he is securing his own position.
Although the miracle was alleged to have happened more than a year ago, it wasn’t until last Friday May 8th that right-wing blogs dutifully kissed mein fuhrer’s ass by running this specious bullshit.
He musta been saving this one up for a rainy day. The level of the spin shows that he wasn’t that concerned he was gonna get the old heave-ho, more likely just letting Stepinfetchit know that any attempt to remove him would create a full spectrum media shit storm from deep thinkers who beleive name calling wins debates. On the other hand one of the TV news services did pick the Petraeus is a god miracle worker story because that’s how I learned of it – from some tabloid news show or another – run as is without any scepticism whatsoever. Sad but true.
Sadder but truer still, is the knowledge that Stepinfetchit’s move against McKiernan was a typical pander to the left that looks good but but doesn’t actually change anything. This move has already become a trademark of the stepinfetchit administration. There has been no official announcement that the ‘resignation’ was tied to the murders. That means if another massacre attracts a similar level of publicity there won’t be any pressure on the whitehouse to repeat the dismissal. Which is hardly surprising otherwise they’d be running thru 4 star generals at the pentagon like a drunk shits through the eye of a needle.
According to the BBC, the pentagon says this of replacement general and former special forces bossfella mccrystal: “Gen McChrystal is reported to have adopted an approach of “collaborative warfare” – relying on communication intercepts and human intelligence as well as military force.”
To the average bystander that infers lots more USuk hirelings will be dressing up in ‘native costume’ so as to create internecine conflict by blowing up another mob’s shit – especially shit that matters to the leaders of the various Afghani ethnic communities – such as the women and children of the clan.
That combined with other reports of a cessation of drone attacks on the ~~niggers~~ AfPaks may reduce the odds of more horrendous slaughter being directly sheeted home to the amerikan invaders in the short term but given that Pakistani support for the current Pakistani armed forces servile obeisance to amerika is pretty much confined to the urban ruling elite and their hangers on, and that there is virtually no chance of cranking up the Afghani army in a similar fashion, the no-dronez remedy won’t last long so pretty soon there will be another awful and inexcusable mass murder, and then another and another, making generals resign means amerika would quickly run outta generals to swap around.
My question for the day is, is the awful reality that the entire South Asian sub-continent from Afghanistan in the north to Sri-Lanka in the south has become mired in murder and mayhem, a result of the gwot where Pakistan India and Sri Lanka put legitimate organisations representing a significant grouping of their citizens on terrorist watch lists (eg The declaration of the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist group made the current genocide in Sri Lanka possible)the cause of the sub-continent’s conflagration, or is it more simple – that unwhite humans are being taught ‘the hard way’ what happens should they become uppity enough to build their own thermo-nuclear devices?

Posted by: Debs is dead | May 12 2009 2:54 utc | 7