The U.S. pays the Taliban to not attack? We should be shocked! Shocked!
The Nation has a great story this week: the U.S., via its subcontractors, pays the Taliban not to attack its trucks carrying military 
supplies around the country:
The bizarre fact is that the practice of buying the Taliban’s protection is not a secret. I asked Col. David Haight, who commands the Third Brigade of the Tenth Mountain Division, about it. After all, part of Highway 1 runs through his area of operations. What did he think about security companies paying off insurgents? “The American soldier in me is repulsed by it,” he said in an interview in his office at FOB Shank in Logar Province. “But I know that it is what it is: essentially paying the enemy, saying, ‘Hey, don’t hassle me.’ I don’t like it, but it is what it is.”
As a military official in Kabul explained contracting in Afghanistan overall, “We understand that across the board 10 percent to 20 percent goes to the insurgents. My intel guy would say it is closer to 10 percent. Generally it is happening in logistics.”
Given that the trucking contracts total $2.2 billion, by my math that’s at least $220 million paid to the Taliban. As appalling as this is, it should not be a surprise. It’s been a pattern throughout the “war on terror,” and not just by the U.S.
I’d love to see someone do some real accounting on how much we’ve paid actual or potential adversaries to not attack us, but some quick numbers:
Paying the Taliban to not attack U.S. trucks carrying military supplies in Afghanistan: at least $200 million
Renaming insurgents the “Sons of Iraq” and paying them to not attack U.S. targets: $16 million a month
Getting Pakistan to stay on our side: many, many billions of dollars
Clinging to the notion that this is a “war of ideas”: Priceless
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Brian Lewis and Joshua Kucera, Tweets Tube. Tweets Tube said: The U.S. pays the Taliban to not attack? We should be shocked! Shocked! http://bit.ly/3h08Fa [...]
$220 million? That’s peanuts…..how many billions are we paying Goldman sachs not to bankrupt the usa? We even have to have Goldman Sachs operatives in the administration….
But getting back on track, how much could we pay these guys to let us win the war….and let us go away?
Mr. Kucera,
I think it would be more accurate to say that the US subcontractors are paying one or more factions of the Taliban, or even better, armed gangs of Pushtun speaking men. I think it is a mistake to imagine that there is a single organization with a single comand and control center called “The Taliban” as there might once have been.
Yes, you’re right. And, in the most charitable explanation, you could imagine that the U.S. is paying off the more amenable elements of the Taliban, hoping that it will help them against the “deadenders.” That, I guess, is the strategy with the Sons of Iraq and the Pakistan military aid, as well. Still, notice the way the brigade commander in that story phrases it: “the enemy.”
In response to another comment. See in context »Mr. Kucera,
Who is or is not “the enemy” I think is a very fluid category. Some who are our enemy one day are our friend the next, or both simultaneously later, or neither on another day. T/S contributor P.J. Tobia made the lack of clarity very clear in a wonderful posting about who wants to whose “friend” on Facebook.
http://trueslant.com/pjtobia/2009/10/22/insurgent-who-aided-bin-ladens-escape-wants-to-be-friends-on-facebook/
Friend or enemy may depend on the market value of either commodity on given day.
In response to another comment. See in context »I’ve always maintained that the best way to end these wars is to buy our way out of them. We did it in Iraq and we should be able to do it in Afghanistan.
Ultimately, though, Afghanistan will NEVER recover unless we let them grow opium poppies. That’s all they’ve got going for them. It’s a sad state of affairs, but that’s the reality.
Hello Justin,
It is important to remember that the Sunni Insurgents wanted to be bought off. They knew that al-Qaeda of Iraq was the most immediate threat, followed by the Shia based militias, the armed forces of the Baghdad government the next. The US forces were a distant fourth. Being “bought off” by the US forces gave them money, arms, and breathing space to defeat al-Qaeda and prepare for the others once the US forces left. They had everything to gain and nothing to lose. The situation in Afghanistan is not so clear for the Pustun speaking insurgents, some of whom might be “Taliban” and some of whom might not be, at least today.
In response to another comment. See in context »Lyndon Johnson tried to buy off North Vietnam, but Ho Chi Minh wouldn’t go for it. I doubt the Taliban will, either. Money may buy temporary calm, particularly with a diffuse group like the Taliban. But when you add in jihadists, foreign fighters, and general hostility toward foreign troops, we can’t buy our way out of this one.
Of course, we know that the next story will inevitably show the Taliban buying weapons with our money.