Can We Buy Our Way Out Of The Afghanistan Conflict?
Recently I proposed that legalizing opium poppies would help bring about some needed peace in Afghanistan. Why? One word: money. Afghanistan has little of it and legalizing the growth of this crop would give folks the means to join the world market, sell the opium to make pain killers and save a lot of folks from living in abject poverty…which is why the Taliban and al Qaeda are able to exploit Afghans in the first place.
Well, a new idea by the administration is in a similar vein.
Basically, it’s a little known fact that one of the big reasons Iraq turned around is we simply offered a better price than al Qaeda. Within a month the word got out that we were paying top dollar and the insurgents were turning against the terrorists and the US body count started to drop.
Will the same strategy work elsewhere?
Afghans are known for changing sides back and forth during their long years of war — there is an old saying that “you can rent an Afghan but never buy one” — and battles have often been decided by defections rather than combat.
Paying Taliban foot-soldiers to switch sides could spare US lives and save money, say its advocates. A recent report by the Senate foreign relations committee estimated the Taliban fighting strength at 15,000, of whom only 5% are committed idealogues while 70% fight for money — the so-called $10-a-day Taliban. Doubling this to win them over would cost just $300,000 a day, compared with the $165m a day the United States is spending fighting the war.
And here’s a bit about a what we did in Iraq…
The tactic was used to good effect in Iraq where the US government put 100,000 Sunni gunmen on its payroll for about $300 a month each.
Some disagree that this strategy will work without more troops, but a refocusing of priorities along with paying people to not kill us will do the trick. Afghans are like anybody else…they want to be able to provide for their families and if somebody is offering a better deal, they’ll go with the best price in town. This isn’t a holy war even though the Taliban would like to convince everybody it is.
Here’s the question: Am I being naive or does it really come down to money?
(Photo: Getty via Daylife)
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Mr. Gardner,
I not believe that simply buying off insurgents per se is a solution all by itself. In Iraq, it worked for the Sunni based Insurgents because it suited other of their goals, which was to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq and to arm themselves for conflict with the Shia based armed forces, both in and out of the government. In the absence of those two other forces, it is doubtful that the Sunni based insurgents would have taken the money.
However it could be a useful part of a broader strategy. The Obama Administration and the MSM generally describe the insurgents in Afghanistan as “Taliban” and al-Qaeda, as if these groups were a single coherent military organization like their NATO enemies. The majority of the insurgents in Afghanistan are tribal militia members who have only passing affinity for the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Their primary alliance is to the feudal clan and tribal leaders who are funded by the opium trade. Our current strategy is to driven these three forces together and destroy all three together. This does not seem to be working.
An alternative strategy would be divide these three allies. Legalizing (or at least perhaps a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach) to opium farming and trading, as well as pulling NATO troops out of the regions of where the Pushtun speaking warlords hold sway. This, combined with a some sort of financial incentives, could pull the majority of the insurgency out of combat. Combined with some sort of negotiated settlement and power sharing with the Taliban proper and these Pushtun drug lords might isolate al-Qaeda and allow for its destruction.
However, this is no easy strategy. First there are the non-Pushtun regions which are not tied to the opium business nor to the Taliban. They cannot be left out of the picture. Then there is Kabul and the “national” government based there. There has to be some sort of central government our we might end up with Somalia-stan.
So by itself, your proposal is unrealistic. However as part of some broader effort, it could be a key component.
You’re not being in the least naive. Much better to be paying people than killing them (and losing our own). Our military budget for Afghanistan is several times the size of that country’s GDP. That’s all people need to know.
Well the problem is once you inevitably stop paying. In Iraq, the Anbar Awakening was a great success, except that once all was said and done, the Sunni’s were left pretty much disenfranchised and no longer on the American payroll. So violence begins to creep back in to the picture. Maybe the structural problem is different with poppies, though. If they could really become part of the global market then that could be more self-sustaining.