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Starvation in Afghanistan (ok, where's the
money, George?)
I've
heard from one member of the Afghanistan
Study Group who said about Bush's pledged $21 billion, 'don't hold
your breath.' This money has a way of getting prominsed then
never showing up. Meanwhile US soldiers die fighting an
insurgency that never should have happened. I read somewhere that
"successful COIN [counterinsurgency] campaigns are usually about 80%
political and 20% military." What book was that? The official
counterinsurgency manual. It wouldn't be half bad if we
actually did what it said. From page 25:
"The outputs of whole-of-government
assessment and planning should include detailed descriptions of...Dynamics
driving the conflict, including those that create and support the insurgency, and those that might mitigate
the conflict and defuse the insurgency."
Would making it so that young men didn't
have to join the Taliban to prevent their families from starving be one
of those thing that "mitigate the conflict and defuse the insurgency?"
![]() Starvation, Kandahar Province (YouTube) "Drought and Hunger Kill Nine People in Northern Afghanistan" (May 25, 2008) |
"Will
Iraq Turn into an Al Qaeda Terror Base if We Withdraw?" By Ralph Lopez
Win Without War Coalition, Letter to Murtha (Iraq) ![]() New York Times Magazine, "Battle Company is Out There." Contact Jobs for Afghans |
An Exit Strategy for Afghanistan
Mission statement and principles of Jobs For Afghans by Ralph Lopez and an Afghan Scholar in the United States
As the US government stumbles toward failure in a war which was
initially won, a new way of thinking is needed to reverse the tragic
course of US security interests in Afghanistan. A recent attempt
on the life of Afghan President Hamid Karzai came perilously close to
succeeding. Attacks on
US forces are on the rise. The US reaction is causing a rise in
civilian casualties. The result is a deadly spiral approaching a
tipping point. The gains of the initial routing of the Taliban
could be erased by another anti-American quagmire.
Is there a
solution? The answer, it
turns
out, is a firm "It depends." If Americans can embrace the plan we
outline here, then Afghanistan can be stabilized in a way that wins the
war,
eradicates poppy cultivation, and allows the US to bring most of its
troops home almost immediately.
Religious fervor plays but a small role in decisions to join the Taliban. Money plays a far greater role. The Taliban pays $8 per day, twice what the Afghan army pays its soldiers, and three times police pay. Insurgents get help with basic necessities such as food, clothing, and medical care. Young men by and large do not join the insurgents out of a desire to fight, but because their families need to eat. The US military occupation runs well over $20 billion per year. Every able-bodied Afghan male could be working for much less than a tenth of that. The United States, with its superpower economy, is losing a rudimentary bidding war against a foreign force whose fighters often fight barefoot. The main obstacle to the solution we propose is not logistical, but psychological. In war, Americans tend to place their faith in actions which result in damage to the enemy. The motto of the state of Missouri is "Show Me." From this heartland of the heartland comes this fair rendering of the American preference for what the eye can see, right now. Winning a war through soft power, which is how the peace was secured after World War II, requires patience and a bit more imagination. Afghanistan has a 40 percent unemployment rate. Pulling America's sons out of harm's way in Afghanistan will succeed on one condition, and will fail otherwise. That condition is competent execution of a specific program, down to dollars on a spreadsheet, to create large numbers of low-but-adequate wage jobs which build Afghanistan's almost non-existent infrastructure. The level of investment per year would equal the amount required to soak up Afghanistan's 40 percent unemployment, and would be paid not to laborers brought in by foreign contractors, but to Afghan citizens alone. Though it may be hard for Americans to imagine, most Afghans would be delighted to work at the hardest kind of labor for a mere ten dollars a day. This unskilled labor could dig water pipeline, build water treatment plant, build roads, repair buildings, and do the thousands of jobs which need doing in this tormented country. Rocket holes in government ministries and AK-47 pockmarks are everywhere. One need not work hard to discover the needs of Afghan society. It needs everything. The average lifespan in Afghanistan is 43. Schools are running in three and four shifts of pupils per day, because school space is lacking. Hospital supplies are a perpetual problem in most poor countries. In Afghanistan, there are no hospitals to hold the supplies. People with treatable problems are dying because there is no room to admit them. Thirty percent of the population has no access to clean water. One out of five Afghan children now die before the age of five. Because the entire cost of wages which would erase Afghanistan's forty percent unemployment would amount to less than one-tenth of the cost of the US military occupation, we call this solution the Ten Percent of Present Cost Solution. Afghanistan lacks a skilled and educated workforce, and if the unemployed cannot obtain education, they can at least receive on-the-job-training. This plan will build observable infrastructure cheaply and quickly, which will drive Afghans away from the arms of the Taliban. Most Afghans never liked the Taliban, which as a movement has its roots in Pakistan. The Taliban was only able to take power in the vacuum left the last time the US abandoned Afghanistan. After the Mujahadeen had driven out US arch-rival the Soviet Union, the US left Afghanistan to its own decrepitude and bombed-out ruins. Poppy cultivation, from which heroin is derived, is purely economically-driven. Cash for alternative crops would stop it. When the U.S. overthrew the Taliban in 2001, it promised farmers that they would not need to cultivate poppies to survive. The farmers waited but the promises were not kept. The total yearly GDP due to the narco-trade is about $3 billion. The military occupation burns through more than this much money every two months. The Afghan Loya Jirga, a country-wide meeting of tribal elders, has long been the body which we would liken to a Congress or Parliament. Central governments in Afghanistan have seldom had much power, and even the relatively strong Taliban could not consolidate the loyalties of the Northern warlords. Afghans should be left to run their affairs the Afghani way, with the West focused on eliminating the drivers of violence: the deadly combination of wretched poverty, too much time on the hands of the unemployed, and money and explosives in the hands of jihadist recruiters. The Ten Percent Solution should be administered by an agency committed to a regimen of spot audits and headcounts at worksites in order to keep corruption in check. Corruption will never be eliminated, but mechanisms could be put into place to verify that at least most of the money is used properly. The WPA- Works Progress Administration earlier in our history is a good model. Presently, forty percent of development funds going to private contractors exits the country in the form of corporate profits and salaries to foreign consultants, who may earn $200,000 - $500,000 a year in a country where most people live on less than a dollar a day. The recommendations in the recent report by Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR), led by Oxfam, should be implemented in the legislation. Any remaining US military presence should be confined to a single forward base which serves only as a launching pad to the Afghan-Pakistani border. International peacekeepers inside Afghanistan should consist of troops from Muslim countries. Although the mile-wide Afghani independent streak frowns upon any kind of foreign troops, those who are at least Muslim possess the advantage of understanding the protocols of a Muslim society. This translates into more successful interaction with the populace. Muslim troops from the UAE are already operating in some provinces with great success. Whether the Solution can be adopted depends on how loudly Americans demand the correction of a course that is headed straight for the rocks. Economic conditions in Afghanistan are inconsistent with the country's importance to the United States as a strategic partner in the global War on Terror. Professor Peter Bergen of John Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies, in testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 2007 said: "Given the fact that the 9/11 attacks emerged from Afghanistan and cost the American economy at least $500 billion, aid for Afghanistan so that it does not to return to a failed state is a good investment." By lobbying lawmakers to expand their thinking, Americans can win the war, an engine of jihadist hatred can be removed, and a looming tragedy for both Afghans and American soldiers can be avoided. Ralph Lopez is the founder of Jobs for Afghans. His co-author is an Afghan citizen and a Master's candidate in government at a university in the the U.S. |