Thanks, that was useful

Maybe it is a natural backlash after years of over-dramatic reporting on the then-called Global War on Terror, or the sign that John Mueller is winning hearts and minds, but there have been an interesting number of articles out there on how the terrorist threat is largely overestimated. It certainly is in some cases, but pushing this point to the extreme makes for rather absurd articles. a Foreign Policy blog post on “Drugs, Failed States, and Terrorists. Oh My” on the Foreign Policy blog criticizes United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa for stating that:

“‘There is more than just spotty evidence’ indicating a link between drug traffickers and terror groups.”

The post’s author goes on to add that:

“There seems to be an awful lot of hand-waving happening here. What we know is that drug smugglers are moving cocaine through West Africa, including regions where Al Qaeda linked militants also operate. This, in itself, may be cause for concern. But many, including prominent politicans, seem to be assuming that an established link exists when the only reported case of a suspected al Qaeda affiliate making a coke deal --again trotted out as evidence in this article -- was with someone who turned out to be a DEA agent. Until there's some more evidence, a little more cautious reporting might be in order.”

More cautious reporting is always welcome, but I fail to see why it would be needed here. It is an established fact that the FARC engages in, and benefits from, cocaine production and trafficking in South America. It is equally established that a number of AQIM members, particularly in its cells of Southern Algeria and Northern Mali, are as much traffickers as they are terrorists, and make a living of convoying cigarettes, arms, migrants, and drugs through the Sahara.

Now if cocaine trade has increased in West Africa as much in the past six years as UNODC reports, is it that much of a stretch to conclude that these two groups have financially benefited from at least part of this increase? Costa is stating the obvious here. The story that came out last December about the DEA investigation is interesting to get the details of how some deals are done, and what type of intermediaries get involved, but it does not teach us anything we did not know regarding the fact that a number of terrorist groups, in West Africa and elsewhere, gets funded through drug trafficking.

Oh, and one last sentence from this FP post:

“if al Qaeda is getting into the cocaine business, it would seem to suggest that the organization is moving outside its core competency in order to raise money”

This completely neglects the fact that there is not one Al Qaeda in this part of the world. AQIM is remotely linked to AQ central, and is itself largely divided between competing cells and leaders with different levels of ideological commitment and strategic priorities. Trafficking all sorts of goods, including drugs, has always been a core competency of some of AQIM southern cells.

Liberia: security sector reform and the international drug trade

Today's Liberia post started when Gulliver emailed me about this: "The National Guard will add Liberia to its State Partnership Program this year (2009), bringing the number of African nations taking part in the program to eight."

What's so interesting about this you ask? Well, first of all the US funded the recruiting, training, and vetting of the Armed Forces of Liberia. The UN Secretary General, in his report dated 10 August 2009, provides the following update on how that's going:

Development of the new 2,000-strong Armed Forces of Liberia continued to make progress. The first battalion started the United States Army Training and Evaluation Programme, which it will complete in September, while the second battalion will complete the programme in December. At that time, the United States contractors currently training and equipping the force will hand over to the Ministry of Defence, which will assume responsibility for training and standing up the new army. The United States has indicated that it plans to assign as many as 60 United States serving military personnel to continue mentoring the Armed Forces of Liberia, beginning in January 2010.

So it looks like we'll continue to work with the AFL as it builds capacity, an officer corps, etc. To get back to the role of of National Guard units, the article (from the snazzy AFRICOM website) explains:

Dankyan [the Liberia Desk Officer at AFRICOM] evaluated their military exercises to ensure a standard level of proficiency. After finding them ready, he started the process of matching them with a state that meets their needs.

These needs can be very specific. Some countries are recovering from war and request states with high engineering quotients to help rebuild essential structures. Some need help in planning for natural and manmade disasters, and still others want experience in farming...

For Liberia, a coastal state, the ideal partner would have expertise in ports and agriculture, he said. Dankyan said he has yet to choose a state partner because so many have volunteered to work with Liberia.

Let's hope that happens because as far as I know, we haven't done much to build Liberia's capacity to manage its borders. In particular, I don't think we've provided much support to build Liberia's Coast Guard (we're talking four 32 ft and four 28 ft crafts and 350 personnel). This is important because, as the BBC reports, Liberia (or rather the region as a whole) has become a trading platform for drugs moving from South America to western Europe. It's also important because the Liberian conflict was largely funded by trading diamonds, timber, rubber...and other commodities. Finally, it's important because beyond deterring and reducing illegal activity, effective border and customs management serves as the basis for reliable government revenue.

A wider question though: in countries like Liberia, with porous borders, resources, and limited capacity to manage borders, how do you fix that problem over the long run?

It's like Rip van Winkle or something

It seems like every day I read another opinion column in which the author proposes a policy course that has been widely discussed, perhaps criticized, and either implemented or disregarded already. Our fresh thinker tends to present his or her idea as cutting-edge, out-of-the-box, and certain to succeed. Today's installment comes from everyone's favorite right-wing McLaughlin Group commentator, Tony Blankley:

Also, we cannot deny the locals the revenue from the poppy fields and hope to befriend and empower the local tribal chiefs and farmers. It would be better if we simply bought the whole yearly crop (approximate cost $2 billion to $3 billion - but far cheaper in both dollars and American lives than the alternative,) and directed it to the legal pharmaceutical market. Thus, the Afghans keep their desperately needed money (and their traditional tribal relations and culture), the Taliban doesn't get its cut, and we keep the heroin off the streets of Europe and America.

I'm pretty sure no one has thought of this one before: why don't we just buy up all the opium and channel it into legal pharma?? Then the bad guys can't make any money off of it!

Only, they can. Does Blankley really think that the "Taliban's cut" in the drug trade comes from buying up the crop and then selling it at a higher price? Money is extorted and stolen from the Afghan people by the insurgents. It doesn't matter where this money comes from (but drugs happen to be a convenient medium because there's a premium to be made on their transport and sale, too). If the coalition starts buying up the crop, then the enemy will simply extort American dollars from farmers instead.

Unless, that is, we're able to cleave the insurgents from the farmers and the rest of the civilian populace. The odds of that don't look great at this point, especially with these force levels. (Not to mention the fact that the strategic logic of committing the necessary forces is... well, let's say it's questionable.)

Here's another charming nugget from the same article:

According to several of the troops with whom I talked, a policy that merely wanted permanently to suppress the Taliban could be more surely gained by fully empowering the local tribal chiefs and warlords to go after the Taliban - who, though of the same Pashtun tribe as many Afghans, are considered different subsets of tribe and thus foreigners worthy of enthusiastic slaughter.

Afghans hate foreigners, whether Macedonian, British, Russian, American or Pakistani Pashtun.

Is he serious? Does he think most Pashtun tribesmen in the Hindu Kush have any concern for (or even know) which side of the Durand Line they're on?

Blenkley figures we ought to just go away and takes the gloves off of the "local tribal chiefs and warlords." (In the latter case, hasn't Karzai pretty much already done that?) Those power brokers are only likely to "go after the Taliban" so long as it's in their interest to do so, which is to say so long as it looks like they're certain to win, and like they have more to gain from prosecuting a campaign against the Taliban than from reconciling with them, switching sides, or negotiating. This idea is based on the false perception that there is some sort of wide consensus about exactly who the bad guys are in Afghanistan.

I don't want to sound like Josh Foust here, but can the Blankleys and other political hacks of the world get out of the business of offering half-baked "solutions" to complex problems like Afghanistan?

"Karzai should see this as 'Godfather II'..."

"You got to get out of the business and go legit."

That's what one UN official had to say about the Afghan president's familial links to drug trafficking and other forms of criminality, as related by the excellent Elizabeth Rubin in yesterday's New York Times Magazine. More:

Yet on every trip I’ve made to Kandahar, I have heard another story about Ahmed Wali and drugs. Some of the people who have recounted the incidents are now dead. Like Malim Akbar Khakrezwal, an elder of the Alakozai tribe. In 2006, he took me around the fertile lands of his district, which are now infiltrated by Taliban. He told me that when he was provincial-intelligence chief, he captured 1,400 kilograms of opium belonging to Jan Muhammad, then governor of Uruzgan and a very close friend of the president. Jan Muhammad told Akbar to release the opium, and he refused. “My brother called me and said, ‘We are not able to fight these big people,’ ” Akbar told me. “ ‘We are weak. Release them.’ So I went to Ahmed Wali and said: ‘You are my commander; what should I do with this opium? Should I give it back to Jan Muhammad?’ ‘Yes. Give it back,’ he said. Twenty days later I was released from my position.” Last year he was assassinated.

A Western intelligence official who has spent much of the last seven years in Kandahar and, for obvious reasons, wanted to remain anonymous, told me: “The Karzai family has opium and blood on their hands. They systematically install low-level officials up to provincial governors to make sure that, from the farm gate, in bulk, the opium is moved unfettered. When history analyzes this period and looks at this family, it will uncover a litany of extensive corruption that was tolerated because the West tolerated this family.”

Perhaps. Or not. As many Afghans have pointed out, U.S. history is full of robber barons and of families who made their fortunes during Prohibition, and in the words of Ashraf Ghani “turned very decent as families.”

The article's already been linked by a bunch of people, but I'm highlighting it here in case you've missed it. In the midst of all this talk about strategic re-assessment in Afghanistan, and with the 20 August presidential election looming, we might ought to give a little consideration to how our horse (?) is being perceived by his own (myriad) constituency/ies, right?