USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20011208.0943 (On Screen): The new coalition government in Afghanistan is very fragile. The groups which are cooperating now have been at each other's throats in the past; in some cases as recently as a week ago. The Afghans are used to changing sides and cooperating this week with someone they were fighting last week -- and again changing sides and fighting again next week. That's going to be a problem here. As this article points out, it's going to take a lot of work from outside to keep the coalition government together. But the situation is far from hopeless.

The "warlords" gain their power from patronage. No-one is forced to follow them; they follow because they get benefit from doing so in the form of prestige and direct rewards. Each top level warlord rules a coalition of lower level warlords, and it continues down right to the point where individual warriors will change leaders when they think it makes sense to do so. The warlords have to guarantee a continual flow of perqs down the chain of command or their forces will start to leave them and join someone else who does a better job. That's what we'll take advantage of to keep them in line. There is going to be a lot of aid moving into the country, and some of that will be distributed through these warlords. That then becomes a source of perqs which will keep their forces loyal. But it also means that we'll be able to cut that off if need be. So all the warlords will get told, "Play along and the goodies will flow. Become disruptive and we'll shut off the spigot." And as this process continues, these warlords will have more and more stake in keeping peace and in cooperating so as to keep the flow of foreign aid coming.

We've already used that threat once. In the middle of last week, Karzai said that he'd let Mullah Omar go if Omar apologized and promised not to do it again. By Friday Karzai had declared Omar an enemy of the state and asked the people of Afghanistan to hunt him down. What changed? He got told by the US that if Omar went free, the United States wouldn't provide any reconstruction aid to the nation, but if Omar were captured or killed, then aid would flow in quantities of billions of dollars. (And it will, too.) Money talks, even in the Muslim world. Karzai knows better than anyone what sad shape the nation of Afghanistan is in, and since he was educated in the west (and has siblings living in the US) also knows what we are capable of, both constructively and destructively.

Right now General Dostum is having a snit because he wasn't given as much power in the transition government as he felt he deserved. Don't be too surprised if in a couple of days he suddenly becomes more cooperative and "for the good of the nation" (or for some equally face-saving reason) decides to play along. A little birdie will tell him that it's to his benefit to do so, and he's going to listen.

US bombs won this war. US dollars can win this peace. (discuss)