To Win In Afghanistan

It might be easier to "win" in Afghanistan than the Pentagon thinks.

Afghanistan is the 3rd poorest country in the world. The average salary is about $ 1.50 @ day, and the nationwide literacy rate is approx 40 %, although out in the countryside, it’s closer to 90%. The Karzai Government is basically broke, so it’s kept alive by donations from the international community. The country’s biggest export is opium, whose export value is some $ 300 million annually. This money goes to the Taliban, however, as they and the drug lords (one of which is Karzai’s brother) control the opium business.

There are only three large cities; most of the population lives in the countryside, where the Taliban and its allies are regaining control of the countryside. Since Afghanistan has twice the population, and twice the landmass of Iraq, how do we ‘win’ with the only 1/3 of the troops we currently have in Iraq?

It’s quite simple, actually, except most of our ‘big picture’ military doesn’t really like it…except the Marine Corps, who excels at it.

While we need more Marines and soldiers to defeat the Taliban, we also need to win the confidence of the locals. When this happens, then they’ll tell us who the bad guys are, and both we and the locals will take them out. It worked in Ramadi; it’ll work here.

First; you need to be in the villages with them. Not on a FOB close by, but in the village with the ANA and ANP.

Next: they need jobs…and they need jobs that are appropriate to a medieval economy. Take the following:

1 – Give a guy a couple of boxes welding tips, an old welding torch and some hoses, and a couple of tanks of Argon and oxygen…and you’ve just put a welder in business. Now he can fix farm implements, do some basic iron work, and help mechanics. Total cost ? Under $ 350.00

2 – Get a couple of old sewing machines, some bolts of cloth, and get a couple of ladies to start a clothing shop. Cost? Under $ 500.00. Now you’ve started a tailor shop.

3 – Without storage, the farmers only grow as much food as they can eat, or quickly sell. Import a cold storage unit (which is only an insulated 40’ cntr with a freezer, set up a co-op, make the tribal chief the boss, and have the villagers (all members of the co-op), store their crops. It’s food for them during the winter – as well as a source of revenue as they can now sell food all winter long. What a concept – food AND an annual cash-flow! Cost? Under $ 15,000 per cold storage unit.

And this is how a local economy is created...money circulates as the welder buys something from the tailors who then buy food from the farmers...the more small jobs that are created puts more cash into the local economy. Do this in a couple of valleys, and you've just pacified a province.

You think the locals are going to side with the Taliban now? No way..when the locals have jobs, cash, and can afford things like school books and medicine for their children..and they get them from us; they’ll be looking to help us. Like in Ramadi when Sheikh Sattar realized working with the Marines was to his advantage; Ramadi “turned” before Bush and Petraus’s “surge troops” had even left the United States.

Give me $ 20 million and I’ll drag Afghanistan into the 19th century. Then we’ll let the whiz kids in DC take over from there.