Originally Posted by
Load Toad
So Wader2,
Taliban will take a cut then no matter what he crop - cos they'll just use extortion on the farmers whatever.
Quite.
But having a legal avenue for opium cash crops will make
a) the farmers more likely to choose the legal market because
b) the Taliban will be simply running an extortion racket which will be all the more unpopular and liable to face resistance from the (organised and protected) farmers.
True, legal market as it would be the easier option. As for b) I believe similar extortion rackets have been run much closer to home too. It might be possible to safeguard the farmers within secure bases but as I said before, the Taliban could simply torch the fields. They are not trying to win a populatirty contest but to kick us out and gain power - power of an AK47.
we seem to be faced with:
1. - Give up, turn tail and run out leaving the whole area to the medieval lawless terrorists types who may not be happy with just being evil in their own back yard.
2. - Carry on the war in some form hoping one way or the other we can find a method which will work.
Option 1 is probably the popular option today
Option 2 seems to be what Khan is suggesting. We are doing what we can to build or rebuild an infrastructure but Khan's other main point was a political one and not a civil or military one.
We took hundreds of years to evolve democracy. We deported the Lockean model successfully to several countries to a greater or lesser extent and have had plenty of signal failures too. The Communist model has also been exported and worked, after a fashion, for a good number of years before it too crashed and burnt.
The only other model that has endured with time is tribalism and we have proven that you cannot change from tribalism to democracy overnight.