Cash flow differentials illustrated

By Dave Anderson:

I have long argued that COIN has a resource problem; insurgencies have a proven capability to be out-spent 100:1 and still fight to a strategic draw.  Marjah was supposed to be a major Taliban profit center whose drug trade was protected by the Taliban who then skimmed $2.5 million dollars per year from the local economy.

 The Taliban was extracting $50,000 a week from the economy, but were still able to maintain a strong social cohesion and loyalty among the local population.  The offensive into Marjah was supposed to remove the cash flow from the Taliban as well as use a "government in a box" to redirect the primary loyalty of the population from the Taliban to the Karzai Kabul government.

The New York Times has a couple of very illustrating examples from a recent story that shows this strategy is probably not working:

In another sign of how little the Marines control outside their own outposts, one week ago masked gunmen killed a 22-year-old man, Hazrat Gul, in broad daylight as he and four other Afghans built a small bridge about a third of a mile from a military base in central Marja.

Mr. Gul�s boss, an Afghan who contracted with the Marines to build the bridge, says he has been warned four times by the Taliban to stop working for the Americans.

And even as the NATO-backed Mr. Zahir struggles to gain credibility as Marja�s leader, the Taliban are working to fortify their own local administration.

According to Colonel Sakhi, the Taliban�s governor for Marja returned to the area on Monday for the first time since the February assault and held a meeting with local elders, many of whom Mr. Zahir is trying to win over. The Taliban governor warned them not to take money from the Marines or cooperate with the Afghan government, Colonel Sakhi said.

In central Marja, where the work projects have had more success, about 2,000 Afghan men are employed by programs financed by the First Battalion, Sixth Marines, said the unit�s civil affairs leader, Maj. David Fennell.

There are at least two US Marine battalions in Marjah, and if the other battalion is spending reconstruction funds at the same pace as the mentioned battalion, the Marines are pumping at least $300,000 a week into the district. The story reports the Taliban is getting a decent skim on this Marine cash flow and they have the local knowledge to effectively monitor, infilitrate and intimidate people on their off-hours, so the cash flow crisis that seizing Marjah was supposed to create has not happened, nor has the ink spot expanded significantly.