By David Anderson:
As Steve noted earlier today, the London Conference Plan is to replicate the Anbar Awakening in Iraq in Afghanistan in order to lease out some of the insurgents' loyalties for a while in order to bring down the level of violence to a more acceptable level. That level can then be attributed to the SURGE (tm) and VICTORY declared without actually doing much to resolve the long standing conflicts patterns.
Dexter Filkins in the NY Times reports on an effort to flip a Pashtun tribal network by buying out the elders for dirt-cheap.
Elders from the Shinwari tribe, which represents about 400,000 people in eastern Afghanistan, also pledged to send at least one military-age male in each family to the Afghan Army or the police in the event of a Taliban attack.
In exchange for their support, American commanders agreed to channel $1 million in development projects directly to the tribal leaders and bypass the local Afghan government, which is widely seen as corrupt.
�The Taliban have been trying to destroy our tribe, and they are taking money from us, and they are taking our sons to fight,� said Malik Niaz, a Shinwari elder. �If they defy us now, we will defeat them.�
A million dollars to sway the potential leadership of 400,000 people. That is dirt cheap. If that is the going rate on a per capita basis, swaying the leadership and influence networks, then only $70 million dollars per month or so would be needed to lease the loyalties of most of the country. That is a great deal.
Forget the fact that the tribal network and its leadership may or may not have the influence that they claim. Forget the fact that this is a further demonopolization of violence from the central government. Forget the fact that US air power and artillery will most likely be used to settle local scores. Forget those facts, as we have already forgotten Iraq, and this is great news.
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