The Dearing Dialogue

People making $250,000 or more don’t save as much because they face “many obstacles” (MSNBC.com).  I guess living large is considered an obstacle.  Paying everyday bills was the biggest reason. 

According to today’s L.A. Times article (Influx of Al Qaeda), money is flowing from Iraq to Pakistan to fund the scores of terrorist training camps there.  A former CIA official remarked:   “that the resurgent Taliban forces in Afghanistan are ‘being schooled’ by Al Qaeda operatives with experience fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.”

The CIA is further developing a new form of covert operative since 9/11, one that can use both the analysis and operations side of the agency.

These so-called “targeting officers” are given a blend of analytic and operational training to become specialists in sifting clues to the locations of high-value fugitives.

The CIA’s ability to send spies into the tribal region is limited, officials said.

“We can’t go into the tribal areas without protection,” said the former CIA official who was involved in the planning of the surge. “For the most part they have to travel with [the Pakistan intelligence service] and their footprint is not small because they’re worried about getting shot too.”

Instead, the effort is designed to cultivate sources in the outer perimeters of the security networks that guard Bin Laden, and gradually work inward.

The aim, another former CIA official said, is “to find people who had access to people who had access to his movements. It’s pretty basic stuff.”

Still, without an inside look at the the clan and tribal elements from where insurgent and terrorist factions arise out of, the CIA is not likely to get even close to breaking up these cells.  Looking with binoculars from an ISI Toyota at the guy who sells bread to the guy who goes to the mosque with the guy that once saw Zawahiri at the public toilet, is a waste of money.

I read a few days back, as I do nearly everyday, the list of names printed in the NY Times of soldiers that have died.  One name stood out:  Lt. Andrew Bacevich Jr.  I recognized the name from a professor I had listened to back in 2005 at Berkeley.  I was hoping the connection was not real.  But I was wrong.  The son of Prof. Andrew Bacevich died from a suicide car bomber in Iraq.  He was the only son of the professor.  It is a shame that it came to this.  I can’t even imagine the grief he is going through.  Grief that is only beginning to work its way into the fabric of our society as a whole.

Former Soldier, Now a Professor, Losses his Only Son to a War He Actively Opposed

On the other side of the connection between war and drugs is the case in New York, where federal prosecutors are trying to convict 8 Samalis for possession of Khat (Making a Federal Case of an Obscure Leaf).  Khat is a shrub chewed in Africa and the Middle East that acts much like an espresso does.  The idea is to link the possession to terrorism in Somali.  This is a hard sell, primarily since Khat was banned by the Islamic government that was in power and recently collapsed, and the primary dealers in Khat are warlords supported by the US.  Are you shaking your head yet?

“Hell hath no fury like a zealous federal prosecutor on a mission,” said Tim Gresback, a Moscow, Idaho, defense attorney who has been following the federal cases. “If your ideology impels you to conclude that an expensive prosecution of Somalis for chewing on a shrub will somehow reduce terrorism, common-sense financial considerations become irrelevant. When obsessed with terrorism you see it everywhere, even hiding in a shrub.”

The irrationality of how this so-called “War on Terror” has been fought is mind-boggling.  This is a good example of the unwarranted effects of the Patriot Act.

James Risen’s article in the NY Times (Poppy Fields Are Now a Front Line in Afghanistan War) has given a greater perspective on the urgent need to confront the drug trade in Afghanistan.  The drug trade inevitably fuels the insurgency as Taliban commanders profit off of the trade of poppy for international arms.  More so, as Risen points out, many in the Afghan government leadership also profit off of the drug trade (one regional governor being caught with a stash of 9 tons in his office).  The US leadership is slow to react to the poppy economy, which fuels roughly 50% of Afghan exports.  The current operation is slow and disoriented.  Their is no plan to transition farmers from poppy to another profitable crop.  The US can not use another Columbian effort that has yet to curb the flow of cocaine from Columbia after 20 years. 

The current export revenue of poppy in Afghanistan is 3 billion a year.  We could easily purchase the entirety of poppy, use it for morphine production in the US, and offer incentives for the growth of new crops (how about corn?).  Instead, the DEA is thinking of flying crop dusters over Afghan farms.  Imagine the cultural implications. 

In the meantime, Afghans are picking and choosing farms to destroy based on tribal loyalties.  They send out a hundred or so men to destroy poppy plants by hand while US contractors provide security from Taliban reprisals.  However, the growth of poppy production is scheduled to grow.  It is currently producing at levels above global demand.  A new, logical alternative is needed for farmers and for the Afgan government.

Bingu wa Mutharika, President of Malawi, has done a decent job cracking down on corruption in Malawi’s young free market democracy.  He has even taken his predecessor, Bakili Muluzi to task in accounting for numerous issues of corruption to include using his office in order to empower himself and his party the United Democratic Front (UDF).  Mutharika’s years in office may be enticing him to follow a similar path as his predecessor.  Allegations that he purchased 4 Toyota vehicles duty-free and gave them to his political party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) raises the spectar of corruption because it is the same allegation placed on Muluzi.  I can’t imagine Mutharika getting involved with the same misconduct as Muluzi, so the explanation should be interesting.

A Dutch and Afghan military patrol in Oruzgan Province of Afghanistan rolled into a police station and found:

The police officers there were cultivating poppy within the compound’s walls, openly participating in the heroin trade. The Afghan Army squad that visited them, itself only partly equipped, did nothing.  (NY Times)

Poppy production is the #1 export for the new Afghan economy.  Eradicating the problem will take more than simply burning fields or preventing the harvest of crops.  Professor Thomas Johnson at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey suggests the US buys all existing poppy and use it for medicinal purposes in the States, such as production of morphine.  Then we provide the Afghan farmers with the knowledge and means toward producing new, sustainable crops that have both domestic and export value.  The Bush Administration does not support such a plan however.  Could Afghanistan become another Columbia solution?