The Dearing Dialogue

From NY Times, Sunday, July 22:

(…) when asked how the United States would respond if Al Qaeda were to plot a successful attack on the United States from the tribal areas (Pakistan), the answer from one intelligence officials was direct: “We’d go in and flatten it.”

“Malawi cannot feed its present population of 13 million - and every year its soils become more degraded and yields steadily fewer crops.

By 2050, the UN forecasts that it will have almost 32 million people - more than twice as many as today. Population growth on this scale will almost certainly leave Malawi permanently dependent on international food aid to keep millions of its people alive. (Telegraph online)”

These are harrowing statistics.  While urbanization is an important factor towards economic development, it is also dependent upon an industrial economy - in the demographic sense, an asset Malawi lacks.  Malawi’s chief exports are tobacco and maize, not cars and computers.  Farming exports typically grow GdP at a slower rate since the price of these products, especially tobacco, are typically weak in a marketplace dominated by international buyers with greater influence and options then the weak and powerless growers. 

Malawi’s cities are lacking in development focused on future population growth.  What is growing are the amount of slums in Malawi.  Currently 1.8 out of a 13 million Malawian population live in slums.  Trash is typically burnt on the city streets, power cuts are a daily occurrance, water is rationed for a few hours a day.  Transportation is painfully lacking.  Mini-buses clog the crowded streets, their exhaust spewing black fog on every corner.  Foot-traffic blocks the roadway and the news of a pedestrian being hit by a car or bus is a daily occurance.  Most city streets remain in the dark as pedestrians come within inches of passing cars as sidewalks are either lacking or blocked by makeshift vendors. 

Unemployment is rampant as more people arrive from the villages in hopes of capturing some of the riches they hear of from outside the tribal community.  The reality is that rural areas are increasingly unable to support the amount of people living there (UN Habitat).  Environmental disasters such as drought and the degradation of land from farming and deforestation has made life less habitable.  While the small amount of money they may earn as servants, vendors, or day-laborers help the home village, it also creates a reliance upon outside income, bringing more people from the rural areas to the city. 

The condition of Malawian health is at risk as well.  With a growth in urban slums, the opportunity for diseases like HIV  spreading is increased.  According to the UN, malnutrition, hunger, and disease are increasing in the urban slums such as Ndirande township in Blantyre, or Area 19 in Lilongwe.  With such growth in urban population, Malawi and development institutions will face difficult obstacles and critical decisions as economic and social problems persist. 

See State of World Population 2007

Jon Lee Anderson writes a brilliant piece in the New Yorker on opium farming in Afghanistan.  Anderson travels to Oruzgan Province (red area on map) with the Afghan Eradication Force (AEF) and US DEA counternarcotics agent Douglas Wankel, who is overseeing the eradication process. 

Opium has now become a major counter-insurgency operation in Afghanistan.  Since last year, the production of opium has increased in Afghanistan by 60%.   The Taliban, who once considered opium harvesting unholy, now uses it as a means to control the population in Southern and Eastern Afghanistan - areas of greatest Taliban influence.  The coalition is at odds in how to deal with a product that is both sustaining the power of the Taliban and the livelihood of local residents.  Dutch forces are using a stand-off approach focused on making the Taliban an irrelevant presence and an unpopular choice for residents by promoting alternative crops.  DEA agent, Wankel is apprehensive:

“Most or all Europeans are opposed to eradication—they’re into winning hearts and minds,” he said. “But it’s our view that it isn’t going to work. There has to be a measured, balanced use of force along with hearts and minds.” He conceded, however, that the Uruzgan operation fell squarely on the use-of-force side of the scale. Later, he told me, aid, seed, and fertilizer would be offered to the farmers around Tirin Kot, but not yet. Other Americans were frankly contemptuous of the Dutch policy, which they regarded as softheaded.”

Of course, when alternatives don’t exist, the farmers will fall back on what they know best and what has supported them in the past.  Opium will give them over $500 an acre of harvest, while wheat may net $50 an acre.  At the same time, development from the Kabul is unequal and often corrupt.  It is based on tribal loyalties according to one local Afghan in Anderson’s article:

“The Karzai government doesn’t give the money to poor farmers growing poppy. It gives it only to its friends who grow it”—corrupt officials and landowners with political influence. (Many of the farmers were sharecroppers.) “We would be happy to stop growing opium if they would give us some help, and stop giving the money meant for us to thieves.” Instead of receiving aid from government officials, Ahmad said, “if they tell us to break the poppies, we must pay them not to.”

At the same time, areas where the Taliban are strongest tend to go untouched in the eradication process.  Whereas, areas with the greatest influence from the central government are hit hard and tend to alienate the local residents. 

It has also proven virtually impossible to conduct in districts where the Taliban are relatively strong, thereby inevitably penalizing farmers in pro-government districts.”

And corruption is enemic within the central government.  In a previous entry, I explained how one governor was arrested for holding tons of opium in his provincial office.  In Anderson’s article, he finds the AEF police providing security are working with sticky hands:

I walked past one of the jeeps where some of Qassem’s policemen, dressed in robes and sparkly skullcaps, were laughing and talking with the opium growers. I caught a whiff of something burning as I passed. They were smoking hashish.

The opium harvest is a linchpin that must be addressed in the broader context of the Taliban insurgency.  We must focus on alternatives for local farmers and provide those as incentives to steer residents away from Taliban influence.  Understanding the human terrain of Oruzgan and other provinces is the only way to ensure we quell insurgent complicity, but to prevent it from perpetuating itself.

Dr. Housing Bubble gives a convincing argument on the coming collapse in our economy due to the factors that supported the inflated housing market over the last 5 years.  He explains that historically, housing prices paralleled inflation, now roughly at 3-4% according to US government data.  So the current housing environment must be representative of either an outstanding inflation rate or an inflated housing market.  He also explains that roughly 70% of our economy is fueled through consumer spending, and 70% of Americans own their own homes.  Take into account the use of home equity loans in supplementing stagnant middle class wages and you can see the presence of unsustainable spending and the alarm bells following it.

My prediction?  The market propagandists from their studio pulpits are heralding a summer “bounce” as just the thing to get it all rolling again to 20% growth levels.  As the end of summer rolls around, the figures will start to show that not only are homes not being sold, but the level of foreclosures will grow exponentially as interest rates adjust.  This will be just the right ingredients to slip us from a contagion of fear into outright recession, if not worse.  We’ve already seen the market “adjust” itself for the second time since March, with the S&P losing 4% in one week.  It’s likely to see by far, greater adjustments.  A move to corporate bonds, short-term treasuries, or energy stocks is my prescription for preventing a loss in the market.  One market observer agrees:

“In our view the potential effects of the falling housing market on both the economy and the financial arena puts the stock market in an exceedingly risky position in the period ahead.”

A video report by Jeffrey Gettleman on the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) in eastern portion of Ethiopia.  The Ogaden people are ethnic Somalis.  The ONLF are fighting a political battle for independence from Ethiopia.  Their mission statement states they are “a grassroots social and political movement (…) as both an advocate for and defender of the people is dedicated to restoring the rights of Somalis in Ogaden to self-determination, peace, development, and democracy”.

Understanding this organization is paramount in attempting to stabilize Somalia. 

ONLF website

After watching Greg Palast’s documentary on New Orleans, one year later: Big Easy, Big Empty, I realized a few things that perplexed me while visiting.  The Housing projects outside the downtown area were not damaged by the floods, however residents of this huge housing project were locked out of their apartments.  The reason?  Years of wanting to get rid of the poor in this district to free up the property for expensive rental units.   His report brings out many frustrations I felt in New Orleans.

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.