A question on Afghanistan

With the Rolling Stone article on Gen. McChrystal and the general lack of knowledge about the underpinnings of what is going on in Afghanistan one of the commenters at Hot Air asked a question in an early message that I felt needed a decent response.

Always dangerous, that.

This was before the General tendered his resignation and, indeed, before most of the details of the article were known.  That, however, didn't matter to the nature of Afghanistan and what a solution to it might be.  For anyone who has read my material this is nothing new.  All spelling, syntax, logic and other errors are kept intact for the amusement of the reader.

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Unlike in Iraq, there is no nation to build. Never has been. Never will be.

Okay, so what’s the solution? Damned if I know.

SteveMG on June 21, 2010 at 9:36 PM

I will give this a shot, because there are historical precedents that need to be examined and much of 20th century mechanized warfare that is inapplicable to Afghanistan. This means I will be linking to some of my previous background pieces, and they don’t tend to be short. Like this one examining the unreal ‘realists’ in diplomacy as applied to Iraq.

First in understanding is that Afghanistan is not a Nation, but a region of tribes more or less defined by their affiliations with each other and often long-lasting resentment. The British Empire tried to solve the Pashtun problem by putting up a border through the Pashtun tribal regions and then try to work out a diplomatic and military way to find an acceptable solution. They failed and the 100 year ‘peace’ that was imposed was outwaited by the Pashtuns and the Empire expired in the area before the ‘peace’ did. Today that AF-PAK border is still an area of contention and the source of the Talibe, Mehsuds and other tribes run in the old way of tribes with personal fighting forces.

This is not unusual in the region, and Iraq can be seen as a few steps further down the road to a Nation State than Afghanistan is. Even better the Kurds are drawn from the same ethnic stock as Afghans, so that if we could get our act together in Iraq and get some Iraqi Expeditionary Forces derived from Kurdish background, we would have similar ethnic outlooks to draw upon as these people share a similar system of values and comprehension that we do not have in the modern West. We did have this in the modern West during the stand-up of Germany (the ‘German Question’), the Norman Conquest in England, and the formation of Italy out of multiple ethnic groups in the Peninsula. We have enforced forgetting what it takes to make a Nation, find common accord amongst multiple warring tribes and get a large scale act together. The Kurds remember this (and often despise the way Empires have divided them so as to keep their people separated) and yet understand they must live in this world of Nation States.

Afghanistan has this in nascient form in the Loya jirga, which is an all-tribe governing system (we call it a parliament, but it more closely aligns with an inter-tribal brokering system of power and resources). The ‘President’ of Afghanistan is a late-coming figure that was once relatively respected before the Soviet invasion, but the de-cohesion of society there devolved power strongly back to the tribal level. That is not an egg we can unbreak and we had best learn that. What is needed is to approach the Loya jirga and see if they can find a better way to get a general representative of them (a form of Nation-level executive) that they can hold accountable to all of them via unanimous vote. There are methods to do this that are direct (a form of Prime Minister with a ‘no confidence’ vote) and indirect (like the Doge of Venice and the system behind that). Thusly, understanding the tribal basis of governance in Afghanistan, our first approach is via the Loya jirga to the tribes, themselves.

As the US is derived from a multi-ethnic common law system (actually understood in Afghanistan!) and that we once understood the necessity of local defense of town and family, that becomes the basis for a local Militia run by locals and having a modicum of oversight from the Loya jirga on rules of operation. This is not a National military, but a local militia arrangement as enshrined in Amendment II, that upholds the right of each to go armed and of local government to defend itself when the National cannot do so (as seen in Art. I, Sec. 10, para.iii of the US Constitution). These need to be de-conflicted, yes, but they then serve as a counter-weight to an oppressive National system and gives a stout first line against other tribes and even Nations.

That covers the social and cultural aspect of Afghanistan: understand devolved power systems, work with them, bring in experts with knowledge from more advanced areas, help to institute a local and accountable militia system (it is now unaccountable and that cannot be done via 20th century Nation State concepts) and generally recognize the internal authority of the inter-tribal power brokerage system.

Secondly is geography and terrain. We cannot, indeed must not, fight a 20th century flatland war in Afghanistan, and yet we do so, by and large, with the bulk of NATO forces (not US or Canadian). The terrain is highland and mountainous, the style of warfare is Mountain Warfare. Every single male in every tribe understands Mountain Warfare: we don’t as a Nation and even our military system is not set up to utilize specialized (not special) forces in a big way. When you read the description of what is expected of MW fighting, you also characterize all sides in the current military conflict, save western troops: someone is out of step with what to do and it is us.

MW devolves power and responsiblity downward for a simple reason: survival. As this IS how the locals fight we should strip out a number of pages from the last successful western force to actually win in the region. That was led by yet another leader of hastily affiliated tribal groups with a more or less coherent ethnic background: Alexander. Alexander the Great. He won in the region using small, specialized, fast moving forces to assault areas that the locals thought impenetrable. By winning against the locals in the style the locals understood, he was able to cement some of the first ties in the region and he is still sung about, to this very day, by the bards throughout the region. The region hasn’t changed much in outlook, a bit in ethnicity due to the Mongols, and none at all due to geography.

The locals, prior to the spendthrift Saudis getting into the act, had as their major firearm the Small Magazine Lee-Enfield rifle, and the ammo (pennies per round in the West) was expensive to the locals. While the younger generation went off on a shooting spree with FA AKs, the older fathers and grandfathers picked off dinner from a half-mile away with ancient bolt action rifles. If we had been anywhere near smart, we would have indicated to all tribes that we would support the SMLE with lots of training, ammo and spare parts (which we would buy from the UK). This would make the militias more effective and put a long-distance counterweight to FA weapons (which are typically short to medium range in the man carried versions). Thus the locals would have a well known, supported and reinvigorated historical weapons platform and the knowledge that we understood it and how they used it.

After that we fight mountain style: small, self-contained groups moving quickly with little to no supplies in mountainous terrain. The Canadian mountain warfare group did the local impossible in 2007-2008 by staging a Winter Campaign and ferreting out the Talibe/al Quaeda training centers in Pakistan’s NWFP and even further in. Some of that could not, ever, be garnered from overhead because the training facilities were used for general housing in winter and only sporadic training: if you weren’t there to see the training you wouldn’t figure out what was going on. The Canadians gained the deep respect of the locals for doing as Alexander did: fight the locally impossible.

What would that mean for the US? A second Mountain Division would be a great start, culled from volunteers who had already been in-theater and adding in new recruits to get lessons learned from the experienced hands… and then train them in mountainous terrain for two years. If this had been our focus from the start, we would now have two MD giving all year coverage to Afghanistan. As this would require local ROEs developed by local commanders in coordination with local Militias and coordinated between tribal areas by our command structure we would not have the blanket ROEs that encumber us now. Plus we would be able to train the National military in how to do this hard problem.

This isn’t a problem of ‘fight and stay’ which is classical COIN. Nor is it our obtuse way of ‘fight and leave’, that gains no trust. This is the local form of ‘fight and fight and fight’.

Thirdly is logistics. By deploying more specialized forces, changing the security arrangement to a localized one with centralized de-confliction, and requiring each and every single ally provide us with their mountain/alpine/highland forces, the entire logistics train is slimmed down. This is critical due to the lack of supply routes to a land locked region. We can only supply 10% of our cargo needs via air, the rest is via ship and overland (its cheaper). Lack of lift at altitude and treacherous winds due to mountain environment point to a lack of ability to get airlifted supplies to Afghanistan even if we paved every flat piece of the place over with airfields. Thus we must have a smaller logistical tail, harder and more independent fighting forces, and make ourselves less vulnerable to the Pashtun tribal areas our supplies have to go through.

Remember them, the Pashtuns? Outwaited a 100 year truce and the British Empire. The British learned that the distance of safety in the area was the length of accurate rifle fire from the road. Lovely place, no? It is still that way, today. They need to learn the lesson that we can outshoot them and use our capabilities (hard won in Iraq) to find and stop IEDs. And that nothing, ever, stops our supplies… and if Pakistan can’t help, then they do need to understand that rolling armor down those highways may not be what they want, but it is required for our safety of supply lines. No more payoffs to thieves and pirates.

Thus what is desperately needed is a real State Dept with capable hands to craft us a second supply route. This can be done without involving Russia, nor Iran, and they will both be PO’d simultaneously as we put in the land/water equivalent of a new Silk Road. That gives economic benefits to the region (a major plus) and allows us to pay off National governments to protect vital supply lines that they can also use. A triple win and more than Russia or Iran can do. Way more. With a firm and secondary supply chain source, we can then operate more freely in Afghanistan and let Pakistan know that they must, absolutely and positively must, stop supplying money to the Talibe, al Qaeda off-shoots, Hekmatyar’s organization, Mehsud clans… by gaining a second supply route we get freedom of activity and action to finally get the Pashtun mess on everyone’s plate and let them know that we do not want to be there, and that this little problem must be fixed once and for all amongst all parties there.

We should not have a fixed end-goal in that, but a fixed and understood process. So long as it gets the old conflicts out of the way, brings a modicum of stability to the region and ensures that terror funding is ended: then we can leave, tyvm.

That should have started… ohhhh… 2002? 2003?

It is much, much, much harder to do now.

But what we have done hasn’t worked.

We can still win, but that means changing the parameters of our expectations vis a vis Nation States and recognize that a good, self-checking localized system of federal accountability amongst tribes is actually way better than what is there now.

ajacksonian on June 22, 2010 at 7:15 AM

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There are a few other articles I could link to, but this gives the best overview.

You adapt to what is there, don't try to force something that the natives don't like, and then you fight in a way that is lean, fierce and totally understood locally.

We aren't doing that and haven't done that since the opening days of the war.  This approach worked early on because it was lean, fast, and capable: perfect for the climate and peoples there.  What we have now is top-heavy and, generally, overburdened with staff and underburdened with fighters and trainers.  If we want to win, we must change our logistical set-up, our approach to the native population, stop 'Nation Building', start local militias, and get a damned second supply route to our troops so they aren't held hostage by the insurgents in Pakistan.

But that is just me.

YMMV.

Afghanistan and the essential fight

The following is a position paper of The Jacksonian Party.

Of all the things that cannot be done, Nation Building is the one that cannot be done from the outside. To have a Nation one must have a people committed to it, willing to stand up for their neighbors to live under the rule of law and be able to expect some modicum of protection from their government. When reading Sen. Lieberman's piece in The Wall Street Journal of 06 FEB 2009, I come away agreeing with much and disagreeing with some areas. While I have disagreed with Sen. Lieberman on many social issues, on military and foreign affairs I find more than majority agreement with his positions.

First and foremost is a strategic coherence on the fighting in the Afghanistan theater, as it is more than just Afghanistan a full and complete approach that includes Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, India, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan is essential. I have looked at the main supply routes now under attack by al Qaeda, Taliban, Mehsud fighters, and followers of Hekmatyar and they are choking off the critical supply routes to Afghanistan from the south. Because our supply system depends so much on shipping as the cheapest form of transport, fully 90% of all supplies for Afghanistan arrive in Pakistan and must be shipped overland through the passes through the mountains. Those routes must go through hostile provinces, now under siege and often full control of these opposition forces. Pakistan has not been ready to take up arms to finally integrate these Pashtun provinces into their country, disarm the rebels, and disband traditional war fighting bands (known as Lashkars, or personal forces beholden to a leader or organization). At this point the most powerful organization is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's terrorist organization that spreads across the Central Asian Republics that used to be held by the USSR.

Russia has been unwilling to offer supply services and, instead, wishes to send troops into Afghanistan. This would further break up command, put different Rules of Engagement in play and cause more complexity than what we now have on the ground. To simplify command the command structure must revert to the Nation that actually declared war on Afghanistan and that is the United States: it is our responsibility to see it through to its end, not NATO's. Further we need the troops that can be acclimated to the climate and who have the best capability to fight there. Finally we need a secondary route of supply for our forces so as to lessen reliance on Pakistan.

The route to do this is clear: work with Turkey, Greece, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan for a route across the Caspian using Georgia and Azerbaijan to trans-ship goods from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. This would bypass the need for Russian help and put Russia on notice that interdicting Georgia or Azerbaijan is a direct threat to US warfighting in Afghanistan. In theory this should be part of a 'hope & change' initiative by the US to offer good contracting through those Nations, help support Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan trade with the rest of the world and help to start putting the ability of Pashtun tribal areas into a role of reduced significance in our fight in Afghanistan. Doing so would also put it to Pakistan that the US is more than prepared to set up alternate and more expensive means of secure transport if they are unwilling to step into their role to actually build their Nation.

Unfortunately I do doubt if the new leadership in the Oval Office has the skill, fortitude, and capability to be assertive abroad in a war handed to them by their predecessor which was mandated by the 9/11 attacks and Congressional response.

Thus to firm up strategic coherence with limited supply lines, the troops most able to fight in such conditions, and fight extremely well, are Mountain Warfare, Alpine, Highland and other similar forces from NATO. Mountain Warfare forces are not regular, flatland forces, and have some of the most rugged and disciplined training for fighting in the most hostile climate the planet has to offer. I go over that in this article, on such troops and how they consistently out fight, out maneuver and out survive their opponents in any conditions. These are not 'Special Forces' but Specialized Forces and this is their domain of battle and now that Iraq is moving towards civil control by local authorities, it is time for a full deployment of Mountain Warfare forces into Afghanistan. During the Winter of 2007-08 Canadian Mountain Warfare forces staged the first successful winter campaign in Afghan history: the locals said it could not be done. When we look back at all the training camps identified in Pakistan we can rest assured that specialized forces known for their ability to infiltrate in hostile climates had no small part to play. When the Taliban attempted a Spring Offensive their troops were spotted, targeted, more than decimated and routed.

To that end the US should call on all NATO Allies to agree to a unified set of Rules of Engagement administered by CENTCOM and remove any and all troops not willing to be under that ROE. Additionally the US should call for all NATO and Allied specialized warfare units adapted to Mountain Warfare to come and join us in removing the al Qaeda, Taliban and other forces in Afghanistan and in interdicting their supply routes. Further all Stryker Brigades not actively needed in Iraq should now be given Afghanistan as their central mission area as these are the troops best equipped to do forms of fighting that were once only the realm of Special Forces. This redirection may actually cause a draw down of troops in Afghanistan, but the fighters put in often fight far above their 'weight class' on a 3:1 basis or better. As this fight may take up to five more years to complete, the US is now in sore need of a SECOND Mountain Division and we should spend the eighteen months necessary to train and equip such a Division.

As these forces are ones best able to adapt to climate and local problems, they are the ones that should be used and only backed up by regular forces that are also adaptable and able to change to varying local conditions of tribal concerns. This needs to be dovetailed with Mr. Lieberman's second point.

Further the US should seek the help of Mountain Warfare troops in Iraq, particularly Kurdish troops, as Kurds have ethnic heritage that stems from that region of Central Asia. Iraqi troops drawn from all ethnic and religious groups in Iraq, however, are to be the primary goal, even if Kurds will tend to lead such troops at the highest levels, the lower levels will be populated by a diverse set of ethnicities, cultures and religions. What we seek is the necessary cultural and ethnic support, along with combat support, to help Afghanistan examine how it is that close cousins can work with others. This is one of the great benefits of having done such hard work in Iraq: we can now ask for help from those we have helped and know that when we say it will be a tough fight, we mean it.

Second is increasing civilian capacity both in areas of tribal and National concerns, and in helping to stand up local government beyond the tribal level to interact with the National government. Here Provincial Government has not received much attention by the MSM or even embedded reporters, but has proven to be a key mediator between tribes in locales and in passing problems up to responsible offices to be addressed without bias towards any tribe or ethnic group within a locale. I have heard very little about this middle-tier of government from anyone in Afghanistan, and yet a good federal system of distributed powers and local authority has been a demonstrated positive good for all Nations, save for periods of internal conflict and then the National government must take on the same role as the Provincial Governments so as to mediate in good faith between Provinces and Ethnic groups.

To do this requires substantial training of government officials at that level not only on the bureaucratic side, but the accountability side. This is of primary importance as policing power administered to the good of all citizens then removes an argument for forces controlled by strongmen. For Afghanistan to self-govern, the day of Private War forces held by the local leaders in tribes must be ended and equitable policing power enforced at the Provincial level. This requires training for judges in these concepts to be carried out and administered by them. Further a means for checking and restraining judicial authority and a system of higher courts is necessary so as to remove judicial bias via an internal check and balance system within the judiciary itself. This gives citizens the right to appeal judgments they feel to be unfair and yet puts a final stop at such things at the highest National level. Continuing problems in the judiciary will be seen at that level and, with good training and mentoring, addressed over time. This does not mean that tribal level courts or other systems need be abridged, just that they need to be incorporated into the larger suite of judicial systems in the Nation.

Do note that this is not a mandated system from the outside, by the US, and must be indigenous to Afghanistan. If there is any legal tradition to the English Common Law system, however, the US and Great Britain will be in good stead to help firm up such a system as we all use the same judicial philosophy. Even absent that, ensuring that good laws that are not biased towards any one group or ethnic concern becomes a key point in demonstrating that the tribes can be respected, that local control can be exercised and that war fighting is done by the Nation, not strongmen.

The single, largest threat to civil government in Afghanistan is not ethnic rivalries, although those are ancient and need to be addressed, we, in the West, can learn profitably from our ancestors on how best to do this. Nor is it the Islamic Radicalism of the Talibe and al Qaeda sort as these arise and fall in frequency in Islam, although the death toll to each is horrific. Both of these seek a common table setting with which to become local overlords of their peoples and other peoples, and it is that source which threatens Afghanistan to its core time and again. I looked at this some time ago in Defunding the opium trade in Afghanistan, and stand by that view and it is the one of Jefferson: a people who are able to profitably farm to sustain themselves and have enough to trade and ensured income from it will prosper. The illegal nature of the crop does not change that component, but shifts it hard against local support for food and shifts it to imported food via illegal commerce to procure it. It is true that many farmers plant in fallow or rugged areas unsuitable to farming and gain meager extra income from that, from which their lives are put at risk from the criminal class seeking to gain those crops. Here the criminal class can be actual criminals, Islamic Radicals, local strongmen... the list is near infinite and yet their means of coercion and meager pay while taking the middle-man's cut is unchanging. To destroy that system, the farmer needs the tools and skills necessary to not only grow legal goods for local use, but to have an advantage of better techniques and equipment to do this.

America oversupplies her own large scale agricultural corporations, called 'Big Agriculture', while having let the small farmer become beholden to a system of paybacks and payoffs via Congressional funding in the Agriculture budget. And yet 'the war on drugs' can actually, for once, be fought by the military and administered as part of a Counter Insurgency plan: COIN to address the rural farming base of Afghanistan with useful and needful dryland techniques and water conservation that can be done locally would begin to shift the base of that rural section out from the strongman as the money to be garnered by trade of legal goods would not come with immediate threat of life that the illegal sort has. Protecting these communities until they can protect themselves is the GOAL of COIN, in case anyone has forgotten that. This requires a multi-year commitment of shifting funds from America's already overstuffed Big Agricultural sector and putting those funds, skills and tools to use in Afghanistan. The road to fighting the indigenous Taliban and other Islamic Radicals requires not only the right skills on the military front, but the right ones on the civilian front.

There will be no peace, no ending of the supply of radicals until the local farming community has a Jeffersonian attitude demonstrated to them of how good husbanding of farms, crops and livestock via insured means taught by those skilled at such farming can gain the farmer a decent, reliable profit and demonstrate that the need to work together to maintain that system is greater than any minor profit an individual would get from illegal goods. When the land holder is invested in the land and its husbanding of resources and care, the system of tribal views changes to become centered on THAT. The farmers in their tribes will then become the backbone of the tribe, and will be the ones who will need protecting BY the tribe so that the local tribe may flourish.

With a single, hard blow, the US can remove the Central Asian supply system from Afghanistan in not less than a decade and make Afghanistan a net agricultural *exporter*. By teaching dryland techniques, how to husband rain water and other water sources, how to deal with droughts... these are the finest and most well honed weapons in excising this problem and demonstrating that investing in yourself to sustain your people is not only a good thing to do, but well supported. To date the US has paid almost no attention to this, and yet the military component to bring this home is absolutely necessary to peoples who are brought up as warriors: farming must become the respected backbone of the community to support local warfighters to protect the tribe and Province. The badge of honor must shift from how many you attacked and killed to how well you defended your people so that they may flourish against those wishing to strong arm them.

There will be no peace in Afghanistan or Central Asia until this is done.

Third is expanding the Aghan Army, and that is vital so that Private War forces that threaten the Nation can be addressed and so that Afghanistan may protect herself against neighbors such as Iran and China. With that said, we cannot discount the English and American experience of local militias under Provincial control that can stand ready to serve the Nation and yet also counters threats from local sources. As I looked at above this requires a change in COIN from Nation-Building oriented to re-orientation of local populations that will see some value in local and National control over war fighting. We cannot and must not disrespect the fierce and honorable tradition of the Afghan peoples: it has protected them for centuries against Persian, British and Soviet Empires. The very local skills of warfighting need to be upheld as that is the trump card against any invader, and supporting it through local economy and having these forces on-call to defend the entire Nation must become an honorable trade in itself. Thus the current Afghan Army will transform over time: we must beef it up now, for general self-protection of the Nation, but what must be set down is a way of reformulating it over time to reflect the culture in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, as so many detractors like to point out, is *not* a modern Nation and we cannot make it become one no matter how much money and how many lives go to it. America and the West, however, did not arrive at modern civilization without going through this exact, same phase between roughly 900-1700 A.D. Modern tools and training do not an Army make: there must be the tradition an necessity of it that makes it a respected profession *beyond* a tribal virtue. Afghanistan, at this point in time, looks more like 16-17th century Central Europe than a modern Nation State. We must identify that the Christian Tradition is not present in Afghanistan and yet the Westphalian State concept has actually taken root in another Islamic Nation: Iraq.

One of the few and great goods of the British Empire was to demonstrate that religious tolerance was no weakness upon the majority and strengthened the State. In Iraq the local traditions are now those of religious tolerance, as you cannot get through the fact that not only do two major branches of Islam have root in the Nation, but Christianity of more than one form, minor Islamic Sects, Yazidi, Alevi, Judaism, and even followers of John the Baptist. There is no more modern equivalent of a Christian Westphalian Nation State concept in action in the Islamic world than in Iraq. British Westphalian rule had to deal with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, there, craft a common law system, and the toleration of religions in Iraq is one of the great legacies of the British rule there. That is why Iraqi involvement, especially Kurdish involvement, is vital and necessary to long term victory and peace in Afghanistan. There will be no reduction of violence in Islamic Radicalism until a peaceful method of co-existing with multiple religious sects is found and that can only be done via a tolerant population seeing the good and end in bloodshed over religion as any legitimate means to power. Iraq is well poised to teach this at a civil level, and our help of Iraq to become stable must require us to ask them to help the United States in spreading that word of civil peace and its practices to Afghanistan.

For those looking to a long-term end to al Qaeda and similar groups: this is the only way forward that does not involve a horrific death toll. Many will die to do this, but our modern world demonstrates that this CAN BE DONE. Unless many have forgotten, the lives lost to uphold 'The Prince of Peace' demonstrates that having good intentions in a religion is NOT enough to spread peace. To do that requires a tolerant civil society that accepts religion as a personal means to enlightenment, not something mandated by the State for all peoples in the State. Religious Nations can exhibit tolerance towards other religions and not castigate or kill the members of them as those are members of civil society and of value to the entire Nation. We can but look to those pointing the way before Westphalia and directly after to examine how best to do this, and we will find thinkers like Machiavelli advocating for enlightened Princes. That does not mean *nice* Princes, but ones that will understand enlightened self-interest is in creating a safe and stable society *first*. To create a true, civil military force requires a true civil society. America can help lay the foundations, form fast friends with the peoples of Afghanistan, introduce them to Islamic enlightened rule concepts in Iraq and help *both* these Nations to secure long term civil societies for themselves.

That is what we did after WWII in Germany, Japan and Italy and should be the exact, same goal today: to help these people to civil societies and peaceful co-existence within their Nations with religious toleration and a productive class of people worthy of being defended by the Nation.

I disagree with Sen. Lieberman in the fourth goal in broad terms, but agree in many details. 'Hardening' Afghanistan is a loser's proposition as it requires time, effort and ability to be applied to the negative of defensive operations and sustainment. Many of the civil institutions need to be mightily revamped and many of the ones that we take as necessary in a modern State can't be built until the lower level society comes to some basic agreements in the Nation. Our own young Nation at the Founding had a very different set of organs and power arrangements in it than we do today: our goal must be to help Afghan society to create the organs they need in the form that best suits them and ensure that they are accountable to civil society. We did this in Iraq, ensuring that a good system of Inspectors General in the Iraqi military had the ability to root out corruption and subversive elements, and our own institutions have such organs throughout them.

Anti-corruption task forces are good, but changing the tone and tenor of civil society to move away from substantive gifts to honoring gifts, as is seen in Japan and other parts of East Asia, is a good and worthy goal. When trinkets devolve into bribes, the system becomes corrupt: those who seek honor they don't deserve will want bribes, those willing to accept the honor will take the trinket. Any goal of self-policing a society must involve the higher esteem of the honorable gift and the disdain and even disgust at the bribe. Here the value of our older allies in Japan and Korea should come to the forefront, and civil teaching of how cultures can still honor and respect, without the need for bribery have to become a necessary section of helping the Afghan society to flourish. Even in our enlightened Nation, this is no longer respected and officials now seek and take bribes, and while prosecuted for them, those seeking to excuse such activities are not castigated for corroding civil society. If we are on the downward slope of this, we can assuredly help others to see our bad example and NOT TAKE IT.

On the civil side that will give Afghan society an area in which they can be SUPERIOR to the US, and take just pride in doing that and then disdaining the corrupt American officials who only know the value of money and not the value of leading a good life. In truth much of the Left in the United States could do with this lesson, and the best way to get it is to teach the right way to do it via our friends and allies in the world. One does not need to be a mighty warrior to become a mighty,honored and respected person. Even as we forget this, we can still bring in those who know it to teach it, to get Afghanistan off to a better start. And once they do that, Afghanistan self-hardens and is sustained from the inside.

In the broader sense of regional engagement, the US will continue to have vital interests in Central Asia so long as corrupt societies create havens for Islamic Radicalism. The modern world can no longer afford an Empire of any sort, and yet another one from Central Asia will bring a death toll to the planet that is horrific beyond all recounting. India and Pakistan are well agreed that they prefer to screw each other up over Kasmir without outside interference - if we are their friends we should RESPECT that and not meddle as we have a full plate. Indeed the best way to end that conflict is by cutting out the criminal money supply from Afghanistan and seeing if the US can help in some COIN operations in the Northwest Frontier Provinces and southeast provinces in Pakistan. Active fighting to remove radicals and separatists will have no end until civil society has been given breathing space and local accommodation between these ethnic populations with the Nation of Pakistan can be performed. This does not require a full constitutional convention, but some formulation of civil organs to address the problems of the different ethnic groups in Pakistan with each other. Many feel that the agreements they made at the founding of Pakistan have not been honored, while others were more than willing to wait out a century holding pattern put in by the British Empire on provisional borders between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This cannot happen until the Pakistani ISI, its Intelligence Service, stops funding the damned radicals. This is something that can and must be addressed to at the Nation State level as the ISI is the source of much of the unrest in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and even into the Central Asian Republics. All Nations have need of an Intelligence Arm for the protection of their Nation: any Nation that funds one that not only puts internal but external order between Nations at risk must be asked why they are doing this. Simply put the ISI, as it currently is, must go. There will be no peace in Kasmir until the ISI's activities in funding Radical Islamic groups ceases completely. Any civil society that aims at disrupting its neighbors must be told that doing so will bring the death they are exporting to their own people: and it has already started. The nest of vipers, finding the rough and thick boots of US troops stomping them flat in Afghanistan now slither home to the warmer nest of their paymasters. At this point the ISI can only be seen in the light of destabilizing their own Nation to their own ends, and they no longer care about the blood spilled by those they fund in Pakistan.

Iran is a tough case to deal with and yet, if we work with Turkmenistan in a cross-asian route for supply, the US will then have an entire suite of friendly Nations encircling Iran. Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan will only leave Pakistan as the last great outlet for Iranian exploits and they are already facing problems from the local Balochs in the East of Iran who feel they got a 'raw deal' in both Iran and Pakistan. To this day Iran has problems with Baloch separatists and the underground independence groups have demonstrate high levels of competence and expertise in their terror attacks in Iran.

By shifting through Turkmenistan the US can slowly erode Russian influence in the region and help to stabilize that realm of Republics that would help us in getting a supply route to Afghanistan. Perhaps we could call it the 'Modern Silk Road' and open up some venues for increased civilian traffic through these routes to get better export markets for the Central Asian States. These Republics are not lacking in trade goods, but they do lack the modern transportation and means to get them to a global market. A long-term strategy of opening up a conduit for US supplies will, of necessity, start to build the infrastructure necessary to address the poverty in Central Asia due to their lack of markets. By opening up a non-authoritarian route for market goods, that is to say not going through Russia, China, Iran or Pakistan, these people will be able to start not only supplying goods to US warfighters (so we don't have to ship it all), but find other venues for their products in the empty trucks and ships going *back* to the Black Sea. Here the opening of trade venues in Georgia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and Turkey will enrich the entire region as these 'exotic' goods move from luxuries to items finding their place in the global market. Indeed, America should welcome this opportunity to start laying the infrastructure for the 21st century of trade in the world: built of necessity to become the first pathways to the spread of market based economics in some of the most deprived areas of the planet in Central Asia.

Unfortunately I cannot see the current Administration doing this: it is too much hope & change to believe that America can be a demonstrable force for enlightenment and trade, even while making the necessary routes to keep our troops supplied. Such is the myopia of zero-sum Leftism in America that we cannot seize this opportunity to turn our investment in blood into something greater for all peoples in Central Asia.

Fifth is a 'surge' in political commitment to Afghanistan in America. I fully agree with the Senator here. Our political class only knows the value of money, not of lives: and then are willing to sacrifice both to schemes of home ownership, retirement systems, medical systems and such that will impoverish us all and shorten our lives if we follow those dreams to their poisoned fruit.

The United States used to know how to see opportunity in strife and reach out to do more than any other people on the planet would ever dare to do, while leaving our people free to choose their own lives, well and unwell, while garnering general support for those needful things that protected the Nation. Now we seek to protect all the citizens in detail and will be at risk of losing them in whole rank.

Soon we will have our own COIN operations in the desert South West of the US and northern Mexico.

Perhaps it is time to take the lessons of limited government, government that protects the Nation and is held accountable home to the United States.

We sure could use it right about now...

The Hard Part

The following is a personal position paper of The Jacksonian Party, first presented at Dumb Looks Still Free.

The reports from Iraq show promise and much of it, while those of Afghanistan are turning upwards, the ability to get a stable government and State that rejects the Taliban is also going forward, though much more slowly. These are both cause for optimism, by and large, although the underlying problems of both Iraq and Afghanistan are only partly due to the extremists within each Nation: the source of the problem lies elsewhere in the world and it is those places where extremism can find easy home that are of the gravest concern. Taking out the prestige and visibility of these organizations, al Qaeda, Jaish al-Mahdi & Iranian Qods/Secret Cells is not the end of the process, nor even close to it. The fangs of these groups have been filed down, but the venom of them and the other organizations that have gone unaddressed as they are only our Private enemies who have killed our people and threatened our Nation.

But then, so are al Qaeda and JaM, and Iran has been an enemy since its invasion of our embassy in Tehran, twice, in 1979.

Of these groups a few are ready stand-outs: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's group that spans across central Asia and has even performed terror attacks in China and Europe, Hezbollah acting as the Foreign Legion of Iran and stretching from central Asia through Europe and even into the Americas, Muslim Brotherhood the base organization of HAMAS and supporter of Islamic extremists in Sudan, Somalia, Algeria, Albania, and into South America. Hezbollah, collecting any profit off of the Syrian Bekaa Valley drug trade can easily pull in hundreds of millions of dollars and can likewise garner tens of millions more downstream via threats, extortion and 'terror taxation'. Just from the narcotics trade alone, that may nearly be as much as FARC, close to $1 billion/year. Similarly Hekmatyar's group is set up for a like-size amount from the Golden Triangle traffic under its control in parts of Pakistan, Kashmir, China, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, probably in partnership with the Mogilevich Red Mafia group

On the non-Islamic side of things, the IRA has worn itself down to criminal status and finding it hard to compete with the Red Mafia. FARC has been an enemy of the US for decades: capturing our citizens for ransom or just killing them, attack US government officials, and even trying to assassinate a sitting President on state visit to Colombia. Of all the non-Islamic groups FARC is arguably the worse and most connected having a long-term vehemence against personal liberty and freedom, and moving into the drug trade in place of the cartels as they fell. Still the profit from the drug trade, alone, is estimated at a minimum of $1 billion/year. Because of the nature of the narcotics trade, even taking FARC out of the equation will just shift export production elsewhere: Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia... you have choices and, of course, a broken up FARC will still have its contacts base and ability to shift some operations for some sub-portions of the organization. Also there would be the expectation of transatlantic trade picking up both from the Middle East, via Europe, and Africa via S. America and the Caribbean. Beyond that the Golden Triangle trade could re-expand as most of that is in some of the vast, lawless territory stretching from Western China into Central Asia. Plus the Magic Kingdom of Mr. Kim in North Korea has demonstrated capability to refine narcotics to something far better than even the Yakuza can do: N. Korea is becoming a prime supplier of the West Asian illicit drug trade, including knock-off above-manufacturers standards pharmaceuticals.

From S. America there is Hezbollah, HAMAS and al Qaeda, along with Shining Path and a few other smaller terror organizations, currently living in the shadow of the FARC drug trade and the emerald gangs. In the Far East the Hekmatyar organization would be a prime one to benefit from increased narco-trafficking, but so would Abu Sayyaf and al Qaeda directly. From Africa it would be GIA, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, HAMAS. If you are getting the feeling that the narcotics trade is merging with terrorism, then you have the right feeling. On the other side the Red Mafia is far more brutal in its commercial operations than mere terrorists could ever be: the Red Mafia doesn't want limelight, just cash. No need for a jihad when just killing you solves the problem... the commercial and capitalist end of organized crime needs to up its ante to compete with the brutality of terrorists, and since organized crime has no ethics or compunctions about their operations, they are actually colder than any hot blooded jihadi blowing himself up: the mobster expects to live and hone his trade. That is terror to intimidate and work one's ends, just as terrorism has just the same though different ends.

So, beyond narcotics, where is the money coming from? Oil and natural gas. Saudi Arabia and Iran both export billions in cash to their favorite terror groups, and while Iran concentrates on Hezbollah and less on HAMAS, the Saudi oil families concentrate on the Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda, HAMAS and various lesser groups across the Far East and Pakistan. Organized crime in the old USSR bloc is also benefiting from this with billions in cash transactions used to hide illegal monetary gains in the vast flux of oil and natural gas from Central Asia to Europe. The fund transactions necessary to facilitate the energy movement also goes to hide the other funds not part of that movement. Regularized large accounts shifting funds between 'known' and 'legitimate' institutions that undergo 'scrutiny' can, by having such large transaction types, hide the other sort of funds shifts. The post-9/11 world where banking has, in theory, 'tightened up' the banking system via a 'know your customer' concept falls apart when that bank knows that customer and doesn't care about that customer's other connections. If you want to fund terrorism and organized crime and filter the profits from it, there is nothing like large cash transactions in other venues bundled along with 'transaction fees' to third parties to help slide that money around. As I went through previously, the idea of 'legalizing narcotics' when those in control of the trade, now at its BASE, makes little difference as the profits might go down, but the steadiness of them becomes an assured income platform.

I will get to banking in a bit, but what other venues beyond human trafficking, white slavery, narcotics trafficking, and outright oil profits funding terrorism are there? One of the highest profits, lowest risk criminal activities is cigarette smuggling to avoid State or National taxes, and this proves to be a very lucrative business on a global scale. Cigarette manufacturers based in Nations with minimal oversight and legal overhead farm out work to smaller production plants. Those plants, having an 'in' to the supply system of the brands they work for can then order more paper, wrappers and packaging material, buy low-grade tobacco and stuff that material into said wrappers and sell them on the gray market'. While this does 'impact brand name' it doesn't do it at a high amount as everyone knows they are gray market' and not 'up to snuff', which some folks took up instead. So while brand name and marketing overhead, distribution and other costs are 'piggybacked' by these 'gray market' smokes, the actual cost of production gets to set the price of initial purchase and then the entire supply chain avoids tax stamps and import duties and such via various means. That then winds up in a host nation and distributed via those same 'gray market' networks that, also, support organized crime and terrorism. The big windfall, though, is on the LEGAL cigarettes coming in post-import duty, and then grabbed up by 'wholesalers' who then are supposed to follow National legal codes for taxation and distribution. Instead those on the criminal support side ship these and sell them as 'gray market' goods, but the 'real deal' and not a knock-off, and pocket the sub-tax cost they charge as profit. See that tax cost on a pack of cigarettes? Would you pay the cost, non-tax, to get them? Many do, and that funding stream, while illegal, is difficult to stop. A single Hezbollah cell in the US working between Toronto, Canada, North Carolina and Detroit was able to send back a minimum of $10 million per year on just this alone. Not bad for 6 or 7 guys, really, and they did account for all their costs in what they took, so the $10 million/year is their PROFIT.

Hezbollah, actually, is becoming the quintessential institutionalized terror organization stretching from extortion via terrorism in Lebanon, absurd oil profit pay outs from Iran, getting 'a piece of the action' on the Syrian, S. American, African, Caribbean, N. American and Middle Eastern narcotics trade, melding with Albanian organized crime and Algerian terrorists to sponsor criminal rings in the West stretching from Europe to the Americas of which the auto-theft rings are the most well known of the Albanians, whatever their overseas mosques can get in 'charitable donations for Lebanon', and gray market goods rings that reach as far as Los Angeles hawking knock-offs from the Far East in designer clothing, cigarettes and anything else they can get their hands on. All of these are money making institutions for Hezbollah, and while the oil pay outs may account for 1/3 to 1/2 of their income, the *rest* of it comes from a diverse source base including the Iranian sponsored beef packing facilities that show up wherever Hezbollah roams, like in Colombia. Iran, BTW, is a net exporter of beef globally due to this arrangement, too. Said beef slaughterhouses and packaging companies serve as excellent places to train terrorists, what with the open spaces, loud noises and blood everywhere. To facilitate this Hezbollah has branched out into intellectual property theft via gray market software distribution, with one hacker in Brazil making $100,000 on just one line of products in a year. If that is starting to hit a bit closer to home, to those in the software community, the fact that it was a major brand name probably soothes some. What may be less soothing is that one could purchase those goods at a shopping mall in Ecuador one-half owned by Hezbollah. HAMAS, on a smaller scale, performs many of these same operations, seeking to utilize multi-source funding bases to keep operations going.

When we hear about individuals all hopped up on 'jihad' and being somewhat witless about 'how to do it' being 'amateur terrorists', we should take little solace due to the fact that the more 'professional ones' are widespread and relatively easy to find (as these things go). Really, most suicide-bombers blowing themselves up in Israeli restaurants, Baghdad ice cream shops, or gatherings in Pakistan are NOT professionals: they are one use munitions for their cause. It is the 'professionals' that walk between organized crime and black market goods to gray market goods to terrorism to money laundering that have a real impact on these networks. If a few thugs in Florida want to do jihad on their own, they are snickered at by the absent minded, and declaimed as 'not a threat' while, in fact, they are one decent drug purchase away from that network of sustainment. And as Islam spreads into the US prison system, those coming out already have their contact base for outside work and means to support jihad if they so desire it. So what was a simple and quite clueless 'thug' can get an 'education' in prison and be well on his way to a 'professional career' of transnational terrorism. Clueless today and in 5 or 10 years a possible *real* threat to society.

The link at the low level back to the high level becomes complete with the other end of banking: person to person banking. This is the exact opposite end of the scale spectrum from hiding money in large transfers and then siphoning off 'transaction' and 'payments & processing' fees to third parties. P2P banking is indigenous via culture and community and relies on family, tribe, clan and other localized trust associations that then span the world as people migrate. The most cited is the hawala concept in the Middle East which was typified as 'small cash amounts' continuously on the move. Get under the 'banking scrutiny' sieve by being too small, and no one pays any attention to the transactions. Some banking institutions noted oddities, but for sub-$3,000 transactions it is not worth deploying more than a letter of inquiry. In theory you can move it so every transaction down to the sub-penny is tracked, traced, and verified, but then you run into the 'front companies' and financial institutions that don't really care about their customers. Even that, however, has been worked around ahead of time via the Black Market Peso Exchange system where all transactions are 'white world' and yet black market funds are laundered. How is that done? Small purchases of *goods* that are then shipped/smuggled to areas where they have high overhead and then sold at a profit with that profit pocketed by those in the system (usually the smugglers and a small kickback to the 'banker') and the rest of the funds then go to its intended recipient which then verifies, via local contact to the originator contact that the funds, in full, have arrived. This system is absolutely ingenious and can even work with absolute and fully 'white market' transactions, just by shipping low cost for procurement goods to areas with degrees of restriction that inflate its cost. Cigarettes come to mind.

This low-level integration is one that no law enforcement system on the planet can stop. How do we know this? It is culturally affinitive, requiring cultural contacts at both ends of the exchange system to be analyzed (or even found) and the problem of 'white market purchases' makes the originator Nation unlikely or unwilling to even investigate 'small crimes' if, indeed, there is a crime involved with, on the purchase end, there isn't. The transaction, from start to finish, is illegal, but the transaction method and mode is not: to get the criminal activity the entire chain of transfers must be brought in at one time to demonstrate the money transfer, which goes from original customer, originating 'banker', wholesale purchase, shipment (via legal or illegal means), receipt of goods, sale of goods, payment of goods to destination recipient. That is at least 7 chain parts to pick up and more if multiple shipment/sales are involved, and the individuals in-between can each claim that they did NOTHING WRONG. Again, if $10 million per year from one small cell in the US can get funds to Hezbollah in Lebanon via a route like this (when not outright using fraudulent transaction methods in banking) then just *how* can you de-fund terrorism? The world can't even crack down on the organized crime base for this work, so getting terrorists via it is an even dicier prospect.

How about the high level integration, then, is that amenable to being stopped via banking regulation?

The answer is: no. Why? It is too late to do that.

Consider the friend of 'Tony' Rezko and Barack Obama: Saddam Hussein's cousin, Nadhmi Auchi. In 1968 Saddam Hussein started a system of fraudulent bank accounts, paper financial groups and paper industries, with the sheets of paper being the only 'real' holdings of these groups. During the 1970's the Al Mahdi system stretched from Baghdad to Zurich, Switzerland and from there throughout Europe and to the US. This growing system facilitated the growth of BCCI and profited from it via utilizing it as a 'holding system' for money and money laundering of Saddam's accounts in the Al Mahdi system. Nadhmi Auchi was put in charge of this just prior to Saddam seizing power and killing off some of his extended family, but Nadhmi was fine with *that*. Utilizing BCCI and, later, helping BNL transfer agricultural funds to Saddam, this system grew and would extend down to the Cardoen industries in South America from which Saddam would purchase US cluster bomb technology and manufacturing licensed by the US to Cardoen. From those humble beginnings, the Al Mahdi system would work with HAMAS and its partner Citibank, and reach out to the Al Taqwa banking system set up by bin Laden and Zawahiri to ensure funds distribution to their terrorists overseas.

Luckily, by then BCCI had gone under.

Unluckily the next large scale bank penetration would join with this joint system of Saddam, Auchi, Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda and a few others, plus have its own bank in the way of BNP. What would serve in its place came from the Red Mafia and is a problem that cannot be pulled apart to this day, nearly 9 years after its discovery: the Bank of New York penetration. In one of the least looked at and hardest to understand bank frauds, the BoNY system penetration would encompass financial institutions stretching from the West Coast of the US all the way to Europe and from there the Far East and then cross the Pacific to link up as a global funds transfer network for organized crime and terrorism. At least three Red Mafia groups worked on this and very few of the individuals involved, save for those staging the penetration in NY, have seen any jail time. The system was the 'mass cash transfer hiding illegal funds' system, that depended on the 'Heavy Metals' Oligarchs taking over the production of aluminum, steel, and other products in Russia. The TransWorld Commodities group would become, for a time, the third largest aluminum producer behind Alcoa and Alcan. This would start to unravel, somewhat, after a few killings in the US by a Red Mafia crime boss and the defrauding of stock and securities exchanges of hundreds of millions of dollars by another, but the magnitude only started to set in during late 1999 and early 2000 that this compromise was not limited in scope nor extent. Consider that the fall of BCCI effected banks from Hong Kong, Switzerland, Abu Dhabi, UK, France, Germany, US, and France (amongst its largest placements with smaller banks scattered all over the place). One regulator put BCCI *below* the scale of the BoNY scandal. And the reason for that is that the European clearinghouse for financial transactions, in charge of the SWIFT system, Clearstream had been penetrated by the Red Mafia to launder its funds from the BoNY system.

It is at this point that Nadhmi Auchi becomes involved in Clearstream scandals under Oil For Food, BNP purchases Paribas bank as it is privatized, then BNL and then, because a minor criminal indictment under OFF is no deterrent to crime, Nadhmi Auchi went on to procure a controlling interest in Clearstream.

Yes, one of the largest verification systems for funds transfers is owned by an individual who has used it for money laundering in the past.

The reason that more cannot be pinned on Clearstream is that the BoNY system of transactions for money laundering staggers the imagination. In London a man by the name of Simon Reubens instituted a system whereby paper companies of all sorts were started up in the Bahamas, Grand Caymen Islands, Cyprus, Switzerland, Monaco... well, you name it, there is probably a sheet of paper with a company there that is part of this systems. The one estimate given by MI5 and FBI is that 200 people controlled 300 companies and no one knew them all save for Simon Reubens. And he disdained computers. It was all kept track of in his head. Any man willing to start three companies to pay his rent has got something going for him, and that virtual web of systems includes things like Highrock Holdings run by Mogilevich for his procurement of oil and gas resources in Central Asia to augment his Golden Triangle trade. Although TransWorld Commodities would fall, Oleg Depripaska helped by Auchi and a group of banks that tend to align with BNP-Paribas, has slowly pieced it back together and Rusal is now looking at the #2 spot in global aluminum production. And Mogilevich would leverage a commercial empire based on natural gas through his associate Dmitri Firtash. Together they have caused Russia to fall for the exact, same industrial swindle three times, under different names, and each time there is a stipend paid to the intermediary company that ranges in the $10 billion range per year. That is above and beyond cost of operation or any other profit.

You cannot get a banking system that is 'secure' with folks like this running around and Nations like China sponsoring Huawei, which has its own terrorist and criminal dealings, in any way, shape or form. When a notable venture capitalist who ran for President, Gov. Mitt Romney, can't understand the role that off-shore banking and financial institutions play in his OWN commercial empire, then how can we expect BUREAUCRATS to do so? They aren't making the money that Gov. Romney does nor have the incentive to shut down such things and even if they could CONGRESS created the loopholes that organized crime and terrorism are exploiting via the tax code.

Iraq and Afghanistan? Dead easy compared to this!

Complain about the pittance being spent on those ventures and not one, single, solitary CENT being spent on tightening up our financial institutional structure that makes US money 'easy pickings' to support terrorism and you get an idea of what is involved in scale differences. Put up those lovely counters of the money spent on those ventures, but the moment you look at the tens of billions going into the undermining our own banking and financial system via Congressional votes, and the actual idea of what the cost of fixing *that* will be starts to come into focus. Every 'special privilege' or 'tax benefit' or 'trade subsidy' that the US encourages makes organized crime and terrorism able to expand its networks deeper into the legitimate institutions of the West. Consider that in 2000 the drug trade from the Bekaa valley to Europe was on the order of $40 billion/year, or about 10% of global drug trafficking, all of which is supporting this entire system to undermine Western culture, values and finances. Now that this has only gone in one direction, cost wise, those relatively small amounts, perhaps only 10% being skimmed by terrorists or even less, ends up at billions per year not just on bombs and guns, but for 'outreach' and sustainment. Add in the tens of billions from oil profits from the Saudis and Iran, and you get Hezbollah having missiles costing tens of millions of dollars apiece and having a 6,000 or so. Some of that does go through the old gas pump, yes, but even if oil dried up as a commodity and the entire world went 'green' on energy tomorrow, the residual problem would still be very close to what the US spends on Iraq and Afghanistan per year.

Notice the problem? All of these terrorist organizations don't have government overhead or infrastructure to take care of, and in the case of Iran they don't bother taking care of theirs, anyway. With all the heavy weapons Hezbollah gets, the fact that the small arms, bombs, and generally more normal terror organization underneath it would still exist based on its other sources of incomes, makes taking Iran out and expecting Hezbollah to crumble a non-starter. Hezbollah's heavy weapons would need maintenance from Syria, which would be paid for via the drug trade, thus putting Hezbollah in a 'use it or lose it' for the high cost overhead items. They would want to expend all of those to get back to the sustainable organization, which would *not* go away. While taking Iran out of the picture would lower the long-term threat problem, the short term gets very nasty without addressing Syria and Hezbollah, too.

Then there is Pakistan, heart of multiple Islamic terror groups and having two native populations, Baluchs and Pashtuns, really feeling that they got a raw deal as becoming part of Pakistan. The top money maker in Pakistan is its *own* transnational terror group run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar out of a 'refugee camp' that is now devoted towards his organization. Stretching from the semi-precious stone smuggling in the East to narcotics in the North and West, then stretching terror arms out to Europe and China, this organization escapes Western sight as it is not al Qaeda or the Taliban. When the Taliban needed weapons it went to Hekmatyar's group to get illegal arms dealer Victor Bout to start supplying them. And as Semion Mogilevich has an airline under his control in the Far East, the contacts to the Red Mafia for Golden Triangle trade in opium are already in place. Clearing Afghanistan of its support for terrorism will only come via the end of the opium trade there and an inter-tribal accommodation on not starting it up again. This would deprive the Taliban and Mehsud organizations of funding, while leaving the other crop areas under Hekmatyar as the only viable source of those funds. Needless to say all of these organizations, to one degree or another, emulate Hezbollah's lead in diversification beyond the committed base of fighters. And many of these groups are, indeed, Private or Personal armies: that is the definition of Lashkar.

What routes can be utilized to curb this problem? And notice it is 'curb' not 'end' or 'eradicate' it?

On the Nation State side the US would have to take a very, very, very hard turn in its foreign policy away from its current, bland multicultural view towards religion. The one thing that the Peace of Westphalia did establish was the separation of the Secular State from Religious Institutions, and that single, sole view is one that has been lost on the US by so many bemoaning the 'separation of church and state'. Not doing so led to the 30 years war and between 15-20% of Europe dead as a result of it. Our current policy of not enforcing the Peace of Westphalia via Foreign Policy is leading to a likewise end on a global scale. But as so many intellectual elites want to end the Westphalian State and put religion as a guiding precept of International Affairs... what?

You say they want only Secular States?

Ok, prove it.

The net effect of not supporting Westphalia has been to encourage the most venomous of religious institutions backed by tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars to radicalize Islamic populations globally. Westphalian States would prohibit that amongst themselves and put those States not doing so under careful scrutiny and possible ban as not upholding Westphalia ends up with lots of people killed over religion. The Transnational Progressive Left does not believe that religion has a role to play in the affairs of Nations and yet will refuse to do anything to stop Transnational establishment of State sponsored religious organizations overseas. The Tranzi Left, instead, equalizes all religions with blandness, thus making, for example, Inuit cultural beliefs the exact same as Islamic terrorists blowing folks up in shopping malls. By equalizing all religions, and not differentiating between them, the Tranzi Multiculti Left upholds nothing and encourages death by destructive religion and will do nothing to stop it. It is unfortunate that the US State Dept takes similar views about not wanting to 'offend' those using Islam as a reason to kill by NOT doing a damned thing to stop the spread of Wahhabi Madrassas and Schools *anywhere* on Rock 3. Mind you, no President has, either, which is why I can find 'al Qaeda High School' as we call it locally, within a few miles of where I am sitting.

The Tranzi Right, likewise, wants no part in anything that upholds cultural identity or gets in the way of economic efficiency. This concept flies in the face of Transnationalism and points out that by not sustaining National culture you lose the ability to get sustainment of Transnational institutions. Without those Transnationalism falls apart as the world goes into chaos because the replacement concepts being put in place by those following strict Islamic Totalitarianism are non-profit seeking and very backwards on personal liberty: you can't be a multiculturalist or a capitalist profit seeker under that formulation as it gets you killed.

Westphalia has a point and a hard one: religion is personal and each individual has freedom to worship inside their Nation. The Nation can have an overall religion but may not ENFORCE IT upon anyone. And as Nations should enjoy survival, keeping external State Sponsored religious institutions OUT of one's Nation should be a goal of Foreign Policy as well as discouraging non-locals from using cash from those exterior States from doing so.

That is a tough nut to sell in the US, as the left would get anaphylactic shock from mere exposure to it. Actually *keeping* to ideals on religious freedom of worship via Foreign Policy is a great big non-starter in the Land of Liberty: can't put forward that human liberty is worth any sacrifice in dollars or comfort now, can we?

That is not going anywhere, I'm afraid, so we must look to other options as a Nation and recognize that venomous religion as sponsored by Nations to undermine and dissolve other Nations is a fact of what is going on. If, say, Turkey tried to manipulate the fast food market by putting in a mega falafel chain that would offer good products at lower prices to gain market share, we would have some heartburn. If they subsidized it to operate at a loss so they could drive competitors OUT, we would seek to end trade with Turkey in this area. If they shifted and opened up a value chain of TurkMart stores, using goods made by low cost labor in Central Asia to compete with US stores and gain market share, we would continue with heartburn. Operated at a loss to drive out competitors? Soon the Foreign Policy wheels would be in motion and things would deteriorate as we would want to know *why* the Turks were doing this. And if they responded, 'to undermine your domestic economy and take it over' we would laugh, of course, but take the threat seriously.

So, why not do this with Saudi Arabia?

Yeah, oil? So?

Yet, in the case of religious intrusion to utilize domestic means to undermine the US legal system, the Left in America is more than willing to roll over, whimper and expose its neck and say 'please don't kill me'.

To put our money where our anti-terror desires are requires the US to utilize both Foreign and Domestic policy to end the threat and seek to our own internal accord and safety. Externally, however, the US has an opportunity that no other Western Nation has had for decades: start to teach something a slight bit different in one of the oldest capitals of Islamic knowledge on the planet. We also have a native population that may just be willing to listen to us and hear us out on the subject of human liberty and accountability, what with all the killing of their people by religious fanatics propagated by the Saudi's and Iranians. If the Saudi and Iranian threat is to use culture and religion to undermine Nations wherever their followers go, it would be a fair fight to start setting down academies to teach Western economics, jurisprudence, culture and traditions and *why* we can live with those who adhere to ideas of human liberty and freedom and having common government that respects those things. In Michael Oren's Power, Faith and Fantasy, we get a rare glimpse into the successes that early US church based schools and teaching hospitals had on the Middle East in a very limited way. Those were private institutions set up to teach the private values of how Americans see their faith and common government as a single whole, and when the earliest explorers brought along books like Tom Paine's Common Sense, and those that heard it from the banks of the Nile to the interior of the area we think of as Kudish it was seen as, indeed, having some common sense to it.

For those on the Left and Right who see the Middle East from Northern Africa to as far out as Afghanistan as still being relatively backwards and primitive culturally, would not teaching the most revolutionary of ideas for human liberty from their source allow the US to make its case that Islam can and indeed MUST adapt to the modern world so as to avoid a global bloodbath on the scale of the 30 years war but without borders? We already have some of the finest of our Citizens demonstrating that this can work and give a culture that is at peace with its beliefs and yet can still advance in material ways in common accord, while allowing each man his say on his own life. These respected Citizens who show and demonstrate respect can also demonstrate how this works, perhaps with the help of the Poles, and give a new context for Islam that allows each to take it up or not as the case may be.

The Hard Part of Iraq and Afghanistan hasn't even started yet.

It is the part where we either demonstrate the courage of our beliefs in how we make our world better by giving each man his due and not threatening him with death if he believes differently, or where we demonstrate an inability to understand that All Men Are Created Equal even on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates.

Cash? Damned easy to come by.

Belief in ourselves?

That is the Hard Part.

The Upgrade Partnership Plan

The following is a policy position paper of The Jacksonian Party.

America is a Nation on the move and progressing quickly in areas of science, technology and industry. Indeed, being the most productive people on the planet, Americans far outdo any others at their rates of productive work and their creativity and then upgrade the entire infrastructure necessary to create new ways of life and work faster than anyone, save, perhaps, the Japanese with 'Hello, Kitty!'. That said Americans also discard these old devices because they just aren't modern anymore. Entire industries have come and gone in the United States leaving their industrial wastelands behind them. And growing businesses shift from capability to new capability and the old equipment hits the scrap heap.

The following is the Upgrade Partnership Plan of the United States.

Today two Nations that the United States has helped out from the heel of despotic and tyrannical rule are now hard pressed to become productive societies in all areas of endeavor. On the Academic, Medical and Scientific realms, organizations public and private have found partners for their old equipment from Universities, Colleges, Teaching Schools and Laboratories in Iraq and Afghanistan. These needs to not only be encouraged, but rewarded and expanded. To do this and to help partnerships foster between these new democracies and America, the Federal Government needs to be involved to first offer such rewards and then give capabilities not easily had by even the industries of America to ensure that old equipment is properly moved from the United States to Iraq and Afghanistan, installed and individuals trained in their use.

To do this the United States proposes that the Dept. of Commerce do the following:

1) Solicit lists of all old industrial equipment, agricultural equipment and any other supporting equipment that American businesses and private concerns now find on their books but with no longer term utility as they are 'outmoded'. Further, those in the ongoing private organizations in the Academic, Medical and Scientific communities may add to this list any of those items that they have found to be unplaceable or that they do not have the capability to easily transport due to mass or size. Such things as make, model, serial number, original equipment manufacturer and such are to be included in this along with original purchase value.

2) The Dept. of State will be handed this list and will then work between the US Government and the Governments in Afghanistan and Iraq to partner organizations based on need. The Iraqi and Afghani Governments shall ensure that companies, hospitals, businesses and any other group or organization is a valid one to receive and utilize such equipment. Points of Contact from the original list will then be contacted and the Dept. of State shall facilitate meetings between the donor and receiving organizations to ensure that the entire scope of equipment type, maintenance, training and other sustainment information is passed on and that any pre-delivery training or inspections are facilitated so as to allow the receivers to ensure that they are getting what they are looking for. All such recipients shall demonstrate plans, backing and ability to utilize such equipment and are to be the end-recipients, not intermediaries or re-sellers.

These two Nations get first priority and right to look over such lists. Then this list shall be provided to every Nation that has helped the United States in its endeavors in Afghanistan and Iraq since the start, or has shown unwavering support in these efforts, and have not withdrawn from them in reverse order of their per capita income or other indicator so that the poorest of Nations has the greatest opportunity to benefit from their work in support of the United States. If no such receiving organization can be found, then the donor shall be informed and given a full tax write-off of said equipment and its disposal in accordance with all Local, State and Federal laws covering such if necessary.

3) Once this is done the USAID or other trade and commerce arms of the US Government shall ensure that the equipment is dismantled and properly shipped. On those projects that are too large for commercial industry to handle, the US Army Corps of Engineers will be given the task of designing the most cost efficient method of dismantling, transporting and reconstructing such equipment in cooperation with both the donor and receiver organizations. Private construction and transport capability is to be used whenever possible and it is cost effective to do so. When that cannot be done, US Transport Command will be given the task of transporting such equipment and the US Army Corps of Engineers shall be used as the organization of last resort for installing such equipment. Such transport by the US Transport Command or other military organization is done free of charge to this program and the cost carried by the People of the United States. Some creation of new facilities will be necessary and the receiving organization must work that out prior to delivery and ensure that such facilities are fully ready for the equipment.

4) All such equipment shall have a full write-off of original equipment value from all donor organizations so as to reduce their tax burden. All time and materials expended shall also be written off so as to reduce the tax burden of those organizations. Anything above and beyond that is considered to be a Charitable Donation and its cash amount is also written off on taxes in full and without restriction for the entire project. Any amounts that cannot be written off in one year by bringing taxes due to zero, shall then be applied the next year and following years until the full sum is expended.

5) The organization(s) in charge of transfer shall perform annual inspections and reports on such donations and identify any long-term help needed in the way of supplies or maintenance and work with American industry to ensure that such can be done on a sustainable basis both for the recipient and for the companies involved. At the end of 5 years the last inspection shall be performed and Medals of Industrial Citation struck so and given to the donor(s) and recipient(s) involved in each transaction. A historical marker will also be placed at the donor site to establish that this site once housed the equipment listed and that it was given to the recipient(s) so as to help them build a free society.

6) All donations are subject to standard security caveats for 'dual use' equipment and other safety provisos for long term security initiatives and standard industrial safety. Any such equipment that is duly transported with such security concerns shall be tracked until its end-of-lifecycle and final destruction by the recipient.

As part of the need for American Academia, Industry, Business, Medicine and Science to show its willingness to extend a helping hand towards those Nations coming into the light of democracy and freedom, and sustaining the valuable Friends and Allies of the Nation is this done. The United States recognizes that while older equipment may have less value to the Nation, it may still have high and great value to those that have NONE.

In any case where old industrial property was purchased so as to allow private individuals and companies to remove old industrial sites that are not in working condition, such individuals and companies must show a plan for rehabilitation of such sites, especially those that have hazardous waste at them. States may certify any waivers or plans that vary from this if the State is satisfied that the good of removing the equipment outweighs the need for site remediation. Any long term uses are acceptable, save abandonment of such sites.

Let us not see the building of new societies to become free as one that need expend cash and cash only. Let the Nation come to see that doing the equivalent of 'cleaning out the attics and closets' of America at older and unused sites is an opportunity to re-invigorate those areas and return them to their communities as a better place for their goods having gone to Peoples in need.