Understanding 55
morality emerged, a different structure to society. Of course all the other parts of society remained the same. People paid their taxes and went about their lives normally; only the traffic behavior was affected.
Afghanistan has had most of its social structures removed over the last forty or so years. First the Soviets, and then the Taliban, took apart much of the fabric until finally the Allied Forces swept the Taliban out, leaving very little behind. There were no police or courts, and few laws
— or at least none enforced by the rule of law. The Allied Forces have spent a decade rebuilding these structures. Before we examine Masters’ presentation, let’s look at the daily life of an Afghan farmer.
If you are an Afghan farmer you have a dilemma. Your most reliable crop is opium. It grows well in the arid soil, does not require irrigation, and is resistant to most pests. For this crop there is a financial infrastructure to rival the Chicago Commodities Exchange. You get interest free loans secured against the crop, and you can forward sell your product on a futures market. Your investors can ‘add value’ by dealing with the major pest — the US military. They do this through the simple expedience of taking pot shots at them if they get too close to the crop. Since a field of opium is worth $30,000 and a militia wage for the year is $350, you can easily employ a few men to protect your investment. Of course, you are indebted to thugs and criminals, but they are at least reliable thugs and criminals.
On the other hand, the traditional products of the Himalayas - walnuts, pomegranates and vines — need years to cultivate. There is no forward market and the timescales over which you must take risks are far greater. If you believe your American protectors will leave before the crops mature, you will be loath to plant and care for them. But, if you make the decision to take this risk, you have a strong incentive to foster stability and reap the rewards of your effort. There is a feedback effect: the balance of power between all the different parties is important to the decisions you make, and the decisions you make affect your desire to invest in future stability.
Masters’ team built a slide pack to demonstrate the complex interactions between the groups: farmers, security, stability, markets, military power, and emerging institutions. The COIN - COunter INsurgency — dynamics slide shows just how hard it is to communicate complex topics between human beings. The presentation is beautifully crafted but it was a public relations disaster. At the end of the presentation General McChrystal said jokingly, “When we understand that slide, we will have won the war.” The slide was paraded in the press as, “the most complicated PowerPoint slide in history.”
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