Obama's excellent foreign policy speech (video, transcript) today covered a wide range of topics. The most attention will probably be paid to the discussion of Iraq and his plans to remove our troops and help stabilize the country. He also promised to move more resources into Afghanistan to help deal with the mounting problems in that area. By this he means more than merely troops or supplies.
From his speech:
Moreover, lasting security will only come if we heed Marshall’s lesson, and help Afghans grow their economy from the bottom up. That’s why I’ve proposed an additional $1 billion in non-military assistance each year, with meaningful safeguards to prevent corruption and to make sure investments are made – not just in Kabul – but out in Afghanistan’s provinces. As a part of this program, we’ll invest in alternative livelihoods to poppy-growing for Afghan farmers, just as we crack down on heroin trafficking. We cannot lose Afghanistan to a future of narco-terrorism. The Afghan people must know that our commitment to their future is enduring, because the security of Afghanistan and the United States is shared.
Clearly he feels that a positive outcome involves more than simply gaining control militarily. He feels that we must help the people of Afghanistan take responsibility for their own region and help them to be able to make a positive contribution to the world.
Recently Bill Moyers interviewed interviewed (transcript and video) Sarah Chayes a former journalist who has been working in Afghanistan where she started a small soap making business to provide employment and help the Afghans rebuild after the fall of the Taliban. It is quite full of incite in understanding the state of affairs and what needs to be done in this region of the world.
She talks about how infrastructure problems have made her task more difficult:
SARAH CHAYES: In my co-op. We're getting three, four hours of electricity every three days. It'll come on any time. You don't know when it's going come on. So it'll come on at 1:30 in the morning, and the guys stay the night on rotation. So whoever the poor fellow is who had to spend the night that night, it's like, I'm knocking on the door, and it's like, we have to get up because there's electricity. So then we'll run the machine until 6:00 in the morning when the electricity ends.
Now, okay, they're working on it, but it's six years after the fall of the Taliban. These are the things that people are wondering. If we're not there to provide reliable infrastructure, there's another real issue which is employment. And this is a kind of economic ideological problem. That when we talk about development aid, we talk about public facilities. And it's sort of against our religion to think about building a factory that would actually employ people. But Afghans don't understand that. They say, "Why aren't you people building any factories?" That's why I made my little soap factories. Because so many people were saying, "what are you foreigners doing here, if you're not employing people? Getting people off the streets."
BILL MOYERS: So what...
SARAH CHAYES: So, we're not doing those things. And we're not providing a government that they can you know, feel any pride in.
She goes on to discuss how the money we have poured into the region is disappearing into a corrupt government and not helping to improve in ways that it should. She discusses how the opium trade is damaging to her attempts to run her factory as she has to deal with labor shortages during key times of the year.
In discussing the businessmen who are involved in the trading of opium between the farmers and others:
SARAH CHAYES: No, no, of course not. It's a business. It's businessmen.
BILL MOYERS: Criminal gains.
SARAH CHAYES: They're just businessmen. They happen to traffic opium rather than trafficking, you know, cars, or trafficking televisions. They're businessmen who buy and sell opium. And it's a slightly complicated buying and selling. But, in fact, they've got some really excellent business practices. Like they provide credit to farmers.
So, for example, one of the reasons that so many people grow opium is, there is no available access to credit. Ordinary credit. Not just business credit. But like, I mean, I suspect most of the people listening to us, have a credit card in their pocket. Afghans need credit, just as much as we do. They can't get it. And so, they borrow money. They need to marry off their sons, for example. It's going cost them $5,000 or $10,000. They have to pay a bride price. They have to have a feast for the entire village. They have to-- you know, where are they going get that money? So they turn to the opium trafficker, who lends them money. And he demands repayment in opium.
BILL MOYERS: So what happens if the American ambassador there, who's a big advocate of aerial spraying to destroy the poppy fields. What happens if he succeeds? What happens if the United States government sprays all the poppy plants and kills them, as happened in Colombia. What do the farmers do?
SARAH CHAYES: They join the Taliban. I mean, it's the biggest gift we could possibly do for the insurgency. What else would they do? They're furious. Their livelihood is taken away. Their children might be poisoned. Or they might think their children are poisoned. They join the Taliban. They take revenge.
BILL MOYERS: So if people were not growing poppies, what would they be growing?
SARAH CHAYES: What exists down there is very valuable crops. Almonds, apricots. It's fruit crops mostly. To me, the way to attack opium is to compete with it. Like let's make it possible to make a living and not-- you don't have to import some exotic new plant. They've got almonds, they've got apricots, they've got pomegranates. They've got cumin, they've got anise seed. Wild pistachios. We're putting all this stuff in our soap.
Why isn't there a fruit juice factory in Kandahar? It's the pomegranate capital of the world. You know, everyone's talking about the antioxidant qualities of pomegranates. That it's the Garden of Eden of pomegranates down there. And what's amazing is, with all this money that you mentioned being spent over there, you can't get any money to do stuff like that.
So, in this region of Afghanistan they have excellent crop potential, people who would simply like a way to support their family, skilled businessmen who have the ability to handle complex transactions as well as act as bankers to the local communities. All the pieces of a strong functional economy are present. She even notes that her factory cannot keep up with the foreign demand for the soap that is produced, the market for the goods they can export is strong as well.
In a region that has so much potential, why are people joining the Taliban or growing and exporting opium to the world. From the above we can take away the following reasons:
- Inadequate basic infrastructure. The corruption is so great that the money we provide to help improve in this regard never gets to where it needs to be to help.
- A lack of willingness to work to get the actual wheels of the economy turning. We don't build businesses or provide credit to allow options for legal work we simply work on the infrastructure (and we aren't even doing that well!) and hope that they figure out a way to make use of it. The expression about teaching a man to fish rather than providing him fish comes to mind, except that we've managed to find a third option. We throw them fishing polls then don't teach them how to use them or make any effort to get the fishing polls into the hands of those who would actually use them for good!
- Choice of destruction of their current method of livelihood over helping them to find a new method of livelihood that could lead to a better situation for them, their families and the rest of the world. Instead we leave them poor, scared, and angry with no idea how they are to meet their basic needs. A perfect recipe for creating criminals and terrorists.
- A lack of pride in government or a belief that government will make any effort to improve their position.
The question is then, what needs to be done in order to solve this problem. Clearly as a first step we need to work to direct our funds better so they wind up in the correct hands. In the interview she states she found that most Afghans believe we are working with the Taliban as through various corrupt channels the money we spend to help is winding up in the hands of this group. Clearly this needs to change, both the perspective and the reality.
We should set the example as Sarah Chayes has done above by starting businesses and using our resources to employ people. We should look for ways to assist others in starting such businesses including providing mentoring and credit.
Perhaps more significantly we need to teach the people of Afghanistan to work together to demand the change that they need. We need to show them that if they act together they can elect people who have their collective interests at heart. We need to show them to hold their leaders as well as other government officials accountable. We need to show them how to create a life for themselves in a legal way and to create opportunities for those around them to do well.
In short we should engage in community organizing.
Solving the problems in Afghanistan would have far reaching positive effects. The impoverished people of Afghanistan would have a better life for themselves free from the risks they now face engaging in the international drug trade. As Afghanistan is the number one exporter of Opium this would make significant headway worldwide in reducing consumption of addictive illegal drugs and all the crime associated with such activities. We would be on better terms with other large nations of the world including Russia as we would be helping to stop the flow of such drugs into their countries. As the Afghans would now be producing useful goods including food we could help to reduce the global food shortage by introducing more quality goods into the market. This would help reduce both poverty and hunger. As people would no longer have incentive to join the Taliban this would serve to reduce the number of international terrorists and also help reduce the funds we provide that wind up in the hands of terrorist.
The Republicans like to declare war on nouns. Solving the problem in Afghanistan would help bring us closer to ending the war on Hunger, Poverty, Religious Extremism, Drugs and of course Terrorism as well as reducing the threat of actual war. The conservatives have tried to solve these problems with guns and prisons, with threats and fear, with tough talk and appeals to nationalism. They are missing the point. Underlying all of these problems; whether they occur on the southside of Chicago, rural Nebraska, downtown Baghdad, or the farms of Afghanistan; whether the question before them is whether to join a violent gang, extremist religious sect, or terrorist organization; whether the choice is to farm opium or apricots or to receive their education in a college or in the streets, the situation is the same. People need to be provided the opportunity to make a positive contribution to the world and to join together with others in a common effort to improve conditions for all. If we do this we get to the very root of the problem and solve it in a more complete, widespread and lasting way.
Some have said that Obama's experience as a community organizer are not helpful in providing him with adequate experience to hold the office of President. I would argue that at this time in history there isn't a job that would have been more useful in preparing him.