Part One: Focus on the Middle East
This commentary deals with why I believe President Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan may fail. One of the biggest obstacles to his impending success is opium. Not just opium as a raw material but what the raw material opium can become. The fact that this raw material is essential to many other medicinal and chemical, both legal and illegal, products means there is large scale global trade in this industry and the U.S. is largely involved. This realization alone is one of the major reasons Obama may run into industry road blocks politically as he pursues an end to terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan in a fight to reduce the illegal trade of opium. Something that has not been done ever. The grappling with this necessary evil goes as far back as the nineteenth century when the Opium Wars loomed between the British and the Chinese. Yet opium is still around and ostensibly shall always be with us. Thus securing its place among the most powerful inelastic commodities in the world. A good example of why I hold this political viewpoint is the fact that Adolf Hitler mostly held power because the Hitler regime was financially backed and supported largely by Corporate America, with major allies like Henry Ford.
Statistically, Afghanistan has an estimated population of 32,738,376 inhabitants. Sunni Muslims are the major religious group with 80 percent and only 19 percent for the Shiites. Roughly only 28 percent above the age of 15 can read and write. That is, 43 percent males and scarcely 13 percent females. It is an Islamic republic. That means its government type is based on a religious foundation. Unlike U.S. Republicanism, which is founded on a written constitution and church and state are separate. The president or chief of state is Hamid Karzai. There is the ANA, the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Army Air Corps. But remember the literacy rate among males is average and thus their means of highly developed intelligence capability would appear weak in contrast to lets say the Soviet’s, Great Britain’s or the American’s, where the literacy rate is much higher for males over 15. As far as transnational issues goes Pakistan and Afghanistan are invariably engaged in border disputes. The main disagreements are: terrorism and illicit drugs. Afghanistan is the largest producer of opium globally with a steady increase in poppy cultivation. The Taliban participates in this industry explicitly. Not to mention the fact that most of the heroin that goes to Europe and Eurasia comes from Afghan opium. And there are various financial networks covertly involved in drug money laundering, such as U.S. corporations and perhaps even banks though as far as banks I am speculating. But it would make sense that since we face a financial economic global crisis in 2009, I would not rule such a hypothetical out.
GDP for the Afghan economy in 2007 was estimated to be about $35 billion, which came mostly from the agriculture and service sector of the economy. Industry that same year only mustered 24 percent of the GDP. One big problem the Obama administration has is the fact that the Afghan labor force is only 15 million people out of a population of 32,738,376 inhabitants. And statistically the unemployment rate is about 40 percent, with a population below the poverty line of 53 percent. This is a huge barrier to President Obama’s political and military objectives for the region. These numbers clearly point out the advantage the Taliban and al-Qaida have in furthering their ambitions, which is to fundamentalize the Afghan state and secure a nuclear bomb from Pakistan. Moreover, the global recession has gone unrestrained. The national unemployment rate in the U.S. alone is over 10 percent not counting those that work part-time or the jobless worker who has totally given up seeking work altogether, and those who volunteer, but receive no pay. Such hopelessly depressed conditions for many people nationally and even worldwide has brought disfavor with the President and his administration.
This hamstrung economic social paradigm has produced, high rates of violent crimes, from drugs, within families, hindering the efforts of police doing their jobs, on the highways, and many more social conflicts worldwide.
U.S. interests in the region is more than the threat of Soviet expansion as I mention in my last commentary. The fact is the U.S. is Afghanistan’s third largest trading partner among a group of four with India its leading Exporter. Another major political problem vaguely discussed by the Obama administration is the border disputes between India and Pakistan. Even if the U.S. could by 2011 stabilize Afghanistan militarily from terrorism they may underestimate the Taliban’s ability to drive a wedge further between India and Pakistan. This wedge would target the 80.5 percent Hindu population in India and the 97 percent Muslim population in Pakistan. Including the competition that exist among Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in the opium trade. But beyond that, there is India’s ongoing conflict with China. One of America’s major debt holders. The Pharmaceutical industry would not look favorably on the Obama administration if any hindrance to licit opium were to materialize in this area. In addition, the President, Admiral Mullen, Senator John Kerry, and General McChrystal has failed to mention the illicit narcotics trade exported to Southeast Asia by India. Again, stabilizing Afghanistan will only have a minor impact on destroying terrorism. Admiral Mullen told Charlie Rose the draw down of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by mid-2011 does not mean a complete withdrawal. And with such uncertainty the question arises, “What does draw down mean then?”
Iran, on the other hand, has a population of 65,875,223 inhabitants, of which 98 percent are Muslims, and of that, 89 percent are Shiites and 9 percent are Sunni. It has a literacy rate of 77 percent. Eighty-three percent males over 15 and 70.4 percent females. Its government type is a theocratic republic. That is, both state and church are combined. The capital is Tehran and the chief of state or Supreme Leader is Ali Hoseini-Khamenei. The head of government is President Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad. The Iranian economy is reliant on oil. It supplies about 85 percent of revenues. A major barrier for the UN and NATO is the state has sovereignty and thus most economic activity is under the state’s authority. And too, corruption plays a big role in sociopolitical progress for the Iranian economy. Something the Obama administration fails to address. I think the U.S. abstains from this encounter with the Iranians, primarily Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is because Iran’s major Importer and Exporter is China. Although Japan leads China as Iran’s major Exporter overall.
What does this mean in the short and long term for the Obama administration when time to draw down the troops in Afghanistan? I believe it means there will have to be politically some concession on the part of the superpowers, spearheaded by President Obama, Gordon Brown and Angela Merkal, and Nicolas Sarkozy.
We must not forget as far as the terrorists are concerned, al-Qaida is backed by Osama Bin Laden, and according to Forbes magazine, issue: November 30 list of most powerful people, had Mr. Bin Laden at No. 37. He is estimated to be worth more than $300,000,000. And maybe considerably more in the light of the opium trade he is engaged in as well. Bin Laden most definitively has ties with U.S. corporations as well as corporations in Europe and Asia. All this has to do with the probability of his acquiring a nuclear bomb at some point in the future. Neither President Hamid Karzai, a Sunni Muslim, of Afghanistan nor President Asif Ali Zardari, a Shiite Muslim, of Pakistan can control all the political factions in their respective governments. Let me underscore a very important point… and that is the Taliban, a radical Sunni Islamist movement, was a legitimate government from 1996 until late 2001, when they were removed by NATO forces. It is the Sunni connection between President Karzai and the Taliban that holds weight here. Though Karzai may appear to be a Patriot he could switch sides for any reason and become an Islamic nationalist. I would not rule out pecuniary bribes, patronage, from the Taliban, once the U.S. begins military withdrawal.
Even though Pakistan is a federal republic as mentioned above, they may see a need to employ Taliban forces to help fend off Indian’s attacks should they materialize. Or they could find the Taliban instrumental with their impoverished and underdeveloped economic circumstances and as such would be willing to grant political favors, such as vital political positions in government. But one thing is for certain above all else and that is, the Taliban and al-Qaida are both in Pakistan. In fact according to Senator John Kerry, al-Qaida is headquartered there, while Bin Laden is in the Northwest region of Pakistan. So the border that divides both Afghanistan and Pakistan could seem to disappear, in the light of Islamic fundametalist objectives, in terms of the war on terrorism.
One of the major goals of General McChrystal should be to drive the Taliban to the Northeastern sector of Afghanistan from the southwest central region. That is, from the Helmand province to the Palmir Mountains in the Gorno-Badakhshan province. The mountains are covered in snow year round. Palmir has long and bitterly cold winters and short cool summers. Making Drone attacks more effective in the summer while the winter would take its toll on the Taliban forces almost unaided by Afghan and NATO forces. I know some officials maybe going through the roof, since the U.S. is interested in these mountains for trade purposes, but that is every reason to drive the Taliban there and put an end to their insurgency.
Let me switch focus at this point. I had the opportunity to see a movie called ‘Head-On’ about a young Turkish woman, a cocaine addict, who moved from Germany, to Istanbul because her husband, a cocaine addict also, had been put in prison for manslaughter, where her sister lived, and got turned on to opium. Probably illegally imported from Afghanistan. Certainly this movie was fictitious. But that does not mean opium is not in reality flourishing in Istanbul or Germany in one form or another. Turkey is a republican parliamentary democracy somewhat similar to the U.S.’s government and has no restrictions on religious freedoms. You can dress as Western or Eastern as you please without coercion from the Turkish government. Ironically, in terms of religion the country is 99.8 percent Muslim, mostly Sunni. The point being, opium could be purchased or acquired for recreational use in the real world as well. The movie makes the old adage, “there is a thin line between fiction and reality” a true aphorism.
In summary, let me state we will take a closer look at opium in part two of this two part commentary. I think up to this point in the discussion the reader gets an understanding of the complexity of President Obama’s foreign policy dilemma. He can save the American ship of virtue from the eye of the radical Islamist storm so-to-speak, but he can’t save all the people in it. Such a metaphor helps us to grasp his likelihood of having to make many unfortunate sacrifices, politically. Jobs are eating at his will to rescue an America under siege by a global economic crisis that does not seem to want to go away. Surely he inherited all these political fire dragons. But it was he, was it not, who said he could bring about resolution over time. I say the two most important tidal waves you have to get us through Mr. President is the war in Afghanistan and the economic global depression in full swing right now. And if you can do that you will then have to turn your attention to the likely internal rise of illicit drug distribution and use, and the gun violence that will escalate culminating in the new terrorist hydra residing in America covertly derived from its parent Islamic fundamentalist groups, the Taliban and al-Qaida, from the Middle East, formulating since 9/11.
