Can we just buy peace in Afghanistan?

Paying for Peace: Can we just buy security in Afghanistan?

In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, both the U.S. Defense Department and Agency for International Development (USAID) are struggling to find ways to use aid resources to promote the goals of development and security. The effort involves a considerable amount of money: If Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province were a country, it alone would have been the fifth-largest recipient of USAID funding in 2008. Meanwhile, aid organizations and NGOs complain that military programs such as the $1 billion Commander's Emergency Response Program build infrastructure that will not be maintained and will provide little long-term development impact. The military, for its part, complains that civilian development efforts are too focused on secure areas at the expense of winning hearts and minds in other places where it would actually make a difference to reduce violence.

Both sides are probably at least half-right: Despite many successes in improving Afghan citizens' quality of life, it seems quite likely that aid flows are failing to deliver economic development or security. A recent review of reconstruction in Helmand province by Stuart Gordon of the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) concluded that aid "may have as many negative, unintended effects as positive ones and, at the very least, is not a panacea." Gordon's interviews with people in Helmand suggested a widespread feeling that aid was only entrenching local tribal and criminal elites while doing little to improve the lives of ordinary people. But perhaps there is a way to meet both security and development goals at once. Just giving money to poor people turns out to be a powerful tool to improve lives and foster opportunity. And making that money conditional on security could provide a big incentive for local communities to turn against the Taliban.

Even a large cash-for-peace program would be cheap compared with the resources the United States alone is already throwing at Afghanistan. A grant that gave $120 over 12 months to each Afghan above age 15 would cost $1.5 billion a year. In 2010, USAID and the State Department spent $5.7 billion in Afghanistan, while the Defense Department spent nearly $88 billion. If a cash-transfer program significantly reduced violence, it would be a bargain.

This is a controversial view. Bribe people to stop shooting at us.

This will illicit several responses from the average American:

1. They wanna use taxpayer dollars to give to random fucks in Afghanistan?! Give it to me!

2. They are blowing our taxpayer money on a stupid fucking war that no longer serves a purpose. End the war NOW!

3. Fucking politicians! Let's kill 'em all!!!!

4. Why?? Spend the money on rebuilding our roads/bridges/train infrastructure and the rest on health care!

5. Bribing them will fail. The Taliban will get the money and use it to kill our own troops with our own money.

6. They'll just use it to buy drugs.


This idea might seem to suck; it also might have some limited carrot-and-stick application to improve short-term conditions. Nevertheless, if our government comes to believe that this is the best option then we truly are fucked.
Post edited by -EB- Bluedoctor at 6/7/2011 8:44:31 PM

ummm all of the above, . . was this a multiple choice question? I say, pull out now, they send shit our way nuke em

Blue sounds as angry as I usually am......preach it brother, blue, preach it!! Amen to all of that.....

That's exactly my sentiments on this. Let that shithole collapse under the weight of its own absurdity. Hopefully that will free up some money, time, and resources to prop up our own collapse from stupidity.