Economics and Irregular Warfare

[Bill Moore]

Steve,

I did a quick read of the RAND study, and I find it supports my arguments. I look forward to reading the Case Studies in Development later.

The RAND study was published in 2003, and it described the economic development in the Southern Philippines overall as a dismal failure because it was grossly under resourced ($6.00/per person), most of the aid went to the Christian population (not the target population), and that the government of the Philippines is corrupt through and through. It did site a couple of "minor" successes regarding banana plantations, where it gave "some" guerrillas an alternative life style via providing jobs.

However, the fact of the matter is that the insurgency is still alive and well today in the Southern Philippines, and most of the economic development projects have failed. Different perspectives will give you different views. On one hand if you listen to Philippine and USG representatives they'll tell point out individual successes, and then if you talk to the Muslim Filipinos who live there, especially the ones not touched by these relatively micro successes, they'll tell you another story.

Let's say you have 100,000 disenfranchised citizens who are active or passive supporters of the insurgency, and your economic development actually provides jobs for 5,000 of them. That makes for 5,000 folks who are more content (perhaps), and some kodak moments for your next brief, but you still 95,0000 disenfranchised folks who are active supporters of the insurgency.

Not necessarily bad, because now you can point to the 5,000 and say if you quit fighting we'll do the same for you, BUT YOU BETTER BE READY TO DELIVER. As the study pointed out, if you give them rising expectations, but fail to deliver you will actually have made the problem worse with your false promises. This is exactly the failed economic aid I saw in Iraq, a number of promises made that never could be realized until we first established security by suppressing the insurgency.

As the study stated, its focus was "inhibiting a resurgence" of violence, not defeating an insurgency. That is completely different than what we were discussing earlier. You were implying you could use economic development to defeat an insurgency, and I disagreed and still do unless the root cause of that insurgency is "simply" economics, and that is rarely the case.

The study also confirmed that poverty doesn't cause terrorism, but it may contribute to it. My previous point, if the issue that they're fighting over isn't economic disparity, then why waste time and our precious resources on economic development to begin with? Furthermore, if the economic development isn't synched with the plan (and used as a carrot and stick), then it is going to fail.

I'm letting this thread die from my side, so in summary, economic development isn't something you do independently of the counterinsurgency effort, and there are more risks associated with doing economic development poorly than not at all. COIN is political warfare, and if you employ economic development as a leverage tool versus a handout, then "maybe" you can make a difference with it, but only if you really know what you're doing.

[brich]

As a current student and former military instructor of Economics, I appreciate you entertaining my mandatory ILE blog.

Furthermore, if the economic development isn't synched with the plan (and used as a carrot and stick), then it is going to fail.

so in summary, economic development isn't something you do independently of the counterinsurgency effort, and there are more risks associated with doing economic development poorly than not at all. COIN is political warfare, and if you employ economic development as a leverage tool versus a handout, then "maybe" you can make a difference with it, but only if you really know what you're doing.

Economic development is much more than spending money as Bill Moore adeptly points out. Economic systems are absolutely about the synchronized objective, but the scope of the problem is even larger than this discussion has so far touched on as it encompasses almost every conceivable LOO or LOE.
Economic development cannot succeed most efficiently in the absence of property rights, a known and predicitable means of settling disputes and some basis for enforcing contracts. These speak to a challenge greater than security - a functioning legal (not police) system.
In this one man's humble opinion, MM12 simply asked how to best spend his money which is a far cry from the benefits and difficulties of imposing free market capitalism in the context of an English common law judicial system on a tribal Muslim culture. I have to agree with one John Nagl's points that economic development within our current COIN doctrine is equivalent to changing a society.

I certainly admire, but don't envy MM12 for attacking either problem. Thanks for your service and keep up the good fight.

Major Adam Albrich, student CGSC, Belvoir satellite campus
"The views expressed in this "insert type" are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government."

[jmm99]

the "benefits" (if any) of "imposing free market capitalism in the context of an English common law judicial system on a tribal Muslim culture." ?

The "difficulties" of attempting that are self-evident.

I do agree with this:

from brich
Economic development cannot succeed most efficiently in the absence of property rights, a known and predicitable means of settling disputes and some basis for enforcing contracts. These speak to a challenge greater than security - a functioning legal (not police) system.

although removing the words "most efficiently" would cause no uproar from me. I know of no functioning economic sytem that is absent some form of property rights, a known and predictable means of settling disputes and some basis for enforcing contracts - whether it be individualistic, collectivistic or tribal - including Astan's thriving poppy trade.

[OfTheTroops]

What is this?

These speak to a challenge greater than security - a functioning legal (not police) system.

I take it to mean a legal system with a responsive police force. As the gatekeepers to legal system the police are the only portion of that system that the law abiding citizen will ever see. Wild west hanging judges or Judge Dreads or thought police are far more practical than a legal system sans enforcers.

[Steve the Planner]

In the regulatory and legal communities, there is a concept of a "bundle of rights" which is the background predicate for much of our interactions within our societies.

We typically think of property rights as the unimpeded ownership or right of use of a property. But land tenure and holding patterns vary dramatically. In Iraq, most citizens live in a town or city, but have some form of ownership or use right in a plot of land outside the town.

During the 2008 Drought, for example, many areas of Northern Iraq were intensively plowed, but not planted. Satellite images indicated a lot of "cultivation" which led the Ag Folks in DC to erroneously believe that bumper crops would be forthcoming. What was actually going on was a very old land tenure system where folks had a use right in land provided that they actively "used" the land. So many of these folks went out to till the land to demonstrate use under their tenure agreements, but had no rational reason to plant seeds in a drought. Many of you in Iraq last year sucked the dust from the record dust storms which were, in part, the result of the tilling needed to preserve their continuing "property right" interest in the land.

Usually, too, we assume rights---quiet enjoyment; police won't kick down your door without a Court writ and show of cause; a permit issuer at the County will not demand a bribe as acondition of issuing a permit; the government will place taxes, once collected, in dedicated tax accounts for uses related to the purpose of the tax; that a mortgage or deed transfer cannot be recorded against a property you own without your consent.

None of this has anything to do with police, but everything to do with a reasonably functional society and economy. The USG focus on Rule of Law often overlooks the most important non-police elements which create resistance to reconstruction, post-conflict stabilization.

I read today that Iraq has finally passed an Investment Law which gives rights to foreign investors to defend claims, interests, ownership rights in things they may invest in in Iraq.

Bear in mind, however, that even with that law, there remain claims outstanding from decades of past practices in Iraq. Sadaam's government forcing Turkmen to sell land for a pittance which was later given to military officers, etc... Even the Jews that were forced out of Baghdad in the 1950s still have potential claims wandering out in cyberspace about real properties and businesses in Iraq.

Very complicated indeed. Especially in the places at issue.

Steve

[jmm99]

What I speak of (and probably also MAJ Albrich) is the need for a civil legal system (property rights, contract rights, family & inheritance law, and dispute resolution of the same) to allow operation of a functioning economic system.

We take much of that for granted in our organized society. We get the morning newspaper from the box at the end of our sidewalk ("our's" because the property lines are established by deed and plat; the newspaper because the paper carrier has been invited onto our property to deliver it; contract made and performed because we subscribed to the newspaper).

In our society, the vast bulk of legal events are part of the civil legal system, which operates fairly seamlessly without need for lawyers and courts.

In the Astan of 40 years ago, the civil legal system on a local village level was a triangular arrangement of village elders (shura or jirga - language dependent), the local mullah and the local "big man" (malik, district officer or local warlord). In the chaos of two generations of armed conflict, the traditional tribal legal system disintegrated in many areas, along with whatever educational system existed.

As nature abhors a vacuum, so does law. So, various legal systems developed: those of the Taliban, regional warlords and drug lords. Now, we do not generally look at these as "legal systems" (often not that much in writing, but rules nonetheless). The villagers probably would have preferred their age-old traditional local institutions; but, in chaos, power and law flow from the barrel with the largest bore. In effect, the villagers have to select the best kind of insecurity that will allow their economic survival, which is often at the subsistence level or below (credits: Marc Legrange).

Now, the police power obviously has something to do with all of this - if the police power carries the largest bore cannon, and if it is going to remain at the village level to enforce its own brand of security or insecurity. Add to that, the development of locally-based security forces as a necessity.

The question then becomes whether the police power is going to impose its own brand of law (civil and criminal), as well as its ideas of economic and educational development; or whether it will seek to restore, as much as possible, the once stable traditional legal institutions; and to assist that economic and educational development needed to raise the villagers above the subsistence level (which to them would be "security") with minimum manipulation of their normal lifestyle (credits: Jim Gant).

STP is right on point with his Iraqi examples. Astan is a much more primitive case; and the less sophistication imposed, so much the better.

Regards

Mike

[Steve the Planner]

JMM:

True. True.

But in Iraq, the civilian side spent far too much time on writing US federal things like national banking and stock market laws years before they were really ripe and needed.

Instead, the majority of our daily lives are defined by small scale regulations and complex webs of "agreed" standards (sometimes enforceable).

Personally, I spend a tremendous amount of time in my private consulting practice on regulatory and finance/budget compliance issues. And its these little, yet standardized practices and regulations, that are what keeps our society functioning without having to have a lawyer in everyone's speed dial.

Whether styled as formal or informal systems, they are the Rules of Law that we commonly understand.

In Afghanistan, it seems logical that the systems JMM described really are the current functional norms, but as he notes, these are not the systems that governed things before. They are the aberations resulting from war, and stable replacement systems have not yet been established or applied.

What good is a properly recorded deed if you can't occupy "your" house?

[Surferbeetle]

H/T to Bill...

PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians: A Reappraisal

Historians have often used a 1966 Army report nicknamed PROVN
either to cast aspersions on the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam
between 1964 and 1968, General William C. Westmoreland, or to
praise his successor, General Creighton Abrams. This interpretation is
simplistic and inaccurate. Although the report criticized aspects of the
war under Westmoreland, its target was really the U.S. and Vietnamese
governments. Moreover, PROVN’s conclusions were less radical
and its remedies less novel than observers have tended to admit. A
fresh look at PROVN reveals significant continuities in thought between
Westmoreland, the report, and Abrams.

If the importance of security was well understood by the Army, so, too, was the notion that political and socioeconomic reforms were also necessary. The U.S. Army had a long tradition of making institutional reform a part of its counterinsurgency, nation-building, and constabulary activities, and it had readily accepted Walt W. Rostow's thesis that socioeconomic change was a key weapon in the fight against the spread of communism in the third world.21