Economics and Irregular Warfare

[Bill Moore]

thanks for the editing catch, I cleaned it up a little more. That's what I get for rushing and not wearing my glasses.

[M-A Lagrange]

Hello Vertnyc

I will try to come with complete answers to your questions. I will first answer to the simpliest one:

Why do you think Afghan villagers want to accumulate savings?

Why do poor people need to accumulate savings?

The question seems a little out of the loop in first place. This basically comes from the circle of poverty theory.

Poor households do not generate enough incomes to cover all their expenses. So they have to make choices between members of the household to allocate their resources. Example: the household does not have enough money to buy clothes for all and send all to school. They will choose to buy closes for the oldest girl so she can get married and send one boy to school. All their choices are driven by a rational allocation of their incomes.

To be able to get out of this circle, households need to be able to generate more incomes to increase the range of choices. To increase their choices they need to be economically secure at household level. To reach this stage, vulnerable households need to accumulate goods or money so they will be able to diversify their production capacity. That diversification can be done through small business, acquisition of land, diversification of production, education… But all this need the household to generate savings they can use to purchase non basic/survival goods.

Also, accumulating symbolic richness as cattle or land or weapons is a way to show both your economical wealth and your social power. For young men especially, their capacity to show symbols as weapons, cattle, land is important as it prove to the communities that they are capable to have a family, to be respected as a man… So they will be socially accepted. You find this problematic in almost all post war context. I found it in places as different as Liberia or Somalia.
Finally, in Islam, being rich, accumulating symbols of richness, is being blessed in the eyes of Allah (Quite like in Calvinist approach of capitalism). So generating savings is something that most of the people will look at.
In traditional societies, the main point to understand is that group rationality lies at household level, not at group level. Vulnerable families will, as example, share with extremely vulnerable families but this is not a charity act. This is an expression of power and social domination.

About this, I would recommend to read Bourdieu : la distinction, critic social du jugement, 1979, edition de minuit. I know it has been traduced in English but do not have the reference. May be a little difficult to read and the link with Afghan society not clear at first look. But this helps to figure how the social habits are preserved and continue to drive individual relationships. What you have to keep in mind is that vulnerable households are self centered. Relations with others are symbolic power struggle. The group, let’s take the village level for the moment, will only prime on a very limited range of issues. And it will be driven by a limited number of influential families.

[M-A Lagrange]

I will try to come with a definition of those “ stages”. I will not come with manual definition but describe them in a “development” approach.

Stabilization: reinstallation of law and order by a military power coupled with humanitarian activities (post conflict type) to address basic survival population needs. The economy is disrupted and there is a low level of market organization. Political context is unstable and influx on economical capacities and choices of the population. Economical efforts are looking to recover pre conflict economical level.

Development: This may include economical recovery (But I would rather include that into stabilization stage). Basically it takes place in a stable security environment with or without political stability. Actions are targeting economical capacities of household to get organized and increase their incomes. This is looking to create the conditions for economical take off for communities. Rule of law is in place and markets are regulated.

Economy: this targets the market organization regulation. It would be the creation of a normative economical context allowing large investments and production distribution. This would be the stage during which juniors and then majors will invest and basically build production plants… Security and political contexts are stable and allow long term activities.

Those are raw definitions and you may disagree. Personally, I would go with a much detail canevas: life saving; recovery; post conflictre development; primary sector development and pre economical development; economical development.

To my understanding, Afghanistan (Depending the areas) is between recovery (with life saving activities) and post conflict activities. With some pockets of pre economical development in major cities.
What you may (and most probably experience) is the creation of pockets of take off rather than a homogeneous take off from all the villages or families in your area. (The basic principle of the drop oil theory).

Then comes the problematic of cotinuum and contiguum in “development activities”.

Continuum is what we all want. From humanitarian life saving stage, we introduce enough money to generate small savings at household level. The population and goods have free movements capacity. This creates small shops and a dynamic market exchange place. This generates enough immediate benefits for all the population so the populations rally the coalition. Then you have long term stability and foreign investors are coming…

Contiguum is what we experience: For a reason we do not know, all is fine in village A but nothing is going well in village B. While village A is becoming a centre and tracts and attracts all economical investments and attention, village B is still in basic survival stage and becomes a periphery. So you have a pocket of linear development and pockets of no progresses.
There village A is an economical centre and village B is an economical periphery. In a wonderful world, villagers from B, watching what is happening in A will double efforts to reach A level and the centre will tract the area to pass from stabilization to development.
In reality, what we experience most of the time is B becomes jealous. Villagers from B will put their efforts in restricting village A economical efforts. This may includes the use of violence. So village B becomes a violence centre and A a violence periphery. So you will have to put your efforts in maintaining A security level to secure its economical progress. And you will have to restrict B violence activities but double your economical efforts to make them progress. Watching that, A may be unhappy (At least…).

I would recommend reading Francois Gruenwald, but I do not know if he has been translated in English. His organization (group URD) is present in Afghanistan if I am not mistaking.

Concerning labor intensive cash for work:

It is a starting point but not the response to everything. You have to be able to stop it at one stage. Once population is creating small business then you have to stop and shift to other activities that will support households’ capacities to generate regular and sustainable incomes.
Cash for work is your first step to enter the community. It is just a tool. Second step may be production transport or transformation…

I support cash for work, used it a lot to stabilize small unsecured areas in many contexts. I also would warn about the side effects of it. The main one being seen only as a cash for work provider and then being unable to do other activities. The day you stop cash for work, the population may decide to no more support you as you are no more providing easy money.

Hope this respond to your questions. Do not hesitate if you feel some dark areas in my explanations.