CMSbelt:
Security is not a decisive factor in whether people need to eat on a given day.
Either security permits free access and low prices, people starve, or it comes some other way.
A battle space commander does not own the economy unless he actively engages and understands it---from day one. Markets, supply routes, sources, etc...
Mishandling has two alternative consequences: (1.) people suffer from lack of supplies, which destabilizes support for him; or (2) a black market grows which destabilizes support for him.
Iraq and Afghanistan are conflict zones of long-standing, and American occupation did little to materially change the economic difficulties they learned to adapt to. People find a way or they starve. Black markets cannot be eradicated in those places without reasonably abundant free trade and basically functional markets---or by mass feeding programs.
Baby needs to eat every day, and if a battle space commander does not know how the people in his space are eating, there is probably a lot more that he is not tracking.
KRG prosperity is a really bad example. If you track the supply routes supporting their relatively peaceful economy, they were primarily Diyala and Ninewa---the conflict zones that they were equally dependent on.
There was never a day when the oil barons of Bayji did not have fresh eggs and Hillal chicken, nor one where people couldn't buy gas from him (even if the government supply wasn't delivered). This despite inaccurate assurances from Baghdad that poultry re-start in the North could not occur until the train restarted to move grain from Basrah.
KRG got its grain without a train, and Bayji had abundant fresh poultry if you could afford it. How did that happen?
The sustainable solution to black market oil profiteers in Kirkuk was not to arrest the bad guys, but to fill the market with legitimate gas.
An effective Stage 1 response to conflict is to identify and stabilize economic systems, and to supplement legitimate ones as rapidly as possible. Otherwise, you can end up in a years long occupation in a very troubling space.
Perhaps it is too simplistic to draw the distinctions, but, somewhere, there is a thesis waiting to be written contrasting occupation without due consideration for economics vs. non-occupation or occupation that focused on economic systems.
Steve
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