Quote Originally Posted by kaur View Post
Fuchs, you should find man (what ever title he has) who has enough resources to enforce tolerable level of security in the valley. You should ask what he asks for this favor and you must bargain. I think this is too much to start rebuilding the society. Do you need this? I doubt. Your task is like US task in Afganistan in the autumn 2001.
I'm not sure it is anything like the US task in Afghanistan, to be honest. There (rightly or wrongly) the US is trying to build the long-term legitimacy and stability of the central government, including by trying to reduce corruption. In the scenario given here, you're trying to maximize the profits of a private company, possibly by ignoring or undercutting the central government (we're given no information on their attitude to all this) and possibly by using corruption.

Moreover, there's not enough information in the scenario to decide anything at the moment. Leaving aside the rather iffy issue of who exactly one is working for (unclear), we don't know anything about the intended investment, length of anticipated operations, possible labour demand (and economic benefits), the possible environment effects, the attitude and interests of key stakeholders, existing social alliances and patterns of conflict, and so forth. Palladium is typically found alloyed with gold, platinum, nickel and copper deposits, and usually involves mining, separating, and refining many tons of raw ore. There are substantial environmental (and hence social and economic) costs to this, and so the benefit and impact to the local community needs to be thought through in much more detail before the corporate security issues can be approached.

First thing to do, therefore? Ask an awful lot of questions. (Not such a bad idea in COIN operations either.)