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