Better backgrounder on the ethnic militia stuff.
This reminds me of graduate school. In theory, the predatory state should notice by allowing more to be retained by the private sector, they'll have more to steal and everybody will be better off. And then before you know it, the veldt becomes a bunch of city states.
Something something, Manticore Olson, something, something.
Like, I wanted to be a mythical beast?
On that first quoted selection about the government employees being paid on time, doesn't that strongly imply he had found the strings to access Western capital assistance from day one?
No. It shows he had he had his shit together. The Afghan government has had Western capital assistance for 18 years, in amounts to dwarf the GDP of Africa, yet still doesn't manage to pay its police. (And I'm the wrong color to say this, but I'll say it anyway, that was racist af.)
I mean in that particular week. Aren't civil wars notorious for draining treasuries the world over?
6: I thought I'd check this. The GDP of the African countries was $2.19tn in 2017 (that's at market exchange rates, $6.36tn at purchasing-power parity). SIGAR said in 2018 that the total of US spending in Afghanistan since 2001 was around $900bn. I doubt the rest of the donors have put in enough to double that (not least because we're nowhere near as expensive as DOD contractors).
Per capital though, that's an incredible difference.
There must be some least two people in African for every person in Afghanistan.
It's certainly enough to dwarf the GDP of pretty much any African country, in particular Ethiopia.
8 is correct, I was thinking sloppily of the trillions that went into the ME wars combined; but the ripostes, also correct, are 9-11.
There must be some least two people in African for every person in Afghanistan.
32 to a first approximation.
The total number in 8 is staggering, as a function of Afghanistan's GDP. Imagine what it'd be like if we had just put all of that money into their (or some other poor country's) economy directly.
15: it did go into Afghanistan's economy directly. But since Afghanistan's economy is mainly criminals, it promptly left again and ended up in nice houses in the Gulf and Pakistan.
16: Touché.
17: I mean, yes, but isn't some portion of that bomb explosions, which are famously non-tradable?
I thought I was participating in a new political economy.
Well, bombs don't represent money going in the Afghan economy though. They're bought in the US. At least the ones we drop are. The ones the other side set off are endogenous and therefore contribute to Afghan GDP.
The Taliban's bombs are 100% Buy Afghan sourced?
I used represent this company, and visited the facility in 2011.
The Taliban's bombs are 100% Buy Afghan sourced?
I reckon, pretty much. They're either HME, repurposed UXO or repurposed "stolen" ordnance. In the first case they're made using locally-bought ingredients and local labour. In the second the ordnance is "stolen" in exchange for money by ANA, i.e. locals. In the third the explosive is basically supplied free, but the labour involved in repurposing it is local.