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 Afghanistan as an empty space
The perfect Neo-Colonial state of the 21st century. Part one. by 
Marc W. Herold
Departments of Economics and Women's Studies Whittemore School of Business & EconomicsUniversity of New Hampshire
This report is dedicated to the invisible many in the 'new' Afghanistan who arecold, hungry, jobless, sick -- people like Mohammad Kabir, 35, Nasir Salam, 8,Sahib Jamal, 60, and Cho Cha, a street child -- because they 'do not exist.'
POSTED FEBRUARY 26, 2006 --
 Argument
: Four years after the U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan, the true meaning of theU.S occupation is revealing itself.
 Afghanistan represents merely a space that is to be kept empty
. Western powers have no interest in either buying from or selling to the blightednation. The impoverished Afghan civilian population is as irrelevant as is the nation'seconomic development. But the space represented by Afghanistan in a volatile region of geo-political import, is to be kept vacant from all hostile forces. The country is situated atthe center of a resurgent Islamic world, close to a rising China (and India) and the restiveex-Soviet Asian republics, and adjacent to oil-rich states.The only populated centers of any real concern are a few islands of grotesque capitalist
imaginary reality
-- foremost Kabul -- needed to
 project the image of an existing central government 
, an image further promoted by Karzai's frequent international junkets. Insuch islands of affluence amidst a sea of poverty, a sufficient density of foreign ex-pats, a bloated NGO-community, carpetbaggers and hangers-on of all stripes, money disbursers,neo-colonial administrators, opportunists, bribed local power brokers, facilitators, beauticians (of the city planner or aesthetician types), members of the developmentestablishment, do-gooders, enforcers, etc., warrants the presence of Western businesses.These include foreign bank branches, luxury hotels (Serena Kabul, Hyatt Regency of Kabul), shopping malls (the Roshan Plaza, the Kabul City Centre mall), import houses(Toyota selling its popular Land Cruiser), image makers (J. Walter Thompson), and theubiquitous Coca-Cola
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.The "other," the real economy -- is a vast informal one in which the Afghan masses
 
creatively eke out a daily existence.
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They are utterly irrelevant to the
neo-colonist interested in running an empty space at the least cost 
. The self-financing opium economy reduces such cost and thrives upon invisibility. The invisible multitudes represent anuisance -- much like Kabul's traffic -- upon maintaining the empty space. Only theminimal amount of resources -- whether of the carrot or stick type -- will be devoted topreserving their invisibility. Many of those who returned after the overthrow of the Talibanare now seeking to emigrate abroad, further emptying the space.
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The means to maintain and police such an empty space are a particular spatial distributionof military projection by U.S. and increasingly NATO forces: twenty-four hour high-levelaerial surveillance; a three-level aerial presence (low, medium, high altitude); pre-positioned fast-reaction, heavily-armed ground forces based at heavily fortified key nodalpoints; and the employ of local satraps' expendable forces. The aim of running the empty space at least cost is foundering upon a resurgent Taliban, who have developed their ownleast cost insurgency weapons (e.g., improvised explosive devices and suicide bombings)and are putting them to good use.
U.S. troops patrolling the empty space of Afghanistan
Unlike in the colonies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries where effort was made todevelop economic activities -- from plantations to mines, factories to infrastructure -- inorder to have a self-financing colony, in the neo-colony of Afghanistan no such efforts are warranted. Indeed, such efforts contravene the aim of running an empty space at least cost.In effect, Afghanistan today has reincarnated itself in its historic role as a buffer state (intwenty-first century clothing). While this argument may offend many -- from the U.S military's Provincial ReconstructionTeams (PRTs) to the United Nations development establishment (UNAMA), to thecommunity of NGOs and to the 'Cruise Missile Left' (the humanitarian interventionists are well-represented in Kabul
4
) -- it nonetheless presents a coherent whole of what we haveseen and continue to see in Afghanistan. Laments and mea culpas about "nation-buildingon the cheap" miss the entire point -- empty space on the cheap. The argument, which isconstructed based upon revealed outcomes -- or circumstantial evidence -- as nowhere would any of the powerful or their lackeys publicly admit that Afghanistan is an empty space, is comprised of five inter-related sections, the first two of which are included in thisessay. I document how the United States and its client state in Afghanistan, has no interestin real socio-economic development in Afghanistan, and delve into the largely invisible
 
economy where most Afghans carry out a daily struggle to survive. Part two will expose thegrotesque forms of pseudo-development in Kabul, reveal how an illusionary image of progress and governance -- Brand Karzai - is constructed and marketed, and close with ananalysis of the U.S. military strategy, which is geared to protect at least cost an "empty space," a modern reincarnation of the buffer state.
Real development is an after-thought
In 1989/90 when Afghanistan had served its 'external' purpose -- defeating Soviet forcesand weakening the Soviet Union -- U.S. interest faded and the country became an "empty space" though with dire medium-run consequences (in the guise of Osama bin Ladendisembarking in Jalalabad in 1996, at the invitation not of the Taliban but by theirenemies, mujahideen warlords whom the U.S. had funded and armed
5
). Similarly, duringthe period 1950-79, Afghanistan was of no interest to U.S. policymakers so long as thecountry's leaders maintained its neutrality during the Cold War, something carefully pursued in those decades. Afghanistan is of no economic interest either in terms of what it exports legally (dried fruitand carpets) or as a market for imports and foreign investment. One can only look on withsome bemusement as the Western development establishment searches feverishly forlegitimate "new" exports, both as substitutes for opium, and to contribute to righting ahuge trade deficit. High-value products like cut flowers, saffron, rosewater, lavender, andperfumes have been suggested as substitute crops
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. But even the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization dismisses the saffron idea, noting that it might grow in theMaiwand district of Kandahar, "...but fits into a different agricultural niche than poppy andis simply not a viable alternative."
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Such views conveniently forget that the country's economy has historically been basedupon self-sufficiency and subsistence agriculture, centered upon the clan at the villagelevel.
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The exponential rise in land devoted to opium poppy production since 2001 is a very clearindicator of peoples' revealed options or preferences in terms of survival opportunities. Year-end 2005 estimates indicated that more than 2 million Afghans, about 9 percent of the population, grew opium illegally. Focus upon land under cultivation, however, can bemisleading if per acre yields vary as they did during 2003-4 when bad weather and cropinfestation significantly reduced yields. In 1999, under the Taliban, 4,600 tons of opiumresin were produced compared to 4,200 tons in 2004. In 2003, total output was about3,600 tons with a hectare yield of 45 kilos of opium, which brought in a farm gate price$283 a kilo (but only $92 in 2004, though, as The Economist noted, "...still not bad, whenGDP per head is around $200
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). The average kilo farm-gate price of opium in 2005 was$102 (a kilo of heroin sold for $60,000 on the streets of Moscow.
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) Yields have since risen-- 32 kilos per hectare in 2004 to 39 kilos in 2005 -- an increase in acreage yield of 22percent attributed greater moisture and no crop infestation. While the Western presspoints to the "success" of efforts in combating poppy production by highlighting a decreasein acreage between 2004-5 from 131,000 to 104,000 hectares, overall opium output in2005 remained at 4,100 tons
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. The prospects are for a continuing flourishing poppy trade.
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Noel Jameel Abdullah

I read this in Asia Times a few years back.Great read!

reply01 / 13 / 2011
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