open Democracy News Analysis - A global economic war, Paul Rogers - Comments

jpcruz on "The global economic war"

jpcruz — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:09:19 +0000

No doubt you have a point there.

richard on "The global economic war"

richard — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 10:20:42 +0000

IThe Taliban have to spend money on their war effort, money which comes from the opium farmers.
90% of the heroin on our streets comes from Afghanistan. There is no
realistic hope that poppy growing will be stopped by military force,
since it provides more than 40% of Afghanistan's GDP, so the poppy
industry will continue to be the lifeblood of the Taliban and assorted
criminals. Meanwhile, some 6 million people a year die in pain of cancer
in less developed countries, without the benefit of opiates to relieve
their agony. International medical agencies should buy the Afghan opium
corp, just as we currently buy Indian and Turkish opium, and apply it to
humanitarian medical use.

The UK Government refuses to consider this policy, objecting that some of
the purchased opium might be diverted from government agencies to the
black market. This is a meaningless objection given the fact that at the
moment 100% of the trafficked crop finds its way onto the black market.
They also object that the Afghan Government does not have the necessary
resources, institutional capacity and control mechanisms in place to ensure that
they are the sole purchaser of opiate raw materials. This begs the question of what tiny fraction of the cost of military
action would be needed to set this up. The Government does not address
the question that the drug trade is one of the main sources of revenue
for terrorists.

A change of policy from prohibition to legitimisation and humanitarian
application would surely be seen as a statesmanlike choice.

We should all join the growing number of agencies, including the Afghan
Red Crescent and the Italian Red Cross, who are pressing for this solution.

Steven Rogers on "The global economic war"

Steven Rogers — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 08:57:09 +0000

Gaining new skills and boldness? How does one reach that conclusion?

In the early 1990s the Philippine NPA was approaching strategic parity with the Armed Forces of the Philippines, and was able to field batallion-strength forces. Today, with a fraction of that manpower available, they are reduced to extortion-driven raids on mining camps.

8 years into the struggle against Soviet occupation, the Afghan mujahedin were routinely engaging Soviet forces, shooting down aircraft, destroying tanks, and sending thousands of body bags back to Russia. Today they are reduced to attacking trucks and staging suicide bombings directed largely at Afghan civilians.

"New skills and boldness"... or desperation?

jpcruz on "The global economic war"

jpcruz — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:56:36 +0000

«are you saying these are all part of a global conspiracy as your title suggests?»

Sorry to barge in your dialogue with the author, but no he is not. He is saying that "From Nigeria to the Philippines, Mexico to India, insurgents are finding new ways to mobilise rage. It is in Afghanistan that the tactical impact will be most sharply felt.»

It's not a "global conspiracy". Violent insurgent movements all over the world, each one with their own agendas, are "simply" gaining new skills and boldness, and eventually learning from each other (not necessarly by closing connections with each other, but, for instance, by studying media reports, pherhaps...).

And that, as Mr. Rogers puts it, is getting very dangerous.

John Mackinlay on "The global economic war"

John Mackinlay — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:57:34 +0000

Dear Professor Rogers, Your overview presents lists of insurgencies in remote places and attacks on logistic installations but are you saying these are all part of a global conspiracy as your title suggests? If you are - isnt this a bit old fashioned? RAND (see Gompert's paper and much earlier by Brennan) and Robert Springborg's statement to the H o C Defence Committee all suggest that what you are presenting as elements of a global conspiracy are more likely to be national movements and that perhaps you are still seeing this through the prism of the Bush administration's National Strategy against terrorism which reflects a very '90s view of the problem. Best wishes John Mackinlay

Not logged in Lawrence Efana on "The global economic war"

Not logged in Lawrence Efana — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 02:25:58 +0000

My dear Stephen Rogers, this is Sunday morning. I share your fears and reasons why it might be possible to think this way, but permit me, while sympathizing with you totally on the facts of the realities you rightly lift into the debate forefront, to add that truly we need to target insurgency, terrorism and criminal acts - not doubts about that! Having agreed thus with you, let us go just one step further on other fronts of our global threats, and also lift up the environmental dimension. Here we had the "Noah" - our beloved former Vice President years back, Al Gore] who demonstrated and presented his scientific findings - above all]. I would not say that he said that he is not concerned about sustainable development and indeed I would not go too far to think of him as having been "ideologically" motivated; of-course, there is always that "normative" or "party-line" factor - a sound arm of our respect in those places where people actually respect and practice democracy. There is every reason to be alert and while I am with you in that sense, please be kind enough not for give-up joining me on the question of: "what type of [global] world we want for ourselves and generations to come"? It is not ideological but a simple and plane question, especially when our two honorable presidential candidates share the belief that there is the need for change!

Lawrence Efana [Finland]

Steven Rogers on "The global economic war"

Steven Rogers — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 15:31:20 +0000

Attacks against economic targets are certainly rising, but whether this indicates that "nsurgents are finding new ways to mobilise rage" is debatable. It might be more accurate to say that such attacks indicate a new way to mobilise cynicism.

Economic targets are often classic "soft targets", exposed and difficult to secure. This vulnerability, combined with the tactics and technology of modern terrorism, makes them ideal targets for groups with limited manpower, resources, and popular support, who wish to make a significant visible impact with minimal risk and investment. It's a tactic that can easily backfire, though, as it often alienates key constituencies: few communities appreciate having their power lines cut, their fuel supplies disrupted, or their employers and potential employers driven away.

"Economic warfare" may also sink to the level of simple extortion. Mr. Rogers cites the Philippines as an example, but fails to mention that NPA attacks on large and small businesses are invariably linked to financial demands. Attacks are made to punish businesses that fail to pay, and to encourage others to pay. In many areas the NPA, despite its nominal psuedo-Maoist ideology, has deteriorated into little more than a glorified protection racket, with a corresponding loss of public esteem.

These tactics are less an indication of a new strategy than an indication of weakness: groups resort to them because they haven't the capacity to conduct mass actions or more challenging military operations. Nor is it entirely reasonable to describe the incrreased volume of such attacks as a "global economic war". There is little or no evidence of any strategic coordination, and it seems more likely that this is simply a case of disparate marginal groups in a few scattered areas adopting similar tactics due to similar circumstances. When groups with minimal resources or support desire to pursue a objective of questionable popularity by violent means, assaults on economic targets are a logical step. Whether it is appropriate to describe this as "insurgency", rather than terrorism or simple criminality, is open to some debate, and any suggestion that this indicates some growing struggle of have-nots against haves owes more to ideology than analysis.

Not logged in Lawrence Efana on "The global economic war"

Not logged in Lawrence Efana — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:24:43 +0000

I will shorten my comments. Paul Rogers has made a real assessment of the present state of our world. Surely it is not for elicitation reasons to know who the good friends are, because truly the commentator is a good friend. However, the scenario frightens, but could these commonly asked questions help attempts to build hope: (i) Should we take enough time to ask ourselves what type of world we want to live in after what we are seeing? (ii) Do we allow ourselves be truly concerned over the problems of illiteracy, poverty, inequality and managing sustainable development for all? (iii) Where there are hitches do we really need to resort to killings (war) or should we rely more on good diplomacy and patience in finding and managing the solutions? (iv) Are we committed to using the United Nations as we should? (v) Are we truly convinced about our institutions - including: GOs and NGOs? Or are we more concerned over 'status quo' to the extent that we loose sight of the psychological dimensions and the best possible ways of dealing with them without war? What leadership qualities, for example, do we recommend in world affairs? All in all: how do we define and approach modernity and with what speed, what consequences for the environment, future generations, cultures and peoples? Do we have any reason to reassess our strategic interests and and approaches to risk and intelligence estimates for the sake of a peaceful global world?

Lack of genuine strife for peace, now tending to return the world to the old is making many people nervous! Everywhere, people want peace, poverty reduction and sustainable development not conflicts and wars. Democracy and economic development would do well with morals stocked behind values of this kind.

Lawrence Efana [Finland]

Not logged in Lawrence Efana on "The global economic war"

Not logged in Lawrence Efana — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:06:45 +0000

A very useful assessment of the state of our world at present and surely it is worrying to many but it should not be a case of using "elicitation techniques" to know who your friends are, for truly we are your right friends, but let us ransack our selves before those who give us the mandate democratically, and before the God we truly worship and set things right in this world we are given the grace to manage and live in". The world is not our permanent home. The grace allows us live on the "mother earth" and when it is time we go into eternity, but then generations continue and the rest of us must not spoil the grace and things for them - it is about sustainable development, our approach to modernity and progress, and above all the morale.

Are we really taking the time to ask ourselves what type of world we want to live in after what we are now seeing? Do we allow ourselves to be truly concerned over the problems of illiteracy, poverty and inequality, among others? Do we need to fight and kill in trying to solve some problems in our world? Are we using the United Nations as we should? Are we morally concerned with GOs and NGOs activities and contributions? Do we truly ask ourselves where we go wrong and accept that we do so? Or do we all the time want to protect the "status quo" and leave out the psychological consequences in situations where as literates we understand and do not underestimate the frustration aggression thesis? Where can we be human and learn to bow a little away from war and instead talk more - make good diplomacy our watch word - what has now at least saved us in Georgia?

As a Nigerian, I might not know enough to comment about other conflict zones in our world, but I do know that though I am now a Finnish citizen, Nigeria, my birth country, but for the Biafran war is a relatively peaceful country, albeit corruption is a problem now that the country is going through the lessons of how to build democratic culture and institutions. It is making business with the West as usual in spite of the problems of how to use the oil money to foster sustainable regional development and environmental policy. The moral burdens are on the Local, State and the Federal Governments there as well as on the investors in its Oil and Gas industries.

To add a little but not much, I just managed to suffer to release a book titled "Political transformation in post and non-post conflict transition democratic and non-democratic states: Learning about democracy and International relations and Comparing beyond African Cases". I have sent it to open democracy for editing so that I can learn more! I foresaw a lot of the global problems: the bearings of which also made me earlier to try contributing with the book "African political study: ancient and modern history, political systems and democracy deficit" and the Occasional Paper "Introduction to research on national and international terrorism: threats, countermeasures and challenges to the civil society". I have been attached and misunderstood even here unfortunately, but my heart is pure and I believe others see that too. A a peaceful world is within our reach but it our minds and diplomatic approaches that continue to deny and put us to conflicts, most of which could definitely be avoided, which in that way would allow us divert our resources into solving the problems of poverty, inequality and socializing the states and cultures we think we could help to softy learn and accept the principles of democracy. Aphoristically we are told "Rome was not built in a day"! God will help us ransack ourselves first to do good to the world and its peoples.

Lawrence Efana [Finland]

A global economic war, Paul Rogers

david hayes — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:46:27 +0000

The five-day war between Georgia and Russia, and the opening week of the Olympic games in Beijing, captured much of the world's and the media's attention in the second week of August 2008. It is not surprising, then, that events in the continuing, low-level - though increasingly dangerous - war in Afghanistan have been relatively under-reported. After all, who wants to read about an asymmetrical war between rural insurgents and advanced military powers that will soon enter its eighth year?

It is a question that will need no answer from the family or colleagues of the British soldier killed by a suicide-bomb on 11 August; or from those of the four workers of the humanitarian group the International Rescue Committee (IRC) who were killed as they drove from Gardez in southwest Afghanistan to Kabul on 13 August (an incident that has led the IRC indefinitely to suspend its operations in the country after twenty yearts of work); or from those of the Afghan civilians who continue to die on a regular basis as a result of bombing-raids by Nato / International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) air-strikes.

But even without the headlines, the conflict in Afghanistan has an impact on many more than the bereaved - and the signs are that this impact is set to intensify as the tactical sophistication of the insurgents increases. A graphic report on 13 August from Kabul by the BBC's Afghanistan correspondent, pointing out that Taliban militias had greatly increased their level of targeting of the supply-lines into Kabul, illustrates how the war is spreading (see Alastair Leithead, "Taleban at Kabul's doorstep", BBC, 13 August 2008). A much-vaunted success of economic regeneration after the termination of the Taliban regime in November 2001 was Highway One, the main route into Kabul; but it is now repeatedly the target of the revitalised Taliban insurgents.

The BBC report states that fifty-one trucks have been destroyed in attacks on the highway since mid-July 2008 alone. This is just one indication of a concentration on supply-routes that has been evolving for over a year . Such intensity of focus presents serious problems even to the best-equipped and most technologically advanced armies in the world (see Sami Yousafzai & Ron Moreau, "The Taliban's Baghdad strategy" , 26 July 2008).

From Kabul to the Niger delta

This trend in Afghanistan is paralleled by similar instances of paramilitary targeting of critical economic infrastructure by other groups around the world - as far afield as Mexico, the Philippines, Nigeria and India. Their individual and local projects have the ability to cause disruption that has global effects, though they have yet to be registered alongside the discussion of the performance of higher-profile militant groups (see Anton La Guardia, "Al-Qaeda: Winning or losing?", Economist, 17 July 2008).

An earlier column in this series pointed to this emerging cluster, citing also events in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere (see "The asymmetry of economic war", 14 February 2008). In the six moths since it was published, there have been numerous further incidents of this kind. There is, for example, a new emphasis on economic targeting by the resurgent Naxalite rebels in India; such tactics are particularly effective in a rapidly growing economy where the infrastructure is already struggling to keep up with demand and is therefore vulnerable to even small-scale operations (see "China and India: heartlands of global protest", 7 August 2008).

This was also the experience in Mexico in 2007 where the previously marginal Marxist EPR insurgents staged multiple attacks on oil-and-gas pipelines. The EPR continued these tactics three months ago while rejecting talks with the Mexican government (see Mark Joyce, "Mexican pipeline bombers reject talks", Jane's Intelligence Review, June 2008). Meanwhile, the (Maoist) New People's Army in the Philippines has extended its operations against power lines, telecommunications centres and roads to include mining operations as the Philippines' extractive industries experience rapid investment by foreign companies (see Gavin Greenwood, "Rich Seam", Jane's Intelligence Review, July 2008).

Even such examples of disruption in India, Mexico and the Philippines are small-scale, however, compared to the problems experienced by the Nigerian oil industry. These have evolved over several years, but in 2008 have become much more serious.

The oil-production systems in the Niger delta are broadly grouped into three zones: the operations based on land, those in the swamps and shallow waters of the coastal delta, and deep-water operations that are relatively recent but have become very productive. The on-shore facilities have long been subject to sabotage by a number of local militias resentful at what is seen as the riches of their region being siphoned off to Nigeria's elites. More recently there has been an increase in attacks on the swamp and shallow-water facilities, notwithstanding the difficult terrain that needs to be crossed in reaching them.

In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here.

Paul Rogers's most recent book is Why We're Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007) - an analysis of the strategic misjudgments of the post-9/11 era and why a new security paradigm is needed.

The really surprising development in this context was an attack on the deepwater Bonga oilfield on 19 June 2008 by a militia group known as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend). The Bonga field started production in 2005, was the first of what is expected to be a series of major deepwater facilities, and is already producing a tenth of Nigeria's entire oil output. It is operated by Shell and is 120 kilometres offshore in a location previously regarded as secure (see Neil Ford, "In Deep Water", Jane's Intelligence Review, August 2008).

In the assault, the paramilitaries used a number of rigid inflatable boats to attack a substantial site termed a "floating production, storage and offloading" vessel (FPSO) - a single structure that takes oil direct from the undersea wells and feeds it through to oil tankers. Because an FPSO is self-contained, oil does not have to be piped ashore to sites that would be more directly vulnerable; but in the 19 June attack the Mend militia was able to undertake a 240-kilometre round (and open-sea) journey (see Jeff Vail, "Nigeria - The Significance of the Nigeria Bonga Offshore Oil Platform Attack", The Oil Drum, 24 June 2008). The aim appears to have been to take over the control room of the structure, possibly to extract a large ransom. This failed, but several people were injured and a US oil worker was kidnapped (though later released).

The failure of this attack to achieve its main aim does not diminish its significance, both in terms of the evolving tactics of targeting economic infrastructure, and the specific example of hitting an important part of Nigeria's oil industry at a time of worldwide shortages and rising prices.

The broader battle

It is, again, in Afghanistan itself that this kind of targeting is having a more immediate result. The BBC report cited above described an attack against the major highway close to Kabul; but this follows a marked increase in Taliban attacks on the route into Afghanistan from Karachi across western Pakistan (see Douglas Frantz, "Taleban, Al Qaeda Unchecked in Pakistan", Washington Independent, 14 August 2008). During the early months of 2008, numerous tankers and trucks were hit in repeated attacks close to the border, especially in and near the Khyber pass. The most spectacular was on the night of 23 March, when forty fuel-tankers were destroyed (see Sami Yousafzai, Ron Moreau & John Barry, "An Assault on Supplies", Newsweek, 7 April 2008).

In the face of these problems, it is possible in principle for United States and other Nato forces to substantially increase patrols on the main routes. This may be a costly diversion from other aspects of their war, but could limit the capacity of militias to disrupt supplies. The problem is that there are indications of Taliban and al-Qaida militias having already thought this through, and planning to move to another area of operations.

One informed estimate suggests that as much as 90% of all of the supplies for Nato's operations in Afghanistan are routed through the Pakistani port city of Karachi; most head for Kabul and some for Kandahar. While some high-value supplies arrive by air, and small quantities come from Russia, Karachi is the key gateway, especially for fuel (see (Syed Saleem Shahzad, "New al-Qaeda focus on NATO supplies", Asia Times, 11 August)

The only realistic alternative would be shipment through Iranian ports such as Chabahar on the Indian Ocean coast. While Chabahar is mainly used by large dhows, it has impressive new facilities as well as a road link through eastern Iran to Afghanistan; but the Iranians have, not surprisingly, refused to consider US requests to use this route.

Karachi is not yet the centre for a major Taliban/al-Qaida operation, but the Asia Times reports that al-Qaida has established cells in the city to begin the process. With its concentrated population and vulnerable and overcrowded road system, Karachi lends itself to supply-route attacks (and especially those using suicide-bombers).

In one sense, this last aspect may be the most important one of all. The technique of targeting critical economic infrastructure is nothing new. "The asymmetry of economic war" gives numerous examples, one of the most effective being the use of economic targeting by the Provisional IRA in Britain in the 1990s. But something almost unprecedented is happening: the combination of economic targeting with suicide-attacks. The escalation in the use of suicide-bombs in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the recognition of the vulnerability of supply-lines, make it more than possible that the two will be combined in operations in Karachi. This could be a new and unanticipated focus in 2008-09, the eighth year of the Afghanistan war.

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