[HN Gopher] The Taliban Has Claimed Afghanistan's Real Economic ...
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The Taliban Has Claimed Afghanistan's Real Economic Prize
Author : wombatmobile
Score : 25 points
Date : 2021-08-18 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (archive.ph)
(TXT) w3m dump (archive.ph)
| throwawaysea wrote:
| The link doesn't load for me. It appears to be some kind of
| archive website - what was the original link?
| wombatmobile wrote:
| New York Times
|
| Opinion - Guest Essay
|
| Graeme Smith and David Mansfield
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/18/opinion/taliban-afghanist...
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| The tl;dr is they captured trade routes and trade posts that
| generate a significant amount of money, one example being illegal
| trading of gas, I guess from Iran to other places, going around
| an embargo (it didn't specify exactly what was illegal). This
| would be 100s of millions a year in total.
| cutchin wrote:
| I have a hard time agreeing with the central premise here.
|
| The article states that the Taliban had a protection scheme
| (possibly legitimate, possibly a racket) going on to effectively
| tax all trade through their regions and that made them a lot of
| money. I can believe that.
|
| But calling that the "real economic prize" seems to miss the
| point. There was so much trade happening because of the tens of
| billions of US dollars flooding into the nation. If you take away
| all that money, you are left with a lot less economic activity to
| tax, and are probably dealing with customers and suppliers who
| can't afford nearly as much protection money.
|
| If there was a true economic prize, it's the foreign aid coming
| in which will likely dry up soon. There are no major
| international shipping routes through Afghanistan (I think! see
| my note below), so without the foreign money they're left
| skimming off the top of trade through a poor developing nation,
| which doesn't seem like much of a prize at all.
|
| However... the article states this : "Even before their blitz
| into the capital over the weekend, the Taliban had claimed the
| country's real economic prize: the trade routes -- comprising
| highways, bridges and footpaths -- that serve as strategic choke
| points for trade across South Asia." I wish they'd elaborated
| more on this - are there some desirable routes going through
| Afghanistan that nations in the region might like to use for
| trade?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The thing is, you profit more from a trade route when more
| trade flows. This happens with the rule of law, and with
| infrastructure development. The Taliban could grow this golden
| goose, or they could strangle it. I'm leaning toward predicting
| "strangle".
| imtringued wrote:
| Yeah sounds about right. How did billions in foreign aid get
| squandered? Well, tons of middlemen (among them the Taliban)
| took their cut until nothing was left.
| hasmanean wrote:
| The real prize was not gas or minerals, but all the enemies they
| made along the way.
| erhzag wrote:
| They have up to 40,000 of our citizens _hostage_ - left to die!!
|
| Fuck Biden! Fuck Milley! Fuck Austin!
| dimitar wrote:
| I doubt this adds up to more than a billion dollars, which is not
| a huge amount for a country. The Taliban will still be in trouble
| and might want to diversify.
|
| What is astounding is that the US spent 2 trillion USD over 20
| years or about a 100 billion USD per year. This is 5 times more
| than the estimated 2020 GDP of Afghanistan and most of it went to
| the US economy (last year it was just shy of 5 billion USD in aid
| to Afghanistan, most of it security aid - "paying their salaries"
| as Biden terms it).
|
| The issue is the Afghan government. It can't be bypassed, as
| Afghanistan is a sovereign state. There is little incentive to
| give more in aid, when you know that corruption might be an
| issue. So endless occupation it is, instead of a Marshall plan.
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(page generated 2021-08-18 23:02 UTC)