Comments on: Letting Poppy Kill the Counterinsurgency http://registan.net/index.php/2009/04/29/letting-poppy-kill-the-counterinsurgency/ All Central Asia, All The Time Fri, 25 May 2012 20:24:26 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: vimothy http://registan.net/index.php/2009/04/29/letting-poppy-kill-the-counterinsurgency/comment-page-1/#comment-380116 vimothy Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:28:52 +0000 http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/04/29/letting-poppy-kill-the-counterinsurgency/#comment-380116 I'm a bit confused by the logic here. Surely the source of the rents is not the issue. The fact of opium production is incidental to the insurgency. The people are the resource the Taliban are exploiting, not the plant. What matters it to the Taliban if they are taxing the product of food, flowers or narcotics? And our response is to... raise the cost of opium production, so that the people become poorer and there are consequently less rents to extract. That's what I call population-centric! I’m a bit confused by the logic here. Surely the source of the rents is not the issue. The fact of opium production is incidental to the insurgency. The people are the resource the Taliban are exploiting, not the plant. What matters it to the Taliban if they are taxing the product of food, flowers or narcotics?

And our response is to… raise the cost of opium production, so that the people become poorer and there are consequently less rents to extract. That’s what I call population-centric!

]]> By: David M http://registan.net/index.php/2009/04/29/letting-poppy-kill-the-counterinsurgency/comment-page-1/#comment-380115 David M Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:05:11 +0000 http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/04/29/letting-poppy-kill-the-counterinsurgency/#comment-380115 The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post <a href="http://www.thunderrun.us/2009/04/from-front-04302009.html" rel="nofollow">From the Front: 04/30/2009 </a> News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front. The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 04/30/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.

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