ARTICLE: 'Colombia's Low-Tech Coca Assault: Uprooting Bushes by Hand Preferred Over U.S.-Funded Aerial Spraying,' By Juan Forero, Washington Post, Saturday, July 7, 2007; Page A01
One is struck by our Leviathan-like tendency to rely on technology and strength from above when what works best is very 1Sigma, on the ground, with lotsa bodies, and the real point being the extension of presence.
The Leviathan attacks strategically because he's all about destroying the opponent's ability to wage similar war. But that doesn't work for the vast majority of the enemies and tasks we face inside the Gap, where there's no escaping presence on the ground, where the simplest technology works best, and where your victory is defined by the extension of your networks and the reduction of theirs.
Thanks to David Stewart for sending this.
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Comments (4)
Spraying from the air is something that you can do in areas that you don't control on the ground. If you control an area militarily, you can use these methods like manual control to get rid of the coca plants.
This has all sorts of other benefits as mentioned in the article. It brings the government representatives into greater contact with the parts of the country where coca is grown. It puts money into the pockets of the many laborers who are cutting down the coca plants by hand.
It would not surprise me to learn that roads into the coca areas are being improved as a result of all this additional activity. Here is a low tech way to improve roads if you can hire lots of guys with shovels who work cheap: dig a drainage ditch on the side of the road. If you are really ambitious, dig a drainage ditch on both sides of the road. Throw the dirt from the ditches onto the roadway. When it rains, the water runs off the road into the ditch instead of pooling up on the road and turning the whole thing into mud. If you get really flush, put in fancy features like culverts, bridges instead of fords and even gravel in the muddiest places. Remote locations will become a little more connected.
Posted by Mark in Texas | July 8, 2007 12:22 PM
To echo Mark, when I was working CD stuff there, the government folks looked at us crazily when we spoke about alternative development projects. I guess when you can't get your produce (the oranges that the US was buying to supplant the coca) to market because of the lack of roads, it makes growing coca that much more attractive. That and large groups of armed thugs who will kill you if you don't grow the stuff. The Colombians even spoke about getting blimps to airlift the produce out of the cultivaing areas. Crazy idea, but at least they were thinking. What is really sad is that the Leviathan is the cause of their problems in the first place, boy do we like our cocaine.
Posted by Ben | July 9, 2007 8:33 AM
Better still, Mark, imitate Roman road design. When something built with no high-tech metals, machinery or petrochemicals is still usable today, the potential for imitation in gap development is obvious.
Getting back to the main topic, though, the sick thing is that the best solution is lower tech still; legalize the stuff so we don't have to destroy it:P
Posted by Michael | July 9, 2007 8:22 PM
No, Michael, you are missing the point. The goal is not to build some piece of low tech infrastructure in the gap that will last for 2000 years. The goal is to get the oranges to market. The amount of effort and resources that it would take to build a single mile of Roman road could dig drainage ditches on either side of 100 miles of dirt road or bring 20 miles of muddy dirt road up to the standard of a Forest Service all weather gravel road. With the roads improved, people who live near those roads get more connected to the Core and the Gap shrinks just a little bit more.
Posted by Mark in Texas | July 14, 2007 4:09 AM