Ana's Home - Afghanistan: Creation of a Warlord Democracy

Chapter 6 - Post-modernizing Afghanistan

Thus far, we examined the socio-historical context of emergence of warlords, the US-led military intervention in the country, as well as the state-building and democratization paradigms. Next, I shall summarize the symptoms of warlord democracy we discerned so far and order them in a temporal sequence.

6.1. The Symptoms

The Afghan communities have been historically ruled not by royalties and states, but by traditional and customary laws. Afghan warlords emerged from a locally regulated social function of controlled violence. During the Cold War, local warlords were sponsored by the two super-powers. The Cold War on Afghan territory was fought as an inter-ethnic war, with massive casualties on all sides. Ethnic cleavages deepened and poverty increased. With foreign financial aid and advanced military technology, they formed extensive and expensive militant networks. They became dependent on external high-income sources.

After the Cold War, in its continuation in a civil war, foreign aid ceased and warlords started becoming increasingly dependent on the opium market as their main source of income. They started gaining economic predominance and independence, based on their ability to control the opium production and market by military means. The traditional forms of self-rule were damaged and rendered open to military and economic rule. Military conquest of territory was frequently substituted with large-scale payments to traditional and military rulers. Alliances were often bought, and allies shifted sides to the highest bidder. Warlords become militant entrepreneurs, with their ability to deliver or withhold violence put forward for rental to the highest bidder.

The present post-Taliban phase reflects the power relations of the pre-Taliban phase. Warlords are key power-brokers in the democratizing state. They have consolidated their positions in the state instruments of coercion (army and police), and they have consolidated their opium networks, drawing in them an increasing part of the impoverished population. At present, warlords cooperate with the U.S. as local military allies in exchange for financial incentives, and with the UN as security guarantors in exchange for political power. Warlords and their proxies dominated the electoral ballots in the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections 2004 and 2005. They obtained formalized political predominance, in addition to their previously established military and economic predominance. They use their political power to legitimize themselves and obtain impunity for their war crimes, their networks and illicit operations.

Much of the present-day security and informal employment opportunities are derived from warlords’ activities. Much of the insecurity and the paralysis of legal economy is due to their activities as well. Democracy and state-building reflect the same dual relation: these processes are supported by warlords up to a point to which state instruments can be utilized in their personal agendas. A warlord democracy has been consolidated: a regime where formal democratic institutions are manipulated to mask a non-democratic rule by poly-centric power-holders, who dominate the military, economic and political life of the country. As we saw in the previous chapters, four main patterns contributed to the formation of a warlord democracy: the historical and cultural conditions, the act of imposing democracy by foreign military intervention, and the assumptions of the democratic paradigm limited to institutional reforms.

However, these symptoms and conditions are not specific only to Afghanistan. They are symptoms of a larger pattern of change in power-relations enfolding in a number of countries worldwide. This pattern is connected to the emergence of the so-called “new wars” (Kaldor 1999) and the notions of “globalization,” “dedifferentiation” and “commodification,” which will be developed next. Four network models of mutual embeddedness of economy, militancy, society and state will be drafted, in order to explain “post-modernization” of warlordism. The introduced terminology and concepts will delineate the fifth pattern which enabled the creation of a warlord democracy as a symptom of the post-modern age.

The following part will define the aforementioned terms and re-examine warlordism through their prism, in order to show how recent global transformations provide benevolent conditions for creation of warlord democracies. I shall describe the transit of warlordism from pre/modern to post-modern stage, marked by the establishment of a symbiotic relation between warlords and the global systems of politics and economy.

This relation is two-pronged: (a) the first prong is based on the commodified ability to deliver or withhold violence, put forward for rental to the highest bidder on the market (formal and informal, licit and illicit) in societal, political, military and economic contracts; (b) the second prong is based on the militarily-maintained economic predominance over opium trade, which far outweighs optional licit income. With these two prongs, Afghan militant entrepreneurs gain relative independence from sole demand-sources, such as states and society, and transfer their dependence onto the global market. From their economically and militarily independent position, they can enter inclusive contracts and parallel alliances with multiple local and international, state and non-state, licit and illicit actors. They can break these contracts and alliances if they do not support their military, economic and political predominance.

6.2. Models of Societal Interrelations

Prior to entering analysis of the influence the globalizing market has exerted on Afghanistan, I shall elaborate the pre-modern, modern and post-modern models of societal organization. These models are derived on Karl Polanyi’s conceptualization of the modernizing world, and Mittelman and Johnston’s appropriation of Polanyi’s theory in the globalizing world. The models belong to Weberian “ideal types”: “conceptual patterns which bring together certain relationships and events of historical life into a complex which is conceived of as an internally consistent system.” They will serve to differentiate between specific modes of behaviour characteristic to separate historical and organizational phases.

It will be obvious however that no real-world phenomenon at any point of history fully embodies any of the model-stages; instead, any phenomenon can combine features from each stage, where the difference between stages can be seen as a more and/or less movement toward different stage-specific modes of operation. Hence, modern phenomena will tend toward full actualization of the modern model, never fully reaching it, while simultaneously exhibiting some features of pre-modern and post-modern models; correspondently, post-modern phenomena will have their trajectory of development toward the post-modern model(s), while exhibiting features of pre-modern and modern models to a lesser degree.

The four models will show variations of relations between society, economy, militancy, and the state. They should be understood in terms of networks: they depict types of mutual embeddedness of social, economic, militant and state networks, where the size of the circle expresses its power to influence the enfolded circles, or the power to form asymmetric relations of interdependence with them.

Figure 7a. Pre-modern model.

Figure 7b. Modern model

Figure 7c. Post-modern model

Optionally, it would be challenging to examine whether the following model (Fig. 7d) expresses a further extreme of the overall societal relations in post-modern stage. This model depicts the most approximate framework for understanding warlord states:

Figure 7d. Optional post-modern model – Warlordism

6.2.1. Pre-modernity

In the pre-modern model (Fig. 7a), the economic system, according to Polanyi, is submerged in general social relations. I conjoin the military system, which was not examined by Polanyi, but is relevant to this thesis. Violent and economic networks are embedded in and subordinated to the social network. Violence and economy are put into service of the community, which manages, directs and tames them. In the pre-modern world, societal functions are diffuse, lacking sharp differentiation. This model corresponds to the pre-state societal organization. The goals of pre-modern wars are limited to territory and control over natural resources.

6.2.2. Modernity

In the modern model (Fig. 7b), a new actor is created, the state, which functions as an all-embedding network in relation to economy, militancy and society. The state and the society are differentiated; functions are clearly separated between the four actors. In the modern stage, economic and militant systems are put into the service of the state. The wars of the modern phase are characterized by the following goals: control of a specific territory, formation of an independent state, central authority, and acquisition of internationally recognized sovereignty.

This model approximates the Weberian state model, where the state holds monopoly over legitimate use of violence, it regulates the national economic system and it responds to social needs. According to Weber (Morrison 2003:300), the novelties of the modern state system include: contractual impersonal relations bound by legal norms, separation between the administrative and the private sphere, and specialization of functions. Emile Durkheim (Morrison 2003:141-142) adds the following features characteristic for advanced societies: contractual links instead of social links, separate and specialized administrative functions, a centralized authority in the form of legal and political organs, and separate and autonomous economic function. The state-building and democratization paradigm, as practiced in post-conflict settings, aims at actualization of the modern model.

6.2.3. Post-modernity

According to Polanyi it is in this modernizing stage where economy begins to gain in power, by “commodifying” (1957:69-72) three non-commodities: people are commodified into labour force, nature is commodified into property, and wealth into money. However, the worldwide modernization, according to Polanyi (1957:71), begins to reverse the modern-model relations of systemic embeddedness: the social system becomes embedded in the economic system, and it is the world economic system that manages, directs and tames the society henceforth. In the post-modern stage (Fig. 7c.), the rise of the economic system to the most powerful position in the model is consolidated. State, society and militancy are embedded in the economic system. Contractual impersonal relations are bound not by legal but by economic norms, formerly differentiated functions blend, there is a return to a polycentric sources of authority, followed by de-institutionalization and de-formalization.

Weak and violence-ridden state systems are pictured in the optional post-modern model (Fig. 7d.): state and society are embedded into the militant network, which in turn is embedded into the economic system. The system of violence becomes disembedded from the social system, it exits its service, and within the economic system it becomes a commodity in service of the world market forces. The global economic system henceforth manages, directs and tames violence.

The optional post-modern relational constellation is highly illustrative of Afghanistan, a case where the system of militant entrepreneurs tends away from embeddedness in the social system and toward embeddedness in the global economic system. This model (Fig. 7d) more accurately expresses “warlordisation,” where militancy and economy establish a direct link, without the state or the society to influence their exchange. Further on in this text, the term “post-modern” will be used on the background of figures 7c. and 7d., and the term “globalisation” as process of movement from pre/modern to post-modern model. The post-modern stage can be examined as consolidation of symptoms developed in the modern stage. The processes of globalization, elaborated in the following sections, can thus refer both to an amplified, but previously present historical phenomenon, and to a new stage, where the effects of this amplification enable new types of relations and elicit new forms of behaviour.

6.2.4. Post-modern Wars

In the post-modern phase, the modern territory-oriented goals of war become redundant, as competition is limited to control over the economic system, instead of control over a territory and society. Establishing economic predominance is less costly and sufficient. Post-modern wars are about stable sources of profit, as we saw in chapter 1: Afghan warlords begin contesting over sources of profit and trade routes and disconnect from the local communities.

Although Kaldor (1999:3) names identity and population as goals of the new wars, I would, however, argue that these goals are flashbacks of pre- or early modern wars and war-making motives; the new wars are recognizable by their primarily economic character, where other types of goals are subordinated, or even commodified, under the cardinal goal of gain maximization at the global market. It is important to note that the post-modern phase does not eradicate or exclude modern and pre-modern features and motives, but it selectively incorporates and adjusts some of them to become acceptable for the global market and/or for the international community.

6.3. Globalization and Dedifferentiation

The symbiotic relationship of the market and violence, the main point of interest for this thesis, must be understood in terms of globalising “dedifferentiation” (Mittelman/Johnston 1999:114), where previously (in the modern model) sharply differentiated functions, roles, institutions, areas, ends, laws and means, lose their distinction, overlap, multiply and exchange roles. I argue that this effects with a triangular de-differentiation between politics, economy and militancy, where one can observe “post-modern” forms of global re-militarization and commodification of politics, commodified militancy and militant economies. Moreover, the difference between formal and informal politics, between licit and illicit economy , and between legitimate and illegitimate violence, is blurred. Consequently, in this text, I shall use these key terms (militancy, politics, and economy) to refer to both their licit and illicit, formal and informal sides. To describe thoroughly the interplay of these hybrid forms is beyond the ambitions of this text; however, I shall delineate here the context of globalizing market and violence as a framework for understanding the rise of post-modern warlordism in Afghanistan and its consequences to state building and internationally led processes of democratization.

The notion of globalization will draw on Mary Kaldor’s (1999:3) definition, as “intensification of global connectedness […] a contradictory process involving both integration and fragmentation, homogenization and diversification, globalization and localization.” This process, according to Kaldor, takes place in each society, regardless of the stage of development and position in the global economic system. However, in developing countries, globalizing economy tends to arrive before political processes of state-building and development. Typically, developing states are characterized by lack of physical, economic and legal security, so that profit-driven interests create a demand for protection guarantors. This demand couples foreign firms with security providers, which can be international private security companies, authoritarian rulers and state security forces, or local warlords in weak or collapsed states. In another scenario, it is the local militants who reach for the globalizing market and integrate with it by becoming providers of security and/or of (illicit) commodities. In both cases, economy and militancy establish a close unmediated relation, which in turn affects the mode of operation of each of the actors: corporations accommodate means and modes of operation of organized irregular violence, and militants accommodate corporate means and modes of operation.

6.3.1. Commodification of Violence

Post-modern wars borrow from pre-modern and modern types of wars, and yet their economic and corporate features make them distinguishable from both predecessors. The stepping stone between modern and post-modern phase of warfare, I shall claim, is the commodification of violence for the global market: when the ability to deliver or withhold violence gains a price as a service, and is offered as a commodity to the highest bidder on the market. In this phase, the service-provider is liberated from a single demand-source (one or other party) and from societal loyalties. Violence as service is offered to multiple actors simultaneously, and it can get contracted by various actors, sometimes simultaneously by opposing parties.

The global market can accept violence as service, as in the process of commodification the motive of the violent service-provider is divorced from the ability to deliver the service. Hence, the questions of ethical dimensions, consequences for the social network and political legitimacy – all issues based on motives and consequences - these become redundant or inapplicable questions: violent agents and contracts can be legitimized as rational actors with rational behaviour within economically theories. Within economic practice, militant entrepreneurs are treated as licit entrepreneurs; illicit militants and licit security organizations can be equally rented by legitimate or illegitimate actors. Hence, local warlords as militant entrepreneurs, regardless of their motives, enter the global economic market as service providers for parties who can rent them, regardless of the latter’s motives.

The ability to deliver violence or to deliver from it can be used to gain an upper hand in economic, societal and political contracts, locally and globally. The unique feature of this commodity is to provide division between safety and threat; hence, security and violence can be regarded as two sides of the same coin, where the tosser is for rental. However, although the modernist motivation for violence (such as liberation, ethnic identity, or resistance) is de-coupled from the commodified service of violence, pre-modern, modern and post-modern features may coexist together, and the motives for gain or for modernist or pre-modern values can compete with each other in the violent entrepreneur as well.

6.3.2. Warfare, Welfare and Levelling of the State

The post-modern characteristics of the contemporary wars led by commodified violence-providers, according to Kaldor (1999:5), are discernable as processes of dedifferentiation between war actors, organized crime, civilian, economic and state actors , dedifferentiation between combatants and non-combatants (civilians), between internal and external wars, between aggression and repression, between local and global , private and public, state and non-state, formal and informal spheres, between economically and politically motivated actors and wars.

The new post-modern wars, including recent Afghan wars, mime and adjust the following corporate features: high level of decentralization, small-size units connected in lose networks in a mixed relation of confrontation, competition and cooperation, sometimes simultaneously, and even when on opposed sides (Kaldor 1999:8), shifting alliances formed ad hoc, aligned toward a common gain-maximizing goal and broken for the lack of it, light-step approach (without heavy investments or territorialization), high mobility and indiscernability from the surrounding.

Organizationally, corporations and new-warlord structures are polycentric, rarely vertically structured hierarchies; they may engage in multiple services, some licit and some illicit; operations are performed through networks of highly autonomous units, where actors can be indiscriminately state offices, firms, local gangs, mercenaries, entrepreneurs, criminals and so on. The organizational map of post-modern operators corresponds to the contemporary mode of military and economic organization of Afghan actors.

6.3.3. The Post-modern State

Both transnational corporations and transnational (and, equally, local-and-globally-embedded) criminal or violent groups can function above, below and beside the state, capitalizing on economic deregulation, social fragmentation, state building, state withdrawal or state collapse. In the previously depicted figures 7c and 7d, the economy commodifies the systems of militancy, society and state, but militancy, in its turn, militarizes the society and the state. The state becomes a minor co-actor in this network, and yet it does not disappear. However, it has stepped down from its modern (Fig. 7b) predominant position in regard to economy, militancy and society, to become potential winner or loser in the global power competition, alongside the wide array of “non-state” actors. The state, its instruments and resources can also be commodified, and hence they enter the market offered to the highest bidder. In order to survive the intense competition in violence, shifting economic orders and polycentric norm-setting, the state in this way is driven to mime and adjust modes of operation of its new competitors: the differentiation between state and non-state actors is blurred. The state can be drawn into using violent means borrowed from the post-modern type of wars, and it can accommodate the corporate mode of organization of its units and instruments.

The three classical tenets of the European state model are challenged by the relationship between local militancy and global economy: the state does not hold monopoly over violence, its territorial delimitation does not play a significant role, and it is not the sole provider of legal and economic order and norms of regulation of behaviour.

6.3.3. Between War and Peace

In the previous chapters we characterized warlords as dominant militant authorities, with relative legitimacy within their communities, profiting on violence and on illicit trade. Why do warlords, by competing in the elections, showed indubitable signs of willingness to enter the democratizing state structures? Why don not they wage a war against a state which aims to prevent illicit rule and trade? Why does not any one of them challenge the other warlords to expand his influence and establish an autarchy? The answer refers back to the character of the post-modern wars: control of state territory can but does not have to be on the personal agenda of a new warlord. Economic control suffices, so long as the service of violence is in high demand, as external parties are interested to pay for it, by military, economic or political goods as exchange items. In addition, criminalization of opium and permanent demand for security, their two key commodities, increase the prices of the services warlords offer.

Between the poles of war and peace, there is a state of permanent, resurgent low-intensity violence of manageable scope and target. It seems that neither war nor peace is desirable state for continuing warlordism. Atmar and Goodhand (2002:114) explain the undesirability of peace: “the war is sustained by the availability of lootable or taxable resources and the low cost of recruiting fighters. Peace would disrupt the systems of production and exchange that provide warlords and their followers with livelihoods.” Their military and societal power puts warlords in position to influence, appropriate and profit on international aid during war or in early post-war years, by taxing it or by providing secure environment for operations of international organizations. As their power is based on military commodity, peace, strong central government and rule of law do not serve their interest, unless they are the ones who guarantee peace, participate in the government and enforce rule of their own law.

Paradoxically, civil war, no government and no rule of any law are not in their interest either: civil war means continuous and expensive fighting; it costs lives and resources; it disturbs the agricultural (licit and illicit) production and breaks off transport routes.

In terms of power-struggle, “no government” literally puts all warlords in position to fight against each other for domination of the central government: in this scenario, they may be pitched against each other over a single goal, the whole state, and driven to abandon their traditional ethnic realms where they draw their support from the local community, and to which they traditionally have been limiting their ambitions. No rule of any law (state or customary law) means a disorganized community of potential followers unaccountable to any standard.

A weak government, low level of manageable violence and local/manageable rule of law are favourable conditions for “warlordisation.” Moreover, in the post-modern phase, the state and the related international efforts, can be commodified and privatized. Stephen Watts claims that warlord democracies can coexist with a central state-like power and maintain a manageably instable economic system of illegal, informal or illegally appropriated economy. Incentives are distributed through the patronage networks, and protection is offered through informal, illegal or illegally appropriated state resources.

6.3.4. Post-modernizing Afghanistan

Afghanistan presents a special case of globalizing illicit economy, militant politics and commodified violence, paralleled at present with Western-led (modernist) state-building. Let us use the globalizing terminology to re-state the symptoms listed in the beginning of this chapter (Sec. 6.1.):

Historically, Afghanistan has never approximated the modern model of state formation, centralized authority, differentiation of political, economic and military functions, separation of the public and private sphere. Instead, it has been ruled by polycentric traditional forms of authority. The previous state regimes have been regularly checked by its pre-modern communities, fiercely autonomous and resistant to centralization. The systems of violence and profit have been embedded into the social system, regulated by customary laws. Without passing through a modernization phase, Afghan warlords have reached post-modern stage, by means of commodifying their ability to deliver or withhold violence and by means of becoming major players in the global opium trade.

The dedifferentiation between violence, profit and politics has submerged not only warlords, but the traditional social system of rule as well. Violence, and hence profit, has whirled away from the control of the customary laws of the indigenous communities, which become embedded in the militant networks; through them, they become embedded in the economic network as well. The militant network serves as a mediator between communities and their economic sustenance. Ethnic violence is used as an instrument in military and political competition. Ethnicity is thus commodified and instrumentalized. Actors pledge loyalty to the highest bidder. Loyalty is commodified.

Afghan warlords post-modernize when they become financially independent from single parties, by means of transferring their dependence onto the opium market. The economic predominance, secured by military potential, enables them to intermittently switch between military and economic strife, as the context requires. Warlords consolidate as militant entrepreneurs when their ability to deliver or withhold violence is put forward for rental to the highest bidder, regardless to traditional social loyalties (ethnicity, religion, etc.) and regardless to the bidder’s motivation and agenda.

At present, as violent service providers, warlords cooperate with the U.S. as local military allies in exchange for financial incentives, and with the UN as security guarantors in exchange for political power. Warlords have commodified the newly built state and its democratic institutions: offices, state instruments, state resources, candidacies, political support and individual votes. Dedifferentiated are politics, economy and militancy; state and non-state actors, licit and illicit activities, local and global actors and operations.

Much of the present-day security and informal employment opportunities in Afghanistan are derived from warlords’ activities. Much of the insecurity and paralysis of legal economy is due to their activities as well. Democracy and state-building reflect the same dual relation: these processes are supported by warlords up to a point to which state instruments can be utilized in their personal agendas. A warlord democracy has been consolidated: a regime where formal democratic institutions are manipulated to mask a non-democratic rule by poly-centric power-holders, who dominate the military, economic and political life of the country.

Afghanistan is a case where, with a high degree of certainty, it can be predicted that low-intensity conflicts will continue, for two reasons: (a) the embeddedness of the militant entrepreneurs in the global opium trade, and (b) the commodification of violence as an informal service (as clients in the U.S. military patronage network, as political partners in the state-building process, and as local guarantors of security of property, personhood and contract).

Afghanistan is also a case which shows how modernist ideas of state-building cannot successfully compete with the flexible strategies of post-modern profit-fare and warfare, within a constellation of post-modern actors which combine and utilize pre-modern and modern features to maximize their personal gain. The local warlords sustained by the global market of opium appear to be more fitted for survival than the state dependent on international aid and foreign military support.

However, as long as local warlords can commodify the state institutions, its instruments and resources, no state destruction should be expected. Instead, a continually weak state and violent conditions are likely to be maintained, an environment where the ability to deliver or withhold violence remains commodity in highest demand, a trump for each party and game, nourishing and being nourished by the symbiosis between the warlords and the global market.

Notes:

“The [pre-modern, note added] economic system is… a mere function of social organization,” (Polanyi 1957:67).

“[In pre-modern stage] man’s economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships. He does not act so as to safeguard his individual interest in the possession of material goods; he acts so as to safeguard his social standing, his social claim, his social assets. He values material goods only in so far as they serve this end… the economic system will be run on non-economic motives,” (Polanyi 1957:46).

“Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system.”(Polany 1957:57). “All along the line, human society had become an accessory of the economic system,” (ibid., 75).

Thus, nationalistic leaders can be for rental, religious or ethnic loyalties can be given up, and set against their communities for a proper price.

It should be noted though that dedifferentiation does not happen alone. It is accompanied by specific post-modern forms of differentiation, de-coupling of previously blended terms, such as economic development and social policy (Mittelman/Johnston 1999:112).

Global economy, as a system of trans-national economic activities.

The question of legitimacy, a pillar of the Weberian stateas bearer of monopoly over legitimate Use of force on a delineated territory, is a question which defines itself on the motive of the militant actors (including the state). By commodifying violence this question is neutralized: it does not enter the rational economic calculations of choice of partners and outsourcing agents. A corporation does not inquire about the motives of a service provider, but about their ability to deliver the good.

It is important to note that the tosser is not for sale: self-sacrificing loyalty of a “sold” actor belongs to the modern and pre-modern periods, while the loyalty of commodified violence is subject to economic rules and market competition. “You cannot buy an Afghan, you can only rent him,” so goes a saying in Afghanistan. An interesting consequence of the differentiation between rental and sale refers to the responsibility of the demand-party: while “bought” commodities entail full responsibility over the item, “rented” commodities dissolve this responsibility and render the demand-party relatively freer from responsibility over the effects of the rented item deployment.

“[T]he new wars involve a blurring of the distinction between war (usually defined as violence between states or organized political groups for political motives), organized crime (violence undertaken by privately organized groups for private purposes, usually financial gains) and large-scale violations of human rights (violence undertaken by states or politically organized groups against individuals),” (Kaldor 1999:2).

According to Mary Kaldor, the new wars are localized, but embedded in “a myriad of transnational connections so that the distinction between internal and external, between aggression (attacks from abroad) and repression (attacks from inside the country), or even between local and global, are difficult to sustain,” (Kaldor 1999:2).

Mittelman and Johnston (1999:107-108) link transnational organized crime and transnational corporations through their common behaviour: gain maximization, rational decision-making, product innovation, risk reduction, investment in research and development, and technological advancement. They both operate through strategic alliances or subcontracting, and move toward opening markets. Also: “Increasingly, actors in the illicit side of the economy mirror the transnational business strategies of actors in the licit side, including subcontracting, joint ventures and strategic alliances, Use of offshore bank accounts, and sectoral diversification. […] extreme variation in the levels of organization and degree of criminality… from independent entrepreneurs to loose networks of transnational gangs, to highly developed and vertically integrated criminal organization.” (Richard H. Friman and Peter Andreas, eds.: “Illicit Global Economy and State Power,” Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999): 7.

“Like global firms, transnational organized crime groups operate both above and below the state. Above the state, they capitalize on the globalizing tendencies of borderlessness and deregulation. … create demand for their services. They become actors in their own right in the global division of labour and power… At the same time, transnational organized crime groups operate below and beside the state by offering incentives to the marginalized segments of the population trying to cope with the adjustment costs of globalization.” (Mittelman/Johnsten 1999:105)

It is true that in Afghanistan, there has never been a state regime in this country which has upheld any of these three classical tenets: most state regimes have had to coexist in uneasy, asymmetrical and often illicit cooperation with its own local actors. However, it is the intensification of interconnectedness with a growing number of global actors, and the overriding commodification of militancy and the state that distinguishes the post-modern warlordism of Afghanistan.

“They control paramilitarized criminal networks that provide them with the revenues to maintain patronage networks. They manipulate ethnic tensions and then pose as the sole credible protectors of their own ethnic group. They attempt to control the distribution of international aid, in order both to reinforce loyalty and to prevent the alleviation of conditions that foster political extremism.” (Watts 2005)

Allan Bock, in “Afghanistan: An Imperial Dilemma,” in AntiWar Series (27 May 2005), cynically and yet realistically evaluates the contemporary Afghan situation: “Having a weak central government that rules in name only in most of Afghanistan just might be the only workable arrangement in a country that is geographically rugged and full of proud and sometimes vengeful local leaders. The ‘warlords’ will tolerate Hamid Karzai so long as he doesn’t meddle in their business too much and pays them proper respect. If he ever did actually come close to eradicating the poppy trade in a country with little fertile land and few natural resources, he probably wouldn’t last long in what we politely call power. He probably knows this perfectly well.”

Much of the local conflicts during and after the Taliban, Rubin (n.d.) observes, have been about controlling trade routes for export of illicit commodities.

As Stephen Watts (2005) concludes, “rather than seeking to monopolize control of the government, warlords frequently choose to co-exist with other political groupings so long as the illicit economies from which they benefit are not challenged political exclusion.”

“Warlords continue to control armies that dwarf Afghanistan’s national security forces in size. Since 2001, when the U.S. funded and rearmed them to garner their support for Operation Enduring Freedom, they have grown militarily stronger and richer (from Coalition payments, illegal taxes and growing opium revenues). These warlords do not want regime overthrow—they have everything to gain from a weak national security structure, and a government straightjacketed by a lack of funding and capacity… Warlord power will endure as long as two key objectives of U.S. foreign policy (the war against terror and the establishment of a strong central government) work at cross-purposes. By supporting warlords to achieve the former objective, the U.S. may be undermining the latter objective.” (Care International & Center on International Cooperation 2003:2)

“Rather than seeking to monopolize control of the government, warlords frequently choose to co-exist with other political groupings so long as the illicit economies from which they benefit are not challenged political exclusion.” (Watts 2005)

Karl Polanyi: “The Great Transformation” (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).

James H. Mittelman and Robert Johnston: “The Globalization of Organized Crime: The courtesan state, and the corruption of civil society” (Global Governance, 5:1, 1999: 103-127).

Max Weber, in Ken Morrison: “Marx, Weber, Durkheim: Formations of modern social thought” (London: Sage Publications, 2003):270.

For example, pre-modern societies may relate to features of post-modern global economy via the Silk Road; post-modern actors may link to the pre-modern model via their link to state-free communities, ethnic identity, tradition, customary laws, etc.

This relative independence is the independence of the service/goods provider who can choose to which bidder to offer his goods/services. The wide array of alternative interdependence links provides this relative independency. For example, Afghan warlords can choose whether to accept “security fees” from the U.S., the UN, Pakistan, India, Iran, the Afghan state, private security firms, foreign corporations, local drug traffickers, local communities, or from any combination of these bidders, even when bidders are hostile to each other.