Biny for 3 yrs wages: Whole Country

Might work:

Paul Abrams

Consider a radically different approach to the entire mess. Bin Laden and Zawahiri are thought to be hiding in various parts of the area in Pakistan called the "Federally Administered Tribal Areas" (FATA). It is difficult military terrain, hard to penetrate, and the people are sympathetic to the Taliban and their cause. The Pakistani Army is not very popular there, and elements of the Pakistani intelligence services were supporters of the Taliban pre-9/11. We have bounties on the head of bin Laden and Zawahiri, but who would ever cough them up, knowing that they and their families would be executed before they would ever see any money?

Taking the FATA region as a whole, there are approximately 3 million inhabitants. The per capital income in Pakistan is about $800 per year (according to figures from 2005, perhaps slightly higher today, but not much). The Pakistani Armed Forces are about 1 million strong. Let us suppose that they earn 3 times the per capita income, and that the people in the FATA region are at the national average.

What if we changed the game completely. Instead of a single bounty on their heads, we offer the 3 milllion people of the region 3 years of income (i.e., $2400/person) or $7.2B, about 2-3 weeks of operations in Iraq. Large families of 20 people, therefore, would wind up with $48,000, a huge sum in Pakistan. Means for distributing the money would have to be established, and systems to prevent a flood on the market would need to be considered. Aggregating the sums further on a village level would provide the people opportunities to improve the material parts of their lives substantially.

In order to ensure the military was on the same page, we could offer $5000 per soldier, costing us another $5B, so the total cost of this program would be about a month's worth of Iraq spending.

What's the deal? They have to produce both Osama and Zawahiri. Since everyone in the FATA is benefiting, and thus everyone is involved, the risk of execution for producing them is reduced. Because he would have been coughed up by their own people, neither would have been killed by the hands of the Western infidels, or even the Pakistani infidels, and thus the attraction of their martyrdom would be substantially diminished. That would be the ultimate defeat for both of them.

I realize that administering such a program, preventing graft, and ensuring the resources went to the right people would be very challenging. But, as challenging as hunting through the mountains with US or Pakistani soldiers? As challenging as bringing Sunnis, Shia and Kurds to an agreed powersharing in Iraq? As challenging as preventing more jihad-recruiting by military means?

And, here's the beauty of the program: it only is triggered when Osama and Zawahiri are produced. It costs no US soldiers their lives or limbs. And, it does not cost a dime unless we get the result.

SOURCE: HuffingtonPost

It just might BUY: the HEARTS AND MINDS...

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