The Taliban as organized crime; and why an American mob boss must be rolling over in his grave

BOSTON — In the end of the day, the Taliban are not a lot different than any other organized crime  family.

And so it's good news that the U.S. government is finally getting that, even if it did take our Kabul correspondent Jean MacKenzie's story to wake them up.

As we reported Wednesday, the federal government announced an investigation and Congress declared it would hold public hearings this fall spurred by MacKenzie’s investigative piece about how American taxpayers’ money is ending up in the hands of the Taliban.

You have got to read this piece which was credited on CNN, CBS, Reuters, HuffingtonPost and all over the blogosphere and different websites. It was one of those stories that staggers the mind. The headline says it all: “US taxpayers funding the Taliban?”

MacKenzie’s reporting focuses on what has long been an open secret in Afghanistan, that the Taliban has established what is essentially a protection racket in which it takes a cut of up to 20 percent from contractors receiving hundreds of millions of dollars for development projects in Afghanistan. Twenty percent.

That’s a big cut even for the mafia. The Italian organized crime families traditionally took only 10 percent of the construction industry in the cities in controlled.

I was thinking about that Thursday morning as I walked near our headquarters here on Atlantic Avenue in Boston and saw one of the last great mafia funerals.

The black limos were lined up along the narrow streets of the North End, this city’s Italian neghborhood. And there were flatbed trucks filled with fresh cut flowers. And wise guys in black suits with sunglasses were standing solemnly as the casket of Gennaro “Jerry” Angiulo, one of the most powerful mafia figures in New England, was loaded into the hearse.

Angiulo died a free man, but only after serving 25 years in federal prison on a litany of charges including racketeering, gambling and loansharking. He was 90 years old.

The scene got me thinking about the federal government’s long fight against organized crime in America and what it can teach us about the struggle against the Taliban.

When you boil it all down, the Taliban are criminal thugs and the sooner the U.S. treats them that way, the sooner the U.S.  will begin to have impact in Afghanistan.

Think back to the 1930 and '40s, and the old gangster movies and "The Untouchables." It was only after the federal government stopped fighting a war against the mafia and starting trying to cut off their money supply that they succeeded in breaking their hold on cities like Chicago and New York and Boston.

It’s time for the U.S. State Department to start thinking that way about the Taliban. Go after the money. To his credit, U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke gets this idea, but Washington has been slow to move on granting him the auditors and investigators he has requested. And meanwhile the Taliban continues to brazenly carry out its protection rackets and pocket what is estimated to be at least tens of millions of dollars in money that was meant to build bridges and roads and other public works.

The Taliban are an armed insurgency for sure, but they are also a corrupt crime family, not unlike the mafia, that uses fear tactics to control its population and fund its organization. Like the mafia in Little Italy, the Taliban is beloved in the Afghan villages because it offers security and a sense of belonging. The North End has always been the safest place to live in Boston. And the community has always looked out for each other, even if that meant keeping your mouth shut when the police asked questions. After all, “Cosa Nostra,” means “Our Thing,” in Italian.

That really is not that different from the Pashtun villages where the Taliban holds power, and where locals keep their mouths shut when U.S. troops ask questions. It is "their thing." They know the people, they keep the peace, they protect the collective culture and their way of life and they quite simply kill anyone who gets out of line or threatens their hold on power. Angiulo would have understood that. But he never would have understood 20 percent. In the old world of the mafia, that is just not gentlemanly. It’s not honorable.

Jerry Angiulo must be rolling over in his grave.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/worldview/090903/the-taliban-organized-crime-and-why-american-mob-boss-must-be-rolling-over