The Little Blue Counter Insurgency
As I’m sure you’ve read, the CIA is distributing viagra to old tribal chiefs in exchange for cooperation and information about where the Taliban is. But maybe some of you haven’t read it, so here’s the best part of the piece:
The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.
Four blue pills. Viagra.
“Take one of these. You’ll love it,” the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.
The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes — followed by a request for more pills.
Apparently, phramaceutical products are better than guns or money because weapons can be lost or sold, while money often leads to ostenatious purchases which lets everyone know that the snitch is working for the US. Also, if a tribal chieftan only needs so much money or so many guns, then their value will decrease over time. If, on the other hand, the CIA can get their assets to become dependent on a drug, then it will be the CIA holding all the cards, while their informants will be desperate to give them information, in hope of getting their favored medication.
And while it’s fun to joke around about this (and yes, it actually is fun. Jesse Singal, my Campus Progress editor probably wins by asking “is this hard power or soft power?”). The question underlying this is whether its right for the United States to be underwriting 60 year old tribal patriarchs having sex with their several younger wives/functionally pieces of property. And while I’m sympathetic to Tim Fernholz’s point that “‘its morally ambiguous power and maybe we should think harder about the consequences of its deployment,” I tend to think that, absent knowing a whole lot more about the surely complex sexual and gender dynamics in Afghan tribal society, we should all probably withold judgment, or at least be very skeptical about any conclusions we reach.
With all that in mind, it’s unclear whether restoring the virility of these 60 year olds is necessarily bad for their wives. While marital rape is a concern (though discerning the difference between consent and nonconsent in such a patriarchal and alien culture may be damn near impossible)*, I also find it hard to believe that the world in which these women’s husband/owner/protector is frustrated by his impotence and subsequent losing face in his community is any better for them. Clearly, life sucks for most women in Afghanistan, and the availability of viagra won’t make much of a difference in comparison to the deep structural issues.
*I’m not saying that there can’t be marital rape in Afghan tribal society, but as Megan Carpenteir puts it (in a discussion with Spackerman that should be read in full) “Nor are — one assumes — operatives on the ground in any position to survey the wives of the warlords to determine whether the dick pill sex is consensual or wanted. Nor do the women in question have the vocabulary — culturally speaking, that is — to likely describe the sex as coercive or forced. In a society in which wives are expected to submit to their husbands and sex is not intended for their benefit or pleasure, nor are their moods or desires taken into account, they probably wouldn’t consider a formerly impotent husband with a handful of Viagra and some impotent time to make up for much more than their unlucky lot in life.” Underlying all of this is that our vocabulary for describing love and sex doesn’t really correspond to what’s going on in Afghanistan.
PS – It’s pretty cool that I’m reading Gravity’s Rainbow as this story breaks. If you’ve read the book (or are familiar with the plot), you’lll get it, but for all the non-Pynchonheads out there, GR is primarily about an American soldier trying to figure out why V2 rocket strikes correspond exactly to a map of London pinpointing his trysts. For those of you with no imagination, this picture captures mostly what the book is about.
