friends

no man is an island so the poem goes; we all need friendships, or alliances, to get through life. mostly we choose our friends, sometimes alliances are made out of necessity rather than choice.
an example of this can be seen in afghanistan where the ongoing ‘war on terror’ is not going as well as was hoped. rather than being under government control most of the country is either in the hands of the afghan warlords or the taleban. given that the taleban are the enemy in the ‘war on terror’, that leaves the warlords as being potential allies.
the warlords have proved to be incredibly fickle in the past, demonstrating a fluid concept of loyalty. the answer to recruitment and retention problem appears to be bribery. there is an art to bribery (or more like a dark science). when it comes to afghanistan you just can’t drop a lot of money into an informants lap as there is a chance that they will spend it stupidly on “shiny junk” and that makes it obvious that they have come into some money and bang goes their usefulness. instead the skill is finding something that they need that you can supply. weapons are not a good thing – sure they can use them against the taleban, but remember the warlords are fickle so they could just as easily use their new weapons on american or british forces and that is not a good idea.
you have to hand it to the cia they try not to miss a trick. when they were dealing with a recalcitrant warlord they noticed that his four wives were much younger than him. what to give the mature man with young wives? why of course you give him viagra.
four wives, four tablets. four days later the cia return and the warlord is a happy man, and one would like to think that he left his wives happy as well. thanks to a cheap little blue bill the warlord is a potent man again and important information flows. everyone is happy.
bribery you have to love it.

of course fans of the matrix will know that the blue pill means you keep living in blissful ignorance within the matrix, rather than escaping from the clutches of the simulation. quite what that has to do with anything i am not sure.