Customer Reviews

Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs

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Here Vanda Felbab-Brown offers a very convincing analysis of the problems that arise when dealing with illicit economies and insurgents in the third world.

Initially, I was fairly skeptical. The first two chapters deal with analytic conclusions and the terms by which her research was conducted. Though these claims seem to "float" initially (she takes, I think, too long to define one of her key terms, "Political Capital"), the histories she provides of Peru, Columbia, and Afghanistan thoroughly dissolved my doubt in the book's analytic capacity. Nuance comes through solidly in the historical section of the book. Thankfully, the author does not get bogged down by trying to involve the efficacy of international law; she makes it clear that policymakers cannot have their cake and eat it too, at leas insofar as the traditional (pro-eradication) understanding of narcoterror would have it. Rather, the difficulties of the subject matter arise naturally out of the book.

Professor Felbab-Brown is a brilliant lady but this book pretty much repeats what any practitioner of irregular warfare already knows; given a tight situation, insurgents will use anything including the drug trade to fund their fighting. If you haven't been to Afghanistan, Colombia or Peru, go ahead and read it. If you've been to those places in a military capacity, then don't waste your time.