HuffPo: "Getting Osama bin Laden Without Military Action"

Why didn't anyone think of it before?

[...]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 million 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.[...]

I wonder if the author has solutions for other problems.

Tags: Pakistan, Bin Laden