It
is easy to overestimate what I call “privileged information,” the kind of information
that is vivid, first-hand and, perhaps most important, of highly limited
access. Let me give you a couple of examples.
I
came across a great
NPR interview on the management structure of the Islam State (IS) courtesy
of a Vali
Nasr tweet. In the interview, Bloomberg
Businessweek reporter Cam Simpson, explains how the IS “m-form hierarchy” works
as revealed by the “documents found in a ditch in Anbar province by U.S.
Marines on a routine patrol during the surge and from a hard drive captured not
long after that.” It’s illuminating, lucid and brief, yet packed with
information, so I’ll say no more. It is the first question that the interviewee
asks that I want to take up:
Cam, these metrics are
largely self-generated. I mean, who's to say they're not just part of ISIS's
pretty sophisticated propaganda machine?
Simpson
replies:
Yeah, that's a really
good question, Eric. I mean, some researchers at the West Point
Counterterrorism Center asked exactly that question…And they found that they
were, sadly, extremely accurate. Just from the sort of independent, open-source
public reporting that was out there.
Which
reminded me of an earlier event…
A
few months ago, I had the opportunity to hear a top Middle East academic talk
about a field trip in Turkey that he’d just returned from. In the talk, the academic
confidently told us that IS would peter out as the calendar year drew to a close
since it would run out of money as well as the weapons that it had captured
when it overran the Iraqi army in the surprise charge that captured Mosul. He
had been to the hinterlands, and there was no way that enough crude oil could
be smuggled across the border by the means available to raise the kind of revenue
that was being reported. He been there, and seen it.
This
went against the gist of almost all the media reports at the time, but I held
my tongue. My knowledge of the issues was spotty at best, and the academic did
not appear to be the kind of person who would take kindly to criticism.
But
I did think that I had reason to doubt. A foreigner getting on in years is not
going to get away with backpacking alone through the mountainous boondocks of Turkey,
home to conservative Turks and rebellious Kurds, hoping to gather information incognito.
Smugglers would not be coming up to the academic with details of their
operations in the hopes of making some sales. The locals would be less than forthcoming
with information and, as required, downplay the importance of smuggling for
fear of doing harm to the local economy or being on the receiving end of
retribution. As for the Turkish authorities, they also had good reason to downplay
the role of oil smuggling, as they were doing their best to avoid involvement
in the war against pressure from the United States while attempting to extract
Turkish hostages held by IS. (A later media report detailed how the smuggling helped
to alleviate the impact on the local economy of the loss in cross-border trade
with Iraq as IS expanded its control.)
Fast-forward
to December, and IS is still going strong. Clearly, it is dangerous to rely
solely on privileged information. Moral of the story: Do not trust; verify. The
West Point Counterterrorism Center did; the academic did not.
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