Well my first lesson of blogging learned: work in a word document and then transfer the post. I had just about completed writing out my outline when I accidentally highlighted and erased the whole thing. So... take 2!
I have narrowed my topic to poppies in Afghanistan but am not sure that I am going be to able to tie it back to technology to a huge degree. Although, I guess I could try to treat poppy cultivation as a technology. Would that work?
So I probably need to narrow this down more but here is what my progress looks like so far.
Topic: The effectiveness of American strategies for the combating the opium/ poppy cultivation/trade in Afghanistan with particular focus on the effects of technology on this process.
Possible Thesis: While there is widespread criticism of American policies on combating poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, which raises many legitimate points, there are few practical alternatives to current American policies, given the current situation.
My outline, which follows, is probably overly ambitious. I think I have included too broad a spectrum of material in it; I will probably pare it down later.
Section 1: Background
Para 1: Poppy cultivation as a cultural phenomenon.
-Turkey and India as parallels
Para 2: British Occupation
-poppy control
-state building
Para 3: Soviet Occupation
-poppy control
-state building
Section 2: America in Afghanistan
Para 1: Brief overview of invasion
-initial poppy control
-initial state building
Para 2: The war in Iraq and its consequences on the stability in Afghanistan
-poppy control
-state building
Para 3: Current Afghan situation
-poppy control
-state building
Para 4: US plans for the future
-poppy control
-state building
-US Congressional document "The plan for Afghanistan"
Section 3: Criticism of American Policies/ Approaches in Afghanistan
Para 1: Afghan Reliance on poppy cultivation
-Poppies to Perfume
--partial solution?
-lead into Turkey Model
Para 2: Turkey as a Model for Iraqi poppy conversion
-overview
-why it won't work at the moment
-a key to future
Section 4: What is the solution?
Para 1: Refocus American + International support on Afghanistan
Para 2: Train + Equip Afghan Police forces sufficiently
-fewer us casualties => higher us home-front support
-stabilize country
Para 3: Stabilize Afghanistan
-train government
-expand + support government
-transition from US forces w/ local support to local forces w/ US support.
--less anti-americanism
--more lasting stability because more autonomous stability
Para 4/ Conclusion: Only once Afghanistan more stable can suggestions such as:
-Perfume not poppies
-Turkey Model of Opium =>opiate pharmaceuticals
david,
it might be a question of whether american approaches to combating opium attempt to employ technological solutions--especially when compared to attempts by other countries. does that make sense?
paul