On Wed, 21 Nov 2001, Doug Henwood wrote:
> According to official tales, which may or may not be true, al Qaeda
> has thousands of members, and became indistinguishable from the
> Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, with an army of many thousands more.
> That's a bit bigger that La Cosa Nostra.
Not if you are thinking of the Italian version. According to Alexander Stille's _Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic_, in the 90s there were 5,000 mafiosi in the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, 7,000 in the Neapolitian Camorra, and 5,000 in the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta
Looked at historically, the parallels are actually quite striking between the rise of the mafia and the Taliban. Both arose initially in response to the complete lack of a credible or effective system of justice and law enforcement. 19C mafia assassinations were supposedly considered a form of justice not much different from Mullah Omar's killing of NA warlord rapists. And in both cases, the original mainstays of their income were levies on smuggling, enforcement of trading monopolies, and drug traffic.
And of course protection. Charles Tilly has an amusing essay where he discusses the extent to which all states can be conceived of as protection rackets writ large.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com