I've heard the argument that paying protection money was part of the cost of doing business

in Afghanistan and I think it is a terrible, terrible argument.

It's just self-defeating for an organization to pay protection money and not deal with

the problem from the start.

Gretchen Peters calls herself a recovering journalist.

I spent about two decades mostly covering conflict areas in some of the world's garden spots.

Including Pakistan and Afghanistan and these days.

I'm the Executive Director of the Center on Elisent Networks and Transnational Organized Crime.

Also known as Sintak, so Peters is still focused on Afghanistan.

A particular focus are the reconstruction projects run by US and other Western firms that

have built highways, hospitals and schools.

And while paying protection money is a terrible model, she says it often is the model.

She recalls the story of a construction manager working there.

Then he got a phone call one day from one of his team members saying the Taliban just

fired a couple of RPGs that are project nobody's been hurt and so he called up the Taliban

commander and said what's the problem?

You told us you weren't going to attack us anymore and he said no, no, nobody got hurt.

We intentionally missed but your payments do.

You need to get over to the Huala market and send me my money and he said oh yes, I'm

so sorry and went over and paid the money right away.

For the Taliban, Peter says this is standard operating procedure.

So the Taliban would fire warning shots when the bills were due and they would often

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