These include structured social affiliations and institutions such as private and public clubs, lodges and churches as well as communications technologies such as postal and courier systems, telegraphs and telephones.
What Mr Allason particularly likes about his internet-based courier system is that it is easily "scaleable": more couriers and markets can be added without having to hire many more dispatchers or people to run a call-centre".There is no longer any need to pick up a telephone to find out where your package is," says Mr Allason.
The Ministry of War was in charge of the appointments, promotions, and demotions of military officers, the maintenance of military installations, equipment, and weapons, as well as the courier system.
There are limited lab facilities in Malawi, and what Dr Mon calls "an unreliable courier system" for delivering the results from the central labs back to health facilities.
But a courier system is too inefficient for the fast pace of the narcotics trade, and so, as U.S. and Mexican authorities eventually discovered, Chapo devised an elaborate solution.
He reformed the Roman system of taxation, developed networks of roads with an official courier system, established a standing army, established the Praetorian Guard, created official police and fire-fighting services for Rome, and rebuilt much of the city during his reign.
Two centuries of political turmoil, without a strong central authority, destroyed this courier system.
Because of the courier system used by Bin Laden it is unclear to US intelligence whether the letter was actually sent.
He employed a deceptively simple courier system, prosecutors said, using dancers from topless clubs to smuggle his drugs.
Using his courier system Bin Laden could still exercise an element of operational control over al-Qaida, but increasingly the men he was directing were younger and inexperienced, the fugitive leader complained.
