It seems that without a benefactor like the US, you may be right. The greatest resource any nation has is its people. If the US can focus on buidling a half decent education system for them then that would be the key to their success.
The general area of Afghanistan has been the center of several sizeable states and has a result been somewhat properous during those periods. For example the Kushans who dominated west central Asia and northern India had their capital in Peshawar, now in Pakistan on the other side of the Khyber Pass, but essentially ‘Afghan’ in culture and history. The Turkic Ghaznavid and Ghurid dynasties that made the first systematic conquests of northern India by Muslim powers, based themselves out of Ghazna ( modern Ghazni ), on the road between Qandahar and Kabul. A branch of the Timurids under Timur’s son Shah Rukh and grandson Ulugh Beg made Herat in western Afghanistan their capital and turned it into a cultural oasis. Another branch, that of the Mughals under Babur had Kabul as his capital as he launched his bids for empire in central Asia ( failed ) and India ( succeeded ) - it remained tied to the Mughal empire for another couple of centuries, vital as the access point to quality Iranian and Turanian calvary mounts ( Indian horses were universally considered distinctly inferior, probably due to lack of good pasturage and fodder ). The founder of modern Afghanistan ( which at that point included modern Pakistan and a slice of modern India ), Ahmed Shah Abdali, made his capital at Qandahar and was the dominant power in northern India in his heyday after defeating the Marathas at Panipat in 1761.
That said, Afghanistan has always been important mostly for its strategic position and at times its reservoir of military manpower, not its internal wealth. While it may have been central to immensely wealthy states like that of the Kushans, the wealth was probably mostly generated from without, not from within.
Well…prosperous? Maybe not. You’re right that they are fucked geographically in a couple of respects. But “not devastated” would be a huge step up. If countries like Botswana ( which granted has some diamonds and spectacular wildlife, but at least Afghanistan has some gem mines of its own, as well as iron, coal, natural gas, copper etc., all of which were once being exploited, but currently aren’t and it can serve as a conduit between central Asia and the subcontinent in terms of oil pipelines and motor transit - plus it has some impressive archaeology/architecture, minus what the Taliban blasted ) can make themselves over into a somewhat poor, but functional state, Afghanistan should be able to as well.
Somewhat poor, but functional. Little or no starvation, rule of law, etc.
- Tamerlane
Was it ‘somewhat functional’? They also didn’t control the entire country, also were desperately poor. But, even granted that they were ‘an effective national government’ (which I think is a HUGE stretch btw, but for the sake of arguement I’ll go there), how long did it TAKE the Taliban to become even as effective as they were? 3 years? More? I haven’t looked it up but it seens Afghanistan has been torn for at least a decade BEFORE the US invaded.
Ok, I’ll buy that…not least because you know more about this stuff than I do. As you seem to be implying though, no one is going to make Afghanistan the center of a new empire to be able to draw on its fierce manpower or because of its strategic position for trade and as a crossroads. So, they are going to have to rely on what they have…which isn’t much.
Certainly agree with this. How long and what will it take to achieve this though…and what SHOULD the US (and others…lets not forget that as far as Afghanistan goes at least the US isn’t there alone) be doing that they aren’t to make it happen?
-XT
Oh they do, its just that people like you don’t take notice of it. So a blogger decided to go against the grain and list all the good reports as a counter weight.
There are 8 parts, read them all.
People said similar things about Japan, apart from the landlocked part, and its now the second largest economy on the planet, and the richest country in the world, all we know about Afghanistan is thats its going to take time for things to change.
The second thing is that the country is two thirds made up of hills and mountains, which over the centuries established tribes and clans which were never able to be completely subdued to central government control. Afghanistan has always had a weak central government, and the only way to counter this is to build up viable infrastructure around these areas.
As long as the Taliban were helped maintain rule in their areas, Warlords simply kept control and swtiched to their side, so nothing changed, it was just an illusion of order.
What major media outlets are reporting on all the good things that are happening in Afghanistan?
When a country becomes the leading supplier of heroin in the world any good news is just pissing in the wind.
ToF: What major media outlets are reporting on all the good things that are happening in Afghanistan?
I don’t think any of them are specifically focusing on happy thoughts like the “Good News from Afghanistan” blog that Ryan mentioned, but I certainly see major media reports on Afghanistan that include positive items. The fact that last fall’s elections went well in the safe areas around Kabul, for example, was widely reported.
xt: How long and what will it take to achieve this though…and what SHOULD the US (and others…lets not forget that as far as Afghanistan goes at least the US isn’t there alone) be doing that they aren’t to make it happen?
Well, I think everybody’s pretty much agreed on the following:
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Afghanistan was not thriving under the Taliban even before Operation Enduring Freedom went in, and there’s no way it would be a prosperous country at this stage of the game even if OEF hadn’t happened.
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Coalition/UN troops in Afghanistan are indeed accomplishing some good things in restoring/providing infrastructure, mostly in non-warlord-controlled areas, and many of the locals are happy about that.
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What is currently being done to rebuild Afghanistan may not be enough to lift them out of stasis and opium dependence in large parts of the country. The UN’s recent Human Development Report on Afghanistan warned that the situation is unstable and made some recommendations.
What should we be doing that we aren’t? Maybe, committing more resources, or at least working harder to make effective use of the resources we’ve already committed. As a (mostly bad-news) overview recently put it,
Probably the single best thing we (the US and other coalition members) could have done for Afghanistan a couple years ago is to refrain from committing to a war in Iraq, which has simply stretched budgets, military resources, and compassionate attention spans beyond long-term sustainable levels. Probably the best thing that we can do for Afghanistan now is to find a way to make Iraq speedily, safely, and stably independent. As xt points out, despite the attrition from Hussein and sanctions and the devastation of war, Iraq still has a lot more potential, infrastructure-wise, for strong rebuilding than Afghanistan currently does. (Whether Iraq has the necessary political potential is still an open question.)
But basically, I’d say the thing we need to commit to most is simply not forgetting about Afghanistan again. We made some pretty strong commitments to a free Afghanistan in a 1986 Reagan speech:
The “Afghan resistance alliance” kicked the Soviet forces out, which IMO gave us a false sense of achievement and a corresponding loss of interest: the Evil Empire was defeated, mission accomplished, right? And then, given the strife and poverty in the war-ravaged country, they morphed into fundamentalist, theocratic overlords before we really started paying attention again. And now we’re back at square one.
No good news is great news.
Wasn’t the US fault though, if the Muhajadeen hadn’t fought each other so many times and tried to forment a national government, we wouldn’t of seen their collapse into the Northern Alliance, and the rise of the Taliban at all. And considering the Afghan government survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and only fell because Boris Yeltsin cut supplies, is another factor which shows the US wasn’t the main reason why Afghanistan is so badly destroyed.
He was murdered after the Soviets left. Which lead to the collapse of any form of government left in Afghanistan, why would Americans deal with such people who couldn’t care less of restoring a national central government? They only do now because they were unified against a fundamentalist enemy, which was vanquished.
The Afghans were fighting against Soviet forces, which were foreign, they were fighting against foreigners, and I don’t think the US marching in with a contingent would of helped the situation. I don’t think anyone could sort the situation out in afghanistan after the ending of occupation, but they were free and we did help them towards that goal, the specifics afterwards, such as reconstruction and rebuilding, is different.
Y’know, it strikes me that the best thing we could do with Afghan opium would be to buy it up and burn it all or resello it to morphine plants or whatever.
Morphine comes from opium, right? I could be getting that wrong. Anyway, cost effective, sends money where its needed.
Afghani-Disney
Land is bound to be cheap, Disney is a pro at taking nothing and making something, and you know the Afghan kids will take to Mickey like nobody’s business.
I’m thinking there might be a way to combine these ideas in a winning synergy . . .
And the best thing about it would be that you could populate the whole “Small World” ride with different national-tribal identities within Afghanistan alone!
From this, Ryan_Liam’s cite:
“US-led coalition forces are preparing a coordinated effort to attack the narcotics trade in Afghanistan, recognizing that drug income could be used to fund insurgents and terrorists in the country.”
Of course money could aid terrorists. So could roads, communications, medicine, energy, etc. You could imagine a national Afghan leader who would wish for the opium production to continue long enough to fund some of their own economic infrastructure. No way he could do it openly, though.
It’s as big as Texas and a whole lot steeper. It would seem the cash crop, opium, would be a huge incentive for a local leader or warlord to stay out of the control of Kabul, and ambush revenooers. It seems this could be a long-term problem, market forces being what they are.
:eek:
I appreciate their intentions, but this is like using a flamethrower to rid a house of termites!
Yep, poisoning the locals is bound to get them on our side. :rolleyes:
WTF is wrong with us? Why do we keep fucking up? Or do we just not care?
What a bloody ridiculous state of affairs when The Taliban are apparently resurgent.
Oops - not the Pit. Apologies for Pit Language.
Just another illustration of the transcendent stupidity of the War on Drugs.
But nothing gets a President’s rocks off more than the word “war”.
Good intentions is always the excuse for whatever war they’re using for their perverted obsession.
That’s a bipartisan judgement, btw.
You got a cite for all that? I was talking to an Afghan last week and he’d just got back from a trip home. He said his friends and family had reached the point where they were lamenting the demise of the Russian days, because at least the Russians built roads, improved educational standards etc. He said that the common view was that the US were interested in the place as a battleground. Period.
I’m not saying that this guy I was talking to was the fount of definitive analysis of the Afghan situation, but it’s going to take more than an assertion by you, Brutus, to make me think he was lying.