"slide" wrote in message
...
Afghanistan is scary and dangerous. I am plugged into an Afghan local
community which has close ties to the home nation and whose members travel
there regularly. The place is a mess - kept afloat by the heroin trade,
being fought over by the Russians, Pakistanis, al Qeada, and Taliban as
well as the US and the US backed government in Kabul. It makes Iraq look
like a well organized peaceful kingdom.


I think you are probably right on this, although you have missed out in your
narrative the fact that the British have been trying to sort this country
out for about 150 years and are still fighting there..
What used to be called the 'Northwest frontier' in the time when
pre-partitioned India was part of the 'British Raj' is littered with
cemeteries of British soldiers who died there around about 1870 trying to
produce some sort of order out of the place.
Still the same at present therefore and I am not optimistic that anything so
deeply ingrained is about to change in the foreseeable future.