Grinding poverty is Afghanistan’s biggest enemy. After seven years of US occupation, the country is close to being a failed state as Somalia is now. Nearly 18 million Afghans live on less than $2 a day. Food is extremely scarce. Social services are close to nil. Billions in aid have been misdirected or wasted. Radical Islamists are quickly taking over the war torn land. If peace and development do not come to the country, the Taliban regime will surely win.

Criminality abounds, unemployment is the norm, and corruption eats away at governance that has been no scale higher than dismal. Bombings persist. People have become drug addicts. Narco-trafficking has risen sharply from the country’s number one export: heroin. Politicians are busy with their self-serving infighting. This is the picture of a doomed land that has been hedging its hopes on other countries that only reneged on their promises.

The tragedy of Afghanistan is its being used as a geopolitical pawn. Such is the fate of a country that trusts foreign occupation. Only the Afghans can help themselves by being discerning of those who help them, as well as not too trusting of politicians that only make their government dysfunctional. Afghanistan’s biggest foe and woe is itself. The solution to its longstanding travails also lies in its own hands. It first must be able to respect itself so that foreign elements stop taking advantage of it. No one can oppress Afghanistan without its consent.

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Via BBC