[AmericanThinker] Afghanistan is a country with violence at Palaeolithic levels, a misogynist religion, and endemic corruption. It is surrounded by countries that are hostile to it and the West. In fact, it seems to be made up of territory that is unwanted by the countries that surround it, as if the value from incorporating bits of Afghanistan would not be worth the pain of having the Afghani people who would come with it. It does not produce anything that the world wants in a positive way. Its major export is heroin, bringing misery and death to a large arc from Russia to Western Europe.
It sounds like a hopeless case of a country in which to do nation-building, but that is not the worst of it. The modern history of Afghanistan is written in its wheat statistics. Back in 1960, there were nine million Afghans and they grew 2.3 million tonnes of wheat in that year. By the time the Russians invaded in 1979, wheat production had risen to 2.7 million tonnes with a further 200,000 tonnes being imported. There were then 13.7 million Afghans. Things did not go well in the latter half of the Russian period of occupation with wheat production falling to 1.8 million tonnes in 1989, the year they withdrew. Nevertheless, population growth rate did not fall below 2% per annum while the Russians were in charge, with the population growing to 16.9 million in the year they left.
| Then a growth rate of 2.6% under the Taliban, increasing the population to 22.8 million, and a further increase to 32 million today. |
What is the most likely scenario? Soon after the U.S. withdrawal, the corrupt Afghani officials in Kabul will increase their rate of theft with the consequence that wheat imports fall below what is required to keep the population quiescent. Rioting and social breakdown follow. The starving urban populations spread out into the countryside, devouring what they can, including the seed grain for the next crop. Population falls to a fraction of the country's carrying capacity after the death of some 30 million Afghanis. There is no force on Earth that can stop something like this from happening. There is no limitless supply of money and no limitless supply of grain that can overcome a population doubling period of 29 years. Over the last thirteen years, the noblest country on the planet tried to help one of the most wretched. That quixotic undertaking was inherently doomed. It is pointless to attempt nation-building if a country is going to starve to death anyway.
| It seems to me that a good portion of the Afghan population will return to Pakistan and Iran, where they had sheltered during the Soviet and Taliban years, rather than roaming the Afghan countryside like over-dressed locusts. What say you, O Rantburg savants? |
|