A paper in GeoJournal Volume 70, Numbers 2-3/October 2007 by John Shroder of the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Afghanistan’s development and functionality: Renewing a collapsed state

Afghanistan has long been backward and underdeveloped where centuries of desertification, deforestation, overgrazing and environmental degradation have combined with successive invasions, violence, and terrorism to reduce the population to abject poverty. In the post 9/11 world, development of Afghanistan is seen as the only hope to revive the failed nation and reduce its threat to the external world. New assessments of natural resources offer many solutions to old problems of development and the potential economic functionality through renewal of the collapsed state. Oil, gas, copper, iron, gemstones, and a number of other resources, combined with a renewed transportation grid, offer a viable solution that is now underway to possibly produce a somewhat more promising future, providing that corruption, renewed violence, and environmental despoliation can be kept to a minimum.