Afghanistan

Afghanistan: History, Geography, Government, and Culture — Infoplease.com: "The Taliban continued to attack U.S. troops throughout 2005 and 2006—the latter becoming the deadliest year for U.S. troops since the war ended in 2001. In 2004 and 2005, American troop levels in Afghanistan had gradually increased to nearly 18,000 from a low of 10,000. Throughout the spring of 2006, Taliban militants—by then a force of several thousand—infiltrated southern Afghanistan, terrorizing local villagers and attacking Afghan and U.S. troops. In May and June, Operation Mount Thrust was launched, deploying more than 10,000 Afghan and coalition forces in the south. About 700 people, most of whom were Taliban, were killed. In Aug. 2006, NATO troops took over military operations in southern Afghanistan from the U.S.-led coalition. NATO's Afghanistan mission is considered the most dangerous undertaken in its 57-year history."

You have to wonder about Afghanistan. It is a tiny, poor nation with low literacy levels and living in a state of perpetual upheaval and still the big nations can't seem to bring resolution to the situation and you do understand why they want to. It had 15 years of war and 10 years of Soviet occupation and still Afghanistan lived on. In the last decade 3 million Afghans have had to leave to Pakistan, 3 million have left to Iran and there are disenfranchised Afghans in many countries including here. Do they get compassion? They have nowhere to live because there own country is constantly in conflict and occupied and other countries don't accept them because they have no papers. What would you do? How long would you stand up to this kind of living? And yet that country still goes on. There are some interesting sites on Afghanistan on the Net and the reason I started looking is because America has extended their troop stay and wants 8 billion dollars to put into Afghanistan. 8 billion. That is such a lot of money and when you see Afghanistan has a GDP of 21.5 billion that's nearly a third of their GDP!! Infact it's the GDP plus their imports. They only import nearly 4 billion dollars worth of goods. They even have a growing economy. So it's a very curious country Afghanistan and yet it remains a treacherous place for nations which go in there. I do not know if money can fix this. I don't think money is the answer.