Your "prosperous and developing nation" (with widespread starvation and near total illiteracy, zero industry other than timber and such) reduced itself to rubble, literally, during the time when they have been left alone all to themselves and Pakistan (1992-2001): https://youtube.com/watch?v=cBeid73WL4E (tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and/or raped then and there, that is Kabul 1993-1996, using leftover Soviet weapons and imported Chinese ammunition, and it wasn't rebuilt afterwards, besides some literal mudbrick houses).
No one in the American public cared about this, until 2001. And one Michael Moore later even described American famine relief (a "prosperous and developing" kind of a famine, that required 5 million to survive on foreign aid, or more than 1/4 of the population back then) of 1998-2001 as "weapons for the Taliban" in his Oscar-winning "documentary" Bowling for Columbine.
"Prosperity and development", July 2001:
"They have hit rock bottom poverty," says the report, "Without food aid, it is expected that members of these families will die. Starvation is facing millions of Afghans. The only remaining option is to leave home and join the ranks of IDPs and refugees." Migration is the last resort for many families. Afghanistan's current IDP population of 450,000 is expected to reach one million by the end of winter. As rural families escaping the drought reach the cities, the job market is starting to buckle under the strain. Most require food aid. 1,000s of others have fled their destitution by crossing the Afghan/Pakistan border for refugee camps near Peshawar. https://reliefweb.int/report/afghanistan/afghanistan-facing-famine-millions-lives-risk
The "western invaders" then "reduced' this literal rubble full of prosperously starving people to this state of affairs with the many billions of dollars in western aid, and armed protection (at the cost of thousands of western lives): https://youtube.com/watch?v=gvARLMSdcok Also removed millions of landmines, built modern irrigation systems, thousands of schools (not madrassas), cell phone & internet networks, and so on and forth. And the population more than doubled in just 20 years.
Hey, wasn't it you who compared to me the alleged incomprehensibility of ME politics to what you called "Balcans"? Maybe you should just learn more about the Muslim world, you talk about it so much and yet you know literally nothing.
I'll tell you one more thing: The only short line of railway they have had until another one was built in the 1960s (and then two more in the 2010s) had been gifted by us here in Poland, along with a locomotive, exactly 100 years ago. This is how "developing" they have been all that time. It wasn't just the Soviets (if you were to count them as your "western invaders" despite them being being eastern) that fucked them up. In fact the Soviets also built infrastructure in Afghanistan (schools, roads, bridges), besides destroying Herat city and laying waste to much of the countryside Mongol style (Mongols with bombers and air-scatter landmines, General Dudayev sure was crafty).
In a statement issued in New York, the agency said 70 per cent of the Afghan population was estimated to be under-nourished, and only 13 per cent have access to improved water sources.
"In most aspects, Afghanistan is worse off than almost any country in the world," said Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Director of UNDP's Human Development Report Office. "The country's social and economic indicators are comparable, or lower, than the indicators for sub-Saharan Africa."
Among 187 countries, only seven have lower life expectancy than Afghanistan, including Sierra Leone and Zambia - countries ravaged by HIV/AIDS or armed conflict, UNDP said. One of every four children born alive in Afghanistan will not survive until their fifth birthday. Only three of the 191 countries surveyed have higher levels of mortality for children under five years: Angola, Niger and Sierra Leone.
Nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) of Afghan adults are illiterate, almost 15 per cent higher than the average level for least developed countries. Only five countries out of 171 surveyed have lower literacy rates than Afghanistan.
With less than one-third of children enrolled in schools in 1999, Afghanistan lags catastrophically behind other countries and regions. Only 14 of 172 countries surveyed have lower school enrolment than Afghanistan, which is the only country in the world that prohibits girls from attending school.
Due to a lack of available estimates of income per capita, Afghanistan has not appeared since 1996 in UNDP's Human Development Index, which is based on indicators for health, education and income. It then ranked as number 169 of a total of 174 countries.
Now they're just going to revert to that, because the free ride is over.
Your "prosperous and developing nation" (with widespread starvation and near total illiteracy, zero industry other than timber and such) reduced itself to rubble, literally, during the time when they have been left alone all to themselves and Pakistan (1992-2001): https://youtube.com/watch?v=cBeid73WL4E (tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and/or raped then and there, that is Kabul 1993-1996, using leftover Soviet weapons and imported Chinese ammunition, and it wasn't rebuilt afterwards, besides some literal mudbrick houses).
No one in the American public cared about this, until 2001. And one Michael Moore later even described American famine relief (a "prosperous and developing" kind of a famine, that required 5 million to survive on foreign aid, or more than 1/4 of the population back then) of 1998-2001 as "weapons for the Taliban" in his Oscar-winning "documentary" Bowling for Columbine.
"Prosperity and development", July 2001:
The "western invaders" then "reduced' this literal rubble full of prosperously starving people to this state of affairs with the many billions of dollars in western aid, and armed protection (at the cost of thousands of western lives): https://youtube.com/watch?v=gvARLMSdcok Also removed millions of landmines, built modern irrigation systems, thousands of schools (not madrassas), cell phone & internet networks, and so on and forth. And the population more than doubled in just 20 years.
Hey, wasn't it you who compared to me the alleged incomprehensibility of ME politics to what you called "Balcans"? Maybe you should just learn more about the Muslim world, you talk about it so much and yet you know literally nothing.
I'll tell you one more thing: The only short line of railway they have had until another one was built in the 1960s (and then two more in the 2010s) had been gifted by us here in Poland, along with a locomotive, exactly 100 years ago. This is how "developing" they have been all that time. It wasn't just the Soviets (if you were to count them as your "western invaders" despite them being being eastern) that fucked them up. In fact the Soviets also built infrastructure in Afghanistan (schools, roads, bridges), besides destroying Herat city and laying waste to much of the countryside Mongol style (Mongols with bombers and air-scatter landmines, General Dudayev sure was crafty).
Afghanistan has been a country for longer than the USA. Anyway, some figures for your "prosperous and developing" (in reality one of the worst in the whole wide world in every aspect, including all of Asia and almost all of Africa): https://news.un.org/en/story/2001/10/16732-level-human-development-afghanistan-among-lowest-world-un-figures
Now they're just going to revert to that, because the free ride is over.