Washington thought Afghanistan was a fixer upper. But after spending trillions of dollars and thousands of lives trying to improve it, the messy capitulation has stunned and embarrassed Americans who want to know what went wrong. However, let’s ask another question about Afghanistan: why is it so poor?
Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is the most common measure of standards of living used by economists. This year GDP per capita was $592 for Afghanistan, compared to $35,672 in the U.S. That makes Afghanistan one of the poorest countries in the world. Of course, we Boomers will remember that this poor country has been at war since Soviet armies were invited to rule in 1980. Over 40 years of war will tend to give a place a run-down appearance.
In the summer of 1976, I worked with others to smuggle Bibles into Afghanistan from Iran. Iran was poor by U.S. standards, and I had been to Mexico several times, but I had never witnessed the extreme poverty that I found in Afghanistan. Even in 1980, the per capita GDP was $273 compared to $12,575 for the US. None of these figures have been adjusted for inflation.
That doesn’t mean Afghanistan has no wealthy people. A tiny group of war lords and government officials are wealthy even by western standards. As with most poor countries, a tiny group of wealthy dominate a mass of nearly starving people. Why?
