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Ideally, Afghanistan was presented with a new beginning on the routing of the Taliban and the backing by the US of a new western style democratic government. The reality however has been less dramatic. Afghanistan in 2007 is as lawless and disrupted as it was during the civil wars with more than 40,000 international troops in the country, more than 5000 people being killed in violent attacks since it was liberated, 100,000 people have been displaced due to the fighting in the southern provinces, development is stagnating, the promised democracy floundering under the weight of corruption and flailing institutional capacity along with an opium trade that now provides 92 percent of the world's supply and constitutes 50 percent of the national GDP.

Where did it all go so wrong?

At the onset of 2001 and the initial promise of some billions of dollars in international assistance, the people of Afghanistan had reason to believe that their lives would change. Even though the country remains steadfastly Islamic, the severity of the Taliban rule had faded giving prospect for schools to be recovered and the expectation that the girls of the towns and the villages would be able to attend them and the people could live their lives with more liberty although greater change will take years. Village people as they do in most of Asia see that the means to climb out of their poverty is through the advent of education of their children.

The difficulty has been that the west, and in particular the US has largely been diverted with the invasion of Iraq shortly after and the initial thrust by the US forces of routing out the terrorists as opposed to providing any semblance of nation building although this has now become an unfortunately belated priority.

The government was resurrected on the basis of past allegiances and not on the basis of capacity rendering managerial skill and facility within the government vacant. The influx of international organizations were vying for the local expertise and paying up to five times that of the government services consumed all of the talent leaving those warlords appointed to the Ministry positions to in turn appoint family and tribal members to all the positions within the ministry. This not only afforded them protection from below, it facilitated the corrupt practices that has blemished and held back the progress of the country ever since.
Much of the existing problems today arrive through the corruption at the top of the administration. Regional

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