AFGHANISTAN The Ignored War

It's the forgotten war. But no news is sometimes bad news, and even though it's not making the front pages, Afghanistan today is a country on the brink of chaos. A new U.N. report, "National Human Development Report: Security With a Human Face," ranked development in the war-shattered country 173rd out of 178 countries surveyed. (Only the sub-Saharan nations of Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone rated worse.) Here's a snapshot of life in today's Afghanistan: The average life expectancy in Afghanistan is 44.5 years, 20 years lower than in neighboring countries. A fifth of the rural population is going hungry. Twenty percent of kids die before the age of 5, "80 percent of them from preventable diseases, one of the worst rates in the world." Part of that is due to the fact that three quarters of the population lacks access to clean drinking water. Unless the situation is turned around, the report warned, Afghanistan could revert to anarchy as "the fragile nation could easily tumble back into chaos."

NARCOTIC STRANGLEHOLD
Last month, a report by the International Monetary Fund expressed concern that Afghanistan's mushrooming opium trade was undermining its stability as a nation. Today, three years after U.S. forces arrived, Afghanistan is responsible "for about 87 percent of the world's opium supply." Drug trafficking brings in almost $3 billion a year, an amount equal to about 60 percent of Afghanistan's legitimate gross domestic product. Experts believe that "roughly 10 percent of Afghanistan's population of about 25 million is directly involved in poppy cultivation. Many more are believed to work in processing, trafficking and other illicit activities." Read more about the impact of narcotics in Afghanistan. [more]