In a primeval and prehistoric world the first fuel was wood. Wood is basic and primary, and it's comforting. Early man learned to tame fire some time between 72,000 to 164,000 years ago,
http://coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.com/2009/08/archaeology-early-man-used-fire-72000.html depending on your archeological source.
Early people used fire for warmth and for light to save themselves from others animals. That was a big step - humans graduated from being dinner, to cooking it. They fired up the wood, put stones on the fire, and meat on the stones. Read: "Catching Fire, by Richard Wrangham. For thousands of years, wood was the primary fuel of humans. Wood is basic; wood is good.
Most countries in the world began to also use oil, and then coal, natural gas, then electricity, but Afghanistan was/is still dependent upon wood for fuel.
The real problem with wood is that 70% of Afghanistan is deforested - in an already arid land, trees are cut down and/or damaged from years of war, and not replanted. The extinction of wood is eminent.
On the roads of Afghanistan, other than military vehicles, most trucks carry huge loads of wood piled 12 feet high above the sides of the trucks - freshly chopped wood coming in from the countryside into towns; the most common sight on streets and highways is trucks of wood. http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/The_Lost_Forests_Of_Afghanistan_999.html
In the past, the people of Afghanistan were always hearty, robust survivors under sometimes extreme conditions. I have a mental picture of 2000 soldiers in the army of Alexander the Great, frozen in place, solid, in fighting position, dead, from an quick and extreme freeze, while the local people knew how to dig in and adapt, much like today.
But if the primary fuel for an entire area of people is wood, and their supply of this fuel is limited, soon to be gone, is this is not unlike the homeless man who sleeps under the bridge, with a heavy winter approaching. He uses up his last food, and his last wood. This is Desperation Economics, and the end of time. Is that how Afghanis think of themselves?
Right this moment, in the news, the talk in Afghanistan is about the presidential runoff election, and how a big factor in the turnout will be the weather. It's the end of October and the weather is cold, and getting colder. Will voters brave the cold? This makes us wonder how they heat their homes, and places of employment (jobs - is there such a thing). Few of us here, reading this article, have any inkling of what life is like in Afghanistan.
Countries around the world use other fuels, and also practice reforestation. Mountainous, yes, but Afghanistan has always been a caravan crossroad - this area has not been completely isolated. Why have these people not modernized? The answer is in that word I used - "reforestation implies and requires community cooperation and interaction, to build an infrastructure. People need to organize an effort to reforest. All these people-activities show cultural development, but that isn't how Afghanistan is.
Tradition - tried, true and habituated, this is what they know - clan structured and tribal. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/opinion/31iht-edbearden_ed3__3.html Like using wood, they do as they have always done. Afghanistan is not an industrialized nation; it is agricultural at best - when a cultivated field isn't being used as a battleground. Their two major crops are wheat and opium. But for any and all humans, there must be a life beyond drugs. If the opium-growing situation in Afghanistan is hopeless as some say, that in itself is a good reason for leaving.
Or if you believe nothing is completely hopeless, consider the male Afghan literacy rate, which hovers at 18 % http://countrystudies.us/afghanistan/72.htm. It's only now with western world exposure that Afghanis would ever think of their children as going to school and needing to read after dark.
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