Outside of its most northern border, Afghanistan is almost a no-man’s land. It is very landlocked by mountains and deserts, little or no major rivers, and a very poor road system. All of this creates an economic environment which makes traditional commerce almost impossible outside of the largest cities, leading to most of the country being very poor, isolated, tribal regions. Subsistence farming using terraced farms to capture runoff is the norm in most of the country. It is almost impossible for anyone to travel from a small village into a large town. You would need a rugged vehicle, provisions, jerrycans of gasoline, and weapons.
You sound like you've seen it first-hand.
I always saw it as poor, poor, poor. The Pakistanis told us that.
The Afghanis are STILL 99% tribal and you are who your tribe is.
The way the world is that USUALLY the strongest have the best places. The Roman legions got Italy; the Germanic tribes got Germany; the Franks battled for France and the English fought EVERYONE to keep their island.
No one wanted the Arabian peninsula as it was dessert, waterless and filled with NASTY spiders. A camel spider bit me once--it jumped out of my hall closet and bit my hand--hurt like hell! I had to go to the clinic and get BLASTED with benadryl and such! The doctor was an Irishman named Murphy! :o) Go figure.
WHOODA ever THUNK that the poor, dusty bedouins who lived in that nasty, graveled, sandless, HOT, mosquito-infested, camel-spider infested PESTHOLE would be sitting on what we westerners HAD TO HAVE: petroleum. It's one of God's really classic jokes!
Back in the mid-1980's the King owned all the petroleum, as the ARAMCO companies sold all the petroleum back to the Saudis. They paid an arm and a leg to get it back. HOWEVER, the King, who owns ALL the petroleum (If HE owns it all there is NO argument between the families of the country) makes/nets one-one and a half BILLION dollars EVERY OTHER DAY--1983 dollars. Who can IMAGINE what he rakes in now.
The royal family gives billions away in charity every year, even to Christian countries. That bit of information never gets in the news HERE, naturally. I saw that myself and helped with that with our little women's groups in the company.
Just curious, don't mean to pry, were you in the military over in Afghanistan?