Badakhshan, Afghanistan
One of the problems with American plans for “reconstruction” in Badakhshan, Afghanistan is that most of the construction workers who show up for jobs don’t know how to hammer a nail, and this problem isn’t really so much a problem (which American know-how could supposedly solve) as it is a reminder that Afghanistan isn’t just another under-developed country. It isn’t even a medieval country.
It’s a pre-historic wasteland.
Here technology hasn’t significantly progressed since the foundation of Jericho, except in the lucrative but dangerous sub-field of refining raw opium into heroin, and junkies in the South Bronx probably understand more about existence in Badakhshan than all the experts in all the embassies in Kabul.
Tajik opium-addicts in Badakhshan, Afghanistan
(Photocredits: A.K. Kimoto)