Afghanistan is made up of so many very different peopleS who are just not willing to work together. I could compare it to the post Revolutionary War/pre Civil War USA where the different states were more like different nations except that Afghanistan has many more factions. For many of them, the immediate and lasting concern is their own area and they have little regard for other regions of the country. When we were fighting in Iraq, the family/clan structure was illuminating for many and Afghanistan is a larger reflection of that. We in the west often looked at the factions being Sunni vs Shia but on the ground, the family/clans such as the Tikriti (Saddam Hussein's power base) were of more import.
All of this is made worse by the fact, that each of the major ethnic groups (with the exception of the Hazara) has ethnic/linguistic/tribal connections across borders with nations, none which get along. To make matters worse, each of those countries is at best, unstable and at worst, a borderline failed state itself.
History has examples where diverse coalitions of groups grew to be somewhat cohesive such as the US but there are probably more examples where this did not happen such as Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.
So true. Like Afghanistan and Iraq, each was an artificial construct.
Bottom Line: I do not see a strong likelihood of Afghanistan pulling itself together in the near future and expect it to be a "failed state" for the mid and long terms. Kabul (the current government) will fall, it is only a question as to when.
Bottom Bottomline: Afghanistan is Natural Resource rich. China has much experience in resource development in poor countries through their Belt and Road Initiative. Most important, the Chinese government doesn’t care about human rights.
In any event, it is very sad for those Afghanis who aspired for little more than an education and an opportunity for a marginally better life.
On a side note: I first met Mrs cb7893 at a party in my dorm in Krakow, Poland in the fall of 1978. She and a male protector had spent the previous summer traveling to Asia. After flying to Baku, they travelled overland to No. India, through Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This was a path, well beaten by Polish kids, because they could trade their way from the USSR to India and load up on things that folks wanted back home. One of her strongest impressions was of how many Russians there were in Kabul and how easy it was to communicate in the bazaars. There had been a Soviet backed Coup the previous Spring and the Russians had embarked on their lastest quest for a warm weather port. It took about 5 min. for me to see, that this was the girl for me—which ended up being the case.
In that short period of time between that summer and when we met in the fall, the Shah was deposed, the Soviets were pouring into Afghanistan and bundles of US national security resources were being showered on the Pakistani ISI. I remember the future Mrs cb7893 looking at her traveling companion and saying, “Andrzej, we were really lucky to go when we did.”
