Decius wrote:

Afghanistan's economic outlook has improved significantly since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 because of the infusion of over $8 billion in international assistance, recovery of the agricultural sector and growth of the service sector, and the reestablishment of market institutions. Real GDP growth is estimated to have slowed in the last fiscal year primarily because adverse weather conditions cut agricultural production, but is expected to rebound over 2005-06 because of foreign donor reconstruction and service sector growth. Despite the progress of the past few years, Afghanistan remains extremely poor, landlocked, and highly dependent on foreign aid, farming, and trade with neighboring countries. It will probably take the remainder of the decade and continuing donor aid and attention to significantly raise Afghanistan's living standards from its current status, among the lowest in the world. Much of the population continues to suffer from shortages of housing, clean water, electricity, medical care, and jobs, but the Afghan government and international donors remain committed to improving access to these basic necessities by prioritizing infrastructure development, education, housing development, jobs programs, and economic reform over the next year. Growing political stability and continued international commitment to Afghan reconstruction create an optimistic outlook for continuing improvements in the Afghan economy in 2006. Expanding poppy cultivation and a growing opium trade may account for one-third of GDP and looms as one of Kabul's most serious policy challenges. Other long-term challenges include: boosting the supply of skilled labor, reducing vulnerability to severe natural disasters, expanding health services, and rebuilding a war torn infrastructure.

Thanks for the factbook quotation.

In terms of barriers to a modern ecomony, these statistics are perhaps as problematic as the lack of natural resources:

Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 36%
male: 51%
female: 21% (1999 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 43.34 years
male: 43.16 years
female: 43.53 years (2006 est.)
Total fertility rate:
6.69 children born/woman (2006 est.)

Infant mortality rate:
total: 160.23 deaths/1,000 live births

Suppose the average Afghan woman is married at 15 and has a child every other year for the next 14 years. At 30 she has six children (she had seven, but one of them died in infancy), the youngest of which is only a year old. By the time the youngest becomes a teenager, the mother is dead. In 4 of 5 such cases, the mother has been unable to teach any of her children to read.

RE: Afghanistan: Five Years Later, By Donald H. Rumsfeld