Ruminations

Fixing Afghanistan is as simple as six words: projecting central government control and authority.  The formula for doing so rests in giving all the monetary resources to the central government, and denying those same monetary resources to troublemakers.  Assuming that the central government doesn't fritter away those resources through waste and corruption, those resources can be used in the provinces to fund a well trained and well armed army and police force, and to create educational and job opportunities for the residents of the provinces.  Now how does the world community go about creating a recurring source of significant income for the central Afghan government?  This is where Iran plays a major role; notably, the world community assists in the technical development and funding of the North Pars Gas Fields, and of a gas pipeline from the North Pars Gas Fields through Iran and Afghanistan to China.  Iran finds a customer for its natural gas resources, China finds an alternate source for its energy requirements, AND Afghanistan earn billions of dollars a year in transit fees for facilitating and protecting the transmission of gas across its territory from Iran to China.  Coupled with an aggressive campaign to deny troublemakers in Afghanistan from earning illicit revenues from the opium trade, smuggling rackets, and the extortion of their own countrymen, Afghanistan could, in short order, be on its way to both unprecedented stability and unimaginable prosperity.