I have a close relative (dear ol' Mom) who spent three years in Afghanistan in the '70s, leaving just before the Russians invaded. I think the Russians, in their wisdom, waited until Mom left to invade - she's tough. She worked for US AID, running a school of nursing with an Afghan counterpart. Basically her job was to find girls with a sixth grade education so they could train them to be midwives, the Muslim women not being allowed to see male docs.

Her letters reported most of what was going on now happened then. Very, very few educated women, education being grade school, and those only among the elite in large cities. And Afghanistan wasn't then a nation like the US, or Belgium, or even Tanzania or Kenya. It was a conglomeration of tribes, each with it's own area, more or less autonomous. There was a central government, which was as much just the tribe which occupied Kabul as it was a representative assembly of the entire country. Cross-country highways were not safe after dark, sometimes before.

The country just wasn't what we in the US regard as a "country". In those situations, just as with the former Yugoslavia or Soviet Union, it takes a strong, sometimes ruthless, government to hold the area together.

Shifting a bit - a book called "The Bear Trap", written by the Pakistani general who disbursed weapons to the Afghanis after the Russian invasion said there were 7 different, competing, non-cooperating tribes who would neither train nor fight together. He would have to meet with each individually, and didn't even try to coordinate their activities.

An interesting aside: The weapons and ammunition he gave out were mainly supplied by the Americans and Chinese. Often they were designed by the Americans who paid the Chinese to build them. The war was ended shortly after the Americans gave the Afghanis Stinger missiles. The US didn't do it years earlier because they didn't want the Chinese to get the technology, and the missiles were issued sort of like Barney's bullet on "The Andy Griffith Show" - take this one and if you shoot it we'll give you another one.

Once the Afghanis could take out helicopters with handheld rockets the war was over for the Russians. And, the Chinese did get the technology.

I thought that was one of the more fascinating parts of the book.

Arf