Broken

Recently, i read the first few pages of the book "AFGHANISTAN" by Magnus and Naby which is supposedly a very accurate book on Afghanistan. It stated how important a country Afghanistan is to the economical, political and even social stability of Asia and in today's global community the whole world. Based on my very limited knowledge of the world, I strongly agree with such notion. The book also indicates how people of afghanistan have fallen prey to manipulations and tricks of power hoggers over centuries. Based on the last survey done in afghanistan which was in 1990s, about 90% of the population was illiterate. This made them highly vulnerable to exploitations under the name of God, Islam, prosperity and almost anything else which in turn opened the door of hope for extremists. I think the reason Afghans are vulnerable to manipulation is that they are very passionate and feel committed to Islam, family, tribe, culture, "values", and such issues.
Afghans love their country and culture, but don't know how to unite and work together to serve their country and culture. Decades of poverty, environmental degradation, political unrest, and social upheaval have done some serious damage to the roots of this nation. Thus even when they want to, afghans have difficult time building trust and harmony amongst themselves. They don't know how to build bridges instead of walls to overcome their differences and live peacefully. In addition to this, they have developed a synnical worldview. Majority of afghans think that any type of modernization and change from the traditional standards are evil and to be avoided. Western lifestyle and standards don't serve eastern values and expectations well thus they are viewed as poor choices. Even afghans who have immigrated to western countries have some difficulty adjusting to the lifestyle. And if you are physically living in afghanistan, you would hate any change in western direction of lifestyle. I think this is one major obstacle in rebuilding afghanistan. Not only that afghans can't work their differences out themselves, any interferrence from western society is met with great cynicism and objection (and they have their history to prove it).
At this point, there are a lot of broken bonds in afghanistan and the road to recovery seems filled with challenges and demands that no one is up for. Ray of hope is very dim in the future of afghanistan. You might say that i have a cynical attitude right now, but if being pessimistic is the bitter reality then i would rather be realistic than optimistic.