Calling this the worst thing that could have possibly happened to Afghanistan indicates both a lack of historical knowledge and imagination.
Yep, now they can join modern, enlightened, resource-rich nations like Saudi Arabia and the Congo.
Yep, now they can join modern, enlightened, resource-rich nations like Saudi Arabia and the Congo.
I don't quite understand how pg's essay applies to the Belgian Congo, is there some specific paragraph you are referring to?
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1713275,00.htm... http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1713275,00.htm...
My objection is with the after the fact justification of colonialism. Charity was never an objective of colonial efforts, it would be very naive to think otherwise. The fact that the rapid decolonization (which was by no means the end of foreign intervention in Congolese affairs) did not lead to a stable and prosperous independant state, is no argument in favour of colonization either.
I'm honestly surprised of the upvotes these neo-colonial comments are getting.
Look to the Philippines if you want an example of what good can eventually come from U.S. occupation of a fractious country. And, unlike the Philippines, Afghanistan is not an archipelago whose thousands of islands practically define the concept of obnoxious-natural-barrier.
The Chinese influence bodes well too. China practices fair and even-handed oppression, rather than trying to exterminate the One True Enemy.
I don't understand what this has to do with it. Do you mean that absence of Africans and Arabs helps in successfully building up a democracy and mining minerals?
Right?
Go read some history. Specifically, all of it regarding the middle east and africa up until the present day. Heck, you can even just look at a map for a few minutes and marvel at how straight the lines are. Maybe you'll reach some more enlightened conclusions about the way things are.
I bet the answers don't have a lot to do with local rents and food prices. And for Johannesburg and Mecca tend towards infinity.
The way things are is that some people are uncivilized and appear unable to become civilized. This is not racism, just the data as they are. Which is why, in the context of this discussion, Afghanistan need not necessarily turn into the Congo because it did not start out as the Congo, and why the Chinese influence is not so ominous.
I'd much rather live in Harlem than Omaha or Frankfurt. Culture and metropolitanism are far more important to me than the amount of pigment in my immediate neighborhood, and it's very safe these days.
Your definitions of civilized are an opinion. The citizens of Mecca think you're uncivilized for a number of reasons, and I think you're uncivilized for others.
Anyways, I'm just thankful that most people don't think like you do -- I certainly wouldn't want to be lumped into the same category as you for the crime of (presumably) sharing a pigment level. People might conclude it's the natural state of white people to be deliberately ignorant about everything except their own little suburban town in rural America.
Oh, wait.
Look, I'm sure there are countries that might be able to successfully navigate a resource find like this. They'd probably be places with few internal divisions, a relatively homogeneous population, a history of stable government and well established cultural and legal norms for dividing and sharing power. You know, the kind of place where everyone really really believes that if their candidate loses an election, they will not be dragged out into the street and shot by the other candidate's private militia. Afghanistan fails all those criteria. So, if you can find any examples of a country that fails as badly as Afghanistan does successfully avoiding the resource curse, I'd be real interested in studying it.
Do you really expect Afghanistan to turn into Canada or Australia, much less Norway?