Everyday Afghanistan

Don't miss this beautiful slideshow of Afghanistan on The Atlantic's website, based off of Sarah Chayes's feature story on "How the author helped Afghans build a thriving soap and body-oil business—and overcame the incompetence of America’s aid establishment" in the current issue.

Comments

I'm sure it will compete successfully with the poppy crop.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 13, 2007 5:09 PM

Readers who feel like doing something constructive might consider donating here or here.

Posted by Fred | December 13, 2007 5:45 PM

When I was in high school, we were assigned to read "The Ugly American", the topic being about the cluelessness of the politicos of what people of other cultures actually needed in the way of US foreign aid. This story should be another of those required readings.

Afghanistan has become the forgotten war. Perhaps that is because there is no huge profits to be reaped by our trans-national corporations from this poor country. If our voters knew just how much of the billions of foreign aid ended up in the pockets of these huge corporations, they would be shocked & outraged. Of course, it would be against the interests of our MSM to talk about this, which is almost entirely owned by these same corporations.

Posted by bob in fla | December 13, 2007 10:23 PM

Sebastian Junger actually had a compelling article about Afghanistan recently in Vanity Fair, but the reason it doesn't get as much attention in the MSM is because there isn't enough of an anti-Bush angle in it. Afghanistan, after all, was the war that Dems supported and haven't turned against, as of yet. You read more about Afghanistan in the British press (the FT, the Economist). I'd imagine the Canadian press is fairly interested too, since their troops have borne the brunt of a lot of the fighting.

Posted by Fred | December 14, 2007 1:35 AM

Well I think Fred is right (this must be some kind of astronomical event) on the British (and Canadian) press' coverage of Afghanistan, I'd attribute the relative dearth in US papers not to the lack of an anti-Bush angle (there is, you know, that whole utter incompetence aspect, failure to find bin Laden, diverting all of our forces to a reckless, unneccesary adventure like something out of Thucydides), so much as to two factors: one, we have 150,000 troops somewhere else right now (see above); and 2) Americans just aren't very interested and/or educated about the rest of the world (I'd even venture, the rest of our own country).

Posted by Daniel Shays | December 14, 2007 3:43 AM