We're Number 173!

In the same way that we in the Gret Stet can hold our heads high when we rank 49th in some state-by-state rundown of desirable statistics (i.e., TGFM, or "Thank God For Mississippi"), Afghanistan can TGFBMBFN&SL, or "Thank God For Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Sierra Leone:"

Three years after the United States drove the Taliban out of Afghanistan and vowed to rebuild, the war-shattered country ranked 173rd of 178 countries in the United Nations 2004 Human Development Index, according to a new report from the United Nations...

The survey, "National Human Development Report: Security With a Human Face," released Monday in Kabul, is the first comprehensive look at the state of development in Afghanistan in 30 years. In addition to ranking Afghanistan in the development index for the first time, the report warned that Afghanistan could revert to anarchy if its dire poverty, poor health and insecurity were not improved.

"The fragile nation could easily tumble back into chaos," concluded the authors of the study, led by Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh, the report's editor in chief. "The basic human needs and genuine grievances of the people, lack of jobs, health, education, income, dignity and opportunities for participation must be met."...

One-fifth of the children die before the age of 5, 80 percent of them from preventable diseases, one of the worst rates in the world. Only 25 percent of the population has access to clean drinking water, and one in eight children die from lack of clean water.

Afghanistan now has the worst education system in the world, the report concluded, and one of the lowest adult literacy rates, 28.7 percent. Annual per capita income was $190 and the unemployment rate 25 percent, said Hanif Atmar, the minister of rehabilitation and rural development.

"Obviously this is a warning," the minister said of the report. "It shows why we are poor, how and in what way we can solve this."

The success of Afghanistan depends on improved security, political reform, broad-based economic development and gradual elimination of poppy production, Mr. McKechnie said, adding that failure in any of those areas would imperil the reconstruction of the state country and the living conditions of the people.

The report and its donors emphasized that attention must be paid to helping the nation's poorest people if Afghanistan is to be lifted out of its dire poverty and persistent instability.

What's truly sad is that we probably could have pulled this country up to a respectable, if still low, level of development if we'd spent even 1/100th of the money that's going into Operation Go Cheney Ourselves in Iraq...

Link via Angry Arab.