You have think tanks like the widely respected Atlantic Council that have published reports in the past year that have called Afghanistan a failing state.

The country [Afghanistan] faces enormous problems. There is a violent insurgency hampering the rule of law and developmental efforts.

I don't know whom or what he was defying. [...] [M]aybe the God he had never believed in.

If you were the poor, suffering was your currency.

Panic. You open your mouth. Open it so wide your jaws creak. You order your lungs to draw air, NOW, you need air, need it NOW. But your airways ignore you. They collapse, tighten, squeeze, and suddenly you're breaithing through a drinking straw. Your mouth closes and your lips purse and all you can manage is a croak. Your hands wriggle and shake. Somewhere a dam has cracked open and a flood of cold sweat spills, drenches your body. You want to scream. You would if you could. Cut you have to breathe to scream. Panic.

Gone. Vanished. Nothing left. Nothing said.

Afghanistan is a rural nation, where 85 percent of people live in the countryside. And out there it's very, very conservative, very tribal - almost medieval.