ABSTRACT
Afghanistan has, historically, survived as a subsistence economy, with its largely desert terrain rendering it highly vulnerable to fluctuating harvests and natural disasters. Small-scale informal trading and labor migration, primarily to Pakistan and Iran, have enabled families to increase the economic options available to them based on highly fluid responses to a constantly changing environment. External investment by the former Soviet Union, the United States, Europe, Iran, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank has strengthened the infrastructure through a network of roads, albeit with security-related and other setbacks to the maintenance of that network, together with the provision of electricity to the major urban centers. Private sector investment beyond the informal sector has, however, been limited, the major exceptions being the establishment of a nationwide mobile phone and Internet service and Chinese and Turkish investment to develop oil, gas and copper reserves.
