The overwhelming faotcr in my mind is that the government of Afghanistan doesn't control most of its territory. Neither does the US military/ISAF. That makes it more like eastern Congo than anywhere else. The buzz around Afghanistan's mineral wealth feels like a desperate attempt to grasp something positive: things may be bad now, but there's gold in them thar hills!For mineral wealth in areas that the government does control, the other relevant faotcr is that Afghanistan is landlocked. As Collier well knows, that constrains the options as it tries to connect to world markets.