GDP
2001: $2.5 billion
2011: $19.2 billion
Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan's GDP has risen nearly tenfold, with an average real growth rate of over 9 percent per year since 2003. Though much of that is thanks to foreign aid, private consumption has also been a large contributor. From 2009 to 2010, private consumption was responsible for 98 percent of GDP growth.
A large portion of that private consumption is directed toward services such as communications, finance and insurance, and transport. Communications alone -- one of the liveliest subsectors -- has seen average annual growth rates of 45 percent. Under the Taliban, Bergen writes, there was "virtually no phone system." Today, one in two Afghans has a cell phone, which, according to Bergen, "they use for everything from getting their salaries wired to them to making utility payments."
In this photo, Afghan women look at gold in a window of a jewelry shop on Feb. 27, 2010 in Herat, Afghanistan.
Majid Saeedi/Getty Images
