Imagine a place where different parts of the country are controlled by tribes speaking different languages, tribes which obviously don't like and trust each other. Now imagine that virtually the only money-making crop in this place is the opium poppy. Add in a religion that is often violent and almost always intolerant of others.
Give the country porous borders with adjacent nations so trouble-makers can float back and forth. Finally give the country a neighbor whose intelligence service has a history of funding and supporting its violent religious radicals as a way of reducing the influence of another neighbor, India. Throw in corruption and brutality as cultural mainstays, and you have Afghanistan.
Iraq is almost a piece of cake, in comparison. Powell is unsure of victory? I would hope he is.
