Let me give you some numbers. The average GDP per capita in Afghanistan is approximately $228 U.S. per annum. The revenue base of the Afghan government, according to the Asian Development Bank in 2004, as we've mentioned, was a total of about $625 million, of which $300 million came from the normal tax and other revenues to the Afghan government and another $325 million in direct assistance, and on top of that of course was the indirect assistance of the various programs conducted by international organizations.
When you are looking at the resources of the Afghan national government in a scenario in which there is no international participation, you are then facing a government with virtually no resources and tasking them to conduct the normal security operations that we would expect in a country of the west. That simply at this point is not something they are able to do at all. So we are looking at a very long-term development program in order to raise the GNP from legitimate sources of the government, allowing it to move from a central government expenditure of about 5% of GNP to a more normal developing world relationship of about 20% to 30%, to a developed world of somewhere between 40% and 60%.
When one looks at an exit strategy, I look at it in terms of simply the task of, first of all, reconstructing the destruction that has been left by 25 years of war, which has ruined everything, and then once you have that basic restructuring done, perhaps something similar to the Marshall Plan in Germany, and then looking forward at the long-term development assistance program that is going to take us out 20 or 25 years. The idea of disappearing quickly is simply a non-starter in real terms.