PARIS, Oct 18: Surgical thread, cotton, silk, carpets, emeralds and lapus-azuli, all products exported from Afghanistan until the economy, one of the poorest in the world, was laid waste by war and drought.

Political conflict and instability, as well as a lack of rain, have ravaged the economy which had always struggled because the country has no coastline, and the people live in a harsh climate: mountains cover three-quarters of the territory.

Afghanistan has some riches. It contains 500 million tons of coal or four per cent of world reserves, one per cent of world copper reserves as well as iron and precious stones, including the biggest reserves in the world of deep blue lapus-lazuli and emeralds. However, many of the mining resources, including lead, zinc, tin, tungsten, cesium and perhaps even uranium, have not been developed, says one expert with French-Afghan association Ceredaf.

Afghanistan is also rich in natural gas, with reserves which the World Bank estimated in 1998 at 120 billion cubic meters. The former Soviet Union, which occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s, exploited these.

The principal economic activity was agriculture, employing 85 per cent of the population. In the 1970s, before war swept across the country, agriculture accounted for 60 per cent of gross national product.

In 1999 the GNP was estimated by experts at Ceredaf to be 7.8 billion dollars, of which 65 per cent was generated by the state.

In 1992 land available for agricultural use shrank by half and the production of some crops dropped by 70 per cent. By three years later the situation worsened, and the cultivation of some basic crops such as grapes, potatoes and sugarcane had been totally halted by strife.

The principal crops were wheat (2.9 million tons), maize (800,000 tons), rice (450,000 tons) cotton (160,000 tons) and fruits (900,000 tons), according to yearly figures from 1976 to 1977. The country currently imports wheat, being unable to meet its needs with domestic supplies.

A French company which assists with the development of textiles, the Compagnie francaise pour le developpement des fibres textiles, had worked to strengthen the Afghan cotton industry up to the Soviet invasion in 1979. Twenty years of warfare have left this industry in tatters.

Industrial activities, which once consisted of transforming agricultural commodities into sugar, silk, fruit preserves, are at a standstill. Artisans have also given up rug-weaving and leatherwork.

The president of Amitie franco-afghane, a French-Afghan association, Etienne Gille, said: “Afghanistan gave up a long time ago an original export, that of ‘catgut’ threads used by surgeons.”

The banking system is rudimentary.

Trade has been completely disorganised by the war. Until 1992, Russia was the principal recipient of goods from Afghanistan, taking in 72 per cent of the exports, most of which were in the form of cotton and astrakan furs.

In recent years, interests from China, Pakistan and Germany have bought fruit, cotton, nuts and carpets from Kabul.

Since the Sept 11 attacks in the United States, Afghanistan has nearly halted all purchases of consumer goods, equipment and fuel from Japan, China and Pakistan, but also Kenya, its main supplier of tea.

Afghanistan accounted for 16 per cent of Kenya’s tea exports, taking 98 tons per year with a value of 30 million dollars.

Gille said: “Only considerable international aid can put the Afghan economy back on its feet.”