With a population of 32-million, and an economy 0.4% of France's GDP, Afghanistan is incredibly poor. Not that it was ever significantly better. Afghanistan needs a money culture. But if the international community decides to throw in the towel vis-à-vis the huge challenges including local belligerence, as per, the ludicrous complaints of occupation, millions of Afghans will simply die from extreme hardship. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has cautioned, within the context of the latest U.S. commitment: 'The goals for Afghanistan have been too broad and need to be more realistic and limited, or the U.S. risks failure. If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose, because nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience and money, to be honest. We need concrete objectives that can be achieved in the next three to five years.' Nor can the EU afford the burden of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees.