Look, I'm sure there are countries that might be able to successfully navigate a resource find like this. They'd probably be places with few internal divisions, a relatively homogeneous population, a history of stable government and well established cultural and legal norms for dividing and sharing power. You know, the kind of place where everyone really really believes that if their candidate loses an election, they will not be dragged out into the street and shot by the other candidate's private militia. Afghanistan fails all those criteria. So, if you can find any examples of a country that fails as badly as Afghanistan does successfully avoiding the resource curse, I'd be real interested in studying it.

Do you really expect Afghanistan to turn into Canada or Australia, much less Norway?