And electricity. Only about one-third of the country has reliable electricity. And that has only been for the past two years, since we have been importing power from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

There are many places in our high mountains where hydroelectric dams are waiting to be repaired. Afghanistan could be producing so much power, we could be exporting our surplus. Our unhappy neighbor Pakistan desperately needs some. Perhaps if Afghanistan were sending its electricity to Pakistan, Pakistan would stop sending its terrorists to Afghanistan.

I have one last use for my ghost money. Let me tell you about a suicide bomber named Nematullah, a bomber who failed. He was 17 years old. He was stopped by security forces a few years ago at a place called Company, just at the edge of Kabul, before he could detonate a minibus loaded with explosives. After the police separated him from his bombs, he asked if he could go home. The next week were his school exams, he told them, and since he was still alive, he’d like to pass them.

Boys like Nematullah become suicide bombers for one reason: their families will be given some money in return for their lives. They will be able to buy some rice and flour and maybe a sheep.

Imagine if I had been able to give some of my ghost money to that boy. Or to all the other ghost boys who have blown themselves up to support their families, or the others who have joined the Taliban to earn a couple of hundred dollars each month.

I know what they would have done with it. They would have started businesses. We are Afghans; this is what we do. If I have one dollar today, by tomorrow I will find a way to make it two. Those kids only want a chance at life, like every other young person anywhere in the world.

If ghost money were going to the people who needed it, Afghanistan would have a lot fewer ghosts.

I would like the C.I.A. to know they can start delivering the money to the carpet shop my family owns on Chicken Street in Kabul any day this week. My father will be there to hold it for me. But, please, no plastic bags. Kabul is choked with them. The goats eat as many as they can, but still the Kabul River is filled with them, waiting to be washed down to Pakistan, where they have enough problems of their own.