Virtually no forests!

I was truly amazed to find out that Afghanistan has practically no forests, what so ever. Afghanistan had, apparently, only 3% of its territory covered with forests in 1980, which has dropped to less than 0,5% by now. That is a very serious side-effect of the wars, but then again one could argue that they barely had any forests in the first place. Nevertheless, there are entire regions where forest-wood is used as firewood for heating and cooking, so it is a necessity. It seems as if it is a big problem, but one never really hears about that. The soil is as well very much affected by trees, so I would assume that the soil from the deforested areas is getting worse every year. According to the CIA Factbook soil degradation is a big problem in Afghanistan, with deforestation for fuel and building materials…

Here are the links of the sources:
http://www.lenntech.com/environmental-effects-war.htm#Asia
http://www.igreens.org.uk/afghanistans_forests.htm