Afghanistan — No Easy Answers, Just A Mess
Some History
The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, after 9/11, and under the New American Century people in the GW Bush administration, including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who had been so obsessed with Iraq that they missed the signs of the impending 9/11 attack, and military leadership under David Petraeus. Within weeks, the Taliban was ready to negotiate surrender with the new government under President Karzai, but we’ll never know whether that would have worked out or led to disaster. The US, for many reasons, was remaking the world. That was not the only chance for peace the US missed, that might have avoided the present disaster and all the many lives lost in 20 years of war.
All of that speaks to the central reason why the U.S. avoided earlier deals with the Taliban as its leverage disappeared. “Making peace with the Taliban,” says Miller, “is another way of saying we didn’t win the war.”
www.thedailybeast.com/...
Years ago I wrote about US complaints that Afghan trainees would simply leave and go home when they came under fire. I posited that this was a generation that had only known war for their whole lives, and were sufferning from a kind of national PTSD. I was reminded of this when Biden said yesterday that the Afghanis need to fight for their country, in a tone that showed surprise that the Afghan army surrendered Kandahar so easily.
Over the centuries many countries have invaded Afghanistan but been beaten by an intractable land and its people. Here is a look at some of the reasons for this current disaster, and why war cannot bring the kind of change needed.
Haji Adam, a tribal elder on the Taliban-controlled side of the river, said, “For 20 years the whole world came and money poured in, but how did it help us? If the water was in our control … if there was electricity, we would have products instead of war. If the roads were paved, there would not be so much destruction.” Instead, “nothing significant has been built” in Kandahar since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, he asserted. The region’s only large-scale hospital, he noted, was built by the Chinese in the 1970s.
www.nationalgeographic.com/…
But we are causing more disasters by leaving as we are: one thing that did change while we were there was the status of women, and a generation of women have grown up in circumstances very different from the Taliban laws in effect before we invaded. Here is a look at Taliban restrictions.
en.wikipedia.org/…
US Withdrawal and Taliban Takeover
Our late and very necessary withdrawal is leaving women to suffering and retaliation under a brutal system. Also we are mishandling the evacuation of those who worked with US troops — we shoudl have started airlifts months ago. And refugee status should also be given to women who want it, and we are nowhere near allowing any of that. The Biden adminstration refuses to recognize our moral responsibility.
Reports from the ground are grim.
www.voanews.com/...
One thing that has changed for women is that many have begun to live independently. Now divorced women, already facing isolation because of cultural feelings against divorce, are worried things will get worse for them under the Taliban.
www.theguardian.com/...
Women working in banks were forced out of their jobs, told their male relatives could replace them.
www.reuters.com/...
Afghani Women Speak
Niloofar Rahmani, Afghani refugee, who was first woman fighter pilot in Afghanistan until her life was threatened because of it and she sought asylum in the US, appeared with Mehdi Hasan as host on MSNBC The coverage of Afghanistan begins around 31:00. Definitely worth watching. (The video on YouTube didn’t go all the way to the end, so I couldn’t embed this.)
topnewsshow.com/…
A young woman journalist in Afghanistan tells of her flight as the Taliban takes control of more and more of the country.
www.theguardian.com/…
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