I can't be the only person who is finding the events unfolding in Afghanistan very difficult to watch.
I hear all the excuses from Biden.
I suspect that Johnson will produce some hopeless explanation for our role.
But whatever either - and others involved in the collation that kept the Taliban at some sort of bay for 20 years - might say the reality on the ground is what matters to me at this moment.
There, whatever the corruption of the administration they served, there are real people with real principles and real abilities who used them to further a real idea that they thought would benefit the people of Afghanistan and who were supported in that belief by the UK and USA. Those people now face torture and death for doing so, and long term oppression if they survive such fates. That to me is what really matters right now.
I do, of course, support the demand that these people be able to leave Afghanistan and be given the opportunity to settle here, amongst other places. So far, the UK reaction to requests from people like interpreters has been shocking at every level. The only thing that has been on display is our racist indifference. That has to change.
But even if we do open the doors that does not everyone will be able to leave. Some will be forced to stay. And for them, what is their fate? Something akin to that of all who are on the wrong side of totalitarian fanatics.
First they come for the politicians.
Then they come for those who administered their ideas.
After that they seek to wipe out the academics and intellectuals who can voice the opposition.
That means they will also silence the teachers who propagate the ideas of those intellectuals.
Journalists will also be at considerable risk.
And then, having taken control, such regimes move on to oppress those they consider the enemies on the ground.
In a country as divided as Afghanistan there will be racial abuse.
There will also be religious abuse of those who have not complied with the strictures of Islam as the Taliban see it.
But as worrying will be the oppression of women, who must be half of the Afghan community, and who will now be denied almost all their rights.
For all in any of these groups the grip of fear must be very real today. I can hardly conceive of how that feels.
That fear will be very short term for some. For others, it is about the complete loss of hope that this regime will represent for them if they can make it through the next few weeks.
We should hang out heads in shame for letting this happen.
These people's fate will be our responsibility, whatever the US and UK political establishments wish to say.
But we should remember something else as well. What the Taliban will do is only what any oppressive regime does. I suspect they will be more violent than most. But their priorities are much the same as any government seeking to rule by force.
All oppressors follow variations on the process the Taliban will follow.
All seek to take out broadly the same enemies - although few would pick women as one of the main targets to the extent that the Taliban does; ethnic minorities are more commonplace. That makes the Taliban unusual. But only because of their variation on a theme, and not because the theme is so unusual.
And remember that around the world there are those who are oppressing, who seek to undermine democracy and who are seeking to impose government without recourse to the opportunity for the population to change those who rule them. That is what fascism does. And they too would seek to pick off their enemies, some way or other.
I am not distracting from the concern about Afghanistan when I say that around the world others need to take note. The fate of those who uphold human rights for all is closely related to the fate of liberals in Afghanistan. We live in a dangerous world and it is always wrong to think that such things cannot happen elsewhere. The evidence is that they can.
And that's why the backtracking in Afghanistan was so dangerous. We live in a world that cannot be indifferent to human rights anywhere. The UK and USA have indicated that they are indifferent in that way. The fascists will have noted.
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I strongly believe that the outcome in Afghanistan was the only one conceivable and we should have been well aware of that from the start, having seen what happened in the 19th Century & to the USSR.
My question might be however, how do you view a general policy of not intervening in the internal affairs of other nations, we may well impose sanctions and travel bans on regimes we consider unacceptable and their members but strictly leave the military out of it.
Had the UK & the US left Afghanistan well alone after 1950, the place might be at best nasty but whatever form it took would not be our responsibility. Many other placed ditto.
Indeed, but ‘we’ apparently never had the human rights /education/ democracy nation-building agenda when ‘we’ went in. ‘We’ apparently never tried to see that a fully represenatative governing system reflecting all diverse people and regions in Afghanistan was established, so long as we had a president in place to do our bidding.
Some of us had dire forebodings as the towers came down in 2001 – ‘someone has to suffer for this’. Some of us were bewildered – why pick Afghanstan why not Saudi Arabia? Well we know why.
Even some establishment figures – such as SImon Jenkins have been pretty consistent on this
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/16/20-years-invasion-afghanistan-unnecessary-post-imperial-fantasy
In Helmand the British army wasnt apparently seen as benign – plenty of atrocities, just part of the problem – along with the Taliban. ‘We’ didnt understand what we were trying to do as an occupying power. Didnt have the resources etc etc
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n13/tom-stevenson/the-most-corrupt-idea-of-modern-times
Obviously we now have to do as much as possible to try to prevent the worst outcome – rescuing as many as possible – and working with Afghanistans neighbours Pk/Iran/China/Tajik/Russia and the UN – to try to use carrots and sticks to prevent the worst.
“Had the UK & the US left Afghanistan well alone after 1950, the place might be at best nasty but whatever form it took would not be our responsibility.”..the problem with this approach is that it become a hotbed of terrorist training camps…for those who believe there is or ever has been a solution to this they are in cloud cuckoo land..perhaps the only solution to overcome the human rights issues and terrorism risk is to be permanently at war with with the Taliban as pretty much has been the case for the last 20yrs with western troops one the ground. Self Government has failed miserably and we are back to square one.
But if you watch the film Charlie Wilson’s War then it is clear the CIA trained and armed the Taliban (and others) in the 1980s because it suited the USA to have them cause trouble for the Soviet Union. The minute the Soviets withdrew the US wiped its hands of the Afghans. At the end of the film Senator Wilson predicts that will end in a disaster and pleads unsuccessfully for ongoing support and aid for Afghanistan (1991).
This is one huge geo-political mess.
Had not Afghanistan been conflated/associated with the rampant lying in the Twin Tower motivated Iraq war debacle, the will to sustain Afghanistan might have endured and been seen as worth it.
Afghanistan has become therefore another casualty of the Iraq war which was about the opportunity to get oil.
Iraqi oil must be the most costly oil in the history of oil.
At the root of all of this is dishonesty. Not even good things can be done because there is just so much dishonesty getting in the way.
A deplorable mess.
To what extent did meddling in the Muslim World breed terrorism though?
This Tweet is shaming to our present Government, not least our horrendous Home Secretary, Priti Patel, whose parents were among the refugees referred to.
https://twitter.com/DLidington/status/1427312927040839682?s=19
For any who cannot read Twitter, the text runs as follows:
“In 1972 Ted Heath’s govt gave refuge to 28 k ppl of Indian descent expelled from Uganda by Amin. Heath’s decision was hugely controversial but those refugees made massive positive contribution to UK life. Hope our govt now will match Heath’s sense of duty & generosity of spirit.”
The tweeter is David Lidington, a Conservative for MP and ex-Cabinet Minister.
Two notable points: the first is that it is now clear, that, with all his faults, Ted Heath was the last, real One Nation humane Tory to lead the Tory Party before it was captured by neoliberal fanatics who set it on the path it is now slithering along into neofascism, with who knows what further horrors to come.
The second, and REALLY important, point is the size of the granted influx of refugees, as well as the speed of acceptance that they should be allowed to come, along with the ethical clarity of that decision – speed, size and ethical clarity all virtues singularly lacking in ALL the current government’s behaviour, but especially so in this latest example.
Ted Heath simple would not recognise the monster the Tory Party has morphed into, any more, I might say, than Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Gerry Ford would recognise the monster the Republican Party has morphed into.
Biden is certainly at fault, but he is only ‘honouring’ (a strange word in the circumstances) the agreement Trump negotiated, which clearly threw the Afghan people to the wolves.
AD,
Largely agree with the sentiment of 70’s Britain. As one old Grammar school / oxbridge man asked me over the weekend when did we become less caring of refugees?
‘No such thing as society’ & ‘loadsamoney’ was my answer – 1979.
However, I must correct the fake narrative about Patel and her family and the Ugandan refugees.
Her family were already here before Amin threw out the Asians;
Petty was born English;
And finally all of the initial ‘refugees’ were actual British Passport holders and could have chosen to live anywhere in the Commonwealth or were taken in as stateless persons across many countries as their Ugandan passports were nullified by Amin.
The conspiracy of Amin and Uganda has not yet been revealed under FOI and standard publication of government papers.
Petty Patel , though is a mere neocon Ayn Rand-ian clone, like Kwarteng, Raab, Truss … infact almost every single one including the unelected Frost running the hard BrexShit perfidy. They are all good patels of East India Co imperialist apparatchiks.
They have been busily clearing out the public service minded Civil Servants for decades now. That also started under Thatcber ( there was an ulterior motive behind the Yes Minister series, beyond its hilarity, that was to undermine the whole public civil service ethos).
So yes mourning a public service supporting, equality promoting, international law supporting Tory/Labour politics of the postwar 30 years is valid – but now we are mere creatures and slaves to the NeoCon , Money Masters of the ancient City ever since. And let’s us not forget it was NuLabourInc who cemented the privatisations and invasions of the MENA and Afghanistan under the cloak of patriotism and fake Terror.
I don’t fear this new Taliban as much as is being propagandised. Their first press meeting seemed highly organised, thought through and took questions – unlike Biden. Their list of plans including women seems to be balanced (certainly better than all our Arab allies!).
As winners of a civil war against tribal headmen running the Opium/Heroine operation hand in hand with the MIC and it’s clandestine and not NATO Generals and gangsters which stretch from there to StPetersbergs (both) who have pocketed Billions – let’s wait and see what ACTUALLY transpires – it’s only 72 hours so far and the only chaos seems to be at the nato controlled Airport, which is not being allowed to run Civil flights by nato!
Here’s an interesting post from “Naked Capitalism”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/08/the-war-nerd-was-there-a-plan-in-afghanistan.html
It even mentions MMT
Perhaps another way of looking at the Afghanistan debacle would be to take it as a clear sign of the total discrediting of the neoconservatism that drove US and UK foreign policy after 9/11, with disasters in both Afghanistan and Iraq, still playing out in Syria, with the added possibility of an Iranian misadventure as well.
In addition, we also have aothe example of the complete nonsense that is neoliberalism.
One of the reasons given for the rapid collapse of the Afghan army was the recent withdrawal of the services it relied upon, provided by contractors.
Who was the genius who thought that military logistics and front- line support could be privatised? Incredible beyond words!
Karl
You are right about Neo-liberalism and its ability to ‘create its own reality’ in the face of facts. All that happens is that it’s peeing in the wind and it comes back at you twice as hard.
Reality bites and often hard.
But hey – the Neo-libs have enabled billions to have been made out of it – so in their eyes unfortunately, it has been all worth it.
The other issue (and linked to Neo-liberalism of course) I’m afraid is this blindness we have to the West’s own fallibilities.
The robber-states who engineered the Iraqi war on the basis of lies.
Are they/we any different or better to/than the Taliban? Sure, women are probably going to get a bad deal in Taliban-land. But how many Iraqi’s (men, women, children) were killed during our occupation? What happened to all that promised infrastructure?
When you make as bad judgement about Iraq and Afghanistan as we have seen, what happens to our ability to judge others? Where is our moral compass? Where is our moral right?
I’m telling you – it no longer exists – throwing stones near glass houses and all that.
We are in a bad way – and this still has yet to be realised by of all people – us.
But I’ll tell you another thing – there are those who see us as we really are – and that includes the Taliban, Putin’s Russia, China and other usual suspects. Talk to them about our precious ‘Western values’. And do you know what they’d tell you?
They’d tell you it was bullshit and that all the West are interested in is money. And they’re right.
Crowing about the fate of Afghani women is bit hollow to me to be honest. What about the rest? How did we get here in the first place?
And if we are that concerned why are we already talking of not recognizing the Taliban regime? So that’s it then, we’re just going to pull up the draw bridge?
No middle ground, no diplomacy – it’s either nothing or war. ‘Take our ball home and not come to play?
On a geo-political basis – it will be what riches the Afghan land can offer (if any) to China or Russian or who whoever that might determine who gets interested yet but what are these riches? They have no oil to call their own do they? And what about the drug crop?
This is so hard to read about, and to watch unfolding …to the extent that I had a nightmare about it last night, in which I was caught up in events there, and was frightened that I wouldn’t be able to get out. I remember in the dream being aware that, as a woman, I didn’t dare go out on my own because that violates Sharia Law—and that meant I wouldn’t be able to escape. It was awful.
I, at least, woke up, ‘safe’ in my own bed here. But those people aren’t going to have that same experience. We MUST extend as much help as we possibly can to get them out—as we can’t turn back the clock and change what has happened before.
And let’s hope Ms Patel experiences an epiphany, and finally recognises what refugee asylum did for her own parents, and what they (and she) might have suffered had that not happened. Her blinkered cruelty in office is really beyond belief. What kind of thought processes brought her to this point, I wonder.
The political situation? It’s really difficult to say what’s best to do now. I guess it all boils down to how badly the new ‘government’ in Afghanistan needs the rest of the world’s cooperation in order to survive. And what other countries are willing to give that cooperation—with or without sanctions. It’s hard to see a silver lining.
I feel very sad reading this plea for support of human rights and liberal values. I no longer believe that our governments care about human rights or liberal notions of justice, particularly in the UK and US. If they did they would treat their own people better. That they would abandon others is predictable. In our own country we’ve seen that bastion of the liberal democracy the rule of law utterly flouted by our govt and rewarded for it. And at work I see the law flouted as well. Any TU rep can tell you that when you say – but the law is very clear – the response is ‘so what, what are you going to do about it’. This happens in major institutions across the nation.