Afghanistan: Human Costs (Le Monde Diplomacy

On 15 August 2021, after the withdrawal of international forces, Taliban fighters entered Kabul and seized power in Afghanistan. The following year brought drought, conflict, a pandemic, the suspension of foreign aid, and the transfer of frozen Afghan assets in the United States by Joe Biden to the families of his 9/11 victims. Currently, nine of his ten Afghans suffer from food insecurity.

Could this have been avoided? The country has a history of great power instability and foreign interference. A drought in the late 1960s laid the groundwork for his 1973 coup against the king and the abolition of the monarchy. Five years later, his second coup led by Kabul’s urban communists led to reforms that were subsequently rejected by the country’s rural communities. The civil war became a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union via Pakistan, and further civil war. The US invasion in 2001 as her response to 9/11 followed, and its continued presence was sold to the West as an attempt to liberate Afghan women. An increasingly corrupt state system imposed from the outside has failed to establish security at home. Meanwhile, the Taliban have managed to gain more power and trust from civilians, and both the US and Russia have reached out.