Editorial
he told you so” exponents who have hailed the Taliban’s sudden brutal resurgence in Afghanistan as evidence of the futility of that country’s 20-year foreign occupation will not be basking for long. Some – including a number of New Zealand commentators – may have been able to harden their hearts to a resumption of the regime’s virtual enslavement and frequent mutilation and murder of the women and girls for whom foreign occupation and democracy had won precious freedoms, such as education and the right to work. But the world has just become a much more dangerous place for all. Afghanistan already harboured a thriving community of terrorists. They will now feel more emboldened than ever to try to export with violence their hatred of modernity and Western society.
Those fastidious about foreign occupations on points of principle and legality may reconsider when they see the inevitable rise of whippings, stonings and punitive amputations of Afghan citizens for crimes such as women wearing sandals or dancing.
It’s ironic that US President Joe Biden’s calamitous handling of Afghanistan has left a rogue state for which there is no foreseeable remedy. As former New Zealand prime minister and United Nations Development Programme administrator
Helen Clark says, the days when humanrights-abusing countries were at least a little constrained by the need for Western aid have gone. Afghanistan can now get support from less-scrupulous sources, not least Russia and China. The UN may at best gain humanitarian access to help the sick, wounded and displaced, but that will be a mere band-aid, Clark predicts.
Like many onlookers, Clark was staggered by the United States’ lack of accurate intelligence about the degree of Taliban control outside Afghan urban centres, and its organisational preparedness to overthrow the elected government once the US withdrew. Also staggering was the US’ acceptance of the Taliban as an entity with which it could negotiate. The defining characteristic of hardline theocracies is that they do not give ground.
For those who dismiss the US’ presence and that of other protective foreign forces, including New Zealand’s, as having been a waste of time, Clark and others involved in humanitarian work there can counter with the considerable humanitarian progress made, in particular for women and girls. Healthcare, education and access to work once denied them had started to become normalised as rights, to the extent that a female governor was appointed in Bamyan Province. It is surely only by fostering the building blocks of a safe, orderly civil society, through schools and a legal framework in particular, that violent, oppressive regimes can be routed. That work takes longer than a couple of decades – a couple of generations is more like it.
The US’ reluctance to commit even reduced military support is understandable in terms of its domestic politics. But it’s also somewhat hypocritical in light of the long-term garrisons it maintains elsewhere in the world. It keeps a 28,000-strong military presence in South Korea, 35,000 in Germany and 55,000 in Japan, among other long-term stations.
Although Afghanistan was an unusually dangerous deployment, we now see how necessary it was to that society’s ability to make humanitarian progress. It is to be hoped New Zealanders there, and those Afghans who have helped this country, and their families, can be rescued. Despite Taliban assurances they will not be brutalised, they cannot simply resume their lives with safety. As former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stresses, the narrative that blames the Afghan people for failing to hold the country is both corrosive and deeply unfair. And the repercussions may yet be felt further afield.
This horrendous flash reversal of 20 years’ hard-won progress may make this country rethink its assumption that because of our membership of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, there is less need for physical involvement in troubled regions. Any escalation of regional insecurity can adversely affect trade-dependent countries such as New Zealand. Certainly, we can all judge for ourselves the credibility and honour of some international assurances of support. For now, though, all New Zealand can do is respond to those Afghans in need with generosity and compassion. l
Although Afghanistan was a dangerous deployment, we now see how necessary it was to that society’s humanitarian progress.