Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Failure in Afghanistan
I've been reading a lot of commentary about the collapse of the government in Afghanistan and the take-over by the Taliban. It's terrible, by any account, and results from a lot of failures.
Sadly, even some of the things we count as successes are really failures. For example, one goal of our work there was to expand opportunities for women, and success was often claimed on that count, based on the opening of a school or a new program here or there. Overall, though, the outcomes were dismal. In 2020-- after nearly two decades of the US spending nearly a trillion dollars in Afghanistan-- that country ranked second to last in the Women Peace and Security Index put out by the Georgetown University Institute for Women Peace and Security, which measures "three basic dimensions of women’s well-being — inclusion (economic, social, political); justice (formal laws and informal discrimination); and security (at the family, community, and societal levels) — which are captured and quantified through 11 indicators."
Only Yemen was worse (follow the link above to get the full list, which got cut off in the section I pasted in above). Our other project, Iraq, was in the bottom 10, as well.
This project failed a long time ago, when we offered Afghans corrupt leaders and tumult. We have to make something of the fact that even the Army seemed to accept the Taliban victory so easily.
Running our own country is hard. Running another one on the other side of the world with a wholly different history and culture... well, by now, after several tries, we should know how that goes.
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Retribution and revenge were our initial impetus to drive the Taliban from power. We then taught them how corruption works. This 20 year spigot flowing with trillions of dollars has rusted so it has been turned off. Those who were tending it have gathered up their money and left. We will now spend some time placing blame for the failures on convenient targets.
We may eventually learn to look past how we left and really think about how we started down this path.
Violent revenge can be profitable for some but again has turned an opportunity to improve people's lives into a deadly mess. We must take an honest look inward if we want to break this cycle of violence.
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We may eventually learn to look past how we left and really think about how we started down this path.
Violent revenge can be profitable for some but again has turned an opportunity to improve people's lives into a deadly mess. We must take an honest look inward if we want to break this cycle of violence.
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