The betrayal of Afghanistan

For six months in 2007, from March through August 2007, I worked in Kabul, Afghanistan, helping a national government ministry there with various communications functions, via a United Nations contract. 

I researched and edited reports for donors, I got our program's vast photo archive of work with Afghans online so other agencies could use them for their reports and online, and I did workshops to help my Afghan women colleagues improve their communication skills.  

It was a time of hope in a surreal setting. It wasn't safe for a foreign woman to walk around on the streets of Kabul, but there were about six restaurants that the UN considered safe enough for staff to go to (and about half a dozen more that staff also went to). I worked primarily with Afghans, in an Afghan workplace, not a UN compound, not surrounded primarily by foreigners. A headscarf could be loose - an unmarried woman could still show her hair beneath that scarf. Not every woman was in a burqa - none of my Afghan co-workers were. I bounced around in a UN SUV on bomb-pocked dirt roads to work at about 6:30 a.m every morning, and went the same way home at about 5 each evening, six days a week. We often passed men playing volleyball in the dusty dirt outside a bombed-out building. I spent most of my days in front of a laptop, writing copy: reports, press releases, video scripts, web site content, etc. Sometimes I was in meetings, sometimes I was walking within our walled ministry compound, trying to track down some Afghan official to interview for a report I was preparing about a dam or a winterization program or some other rural development project. I rarely got moments away from work or my guest house, but I did get a few: a day at a lake, two days in Kandahar, all day in beautiful Panshir, an afternoon in the Kabul history museum near Darul Aman Palace... 

I won't say I loved it. I didn't love it. Some days, I hated it. It was hard, lonely work. I missed my husband and my dog. I missed walking. I hated the polluted air. I was appalled at how dogs were treated (the Koran, by the way, teaches to care for dogs). I was offered an extended contract and said, "No way!" 

But I loved working with Afghans - all these young, educated, hopeful people who went all in to improve their country. Their hope and assumptions about the future were infectious. I took photos of them, I blogged about them, I stayed in touch with them all these years. They went all in to make their country better and to believe their country was embracing Democracy, and they were already living a life oh-so-different than anything the Taliban would ever allow. 

When I left Kabul in August 2007, Lonely Planet had just published a guidebook to the country, I had written and published a guide online to shopping in Kabul, so foreigners could support local businesses, especially women, and I told my husband I would take him to Afghanistan in probably five years, because the country would be safe enough for us to go for a visit. 

All these Afghans who believed they could build a modern country - not like the USA, not like Canada, not like something in Europe - they wanted something like Lebanon in its heyday, or like Egypt at various times in the 20th Century: a modern Islamic state, where the religion was valued and practiced openly but also where women went to school and had careers. They wanted the country to look more like Tajikistan or Uzbekistan. They did NOT want to be "America" - they wanted to be Afghanistan. And they worked towards that. They lived it, every day. And the USA celebrated that, publicized it, bragged about it. 

A few years later, I watched one of my colleagues get a comment on his Facebook page about being Pashto, in contrast to Tajik or whatever, and he responded, "I am Afghan." It warmed my heart. 

And the way my Afghan colleagues have lived in the last 15 or so years, the way the USA and other countries have encouraged them to live, is now going to get them killed. 

Here I am in Oregon, 14 years later. I've spent days and days compiling information and doing online research and writing the state department and my elected officials, trying desperately to get the magical paperwork for my assistant and her family, and another woman I worked with, so they can get out of the country. I'm writing letters, sending emails, posting online, filling out forms... and it just does nothing. I'm also scrubbing photos off the Internet, including photos of me with some representatives from an Afghan media channel when they visited Portland and a blog applauding my alma mater back in Kentucky for honoring an Afghan journalist. 

My former assistant has four young nieces that she's responsible for, and she's terrified the Taliban is going to take them away, because that's what they do. They hide in their house. The US press says, "oh, the Taliban says women will be able to go to school, they will be able to work in separate workplaces!" while the Taliban tells women and girls they must stay in their homes - and far worse. 

I get messages from my assistant each morning and each evening so that I know she's still alive. 

I just can't believe we have abandoned the people who believed in us and have lived the lives they've lead, because we, the USA, the Western World, said, hey, we've got your back, go for it! All these uplifting media TV stories over the years about Afghan women over the years, because they formed a bicycle riding team or a soccer team or a skateboarding club - all of those stories now have the potential to get them killed.

The evacuation did not have to happen this way. Leaving Afghanistan did not have to happen this way. Trump didn't involve the Afghan government in any negotiations with the Taliban, signaling to everyone: they are powerless and meaningless. Same for women: Afghanistan has women leaders, and they were left out of all conversations. The military thought contractors and lots of equipment could create an Afghan army - and they never considered talking to Afghan young people, or any women, about what was happening, they poured money into contractors bank accounts instead of regular people's. Yes, Biden inherited a mess he could not fix, but he has to be held accountable for his role in this disaster of an evacuation, starting with the sudden closing of Bagram airbase, which was such a colossal mistake, and no plan for mass evacuation. The arrogance and denial of Biden and his administration about how things would end in Afghanistan cannot be forgotten: 

The Taliban is not the south—the North Vietnamese army. They're not—they're not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There's going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the—of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable. 

Biden during a July 8, 2021 press conference.

And it's going to be sooner rather than later when we start hearing about how the USA is going to give the Taliban money despite their rapes of women and murders of journalists and ethnic minorities - it will be something about "fighting terrorism" and "we can't expect them to change overnight" and blah blah blah. All sorts of excuses. All sorts of empty excuses for not really pressuring Afghanistan in any meaningful way to restore women's human rights. 

Why will any person in another country believe a US military person, a US diplomat, a USAID worker, a Peace Corps member, or any citizen of the US who says, "Hey, trust me! Let's work together! Let's be allies!" Why should they believe the US ever again?

Bases in Germany, Italy, South Korea, Japan... good, long relationships with people in those countries, starting when they were war-ravaged and needed to rebuild and needed that long-term commitment. But not Afghanistan.  

I'm just gutted. I'm completely gutted. And ashamed. 

September 1, 2021 Postscript:

Educated girls grow to become educated women, and educated women will not allow their children to become terrorists. The secret to a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan is no secret at all: It is educated girls.

Shabana Basij-Rasikh, @sbasijrasikh on Twitter, in "I founded a girls’ school in Afghanistan. Don’t let our stories disappear as they have before."