U.S. troops are finally leaving Afghanistan after 20 years, a decision recently announced by President Biden. It’s time to end the “forever war,” Biden said, a conflict responsible for at least 2,448 American deaths and the wounding of 20,772 soldiers.
Bring the troops home. Heck, who doesn’t like that idea? Do we really need to shed more American blood in Afghanistan, a dusty, tumultuous country that has historically resented foreigners? Why spend the money? Why spend the time?
“What’s the downside of leaving?” I imagine one of the Washington, D.C., decision makers asking.
I picture them sitting around a highly polished table, coolly assessing the pros and cons of pulling the plug on American military support, a dicey proposition given a resurgence of Taliban violence right now. Maybe there’s a woman or two in this group of high-level officials, but in my mind, it’s predominately male. And I’m probably right.
“Women might lose some of the freedoms they have won in the last 20 years,” one answers.
“How bad could it get?”
“Unclear.”
Oh really? Unless you’ve had a bag over your head for the last two decades, you should have a pretty good idea of what will happen once the United States and its NATO allies depart. You remember the Taliban, don’t you? They’re the guys who think women shouldn’t show their faces in public. When they controlled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, girls weren’t allowed to go to school and women weren’t allowed to work. Women could also be stoned or flogged for so-called morals offenses, male-defined, of course.
A newly declassified U.S. intelligence report essentially predicts that women’s rights will slide without American military support, whether the Taliban regains control or not. But, in explaining his decision, Biden said the U.S. had met its objective of rooting out Al Qaeda’s terrorist training camps, which helped to spawn the 9/11 attacks on this country. He vowed American troops would depart by Sept. 11 of this year, 20 years to the day the twin towers collapsed, offering a tidy, almost Hollywood-like ending to a conflict that has been anything but.
The gains Afghan women have made in the last 20 years — such as the right to hold elected office, go to school and work outside the home — received one line in Biden’s April 14 speech, a vague pledge to support their rights with “significant” humanitarian and development assistance. So, too, Afghanistan’s current president, Ashaf Ghani, has vowed to protect the progress made by women, at the same time his government is negotiating with the Taliban for an end to their protracted war.
But the Taliban, and other fundamentalist creeps in Afghanistan, like the Afghan branch of ISIS, have never disguised their feelings about women and girls. The younger generation claim to be more open-minded, and in some places they control have even allowed girls to go to school — until puberty that is. But, in general, their actions belie their words. In May 2020, gunmen attacked a maternity ward in Kabul, killing 24 people, among them five women in labor, 10 who had recently given birth and three children.
No group claimed responsibility.
Then, just to make their intentions perfectly clear, bombs exploded earlier this month at a girls’ high school, killing at least 50 people, many of them poor, teenage girls. As the New York Times reported, “The scale of the killing and the innocence of the victims seemed further unnerving proof of the country’s violent unraveling, as the Taliban make daily gains …”
So, back to the decision makers in Washington: No doubt they, and President Biden, had a difficult decision to make. But they shouldn’t pretend they don’t know whom they’re sacrificing in their determination to get out of Afghanistan. The victims will be innocent lambs. Girls again. When will it end?
