A humanitarian crisis looms unless Americans and Europeans continue to fund the projects keeping Afghans from oblivion
Leaving is the easy bit. It’s the looking back that hurts. There was – as Joe Biden pointed out when announcing America’s defeat at the hands of the Taliban on 31 August – nothing “low-grade or low-risk or low-cost” about a 20-year deployment that cost the United States more than $1tn and thousands of service personnel their lives, their limbs or their peace of mind. But it is disingenuous to claim, as the president also did, that closing the door on Afghanistan will miraculously free the US to deal with more pressing concerns such as China and Russia.
A humanitarian crisis looms over the country, caused in part by the abrupt halting of international aid after the Taliban takeover. Even now, despite the US retreat and the announcement by the regime, on Tuesday, of an interim cabinet that gives scant representation to the country’s different ethnic groups and none at all to women or Shias, Afghanistan can’t be forgotten. Its people’s needs, and the country’s capacity to send out ripples of instability, will continue to demand attention.