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Why were more people not talking about Afghanistan in a world where social media amplifies rage and exaggerates polarisation? Where was the anger about innocent Afghan people before the recent conflict? Where is the protest around leaving a country in the manner that the United States and Great Britain have? Where were the rage and support when hundreds of innocent children were being killed by daily U.S. airstrikes?

 

Today's Afghanistan is the same Afghanistan where two decades of Western engagement has resulted in a bloodbath. The same Afghanistan, where hundreds of our countrymen died fighting to make the world safer and more equitable. Afghanistan, where fresh blood spilt over the earth before the last spill dried up. Afghanistan, where U.S. and G.B. serious power claims are being shattered alongside the people they pledged to help. Instead, the party they went to eliminate and remove, the country's ruthless Islamist movement and military organisation, the Taliban, have now reclaimed power. Yet, the only outpouring and support the Afghan people have got has been in the past few days.

 

The international world erroneously assumed that Afghanistan could be pacified and that a central government could be established there with the help of soldiers from various nations. This created the appearance of democracy. But, unfortunately, the plan has failed, and the U.S. has withdrawn. Likewise, G.B. has withdrawn. The rest of the world, mainly NATO members, have followed suit. However, it took a country going through numerous wars for over four decades to be reclaimed by the Taliban to trend on Twitter.  Before this week, any hashtags related to Afghanistan did not even make it to the top 100,000, let alone any newspaper front page.

 

As the U.S. signed the fate of the Afghan people away with a deal with the same party, they went to eliminate. No one even blinked an eye. People instead people like G.B. Defence Secretary called it a "small but important step towards the chance for Afghans to live in peace, free from terrorism". The same people are now back peddling and trying to distance themselves from the peace deal. It is as if people are only now talking about Afghanistan because it is plastered across every newspaper front page for all the wrong reasons. Now it is suddenly 'cool' and 'trendy' to post something on social media even if you do not understand the full context of the situation and previously were purposely avoiding the topic or could not care less.

So let us add some context. It is true that in these 20 years, Afghanistan saw progress in many areas. Since 2002, in cities under Afghan government control, millions of Afghan girls have gone to school, and Afghan women have participated in public life, including holding political office, in greater numbers than ever before. In government-controlled areas, Afghan media play an active role in providing a forum for public debate while also risking threats and violence from officials, security forces, government-backed militias, and increasingly the Taliban.

 

However, these gains were fragile and limited and were achieved against a background of tremendous violence and abuse. In these 20 years, the propensity of the U.S. and G.B. to prioritise short-term military gains over the creation of genuinely democratic institutions and the protection of human rights fatally undermined both the wester allies mission and the entire post-2001 state-building effort. The war, which frequently lacked strategic coherence over the last two decades, moved from counter-insurgency to counter-narcotics to capacity-building, sometimes blurring all three.

 

Moreover, overreliance on airstrikes without adequate civilian protections, relying on abusive warlords to fill security and political leadership roles, and mainly ignoring wholesale corruption and rights violations, fostered deep resentment and distrust of the western allies and Afghan governments. This has no doubt grievously weakened Afghanistan's military and political capacities and made it far easier for the Taliban to gain ground.

 

Taliban's gain today has been a disaster almost two decades in the making. Both the U.S. and G.B. need to recognise that their mistakes were not in troop numbers, rules of engagement, or amount of fighting power or failure of the Afghan army to take responsibility. Instead, the mistakes can be broken down into two parts:

1. There was a big misunderstanding of the type of conflict the U.S. and G.B. were involved in and the failure to adapt quickly. The U.S. continually attempted to make the war fit their understanding of operations and not a true understanding of the conflict itself. The combination of guerilla and conventional warfare that the U.S. faced in Afghanistan was, for the most part, met with superior technology, firepower and significant unit actions. As the war continued, the U.S. technology and firepower was mostly in the hands of wrongly motivated troops fighting for no other apparent reason than to kill Taliban's/Al-Qaeda. Even when the U.S. handed over responsibility to the Afghan national army, they offered training in how the U.S. operated in Afghanistan (which, as can be seen now, was not very effective at all) and provided weapons and machinery but not ammunition or maintenance/repair support. This manifested as part of the thinking that relied on a belief that concentration and high volumes of firepower would win the war. Instead, it had the opposite impact and resulted in high civilian deaths and loss of support from Afghan locals outside major cities.
2. There was a combination of strategy failures and fundamental failure to recognise that corruption and widespread human rights abuses. The psychological impact of so many civilian deaths (over 70k since 2001, of which up to 30k are projected to be children) and injuries from air operations heavily impacted the Afghan peoples views of U.S in a negative way. That is only the official reported numbers, the actual number of civilian deaths by some charities working on the ground are projected to be well over 250k. The terror in rural Afghanistan from the constant raids and special operations did far more significant damage in undermining support for the Afghan government than any military advantage gained. Additionally, the Afghan military that over the past twenty years had learned to rely on U.S. support for airpower, intelligence, logistics, planning, and other vital enablers was fatally demoralised by the U.S. decision to abandon it. To say the Afghan army did not fight is fatally untrue and disrespectful. The strategic decision to pull troops out so rapidly hugely impacted morale. Not only did those troops depart, but so did eight thousand allied troops and eighteen thousand contractors that the Afghan forces relied upon to operate their air force and for logistical support. In recent months, the Afghan military could not provide vital supplies such as food and ammunition to outposts scattered around the country. Some Afghan units, particularly the elite commandos, fought hard nearly to the end. Over 600 Afghan soldiers were killed in combat fighting the Taliban and zero foreign soldiers in the past few months. Seeing the writing on the wall, most Afghan soldiers chose to cut deals with the Taliban, surrender, or melt away rather than risk their lives for a hopeless cause.

 

For those that have only heard about Afghanistan this month, the Taliban have swept out the current administration, leaving just a farce of a transition in place. The seeds for the collapse were sown last year when Trump signed a deal with the Taliban to withdraw its troops entirely in exchange for them not targeting U.S. troops instead. For the Taliban, it was the beginning of their victory after nearly two decades of war. For many demoralised Afghans, it was betrayal and abandonment. The Taliban started to increase their attacks on government forces but starting to combine those with targeted killings of journalists and rights activists, ramping up an environment of fear. As a result of the deal, in the first half of 2021, there were 1,659 civilians killed and 3,254 wounded, a 47 per cent increase compared with the same period last year. The humanitarian crisis today can be linked directly back to the shortfalls of the U.S. deal.

 

It is not all U.S and G.B doings. Poverty, corruption and insecurity are just some of the piercing issues where the Afghan government has miserably failed the ordinary Afghan too. Almost half the country's population now lives below the national poverty line. The Afghans are exasperated after 43 years of bloodshed and the incompetency of their heavily corrupt leaders, who, instead of helping those in need, focused on filling their own pockets. However, the ordinary Afghan people know that the country's atrocious situation will not change unless all parties return to the negotiating table, rejecting their rigidity, blame game, egos, and greed and seriously looking for a peaceful solution. It is high stakes, but its stakes worth taking a risk for. They want peace and hope. They want their lives back. They want their children to experience childhood.

 

Knowing this, the Taliban offered Afghan people outside the major cities the opposite of the U.S. strategy had been; through tribal and village elders, they guaranteed safe passage, removing warlords, eradicating corruption and the protection of civilians if no one put up a fight. The Taliban took the initiative with the U.S., adamant to pretend Afghanistan was no longer their problem following the deal. They used the corrupt Afghan government to put deals and surrender arrangements in return for safe passage. With the Taliban all but victorious, why put up a fight. Unlike the U.S. and G.B. strategies, the Taliban strategy proved immensely effective.

 

"To understand Afghanistan, you have to face the stress and loss that the Afghan people have faced for more than 40 years. No one clings onto a plane because they want to. The suffering and desperation are beyond imaginable for us in the west."

- One of The Green Village founders

 

The harsh reality is that many people in the country will face death sentences, persecution, and brutal subjection of women. Tens of thousands are living in makeshift camps with no shelter, hospitals are full, and drought is compounding peoples' suffering. Many people are fleeing the nation to save their lives or, in the case of women, to keep their freedom. Because the Taliban will not deliver peace, another wave of exodus is unavoidable. Nothing will happen for a good few weeks while the world's eyes are on Afghanistan. It is not a question of IF uncontested Taliban control will bring suffering and oppression to the whole country, but more a question of WHEN.

 

Over the next few weeks, people worldwide will go back to how it has always been and will not blink an eye to the millions suffering every day in Afghanistan or could not care less that the U.S. and G.B. mission has dwindled into bloodshed, strategic failure and humiliation.  Nevertheless, the U.S. and G.B. seem to be largely indifferent to all this. There is noise and 'support' while the conflict is the flavour of the week before people go back to posting their outrage with who lied to who on Love Island instead. Supporting those Afghans that have helped foreign troops, governments and aid workers with asylum is greatly appreciated, but it is only a small step in helping <100,000 people and not the unfortunate 37 million innocent Afghans that remain in Afghanistan.

 

It almost seems like we in the west have just become countries that only get angry about the things that do not matter as a society or things that make us look 'trendy' and 'cool' on social media. So back to my question: where is the anger and protest about Afghanistan?