Forty years of blame led to the tragedy of Afghanistan

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The cost to America was enormous, and the medieval Taliban still survived.

(Jim Huylebroek | The New York Times) Hoping to flee the country, people gather outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on Friday, August 20, 2021, as a military cargo plane takes off. Since invading Kabul last weekend, the Taliban have quickly tightened their control over Afghanistan, dispersing protests by force and tracking down opponents despite promises of amnesty, according to witnesses and an assessment of the security prepared for the United Nations.

By Don Gale | Special at La Tribune

| SEP. 3, 2021, 3:30 p.m.

Afghanistanism. Journalism professors taught me to avoid Afghanistan. They meant not to write on topics of little interest or relevance to your readers.

In the middle of the 20th century, Afghanistan was of little interest and largely irrelevant. It was a small landlocked nation with few resources nestled between what was then the Soviet Union, Iran and Pakistan.

How things have changed.

Later, in the fall of 1980, I was in Dushanbe, a charming town not far from the border between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. Soviet army trucks rumbled through the city, transporting reinforcements to Soviet military forces bogged down in Afghanistan. The Soviets had taken control of much of the country and installed a puppet government, but Afghan fighters waged a guerrilla warfare, using US-supplied weapons, including handheld Stinger missiles to bring down Soviet helicopters.

Afghan fighters called themselves mujahedin. President Ronald Reagan welcomed the Mujahedin leaders to the White House. The battle lasted for a decade until the Muhajideen drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan. The conflict has left around a million Afghans dead, mostly civilians and 15,000 dead Soviet soldiers.

During the Soviet occupation, some Muhajideen fighters learned to love carrying guns and mistreating women. They split into two factions. Many joined a morally hungry and disowned branch of Islam called the Taliban, while others sought to build a more modern nation. Both groups had abundant weapons, some supplied earlier by the United States, others abandoned by the Soviet army initially, and others supplied by renegade nations in the Middle East.

A long civil war ensued, killing thousands more civilians and virtually destroying Kabul, the capital. The fanatical Taliban faction has emerged victorious. The uncivilized Taliban abused their newfound power by inflicting horrific punishments on those who disagreed as well as on women and girls.

In the late 1990s, evil Taliban believers in Afghanistan welcomed leaders of terrorist organizations, including Osama bin Laden. The United States has formed an international coalition to punish Afghanistan for hosting terrorists. When these same terrorists attacked America on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush sent troops to Afghanistan to control the Taliban.

For 20 years, U.S. military and civilian personnel have helped train Afghan soldiers, rebuild Afghan infrastructure, and help Afghans develop educational opportunities, especially for women and girls. For all these years, the American leadership has tolerated widespread and obvious corruption among Afghan leaders.

The cost was staggering 2,000 American lives, thousands of life-changing American victims and $ 2,000 billion in American taxpayer dollars. And yet the medieval Taliban survived and even prospered in parts of the country, in part because we tolerated too much corruption, relied too much on military force, and failed to provide enough education and information to people. Afghan citizens.

President Barack Obama has said it is time to end the adventure. President Donald Trump has set a deadline for the US withdrawal. President Joe Biden followed up by extending the deadline. Trump has also opened direct negotiations with the Taliban, giving them legitimacy they don’t deserve. President Joe Biden took advantage of this opening to negotiate with the Taliban delayed reprisals against Americans and others wanting to flee the Taliban regime.

As previously stated, things have changed. Where do they have?

The point is, those who want to lay the blame for today’s tragedy in Afghanistan should look back at least 40 years. There are a lot of complaints. And the challenges created by Afghanistan’s inability to govern itself will continue for decades, with or without a US presence.

We should now focus on developing some kind of international organization to help the Afghan people. As the Kabul airport testifies, many Afghans are willing to risk their lives to seek education, economic survival and the benefits of a civilized existence.

Afghanistan may be dead, but the good human beings who live in this once forgotten nation are alive and well. They deserve a meaningful future.

Don Gale, a longtime journalist from Utah, watched the tragedy unfold in Afghanistan for 40 years. He thinks the answer is education, not guns and dollars.

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