https://arab.news/mke52
The reverberations of the Western forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 keep on being felt in many nations, years after Taliban turned the page on 20 years of failed attempts by the US, UK, NATO and others to democratize the country.
The recently exposed leak of data about thousands of Afghans who had worked with British forces presents several unanswered questions, as well as billions of pounds in costs. Then there is the vetting process that remains less than comprehensive, to say the least, and open to abuse, especially as the Taliban have repeatedly claimed that they have not pursued or targeted those who cooperated with the pro-Western regime in Kabul or its many Western allies.
So, is it possible that the Afghans have been overexaggerating the level of threat to their safety for other reasons? Or has the West again been a victim of its oversensitivity to the protection of human rights, freedom of expression and women and other minorities from potential abuse by regimes such as the Taliban?
In less than a month’s time, on Aug. 15, it will be four years since Kabul fell back into the hands of the Taliban. The US-led Western troops’ pullout, negotiated by the first Trump administration and executed by the Biden administration, ended up being one of the most chaotic and humiliating withdrawals since American troops pulled out of Vietnam. Whatever the reasons behind the speedy collapse of the pro-Western government in Kabul, it showed once more that the Western efforts to supplant democracy and nation-building were flawed from the beginning.
