Continuing US engagement with Afghans

It is a sight that few would have anticipated: jubilant Taliban fighters, brandishing their guns, sashaying into Kabul, uninterrupted by any resistance or the need to destroy symbols of the Afghan state that the U.S. helped erect. The state was already dismantled.

Some police officers guarding Kabul took off their uniforms, changed into civilian clothes and abandoned their posts. All government offices were deserted. President Ghani fled the country. The Kabul airport became the scene of mayhem as thousands of Afghans, desperate to escape another Taliban regime, tried to board airplanes that were already at full capacity. There was no airport security, no immigration checks, and pilots had to escape. A similar script played off in many provinces that fell to the Taliban without offering a fight. Neither the U.S. government, nor the Afghan government, nor the Afghan people, nor likely even the Taliban imagined such a swift turnaround.

There will be an ongoing flurry of analysis on what went wrong. The military establishment will blame the diplomats; the diplomats will blame the military; both will blame the Afghan government. The Afghan people will blame the United States and their own government. There is indeed plenty of blame to go around — and no single leader or institution willing to accept responsibility for the state of affairs.

Defining the U.S. engagement in Afghanistan is like walking in a hall of mirrors, where the explanations for failure and the justifications for continued engagement trip over one another’s heels. It seems everyone — the U.S. military and its NATO allies, diplomats, Afghan politicians, humanitarian workers and, most tellingly, the narrators of the war — emerge bruised.

But an honest rendering of the current situation in Afghanistan should start with looking past these binaries of success and failure and calibrate the most useful way to save the democratic gains of the new, post-2001 Afghanistan.

The next few weeks in Afghanistan are likely to be a litmus test for America’s leadership. Beyond evacuating those Afghans who helped American engagement in Afghanistan, the U.S. Government needs to address three looming crises.

The first major crisis is the likely obliteration of democratic institutions in Afghanistan. The Taliban exhibit an intolerance for dissent, and they have repeatedly expressed a profound disdain for political contestation. They are unlikely to accept an electoral system that would present opportunities for their competitors to unseat them from power. Their arrival in Kabul may thus present a death knell for democracy in Afghanistan. The most immediate effects of this reality will be felt by the Afghan minorities. Historically excluded from power, the Afghan minorities, for the first time since the founding of the Afghan state, have been able to legitimately express their political preferences in the new, post-2001 political system. The United States should try to ensure that those rights aren’t dismissed simply because the U.S. military engagement has ended.

The Afghan society is deeply conservative in its adherence to social norms and in its vision for women’s role in society. But the Taliban reinterpreted those social norms to limit the role of women strictly to household work, prevent them from pursuing education beyond the age of 12, and allow them to step outside their homes only when accompanied by a male family relative. The Taliban conducted public beatings of women and were known to throw acid at or shoot girls who pursued education. Their draconian vision of society is deeply insulting to modern sensibilities. The United States should keep Afghan women at the center of any engagement with the Taliban and try to ensure that the Taliban allow Afghan women to express themselves.

There is also likely to be a crisis of governance in Afghanistan. The Afghan government provided governance inadequately and ineffectively. But the Taliban’s vision for governance is rooted in inflicting savage punishments to enforce Sharia, instilling fear among the population, and ruling by diktat. If they do not deviate from that script, their mere presence would propel an exodus of technocrats and educated Afghans. This will present a massive challenge for the Taliban to provide education, healthcare, justice, and other public services to Afghans. The United States should engage humanitarian organizations to provide emergency relief and calibrate a plan to provide basic public services to Afghans who will now need to contend with a new regime that is unfit to govern.

The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan may be ignominiously over, but that does not preclude the United States from engaging the Afghan people, enabling their social development and championing their democratic aspirations.

An individual born in a war-torn Afghanistan should have as much a say in how she or he should be governed as someone born in Pennsylvania or New York does. This belief in the equality of opportunity has underlined American idealism about reshaping the world in its image. Now is not the time to abandon that aspiration.

Prakhar Sharma is a senior researcher at the International Republican Institute (IRI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization committed to advancing democracy and governance worldwide. Since 2006, he has studied in Afghanistan and lived in the country for four years.