In 2009 our State Department asked me (why me you may wonder—story for another day) to interview a group of women that State had brought from Afghanistan to DC for democracy and leadership training. The Dari speakers (Persians) among them looked down upon the Pashto speakers (Pashtuns), but all the women united in their fervent belief that the USA would always have their backs. I tried to tell them otherwise. That we would leave Afghanistan. They should not count on us. Please, please, I begged, if you have money, start Plan B right now and buy a condo abroad. Since all the women spoke some English, I made the assumption that their families had the wherewithal. But to a woman they brushed my concerns aside. This past spring two of the women were assassinated in Kabul. Shortly after, PBS did a long series on the targeted assassinations of prominent women. This disturbing Kabul development ALONE should have alerted at least a few US lawmakers, especially the women, that the Taliban was soon going to take Kabul. The belated bleating of lawmakers like Barbara Lee NOW pisses me greatly.
The assumption at State had long been that “Afghanistan” would become a group of small states, some under the control of warlords (including Taliban leaders), others dominated by China, Russia, Iran and finally Kabul, the lone bastion of western influence and partial democracy. Why did our leaders so misjudge Kabul? Because they saw only the Kabul elites, like my women friends, who just like us believe in democracy and individual rights. What our leaders failed to see are the majority of people in Kabul, who do not really understand these two concepts. Their loyalties are to clan and faith; their yearning is for justice, which, ironically from our point of view, but true to one version of Islam, the Taliban provide.
Perhaps history will call the Fall of Kabul the end of the American Age. We did not keep our promises to the Afghan women we groomed for leadership, and by assumption all Afghan women. In betraying them, we betrayed ourselves. Sometimes we see ourselves best through the eyes of others. So let me end with a story in that regard. For many years I have taken classes from a Stanford classics professor. Recently, as our zoom class began, he was in tears over the January 6 insurrection. He is a German who as a boy was saved from starvation by the Berlin airlift. How could that America, which became for him the light of the world, have become what we are today? He had such faith in us. As my friends among the women of Afghanistan.
In 2009 our State Department asked me (why me you may wonder—story for another day) to interview a group of women that State had brought from Afghanistan to DC for democracy and leadership training. The Dari speakers (Persians) among them looked down upon the Pashto speakers (Pashtuns), but all the women united in their fervent belief that the USA would always have their backs. I tried to tell them otherwise. That we would leave Afghanistan. They should not count on us. Please, please, I begged, if you have money, start Plan B right now and buy a condo abroad. Since all the women spoke some English, I made the assumption that their families had the wherewithal. But to a woman they brushed my concerns aside. This past spring two of the women were assassinated in Kabul. Shortly after, PBS did a long series on the targeted assassinations of prominent women. This disturbing Kabul development ALONE should have alerted at least a few US lawmakers, especially the women, that the Taliban was soon going to take Kabul. The belated bleating of lawmakers like Barbara Lee NOW pisses me greatly.
The assumption at State had long been that “Afghanistan” would become a group of small states, some under the control of warlords (including Taliban leaders), others dominated by China, Russia, Iran and finally Kabul, the lone bastion of western influence and partial democracy. Why did our leaders so misjudge Kabul? Because they saw only the Kabul elites, like my women friends, who just like us believe in democracy and individual rights. What our leaders failed to see are the majority of people in Kabul, who do not really understand these two concepts. Their loyalties are to clan and faith; their yearning is for justice, which, ironically from our point of view, but true to one version of Islam, the Taliban provide.
Perhaps history will call the Fall of Kabul the end of the American Age. We did not keep our promises to the Afghan women we groomed for leadership, and by assumption all Afghan women. In betraying them, we betrayed ourselves. Sometimes we see ourselves best through the eyes of others. So let me end with a story in that regard. For many years I have taken classes from a Stanford classics professor. Recently, as our zoom class began, he was in tears over the January 6 insurrection. He is a German who as a boy was saved from starvation by the Berlin airlift. How could that America, which became for him the light of the world, have become what we are today? He had such faith in us. As my friends among the women of Afghanistan.