Afghanistan is in meltdown, and the US is helping to speed it up
Categories: FOREIGN COUNTRIES
When the United States withdrew from Afghanistan last summer, it was left with a critical choice: allow the collapse of a state that had mostly been kept afloat by foreign aid or work with the Taliban, its former foes who were in power, to prevent that outcome. The United States should swallow the bitter pill of working with the Taliban-led government in order to prevent a failed state in Afghanistan. Kneecapping the government through sanctions and frozen aid won’t change the fact that the Taliban are now in charge, but it will ensure that ordinary public services collapse, the economy decays and Afghans’ livelihoods shrink even further threats. Afghans are already on a countdown to calamity. Their cash-based economy is starved of currency; hunger and malnutrition are growing; civil servants are largely unpaid; and essential services are in tatters. Devastating droughts, the pandemic and the Taliban’s incompetence in governing have all played roles in creating what may be the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. But the West’s immediate steps to isolate the new regime triggered Afghanistan’s meltdown. This was especially the case because the countries that shut off the aid spigot had, over 20 years, enabled the Afghan state’s dependency on it. Isolation was fast and easy to do: It cost no money or political capital and satisfied the imperative of expressing disapprovalThe United States should draw a distinction between the Taliban as former insurgents and the state they now control. This starts by beginning to lift sanctions on the Taliban as a group (leaving sanctions on some individuals and an arms embargo in place); funding specific state functions in areas such as rural development, agriculture, electricity and local governance; and restoring central-bank operations to reconnect Afghanistan to the global financial system. Afghanistan will undoubtedly be more impoverished under the Taliban than it was in recent years, and no country will restore aid to the scale the last government enjoyed. But the population needs a glide path for a diminishing level of support, rather than the abrupt cutoff that hit the economy with a shock wave. That’s not to say that the West should abandon efforts to get the Taliban to respect human rights and cooperate on security priorities. But expectations should be modest. The Taliban are never going to have a policy on women’s rights that accords with Western values. They show no signs of embracing even limited forms of democratic governance. Nor is it likely they will ever take active measures to destroy or hand over remnants of Al Qaeda, even though they might keep a lid on them.No one in Washington or European capitals can be pleased to contemplate working with this kind of government.But the alternative is worse, foremost for the Afghans who have no choice but to live under Taliban rule and who need livelihoods.