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Taliban Rule in Afghanistan, 20 years later: How Did We Get Here? CW:
This article discusses war, violence, terrorism, and misogyny.
A two-decade-long war has come to an abrupt, chaotic halt as the US and its allies withdraw forces from Afghanistan. At least 240,000 people have directly lost their lives in the conflict, with thousands more indirectly injured or dying. 20 years and more than two trillion USD has been spent in the efforts to defeat al-Qaeda and prevent Taliban control in Afghanistan, and yet the country has been rapidly plunged back into the authoritarian rule of the Taliban. The US-led ‘War on Terror’— which was authorised by the UN Security Council — commenced with the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, mere weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The war had the stated objectives of finding and defeating al-Qaeda and countering the Taliban regime, however, the mission also had more ambiguous aims, namely: democratisation, nationbuilding, and human and women’s rights promotion. The people of Afghanistan have been suffering from the fallouts of foreign occupation since the Soviet invasion of 1979, so there was optimism among many civilians that this war might bring an end to decades of oppression and violence. A multitude of failures during the 20 years of the War on Terror, however, has lost the hearts and minds of Afghan civilians. Primarily, it has been the plight of Afghan civilians as collateral damage — where more than 71,000 innocent Afghan people have been killed — which has seen the morality and purpose of the war questioned. While the majority of civilian deaths have been at the hands of the Taliban and insurgent groups, others have been caused by the US and allied forces airstrikes. I believe that this indiscriminate loss of innocent lives is the greatest tragedy of the conflict and is a further injustice for the Afghan people who have already suffered so much.
