Make Solutions, Not Sanctions: Ending the US’s Economic War on the Afghan People

Make Solutions, Not Sanctions: Ending the US’s Economic War on the Afghan People

By Taban Malihi

I. INTRODUCTION

The summer of 2021 saw U.S. headlines reporting on everything from intense droughts and wildfires in the American west to an ongoing racial reckoning to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet one international crisis dominated the nightly news for mere weeks before fading into the ever-churning news cycle: the U.S. pullout of Afghanistan. Widely described as a "disaster" and "betrayal" (Nevett), many questioned this climactic end to a nearly twenty-year-long intervention that left an estimated 157,000 people dead (Whitlock). Indeed, although the Pew Research Center reported that 54% of U.S. adults in August 2021 supported the decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, a near-equal amount of Americans—42%—said the withdrawal was poorly executed, while 69% said the U.S.’s Afghanistan mission was largely a failure (Van Green). A March poll from I&I/TIPP even concluded that 56% of Americans believe the pullout from Afghanistan, embroiled in chaos and confusion, emboldened Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine (Jones). Though the governmental collapse was a shock to many, behind the scenes the American government played a considerable part in the downfall of one of its greatest democratic projects: within Afghanistan’s U.S.-supported ‘democracy’, the U.S. actively enabled widespread corruption that doomed the system from the start (Michel). American journalist Craig Whitlock found that forty percent of Department of Defense contracts—tens of billions of dollars—ended up in the hands of criminal officials and organizations (Whitlock). Even development assistance, amounting to $132 billion since 2001, was found by Congress’ Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) to be either wasted or stolen (U.S. Government Publishing Office).

Though it has been almost a year since the U.S. pullout and Taliban takeover, the U.S. is still involved in perpetuating an ongoing crisis in Afghanistan. In its attempts to apply economic

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pressure to the repressive Taliban, the U.S. and its policies have contributed to Afghanistan’s wholescale societal collapse, dire to the point that in February, the White House recognized the situation as an “extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” (Lang). Yet amidst a geopolitical standstill where neither side is willing to come to the negotiating table, the people of Afghanistan suffer, having experienced decades of foreign intervention and violence only to now be left at the mercy of a limited number of aid organizations and otherwise cut off from the world. The U.S., which expressed such a deep sense of responsibility to support a terrorism-free Afghanistan in 2001, must now accept the consequences of its actions to once more take responsibility as an international leader and adopt a different approach than the status quo. Thus, this paper argues that to truly aid Afghans, current U.S. economic warfare must cease and make way for more rational approaches to both policy making and diplomacy as well as alternative forms of harm mitigation, including bolstering efforts to provide refuge to Afghans in need.

II.

CONTEXT BEHIND U.S.-AFGHAN RELATIONS

The U.S. government follows the ‘path of least resistance’, constantly maintaining appearances to sate the public. Therefore, although it is advantageous to the government to maintain its current quiet economic warfare and consequently face very little public resistance, when considering its history of failure surrounding interventions in Afghanistan, it is its responsibility to abandon this irresponsible posture. The government must begin the hard work it has failed to do in the past twenty years: approach the situation with a goal-oriented mindset while recognizing its limits, versus the equivalent of throwing a handful of darts whilst blindfolded to see which ones stick. If not, the continuation of a long-standing performative

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doctrine comes at the cost of both this nation’s foundational values as well as the potential to create genuinely beneficial policies to both aid Afghanistan and repair the U.S.’s credibility as a leader. If the U.S. wishes to be an arbiter of justice and promoter of democracy with global influence, it must first strive to fulfill its own ideals of transparency, recognize the consequences of its actions, and accept its responsibility to help—not continue to destroy—Afghanistan today.

A. Historical Relations 1. Entering Afghanistan

Former President George W. Bush said in 2002: “The history of military conflict in Afghanistan has been one of initial success followed by long years of floundering and ultimate failure. We are not going to repeat that mistake” (Whitlock). These promises, made during the beginnings of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, would ring hollow not soon after his speech. Yet it is worth understanding the roots of modern U.S.-Afghan relations, to the end that they provide essential context to the current state of Afghanistan as well as the nature of U.S. foreign policy objectives.

Major U.S. involvement in Afghanistan stretches back to the 1950’s; during the Cold War, both the U.S. and Soviet Union sponsored infrastructure investments, and by the 1980’s, following a 1978 Marxist-Leninist revolution, the U.S. became involved with the resistance movement to counter the spread of communism (Stewart). These resistors, the mujahedeen, varied in terms of political ideology and capability, but the U.S. specifically funded the most reactionary, conservative, Islamist branch of the mujahedeen, as they happened to be the most organized of the groups. Unfortunately, the U.S. was haphazard in its management and neglected to monitor these groups, resulting in their eventual evolution into al-Qaeda and the Taliban (Stewart). In effect, with U.S. funding, guns (Alvi), and training (including infamous terror

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tactics like suicide bombing), the U.S. soon found itself seeking to defeat a monster of its own creation—it won the battle only to lose the war (Tharoor). This historical backdrop for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan explains why experts have called the initial invasion an example of imperialistic government doctrines put in motion, with U.S. power projection at the heart of intervention rather than the Afghan people—a tradeoff that risks repeating itself in the present day (Peters).

2. Government Narrative Manipulation The government has obscured and warped the narrative surrounding the war in Afghanistan time and time again. After a three-year-long legal battle with the U.S. government, the Washington Post was able to obtain access to the Afghanistan Papers under the Freedom of Information act. Over 2,000 pages of these previously unpublished interview records revealed that senior U.S. officials recognized they were losing the war, yet externally maintained false claims of success (Whitlock). These claims include comments from Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, in 2008: “Are we losing this war? Absolutely no way. Can the enemy win it? Absolutely no way.” These catchy rhetoric are hyperbolic at best and blatant lies at worst, meant to neatly package warmongering to the American public within a palatable us-versus-them mentality. Contrary to the Major General’s confident public statements, senior officers in the Afghanistan Papers exposed extreme top-level incompetencies, revealing that the war had been plagued since its inception by “so many priorities and aspirations it was like [there was] no strategy at all.” No strategy was evidently a bad strategy: as early as the first few months of conflict, years before Schloesser’s speech, officials cited fears of a “Vietnam-like quagmire” as the U.S. suffered heavy losses. This proved true as the war dragged on for another twenty years, yet Army colonel and senior counterinsurgency adviser Bob Crowley, corroborated by another

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Senior National Security Council official, revealed that the U.S. government was willing to go to any ends to cover up the true cost of the war: “Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible.” This harsh truth, worsened by the doomed war strategy, directly contradicts misleading messages from prominent officials, including former President Barack Obama, in 2009: “Going forward, we will not blindly stay the course. Instead, we will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable” (Whitlock). The falsehoods surrounding these metrics indicate that there has never been any real attempt at holding the U.S. accountable for its failed war and deceptive actions, and officials must publicly acknowledge the truth in the aftermath of the pullout for any meaningful accountability to take place. Moreover, given the warped history behind this largely one-sided decision making, it is impossible for the U.S. to deny its unique responsibility to deal with the disastrous results of its mistakes.

3. Media Narrative Manipulation

The media has always been key to controlling public opinion about Afghanistan, since a relatively ignorant constituency enabled the perpetuation of shadowy political and operational decisions. General Douglas Lute, who administered U.S. affairs with Afghanistan under both Bush and Obama, remarked: “If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction…” (Whitlock) Indeed, this ponderance highlights the importance of public perception to a government that finds such ease in withholding the truth; if the constituents don’t hear about something, it effectively didn’t happen when it comes to shaping government policy. The proof is in the viewership: during the war, TV news coverage on major networks CBS, NBC, and ABC was negligible, totaling five minutes in all of 2020. Meanwhile, the government’s need to memorialize the pullout as the righteous end of a two-decade-long war ensured that in just August 2021, coverage jumped to 345 minutes, yet slumped back to 21 minutes between

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September and January 2022 in the worsening aftermath (Marcetic). Such fast-changing headlines condition Americans to feel an ‘appropriate amount of remorse’ and move on, all while Afghanistan’s current crisis goes underreported, resulting in an uninformed American public that cannot hold the government accountable. Even after the disastrous pullout exposed the mission’s dysfunction (Van Green), American public criticism was too little, too late: if constituents had been exposed to the truth all along, they likely would have exercised their democratic rights to vote against, protest, and change the U.S.’s foreign policy approach during the war, saving countless American and Afghan lives.

A second dynamic behind underreporting is deeply rooted in the underlying racism of American imperialism. Columbia University Research Fellow Richard Hanania writes that economic warfare is “impractical and morally destructive but politically convenient”, because conflict causing the deaths of American soldiers draws considerably more attention from the American public than famine and economic disaster that solely affects Afghans (Hanania). Similarly, to maximize engagement, media outlets prioritize reporting on warfare that affects the majority of Americans, which often means that once the intervenor disengages, a lack of coverage feeds into limited public education and discourse. Meanwhile, it is essential to recognize that diasporic communities within the U.S. are not exempt from the effects of economic warfare, but neither politicians nor media adequately factor them into their decision making, since these communities tend to constitute a small percentage of the population or face obstacles to enfranchisement or viewership such as language barriers. Simultaneously, the post-9/11 phenomenon of mass desensitization to conflict in the SWANA region has encouraged xenophobic, racist, and Islamophobic rhetoric from politicians and reporters which further cements public apathy towards the plight of Afghanistan and a willful ignorance of human

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suffering. Calling refugees of color “uncivilized” justifies both their plight and the lack of attention it receives, enabling mass dissociation and a lack of collective responsibility (Ko), which should be a major concern for any democratic country that relies on the engagement of the populace to determine the future of policy.

B. Modern Day Relations

In the winter of 2021-22, twenty-four million Afghans were facing life-threatening food insecurity (Ferguson). Inflation, a liquidity crisis, and a healthcare system collapse now ravage a population that had already been struggling with widespread poverty before the withdrawal. The New York Times reports that the root cause of this economic crisis is U.S. sanctions on the Taliban, with the international community following in American footsteps to cut off Afghanistan from the international financial and banking system (New York Times). In addition to sanctions, $10 billion dollars worth of Afghan assets have been frozen in foreign vaults along with $440 million in IMF reserves, largely due to concerns about Taliban access to these funds. Similarly, the flow of foreign aid has vanished into thin air, taking with it three-quarters of Afghanistan’s public spending and 43 percent of GDP (Marcetic). Exacerbating an already dire situation, in February 2022, President Joe Biden signed an executive order dictating that of the $7 billion in Afghan assets America seized, $3.5 billion will go to aid for Afghans, while the other half will be distributed to the families of 9/11 victims (Ahlman) (Hussain). However, senior officials within the Biden administration admit that due to extended delays, this aid will be largely ineffective and overall insufficient (Lang). Moreover, the decision has been criticized by Afghan activists, organizations like Unfreeze Afghanistan, and 9/11 victim families alike, with a consensus that laying claims to the money of the Afghan people is unlawful and unethical in the face of the ongoing humanitarian crisis (Hussain).

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Peter Swope of the Brown Political Review concludes that this is the new face of American imperialism, with U.S. economic and strategic interests at the forefront of its actions as opposed to realistic crisis management. Indeed, they continue that despite no Afghan being responsible for the 9/11 attacks, Afghans today are being held responsible for what transpired over 20 years ago, while Saudi Arabia—from which 15 of the 19 hijackers hailed—has generally enjoyed strong relations with the U.S., even with continued concerns over government repression and human rights violations. As such, Swope argues that the U.S.’s current method of collective punishment is predicated on and perpetuates post-9/11 Islamophobic, orientalist, and racist narratives of the SWANA region as a monolith (Swope); these prejudiced views feed into a wide range of ongoing social, economic, and military violence against regional and diasporic SWANA peoples.

The current state of Afghanistan hangs in the balance, as the NGO Save the Children reports in May that almost 50 percent of the population needs urgent support to survive, with nearly 10 million children going hungry, despite continuing humanitarian aid (Al Jazeera). Moreover, UN officials report that organizational efforts have been unable to avert the economic collapse from "approaching a point of irreversibility…What we have done has been only to buy a little time" (Landay). If Afghanistan is to ever have a stable foundation upon which to build an economy, a solution to the current crisis must be determined immediately.

III.

SOLUTION-MAKING

It is essential to acknowledge that there are no perfect solutions to complex civil andinternational crises like those in Afghanistan. However, considering the legacy ofpoorly-informed, under-nuanced, secretive decision making that trails the U.S. government’s

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history with Afghanistan, the first step towards productive solution-making is acknowledging and learning from past and current mistakes. The imperative lies with the U.S., both as a global leader and major contributor to the current state of the nation, to abandon its ongoing ineffective strategies in order to play a part in the solution-making process.

A. Roadblocks to Success

There are currently two main roadblocks to effective solution-making. Firstly, the Taliban are not internationally recognized as legitimate governmental leaders of Afghanistan. This technicality has huge consequences for diplomacy efforts: not only does it enable the U.S. to make claims to the $7 billion it holds in Afghan assets, it also isolates vulnerable Afghans—oppressed by their leaders and ignored by the world. UN Special Representative Deborah Lyons explains that in order to truly help Afghans, countries must work with Afghanistan’s “defacto authorities” (Landay). Therefore, the U.S. must put its pride aside and seek opportunities for negotiation with the Taliban, however unsavory the prospect may appear.

The second main roadblock lies within the U.S. political system, and likely explains not only America’s current stance on dealing with the Taliban, but also decades of American foreign policy failures around the world. First, let it be established that informed policymaking requires high-quality, up-to-date information; one might expect the U.S. politicians and decision makers utilize such resources when shaping foreign policy. It may come as a surprise, then, that U.S. Congresspeople are either gatekept from investigating to uncover said information or outright refuse to acknowledge the consequences of their policies in Afghanistan (Ahlman). In February 2022, the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Representative Pramila Jayapal, sponsored an amendment to the America COMPETES Act that would enable Congress to formally study the effects of U.S. economic policies in Afghanistan. But every House

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Republican and 44 House Democrats voted to block it. While Republican opposition could be attributed to political polarization, when contacted, not a single opposition Democrat provided an explanation for their vote (Ahlman). This apathy towards Afghanistan is particularly concerning coming from individuals with potential access to confidential government information that could inform life-saving policies. Furthermore, it represents a leadership preference to uphold a static stance on U.S. foreign policy with little opportunity for essential reflection or adaptation, limiting the government’s capability to learn from its mistakes and ensuring its foreign policy will forever value short-term stability over long-term stability. In fact, Professor Michael McFaul of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies cites this precise reasoning to explain why seventy percent of all major U.S. foreign interventions fail to foster democracy, falling to autocracy within ten years (Nichols). If the U.S. wishes to promote productive solution-making in Afghanistan and beyond, it must exit its policy comfort zone to seek the truth in its entirety.

B. Addressing the Status Quo 1. Eroding Taliban Stability

Current U.S. policy is so ineffective as to be counterproductive, damaging both the nation’s international standing and its larger fight against terrorism. In a devastating blow to U.S. credibility, this January, a senior U.S. aide revealed that the United Nations, International Rescue Committee, and Red Cross, in addition to numerous foreign policy experts (Ioanes), have unanimously warned Biden that no amount of aid can compensate for the destruction of Afghanistan’s financial system at the hands of sanctions and seizures (Ahlman). The situation has even caused internal divisions: in December 2021, 40 House Democrats urged the Biden administration to release the billions of seized funds, to no avail (Kudo). Despite these pleas, the U.S. fixated on its current strategy of chokeholding the economy in an effort to undermine the

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Taliban, without concern for the deadly toll on everyday Afghans (Swope). However, from an operational standpoint, this strategy is a failure: it can only punish innocent civilians, since the Taliban, apathetic to the people’s concerns and international demands, stay rich off drug trafficking, which accounts for up to 60% of their revenues (Azami). In fact, the more Afghans suffer at the hands of U.S. measures, the more the Taliban can capitalize on widespread resentment and poverty to boost recruitment (Hudson) (Gossman). Indeed, historical studies reveal that U.S.-imposed economic oppression caused the radicalization at the heart of the Taliban’s extremist fundamentalism (Gagnon). In essence, the government staunchly maintaining its current policy strategy in the face of both the experts and the facts can only cause harm, and for both credibility and national security purposes, the U.S. must take into consideration the well-being of the Afghan people.

2. Women’s Rights

The U.S.’s reasoning for its actions targeting the Taliban has long been centered around human rights violations. Since the 2001 invasion, the suffering of Afghan women has been co-opted and commodified to justify U.S. intervention. This phenomenon, known as ‘purplewashing’, draws upon the American public’s preconceived notions surrounding women’s liberation to create moral grounds for the war beyond retaliation for 9/11 (Freeman and Mi). Although liberalism and feminism was relatively safer under U.S.-supported democracy, the heroism shielding the U.S. cannot erase its own human rights violations, including the active perpetration and condoning of violent abuse (Ahmadi et. al) for which it has never been convicted, in large part due its leveraging of soft power to obstruct investigations since 2003 (Speri).

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In the past year, countless politicians like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have brought forth messages such as: “The U.S. […] must do everything we can to protect women and girls from inhumane treatment by the Taliban.” According to LeftVoice, these platitudes--eerily echoing militaristic purplewashing narratives--support current U.S. economic imperialism (Freeman and Mi). Despite politicians’ mission to ‘support women’s rights’, the U.S.’s current method of economic pressure is not a productive solution to the Taliban’s repressiveness, as evidenced by ongoing Taliban crackdowns on female autonomy and education, as well as Afghan women’s compounded suffering. International Rescue Committee President and CEO David Miliband highlights the disparities in priorities between Western liberal feminism and the actual needs of Afghan women within his organization, who ask: “How on earth does the West think they are helping our prospects when we can’t feed our families?” (Ahlman). Zaigul, an internally displaced mother of seven at the Nasaji camp near Kabul, echoed this sentiment: “You can live without freedom, but you can’t live if you have nothing to eat” (Ibrahim). Indeed, the economic and humanitarian crisis caused in large part by the U.S. disproportionately impacts Afghan women and girls (Cone)—for instance, the number of child brides is rising as families seek bride-prices, and since August, over 120,000 children have been “bartered” by their families for financial reasons (Tharoor). As such, not only is current U.S. policy ineffective at undermining the Taliban or strong-arming them into respecting women’s rights, it also ultimately worsens the situation for Afghan women and girls.

C. Solutions Beyond the Status Quo 1. Context

While the first step towards improving the current situation clearly involves the U.S. ceasing its economic warfare, this does not--nor should it--illustrate the full picture of how the

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American government can help Afghans. Harm mitigation often takes many forms; however, this paper’s analysis focuses on one of the most immediate: aiding Afghans in escaping Afghanistan altogether. To understand why this matters, one must first imagine a hypothetical situation: all goes according to the core recommendations of this paper—the U.S. ending its sanctions and seizures, consequently eliminating the largest barrier to the efficacy of aid organizations and allowing for economic activity to resume, as well as eliminating the roadblocks to pursuing a more diplomatic approach with the Taliban and establishing congressional learning processes. Yet the Taliban cannot be trusted to protect Afghanistan’s people, having made and broken false promises in the past (Hadid), and many Afghans understandably will still wish to leave and seek stability. Thus, even in this “perfect” hypothetical scenario, there is an urgent need for evacuation, immigration, and resettlement processes both during and after implementation of the recommendations, and this paper’s scope of analysis subsequently reflects this reality. a) Afghans in Afghanistan and Abroad

A report by the nonprofit Association of Wartime Allies concluded that by March 2022, the U.S. had evacuated only about 3 percent of Afghans who worked for the American government and applied for the special immigrant visa (SIV) program. Left behind by the initial evacuation effort immediately following the pullout (De Luce), 78,000 Afghans now face the Taliban’s travel bans, forced either to languish in a crisis-gripped country or attempt dangerous smuggling to neighboring countries that can result in death or deportation (Radio Azadi). Numerous bureaucratic barriers make entry to the U.S. still more difficult, including a visa application process that, despite the U.S. Embassy in Kabul being closed, at one point required medical exams and in-person interviews (De Luce). Meanwhile, Afghans who have managed to apply for entry hang in limbo, since the agency that processes humanitarian parole requests, the

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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), is experiencing backlogs so severe that of the 66,000 applications received, so far 8,000 have been processed and only 123 approved (Aminy) (Washington Post). Worse, an official from the Biden Administration announced in early September that the US will largely cease to admit Afghans on humanitarian parole after October 1, 2022 (Landay); considering the ongoing crisis, this deadline should be immediately reconsidered. b) Afghans in the U.S.

Afghans currently residing in the U.S. face the challenges of a complex bureaucratic system while falling through the cracks of governmental aid. The U.S., in contradiction to the vast majority of sources and experts, has not granted refugee status to Afghans fleeing the oppressive Taliban and a humanitarian-economic catastrophe. This lack of recognition has caused a multitude of problems, beginning with resettlement programs that rely on private volunteers often operating with less adequate logistical and financial support compared to government-led initiatives for refugee resettlement (Washington Post). The other main challenge this presents is that evacuated Afghans, once in the U.S., are at the mercy of the government when it comes to their temporary or permanent residency. According to the Department of Homeland Security, 36,000 Afghans in the U.S. have temporary residency under humanitarian parole (Dunphey). Although DHS extended the duration of this temporary residency to 18 months in March, this is a “short term band-aid”, according to Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS). Vignarajah asserts that this temporary residency stakes the lives and livelihoods of vulnerable Afghans on the whims of constantly-shifting political agendas (Aguilera). If the temporary residency time runs up without being renewed, and evacuees haven’t found a way to stay permanently within the U.S., they risk

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losing work authorization or being deported. They risk the same fate if they have applied for asylum through the U.S. refugee program (which grants permanent residency) but have not yet been accepted—a likely situation due to extreme backlog that can make it up to a three-year-long process (Dunphey). Thus, it is clear that the U.S. government must take systematic measures to give Afghan evacuees more stability, beginning with recognizing their status as refugees as well as expanding and fast-tracking pathways to permanent residency.

2. Potential Solutions

Regardless of the mistakes the U.S. made in the evacuation process, the current largest issue remains the Taliban’s unwillingness to allow Afghans to flee the country; diplomatic negotiations, as previously mentioned, are the only way for this dynamic to shift. Whether the Taliban becomes open to migration or not, there are many Afghans that have fled to neighboring countries who wish to come to the U.S., and there are numerous ways the U.S. government can assist them. In fact, there is ample precedent for the government to both create sponsorship-resettlement programs (which it has currently done for Ukrainian refugees) and establish paths to citizenship for Afghans currently in the U.S. (which it has historically done for Cuban, Vietnamese, and Iraqi refugees) (Washington Post). However, a prerequisite to this process remains that evacuated and escaped Afghans, who are widely recognized as refugees, must be afforded the legal status to match their dire situation. In addition, opportunities for international cooperation should be utilized. A February 2022 report by the Atlantic Council Europe Center established the responsibility of countries that participated in the war in Afghanistan—including the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, France, and others—to assist in the evacuation of Afghan civilians. They further recommended a plan for each country in this multinational refugee coalition to work towards a goal of annually taking in refugees equivalent

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to 0.05 percent of its population, as well as adopting a resettlement model similar to Canada’s current private sponsorship scheme that expedites permanent residency (Stewart).

For Afghans already in the U.S., streamlining the residency process is essential. Thankfully, activists are pushing for Congress to pass the recently introduced Afghan Adjustment Act, which would grant permanent residency to Afghans currently on humanitarian parole if they have been in the U.S. for a year or more. The act was originally introduced as a provision of the $40 billion Ukrainian aid package in May 2022, but despite calls for action was ultimately not included. Now, this bipartisan bill faces increasingly strict timelines due to upcoming midterm elections and immigration policy expirations (Dunphey), meaning Congress must act immediately if it wishes to provide this essential support to Afghans in the U.S.

IV.

CONCLUSION

Afghanistan is in the midst of a humanitarian and economic crisis caused and perpetuated in large part by U.S. economic policies. Past U.S. interventions in Afghanistan have been harmful in numerous ways, from indirectly radicalizing the Taliban to supporting corruption in a failing democracy project to engendering false and harmful narratives at home. As such, the U.S. owes it to Afghanistan as well as to the American people to stop its largely ineffective, highly damaging economic warfare and instead institutionally recognize its mistakes and engage in productive solution-making with the Taliban, whilst also rethinking its approach to the refugee crisis U.S. policies have caused. In the midst of Afghanistan’s challenges, Hardin Lang, vice president of Refugees International, identifies the largest barrier to achieving this goal not as a “shortage of creative ideas”, but a “missing [...] political will to move quickly and the boldness to take difficult decisions. That political will must come from the top” (Lang). Without this

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political will, there will be no pursuit for diplomacy to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table around women’s rights and possibilities for further refugee evacuations. Without this political will, American foreign policy will forever cement itself in stagnancy, doomed to repeat its worst failures. Without this political will, the Afghan people will continue to suffer not only for the sins of the Taliban today, but also the sins of the 9/11 hijackers two decades ago. Without this political will, U.S. credibility will continue to deteriorate amidst a rapidly changing, multipolar geopolitical arena. Without this political will, the modern-day manifestations of America’s imperial legacy will continue in the form of economic strangulation. Put simply, as Lal Mohammad of Kan-e-Ezzat village explains: “Everyone is traumatised and tired. We didn’t want the Russians, nor the Americans, nor the Taliban. We just want peace” (Glinski).