This week’s revelations about the UK’s dangerously cavalier treatment of Afghans who worked with British forces are shocking, but not surprising.
The carelessness with which the UK went to war in Afghanistan was matched by the carelessness with which it left the country and its people to Taliban rule two decades later.
The US and its allies in 2001 dressed up a war of revenge for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as a moral mission to protect women’s rights and build democracy, turning down a Taliban offer to surrender out of a conviction that they could remake Afghanistan as they wished.
Illustration: Mountain People
In the summer of 2021, with the full withdrawal of US forces looming, it was clear the Afghan government they had propped up for years was fragile. Many of the Afghans who backed it, worked for it or believed in broader Western promises of long-term support for democracy and human rights were at risk.
Despite Taliban promises of moderation that year, there was no room for complacency. The militants marked their previous capture of Kabul in 1996 by killing a former president and hanging his mutilated body from a lamp post. They assassinated officials, activists, journalists and others throughout the war.
Yet, at most, Western embassies’ plans for immediate evacuations focused only on international staff. The UK timeline for processing asylum requests of Afghans who remained, and who had worked for or fought with British diplomats and troops was measured in months.
As the Taliban marched toward Kabul, then-British secretary of state for foreign, commonwealth and development affairs Dominic Raab’s decision to manage the situation from a beach holiday in Crete summed up the UK government’s lack of urgency.
With Afghan lives at immediate risk and the UK’s long-term credibility on the line, Raab clarified that although he was not available to take a call with the Afghan minister of foreign affairs, “no one was paddle-boarding” at the beach.
It was an attitude that might have been bolstered by a similar approach in other European capitals. After Kabul fell, Afghan employees turned up for work at one embassy to find international diplomats had been evacuated overnight, while they had not even been warned to stay at home.
Desperate crowds gathered around the airport as Western governments tried to set up mass evacuation operations on the fly. Nearly 200 people were killed by an Islamic State suicide attack on people waiting hours for a chance to leave.
In the UK, civil servants were pulled in from their normal jobs to work around the clock processing in hours asylum that would normally have needed weeks. It was exhausting, stressful work, and many of them felt personal responsibility for ensuring vulnerable people could reach safety.
They did not feel that burden was shared by everyone in government.
Whistle-blowers said that then-British prime minister Boris Johnson ordered Whitehall to prioritize the evacuation of staff and pets from an animal rescue charity, not a historical Taliban target. He denies this, but hundreds of e-mails about the issue clogged up official inboxes.
Those whose asylum requests were being considered by UK authorities, because of work at the embassy or with British forces, at least had hope of a route out.
Neither the US nor its allies appeared to have given serious thought to the safety of Afghans whose work on issues such as democracy and women’s rights had been key to the Western mission — but who had no obvious route for asylum, because they were not directly employed by foreign governments.
Desperate social media messages went around seeking refuge for prominent lawmakers, athletes and activists whose work and lives made them obvious targets.
In less than two weeks, the airlift ended. Some of those who did not make it to the airport went into hiding to try to escape the revenge attacks that began almost immediately. Hundreds of killings have been documented by human rights groups.
Others fled to Iran or Pakistan, where Afghans struggle to get refugee status. The UK system returned to its usual lethargic timelines after the media spotlight moved on, so families waited in terrified limbo for asylum bids to be processed, fearing expulsion back to Afghanistan and Taliban agents operating abroad.
Now, thousands of people inside Afghanistan and beyond it must grapple with another layer of fear and uncertainty about what the Taliban know of their work with foreign forces, their family networks and their desire to escape.
Not all those Afghans who sought resettlement in the UK were eligible, but applying for asylum should not have put them at greater risk. The damage of the leak has been compounded by the decision to leave people affected in the dark for years, so they could not even make informed decisions about managing their security.
As it has done again and again, the UK has let down Afghans who made the mistake of believing the basic principles it claims for itself and promised for Afghanistan.
Taiwan has lost Trump. Or so a former State Department official and lobbyist would have us believe. Writing for online outlet Domino Theory in an article titled “How Taiwan lost Trump,” Christian Whiton provides a litany of reasons that the William Lai (賴清德) and Donald Trump administrations have supposedly fallen out — and it’s all Lai’s fault. Although many of Whiton’s claims are misleading or ill-informed, the article is helpfully, if unintentionally, revealing of a key aspect of the MAGA worldview. Whiton complains of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s “inability to understand and relate to the New Right in America.” Many
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier this month raised its travel alert for China’s Guangdong Province to Level 2 “Alert,” advising travelers to take enhanced precautions amid a chikungunya outbreak in the region. More than 8,000 cases have been reported in the province since June. Chikungunya is caused by the chikungunya virus and transmitted to humans through bites from infected mosquitoes, most commonly Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. These species thrive in warm, humid climates and are also major vectors for dengue, Zika and yellow fever. The disease is characterized by high fever and severe, often incapacitating joint pain.
In nature, there is a group of insects known as parasitoid wasps. Their reproductive process differs entirely from that of ordinary wasps — the female lays her eggs inside or on the bodies of other insects, and, once hatched, the larvae feed on the host’s body. The larvae do not kill the host insect immediately; instead, they carefully avoid vital organs, allowing the host to stay alive until the larvae are fully mature. That living reservoir strategy ensures a stable and fresh source of nutrients for the larvae as they grow. However, the host’s death becomes only a matter of time. The resemblance
Most countries are commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with condemnations of militarism and imperialism, and commemoration of the global catastrophe wrought by the war. On the other hand, China is to hold a military parade. According to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, Beijing is conducting the military parade in Tiananmen Square on Sept. 3 to “mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.” However, during World War II, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had not yet been established. It
RSS