In August 2019, the BBC reported that an average of 74 men, women, and children were killed every day in Afghanistan that month, with a further 1,948 people injured. Locals, like our neighbor Sameera, often disputed the official figures and media reports, questioning how anyone could truly count those who simply vanished in suicide bombings and explosions. Sameera’s father sold fruit from a cart; he was never found after one of the bombings in Zanbaq Square. No BBC journalist interviewed her, and no government report recorded her father’s death.
Over time, the chaos at home, the ambiguity surrounding political decision-making at higher levels, and the massive loss of life deepened the sense of hopelessness. The continuation of the war on terror, which had initially promised freedom and dignity, seemed increasingly senseless.
Washington, too, exhausted and weary of the conflict, resolved to bring an end to its longest war in history. On February 29, 2020, the United States and the Taliban leadership signed an agreement in Doha, Qatar, which laid out several core commitments: the United States agreed to a phased withdrawal of all U.S. and international troops, while the Taliban pledged to prevent al-Qaida and other terrorist groups from operating on Afghan soil in a manner that could threaten the United States or its allies.
The agreement was also meant to be the first step toward peace talks between Afghans, with the U.S. promising to help keep the talks going. But as the U.S. and its allies sped up their withdrawal after almost 20 years, the situation inside the country showed that the hope for a better future was hanging by a fragile thread.
While the exclusion of the Afghan government from the Doha Agreement was widely criticized as a serious shortcoming, a deeper issue had already become apparent: the Afghan state lacked the cohesion to field a strong negotiating team, and its institutional legitimacy was in doubt, as it had little control over much of the country. How could such a government credibly serve as a negotiating partner?
Within a year, this fragility became undeniable, as the wholesale flight of political elites and government officials exposed a fundamental absence of commitment and responsibility at the highest levels of power.
Perhaps the most disheartening chapter of two decades of war was its chaotic end and the helplessness of the Afghan people, abandoned by both the powerful Afghan elites and the Americans they once trusted. Their desperation, though only partially captured, is etched forever in the images of the Kabul airlift.
Afghanistan, after all the sacrifices, has reverted to nearly the same state it was in 25 years ago, and today, only Russia has formally recognized the Taliban as a legitimate government. Others including China, Qatar, Germany, Uzbekistan, and Iran maintain varying levels of diplomatic engagement, motivated primarily by strategic and regional interests. Even Pakistan, long considered a close ally of the Taliban, has refrained from full recognition and appears to have distanced itself from the powers-that-be in Kabul. Islamabad’s increasingly harsh treatment of Afghan refugees and traders carries with it the sense of a neighbor exacting retribution, not a government controlling its borders.
Four years on, the starvation ravaging Afghanistan is impossible to ignore. Parents forced to sell their young daughters to survive, children begging on the streets – all suffering inflicted as punishment on a government while an entire nation sinks deeper into despair.
Amid all this, what has most shattered the spirit of the Afghan people is the ban on girls’ education beyond sixth grade and the severe restrictions on women’s employment. Soon after returning to power, the Taliban reinstated their old harsh policies on Afghan women and girls – the very policies many of us believed had no place in the 21st century, and certainly not in Afghanistan.