Watching Afghanistan gives a true sense of history unfolding, even in my lifetime. I was born around the time the Soviets entered Afghanistan. In my earliest memories the war next door was a fact of life and its effects were barely noticed because they just were. Then there are the memories of the Soviets leaving, of Najib’s body hanged in Kabul, of the Taliban rising, of missiles flying overhead, of being a teenaged intern hiding in a bank basement on Mall Road as a mob outside attacked foreign institutions. The Bamiyan Buddhas destroyed, 9/11, the fear of what would happen, of being unable to say that deposing the Taliban was a bad thing, and unable to articulate how or why I felt such unease about it. And then what followed, the missed opportunities, wilful corruption (I speak here of the US and its allies, not just of the Afghan government). The people sent to Guantanamo, some still there, forgotten. The US refusing to deal with the Taliban at a time when it might well have worked. Of realising, and loathing, the role Pakistan has played and continues to play, while also seeing the truth in what some general or the other said: one day the Americans will be gone, but we will still be here, this is still the neighbourhood we have to deal with. The buzzing of drones, the death of Osama bin Laden (a short story about it). The surge and the draw down. Of working with UN agencies in Kabul, writing desperate pleas for funding disguised as reports and project briefs. Editing policies for the Afghan government, knowing even then that it was for nothing. The cruelty and desperation. The astonishing decision by Biden to withdraw before a settlement was reached. The shameful departure from Helmand. The fall of city after city. Today, the news that the US and UK are sending troops for a final scrambling evacuation from Kabul. And so it sweeps on, the seeds of the present are in the past and the present is birthing the future.
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