June 22, 2022
“O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free
And the home of the brave?”
“The Star-Spangled Banner” – National Anthem of The United States
The United States of America is a country well-known as a champion of courage, freedom, peace, and prosperity. In particular, it is a country that has a reputation for global leadership, liberal international order, and advocacy for human rights. The U.S. “tends to be the first or most important country for identifying or framing international issues, taking action to address those issues,” and “setting an example for other countries to follow” (CRS).
The mission of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan was in accordance with its foreign policy to propagate the same values of freedom and human rights across the globe. The U.S. administration was determined to thwart the tyrannical Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The American soldiers spent 20 long years in warfare, risking their lives to uphold this noble dream. In August 2021, when the U.S. forces evacuated Afghanistan, giving way to the Taliban to regain control of the country, the U.S. government remained concerned for the welfare of Afghan civilians and promised its support for a peaceful establishment of a civilian government in Afghanistan. They also promised America as a safe haven for the Afghans who were targeted by the Taliban.
In the book Sparks like Stars, a shaggy-haired American man asks, “Don’t you think we’ve done enough to clean up these third world countries?… We took the Taliban out for them. They should be responsible for fixing their own problems now” (279). As I contemplated these statements, my mind raced to grasp the deep irony embedded in them. The questions rampant in my brain were: Isn’t it obvious that the U.S. is mostly at fault for the desperate state of affairs currently in Afghanistan? Shouldn’t the U.S. be held accountable for the loss of thousands of civilian lives with its invasion of Afghanistan? Their participation in the Afghanistan War should not be classified as a heroic act out of altruism, but rather as a show of military power and interference in the sovereignty of another country.
Afghanistan is a multi-ethnic country located along the trade routes bridging Asia to Europe and the Middle East. It has long been a clashing point of other empires that seek to win the country over for its geographical economic gains (“Afghanistan”). The country itself has never been able to unite against invasive forces; however, the independent resilience of each Afghan made up for it. In 1992, the Mujahideen differed on the future of Afghanistan. Eventually, the Taliban rose to power in 1995 with a promise to establish peace after decades of unrest (Desk). They claimed to uphold traditional Islamic values, but they propagated extreme interpretations of Islamic theology that suited their authority and executed them on the Afghan population, like barring women from their education rights (Ibrahim).
In 2000, the U.S. demanded that Bin Laden be handed over for trial against terrorist acts, but the Taliban refused. Following the Taliban’s continued refusal to extradite Bin Laden after he was accused of initiating the 9/11 attack in 2001, the U.S. and British forces launched attacks against Afghanistan. In 2017, the U.S. military loosened its airstrike rules, resulting in an increase in civilian casualties. Over the four years of Trump’s administration, the number of innocent civilians killed by America’s airstrikes increased by 330%. As of April 2021, 71,000 of the 241,000 killed by all parties in Afghanistan were civilians (“Afghan Civilians”). Innocent Afghan civilians were caught in the crossfire as these forces claimed to bomb the military bases of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Ironically, most of the Western leaders and public justified the civilian casualties in consideration of the noble intentions of American soldiers to erase terrorism.
The propaganda that the West is a saviour to the East has been rather systematic in the global narrative, As Clay says on page 278, “History books are sanitized, abbreviated versions of the story. One guy assumes power, another loses it. But the soldiers and civilians are living this war and suffering the losses.” Western media portray the U.S. as a heroic country and a self-proclaimed leader to establish peace and prosperity in foreign countries. But how do we then reconcile this claim against the 90% of the 5000 Afghan refugees who were refused refugee status in America without apparent reason (“U.S. Is Rejecting over 90% of Afghans Seeking to Enter the Country on Humanitarian Grounds”)? What about the ‘justified’ American airstrike that killed 10 innocent people on August 29, 2021, seven of whom were young children (Savage)?
In the summer of 2021, 76,000 Afghan refugees fleeing from the Taliban’s control were accepted by the U.S., only to be living in poverty (NBCNews). For months, these refugees stood in long lines for food and clothing, and they had little privacy in the camps. They were provided with minimal assistance; local resettlement agencies offered assistance for housing and basic necessities that lasted for barely three months. This support included an insufficient amount of $1,200 per person as federal ‘welcome money’ which was only able to cover limited daily essentials while the jobless evacuees were left to find ways to pay for rent (Mansoor). It also took at least six months for the Afghan refugees to benefit from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a federal program once known as “food stamps”. Due to the lack of education, the resettled Afghans are also deprived of a clear path toward U.S. citizenship, a status that would solve many of their financial issues (NBCNews).
The U.S. has a long list of countries it has corrupted for its own political favour: Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are just a few examples in recent history. The U.S. gets involved in such countries for political power and other gains; it’s never been entirely about justice or welfare. It is time that powerful countries like the U.S. be held responsible for the blood they have continued to shed in third-world countries. “People say ‘third world’ and think it just means countries without the internet and paved roads. But ‘third world’ is Cold War terminology. NATO countries are the first world and the Communist bloc is the second world. The third world was where those two clashed. So the mess in Afghanistan is actually a first and second world problem” (278). The U.S. has to take accountability for the losses they inflicted upon the Afghans and stop pulling the ‘heroic’ card each time of war. The U.S. has to provide more Afghan refugees with the safe haven they were promised; the American administration has to truly live up to the anthem they very proudly sing by granting the brave Afghan civilians a free life in the country of that star-spangled banner.