“Instead, while we did at least insist on the rights of women, we imported a sense of imperial racism that was redolent of the First Anglo-Afghan War. We rendered life prohibitively expensive without enhancing the wealth of the people (when I wanted to set up a branch of our NGO, it would have cost four times as much in Kabul as it would in Islamabad). And we set up a government that was so legendarily venal and corrupt that the US military referred to it as the V I C E - 'Vertically Integrated Criminal Entity'. Is it surprising that Afghans did not want to indulge in yet another civil war to preserve what we had offered them?”
31 Aug 2021
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