I have thought long and hard about whether Afghanistan was worth writing about. It is obvious that I am a layman in the field and that I can not shed any explanatory light, or geostrategic or anything. Nor am I able to add something that has not already been written in the newspapers. It has only occurred to me that, precisely because I am a layman – unlike television commentators, who become experts in any matter after a sleepless night consulting the Internet – perhaps I can express the same incomprehension that must assail a good part of humanity following the news. Because the truth is that I do not understand current politicians, young or old like Biden and Trump. I don’t understand how they have staged a disaster like the one in Afghanistan.
I do not understand that, during twenty years of occupation of the country and of governments controlled or supervised by the West (that of Karzai first, then that of the fled Ghani), no one realized that their corruption and robbery were so exaggerated that the State did not it could be started properly. I do not understand that the West created a regular Afghan army (Biden has repeated that it had 300,000 men, four times more than the Taliban contingents, and that it was well equipped after the billions of dollars invested in it), and that nobody noticed that he was a useless force, partially opium-stunned and completely unmotivated, unlike his enemies, possessed of fierce determination. I do not understand, therefore, that the sure fight that would come as soon as the United States announced its withdrawal, was entrusted exclusively to such a weak force. Nor that the announcement of said withdrawal was made in May or so, months before its expected conclusion (August 31), giving the Taliban plenty of time to begin their reconquest with guarantees that they would not be stopped or find little opposition. . In reality, that withdrawal was proclaimed by Trump a year earlier, in 2020, with his usual lack of scruples, and on top of that he held talks and made a pact with the Taliban, who did not seem as barbaric or cruel as they claimed. The serious thing is not that “it was said”, but that, between 1996 and 2001, the world saw and learned of their atrocities: not only did they house the terrorist camps of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden himself, but they imposed the sharia in its wildest and most retrograde version, with hands cut off for robbery, stoning for adultery or for “impure acts”, public executions of dissidents as the only entertainment for the population, since the rest were sharply prohibited: music, dance, sport (including chess), radio and television, foreign series and books, women’s laughter… Ah, what about women? Forced to dress burkas, to not work, not to study from the age of ten, not to go out on the street except with a male (not even to go to the doctor), to remain locked up and hidden. The Taliban destroyed all pre-Muslim or non-Muslim works of art, invaluable and irreplaceable pieces. The world attended dumbfounded from a distance. I, I’m sorry, I don’t understand how during the twenty years that no They were in power, it did not end in some way — not necessarily violent — with that sect of criminals, nor how it has been possible to deal with them trusting that they had changed or evolved, a people that they just detest and refuse to evolve. I do not understand that now they speak of “moderate Taliban”, as in his day I did not understand that, when Erdogan appeared in Turkey, he was universally described as a “moderate Islamist”. Both the one and the other suppose an absolute contradiction in terms, and this has been verified with Erdogan.
Nor do I understand that, given the rapidity of the Taliban advance throughout the summer, the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Holland, Spain, did not begin the evacuation of their diplomatic personnel, their nationals and the Afghans who had helped them. for two decades … until Kabul had already fallen. A couple of weeks ago the famous airport would not have been hellish chaos and there were still regular flights operating. Didn’t anyone really think that what happened was going to happen? And, please, what luminaries thought that the Taliban would have “reformed”, that they would now be respectful gentlemen who kept their word, that they would not deceive, that they would not enslave women in the most repulsive way? I am writing this at the end of August, and neither do I understand that the female ministers of our Government —Belarra, Montero— have not released more than a few petty anti-American tweets and have not been concerned about those crushed women, who see their world of relative freedoms collapse. Well, they have been concerned about the LGBTI Afghans, whom they have urged to immolate themselves. Or maybe I do. It is the same phenomenon of unmasking and falsehood that occurred in those columnists who have the Second Republic tattooed on their foreheads and take advantage of it, and instead deliberately kept silent when Iglesias offended his worthy and suffering exiles by assimilating them … with him. inhabitant of a luxurious Belgian palace known as Puigdemont.