Afghan Suffering is Just Another Bloody Stain on Biden’s Legacy

The news cycle moves fast. Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s U.S.-sponsored genocide in Gaza, it’s easy to forget that Joe Biden’s presidency first started to come off the rails with the humiliating conclusion of the United States’ 20-year war in Afghanistan. We don’t hear much about Afghanistan these days, but, three years to the day since the last U.S. military plane took off from Kabul, marking the end of America’s chaotic withdrawal from the country, perhaps now is as good a time as any to reacquaint ourselves. What is happening to the people of Afghanistan today is horrifying, and Joe Biden shoulders a lot of responsibility for it.

Beginning during the Trump presidency in 2020, the withdrawal of American forces spurred the Taliban, which had been fighting an insurgency since being ousted from power by the US-led invasion, to begin stepping up its attacks against the U.S.-backed Afghan military. By the summer of 2021, the group was making rapid progress through the country, despite Biden’s assurances that a Taliban victory was far from certain, and by mid-August it had entered its capital of Kabul. The Afghan government duly collapsed and the Taliban, after two decades, was suddenly back in power.

Hasty attempts to extract American troops and their Afghan allies from the country were made over the following two weeks, with more than 120,000 people being lifted to safety. But that nonetheless left a reported 78,000 Afghans and hundreds of Americans to fend for themselves in a land now ruled by a vengeful Taliban. Rightly fearing reprisals by the new government if they stayed, desperate people were driven to cling to the wings of American planes as they took off from Kabul, only to fall to their deaths. It is within this general sense of disarray that ISIS-K, an enemy to both the US-led forces and the Taliban, launched its terrorist attack outside Kabul airport on August 26th. Among the 180 people killed that day were 13 Americans, highlighting the degree to which the Biden administration, despite intelligence reports warning of the probable chaos that was to accompany an American withdrawal, had apparently been caught off guard.

In the early days of its return to power, the Taliban sought to present itself as a changed organization with a respect for human rights, but, predictably enough, the facade didn’t last for long. The regime quickly clamped down on civil liberties, so that today, three years into its rule, the arrests of journalists and activists, the extreme persecution of ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, and instances of public floggings and executions have become the norm. And this, of course, is to say nothing of the situation for women and girls, whose rights have been eroded to an almost unimaginable extent over the last three years.

It is not for nothing that the UN has declared that the situation in Afghanistan amounts to “gender apartheid.” Women are, in most cases, banned from working or receiving a university education. They aren’t allowed to travel “long distances” without a male by their side. They have been barred from visiting public parks. Those accused of adultery may be publicly stoned to death. New laws prohibit them from speaking in public, because their voices may be used to seduce men into vice. Teenage girls have been banned from high school. Child marriage and the sale of young girls are on the rise.

Beyond the Taliban’s overt cruelty, other forces are adding to the Afghan people’s suffering. The country’s economy is in tatters, its health system has collapsed, and climate change has exacerbated drought and food shortages. People are poor and starving, which affects children the most and has seen Afghanistan become one of worst places on Earth for stunting in children under five. Child labor, too, is rife.

Biden is directly culpable for the economic suffering endured by Afghans.

Their country’s economy has long been hugely dependent on foreign aid, but, after the Taliban reassumed power in 2021, the U.S. led the imposition of a wide-ranging sanctions campaign on Afghanistan, ostensibly to weaken the Taliban. The United States regularly wields sanctions against foreign governments it doesn’t like, and those regimes tend to endure while their populations suffer horrendously. In Afghanistan the Taliban remains in power, while the salaries of medical workers, civil servants and security personnel have gone unpaid, extreme poverty has become increasingly rampant, and the health system’s deterioration has accelerated.

The sanctions have done nothing but inflict misery upon innocent people.

Perhaps the most callous act of sanctioning could be more rightly characterized as plain theft, as, following its withdrawal, the United States seized $7 billion of Afghan reserves that were being held in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. To be clear, this money belongs to the Afghan people, but Joe Biden issued an executive order to freeze the sum and to place half of it in an account “for the Afghan people” — though, as of 2024, not a single cent has been distributed to them — and to set the other half aside for the relatives of 9/11 victims to seek legal compensation. As if the Afghan population of 40 million, having endured 20 years of war, hadn’t suffered enough already for 9/11 — which, lest we forget, was orchestrated primarily by a group of Saudi nationals — it then had its national wealth plundered for it.

The cruelty is difficult to comprehend. Biden could at least ease this situation right now, but, as the embodiment of an American foreign policy establishment left humiliated by its defeat in Afghanistan, he is unlikely to. Leading an establishment driven by a vague but consequential drive for revenge, Biden will ensure the Afghan people suffer for America’s failure.

How else are we to understand a policy with no strategic upsides? Literally millions of Afghan children are starving, in part because of sanctions that fail even on their own purported terms. As November approaches and his presidency slowly winds down in disgrace and farce, it’s not just Palestinian blood soaked into Joe Biden’s hands.