Even people around President Biden now accept that pulling out of Afghanistan in the way the US did two years ago was an utter disaster. It ruined the lives of millions, destroyed the social and economic advances of 20 years, and returned the country’s women to a state of slavery. The result was to make the US look weak and pathetic; no wonder Vladimir Putin decided he could safely invade Ukraine, only six months later.
The suffering of ordinary Afghans as they panicked and tried to escape the Taliban shocked the entire world. The scenes in the approaches to Kabul airport on those 17 boiling hot August days were unbearable. People tore at one another and trod the dying underfoot in order to get to the barbed wire that separated them from the airfield, screaming and waving the bits of paper they hoped would get them out of the country. The Taliban fighters lost all control, hitting out indiscriminately with their rifle butts, and firing into the air or at people’s feet. Some women tried to throw their babies over the barbed wire to the British and American soldiers on the other side; more than one baby landed on the wire itself. Then came something more appalling still: an Islamic State fanatic worked his way into the thickest part of the crowd and blew himself up. In this one incident alone, 160 people were killed, the ditches running thick with blood.
