Afghan women: Unworthy of the “white man’s burden”

 

At the start of the 20th century, an editorial cartoon illustrated Kipling’s poem The White Man’s Burden. The poem expressed the grand idea of colonialism. The cartoon showed John Bull, the personification of Great Britain, and his counterpart Uncle Sam trekking up a steep hill made of boulders toward a gold statue. The boulders underneath their feet were inscribed with the words: Superstition, Cannibalism, Slavery, Oppression, Brutality, and Vice. The gold statue at the top of the hill held a sign that said: Civilization. John Bull and Uncle Sam were hunched over with huge baskets strapped to their backs. The baskets were filled with all their colonial subjects from Africa and Asia. The message was clear, John Bull and Uncle Sam carried the tribal people of the earth to civilization.

In plain English, the White Man’s Burden was to civilize the “uncivilized”.

Over the course of the century, The White Man’s Burden was rightfully condemned for its racism and white supremacy. By the end of the 20th century, the European powers lost their colonies, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the United States became the lone superpower.

Immediately, the United States embarked on its own version of The White Man’s Burden.

This time Uncle Sam policed the globe, spread democracy, and championed human rights. Critics of these activities claimed the United States was trying to remake the world in its own image and condemned these activities as “nation building”. Critics insisted “nation building” was too much, even for a superpower, to bear because “nation building” led to “endless wars” that were not worth the cost.

Critics also condemned “nation building” as colonialism in disguise.

In 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan after 9/11, in order to topple the Taliban government and make sure Afghanistan was no longer used as a staging ground to launch terror attacks against the United States. In 2007, President Bush said, "Our goal in Afghanistan is to help the people of that country defeat the terrorist and establish a stable, moderate, and democratic state.” Bush also said, “Under the Taliban, women were barred from public office. Today, Afghanistan’s parliament includes 91 women. Under the Taliban, there were about 900,000 children in school. Today, more than 5 million are in school – about 1.8 million of them are girls.”

In 2021, President Biden withdrew U.S. forces in Afghanistan. During the withdrawal, Afghanistan’s government collapsed, and the Taliban seized control of the country. After these catastrophic events, Biden explained that the United States accomplished its military objectives ten years ago, Afghanistan was no longer a vital interest, and withdrawal was overdue. Biden also reiterated that the mission in Afghanistan was not “nation building” or “creating a centralized democracy”.

In a recent interview, Shabnam Nasimi, a British-Afghan political commentator and director of Conservative Friends of Afghanistan, disagreed with President Biden. Nasimi said the goal of the United States was to remove the terrorists and to “nation build”. If the former were the only goal, then Biden’s withdrawal wouldn’t be a betrayal to a new generation of Afghan women who never experienced living under Taliban rule. In the past 20 years Afghanistan made a lot of progress.  That’s because the Afghan people welcomed democratization, it wasn’t being imposed.  If Europe and the United States weren't built in 20 years then, Afghanistan wouldn’t be fully developed either, especially since “nation building” had to be done from scratch. There was no infrastructure, no roads, no school system, and no health care system.  If the United States stayed longer, 40 years, as they have done in other places around the world, Afghanistan would have had a chance to prosper and be an ally to the United States in a hostile region.

Currently, the United States has over 35,000 troops in Germany, over 12,000 troops in Italy, over 53,000 troops in Japan, and over 26,000 troops in South Korea. But maintaining over 2,000 troops in Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban from taking over the country and returning Afghan women to religious restrictions that rival slavery was too costly.

The interviewer told Nasimi he wasn’t convinced by her argument.

The interviewer might as well have said, “Afghan women are unworthy of The White Man’s Burden.” 

First Published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 9/1/21