US abandons the women of Afghanistan

Kevin Drum:

I agree with most of the critics of the Afghanistan withdrawal. The Taliban will almost certainly overrun the country in short order. It will be a disaster for women. It will provide a safe haven for terrorists. We are abandoning everyone who fought along with us. It will be a humanitarian disaster beyond reckoning....If there were any way we could win this war, we would have figured it out by now....But the consequences of our failure will be enormous. It's best to face up to that.

No, it would be best if we didn't make this shameful retreat at all. 

The big mistake on Afghanistan was the invasion of Iraq that was based on the WMD lie. That historic blunder diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan and that effort never recovered.

From the Guardian:

“The Americans are leaving,” said Basireh Heydari, a Herat University student. “We have terrible days ahead with the Taliban. I’m worried they won’t let me leave the house, let alone what I’m doing now.”....With Nato allies such as Germany already announcing on Wednesday that they will follow Washington's lead and exit the country, Afghans fear an intensification of fighting between the national government and the Taliban....

Violence against civilians, especially women and children, has surged over the past year, according to UN statistics released on Wednesday, and Taliban control of the country is greater than at any point in the past two decades....

But a return to hardline Islamist rule could mean the rollback of one of the intervention’s least disputed achievements – the lifting of a Taliban prohibition of female education. 

On Wednesday, Heydari and her friends were trying to absorb the news as they sat in a rickshaw by the university gates. “I have only one wish, and that’s to finish my studies and of course work, but with the Taliban coming, I don’t think I’ll reach it,” she said.

See also The fate of women's rights in Afghanistan.

The women of Afghanistan should follow the lead of Kurdish women: Women Are Free and Armed in Kurdish-Controlled Northern Syria.

Later: see also Fred Kaplan Was America’s Longest War Doomed From the Start? and The Contradiction That Doomed America’s Mission in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the war against the American Taliban continues.