Letters | The US should have colonised Afghanistan or left it alone

Our readers react to the Taliban taking power in Afghanistan and discuss its fallout

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A US soldier points his gun at an Afghan passenger at the airport in Kabul on August 16, as people mob the airport to flee hardline rule after the Taliban’s swift takeover of the capital. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:00am, 20 Aug 2021Updated: 7:00am, 20 Aug 2021

I refer to the column “Afghanistan is an object lesson in how to ‘unbuild’ a country” (Aug 16) by Alex Lo. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, in fact, the entire Middle East – anywhere that the United States has dipped its toes in, it has left a trail of destruction and torn legacy; abandoning a job half done, then merely shrugging its shoulders, claiming it has done what it can.

President Joe Biden took the hit for pulling out of Afghanistan. Yet the fault lies not with him nor the preceding presidents who lacked the courage to do so, but in the interventionist policy of an America that invades a country when it serves its purpose or under the guise of spreading democracy.

What right does any country have to set foot in another, to tell it that its style of governance is wrong, that its hundreds of years of tradition, culture and way of doing thing is wrong and that democracy is the solution to everything? Especially when said country is clearly not ready for it.

In Afghanistan’s case, in the face of the challenge to destroy al-Qaeda and given the history of a failed Soviet invasion, did the US think it could have done any better or come up with a better exit strategy?

Instead of a half-baked attempt to change the country, I think the US would have done better by straight up colonising Afghanistan, like the British did with the Commonwealth countries, returning independence to them when the time was right. It might take up to five generations but at least the job gets done and the seed of democracy gets to grow, instead of it being dumped into their laps. And a new generation of Afghans can rise up under the umbrella of US protection.

In exiting this way, the US has not only reinforced the idea that it can abandon the very people it claims to support and the ideals it claims to spread, but has also destroyed the lives of many Afghans – crucially an entire generation of youth who, for 20 years, lived with the hope that their lives and future will be better than for their predecessors.