This is complete, absolute game. The shots from the Kabul airport simply cannot leave you indifferent. A child forgotten at take-off in a drawer under the scorching sun. Lost? Have you abandoned it? Didn't fit? Desperate Afghans chasing the plane. The cold-blooded take-off of the transporter, the take-off, people falling down from a height who tried to hold onto the skin of the plane with their bare hands. The legs of the deceased, fluttering at height, in footage shot through the window. The crowd storming the airport, shooting, killed. Complete anarchy. Such a shameful, disastrous, humiliating, and at the same time cynically cruel and hasty evacuation is, perhaps, difficult to recall.
For 20 years the country was bombed and ironed with a roller, imposing "Western values" completely alien to the tribal society, hundreds of thousands of people were killed, how many of theirs they sacrificed - for what? To lose everything in a couple of weeks? The US has spent $ 83 billion on training a new Afghan army. The equipment was abandoned, people fled. Many, it turns out, were not paid - the commanders took everything for themselves. Has anything been done useful for the country's infrastructure? Have people started to live better? Or were they afraid to arrange weddings because they were being shot at by drones? Oh yes, a mistake - it happens, no excuse. About 80% of Afghans began to live below the line of absolute poverty, opium was grown instead of grain. It is not surprising that the entire country, without any resistance, was taken back by the Taliban * movement banned in Russia *.
Epic failure of the West. Emmanuel Macron once spoke about the death of NATO's brain, and here it is time to talk about the decayed body of the alliance. After such defeats, decent organizations generally fall apart. But NATO, of course, will not go anywhere, it will continue to fight, for example, for the rights of the rainbow within itself. Let it be better so, if only they would not climb to others. And for Afghanistan, Europe and Asia, everything is just beginning.
It is understandable why the Taliban acted quickly. A holy place is never empty. If they hesitated, the territories could quickly crush all kinds of other groups - such as ISIS **, since the Western intelligence services have already produced a lot of different Islamist radicals for every taste. And the people accepted them without a fight, because they were not any, but they were their own: they put things in order, they began to drive out corrupt officials, they announced an amnesty. They behave herbivorous, work through social networks and the Internet with public opinion, call professionals back to the service, promise not to touch them.
Another thing is not clear - what to do in such conditions for those who have sincerely strived for change for all these 20 years, wanted to learn, and used the opportunities provided.
It is difficult to blame them for believing in the West.
He knows how to sell dreams wrapped in colorful wrappers.
How many artists, actors, fighters for different rights, active women have appeared in Afghanistan.
How many of these dreamers studied at secular universities, built their lives, careers, earned money, serving the foreign contingent, embassies, all kinds of missions.
Two decades is a whole generation that has managed to grow with one leg in a different reality.
Managed to believe in her.
And then in a moment they broke their backs: at the moment they lost everything - the well-functioning system of life, income.
They were betrayed and abandoned.
Someone now hopes to establish a new life under the Taliban.
And for some, this is not an option.
They may not be forgiven for working for the invaders.
They will clean it quietly, without unnecessary advertising.
Such people ran after the flying away hope.
You can understand people.
But if we see thousands at the airport, how many more thousands will go on foot across the border?
After all, not to the States.
Biden says about 20 thousand will be taken there.
We saw a little over 600 people inside the transport.
Also, of course.
The Americans took out the service dogs in the passenger seat, and the Afghans - like cattle.
Well, this once again speaks of the "liberators".
There will be a wave of refugees - this is as inevitable as the return of Afghanistan to the Taliban. Europeans understand this. That Chancellor Merkel, that French President Macron. The entire right-wing French opposition is also warning about new migrants. For humanitarian reasons, each country promises to take the Afghans who worked for it with them. But when this was done in a quiet time, there were already many visa refusals. And now, in such an emergency mode, it is generally not clear how to organize everything, to check these people, their families. Test for European bureaucracy.
The capture of Kabul also fell on the weekend; there was no reaction from the EU foreign policy service. Officials only said that now there will be consultations on who and how to take out, and most importantly - where. After all, there are no European emergency visas. Who wants to invest now? Greeks? Italians? Hungarians? Poles? None of them need all this at all. The Estonians agreed to take ten (!) People. Germany took out seven (!) Afghans with a whole military transport plane, which landed in Kabul the second time. The Germans are also not rubber. To all the existing problems, to the money that was spent on refugees from the flood relief fund, they still lacked new migrants for the elections. And then, who's coming? Has anyone seen any border guards at the airport? There is such a crush and panic, everyone is crammed into the planes who got there first,he got the place. It is not in vain that the Europeans started talking about the threat to security: what if militants or radicals infiltrate? Where is the guarantee that there is no?
I saw how in French Calais, where at one time there was a giant city - a tent camp of migrants, the Afghans took everything into their own hands. They became the masters there, all humanitarian aid went through them, they controlled everything, made their own system of taxes and punishments. They even opened restaurants there. They were also involved in transporting people to the UK. Moreover, they are immediately visible by their clothes - they did not try much to change something. So in Belgium there is a building on the way to the school, where I take my child, where Afghan teenagers live. They are 17-19 years old. They sleep on two-story cots in narrow rooms. No matter how I go by, they all sit at the entrance on a bench or on the sidewalk. They are dressed in sweatpants, and more often in their traditional clothes. In the hands of a telephone, from where their own national music plays loudly. They probably go to courses, but I have little faith in assimilation,given their tribal traditions of unification and mutual assistance at the community level.
In Europe they will revolve around their own people, and not all of them will accept liberal Western values. No wonder the majority in the Afghan army still sympathized with the Taliban, whose ideology is closer to their usual way of life. Islamic ideas and orders, albeit strict ones, are closer to them. Radicals inside Europe will certainly want to take advantage of this. Work will begin with newcomers in the areas of their compact residence. All this has already been established, the system has been worked out in the French suburbs, territories outside the republican law. It won't do anything good for Europe. Although, of course, there will be isolated exceptions in the form of the fled Afghan intellectual elite. In general, it seems that the time has come for Europe to clean up the porridge made by the Americans again and pay for the mistakes and war, in which they have been complicit in all these 20 years.
* "Taliban" - the organization was recognized as terrorist by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of February 14, 2003.
** "Islamic State" (IS, ISIS) - the organization was recognized as terrorist by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of December 29, 2014.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.