Some thoughts and questions to keep in mind for the future.
An infinite sadness takes hold of us as we follow the news that is gradually presented to us from Afghanistan, whose people have been betrayed and cynically abandoned to themselves.
Ultimately, it is another episode of the dramatic and endless festival of hypocrisy that our Western countries have been staging for decades to cloak with noble motivations actions that are instead aimed at pursuing interests and policies of expansion or maintenance of their spheres of influence. Paradoxically, and I underline the term “paradoxically”, the frank sincerity of the powers that have instead decided to remain with their diplomatic representatives (and who knows what other appointees) in the spectral Kabul and in the most strategic areas of the country is almost preferable.
Just two days ago Gino Strada died, whose experience and expertise on Afghanistan are indisputable. With his last article published that day in La Stampa “This is how I saw Kabul die”, he once again denounced the hypocrisy and illegitimacy of that military mission and also recalled our responsibilities, when in November 2001 almost the entire Italian parliament voted in favor of armed intervention. An intervention questionable in terms of constitutional legitimacy, but which today, together with the entire NATO Resolute Support Mission, is certified as a total and absolute failure. For the umpteenth time, Strada recalls that the majority of the direct or indirect victims of these conflicts are civilians and that the immense resources wasted in recent years have not brought any real benefit to the Afghan people. Promoting democracy, human rights, social and economic development of a nation and its many communities are not easy tasks and are not for the military. What is terribly bitter is not so much the fact that we in the NGO world were right to criticize the use of the military for tasks that they were not and are not prepared to face, nor the frightening cost that this has entailed by taking away and denying resources to the many non-governmental organizations that could have performed these tasks better both in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. What is terribly bitter is the betrayal perpetrated at the expense of those who believed in our values and collaborated with our representatives in Afghanistan : a betrayal that will have very profound and long-lasting consequences for the loss of credibility and trust in our countries, peoples and institutions. The statements of ministers and heads of state who are eager to affirm that no one will be abandoned, that the new regime must assume its responsibilities, etc., having before them the images of those who were crushed by planes on the taxiway at Kabul airport, are mocking and hypocritical. After Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now Afghanistan, who will be the next sacrificial victim of the arrogance of those who have destroyed multilateralism in international relations, of those who hypocritically deceive their own people by saying that “our boys” are going to promote peace and defend our nation, of those who carry out “surgical missions” that “certainly” do not affect civilians, of those who hide behind noble pretexts for the control of strategic resources or territories? 31 years have passed since the first attack on Iraq on August 2, 1990, and today material and moral rubble, deaths and displaced persons and asylum seekers without number mark a devastated and totally destabilized Middle East and Afghanistan; another dramatic passage that marks a new page in history. Let us clarify that we are not against the United States of America, and even less against its people, but as citizens of a West that professes to be democratic and free we should have the courage to demand sincere and complete answers from those who at the time supported the goodness of these choices, which today appear to be failures and wicked. And let us treasure these reflections in our common future choices.
We have the burden of hope and closeness to the many who are anonymously paying with their lives or the loss of their loved ones for what our countries were unable to foresee and contain.
Stefano Comazzi, President of AMU
