David Pratt: There are lessons for us all in tragic Afghanistan crisis

This past week along with colleagues from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) we found ourselves in a tense, mad rush to help get to safety eight Afghan women journalists under potential threat from the Taliban.

With six having been brought out of the country on flights and given asylum status in countries like Ireland and Sweden, two were left behind. The welcome news as I write however is that they too have now been given asylum status, though the challenge continues to get them on planes as the end of the evacuation process looms menacingly.

Those eight Afghan women colleagues are among the “lucky” ones given that for every single person evacuated many more Afghans will be left behind to an uncertain fate.

Right now the situation becomes more dangerous by the hour as the deadline of next Tuesday, agreed between the US and the Taliban for all foreign troops to leave Afghanistan, bears down.

A growing sense of panic, jittery Taliban gunmen, potential security threats from other extremist elements like the Islamic State (IS) group, all have the capacity to make Kabul an even more terrifying place in the coming days than it already is.

For these reasons it’s perhaps premature to pause and ponder what lessons might be learned from what has happened in Afghanistan over these dark days. But those lessons be they for individuals, governments, nations or the wider global community are something that will touch us all in the future in some way or other.

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On a personal level, after four decades of close association with Afghanistan, I’ve learned of the willingness of friends and colleagues to come forward in helping Afghan journalists, some of whom they have often never even met but whose plight has galvanised them into action.

Out of the mess created by a terrible betrayal of the Afghan people, it’s a humbling reminder of the selflessness and value of solidarity shown by others. People do care is the message that I’ve taken away from this.

On a very different level it’s been a wake-up call of the dangers in the West of taking our eye off situations in far-away lands. All too often these days foreign policy in the West seems conducted solely through an out of sight out of mind optic. Events in Afghanistan bring into sharp focus how what happens in such places can within almost no time lead to humanitarian catastrophes that we simply cannot ignore.

Crises like these even though we might not notice at first, are what shapes the world around us even right here on our doorstep by bringing those fleeing persecution to our shores and into our communities.

Then there are those other lessons that have emerged from the Afghanistan tragedy. Sharp political lessons that we all should file away in our memory banks as a bulwark against those falsehoods and frankly lies so often perpetuated by governments and politicians supposedly with our safety, security and well-being in mind.

I’m talking about those military interventions, campaigns and adventures dressed up as being on the side of right but in an instant can drop from favour because of political vagaries born out of opportunism or a desire to hang on to power or win elections. To such unscrupulous governments or political leaders of this type the carnage they inflict or leave in their wake matters nothing once such a situation has served its purpose to their advantage.

Think US president Joe Biden’s election campaign mantra about “restoring alliances”, “promoting democracy” and how “America is back” and you will understand where I’m coming from here.

Biden’s cynical self-justifications for what the US has done in Afghanistan lately is an insult not just to Afghans, but to the sacrifices made by those 36 other countries with troops in the country left high and dry by a shambolic US pull-out.

This before putting those same nation’s troops in danger in the rush to get their own citizens out and being able to justify their mission to their respective publics back home. All this you see is about “America First” as coined by Trump, not “America is back” as Biden would have us believe.

Then there is that other dimension to this US- led coalition as it was described and known.

As columnist Edward Luce of the Financial Times rightly pointed out the other day, the fact that many of these 36 nations spent 20 years in Afghanistan, and did so not primarily because they consider Afghanistan essential to their security but because they consider the US essential to their security, now throws up another lesson that some will take stock of.

This lesson that will make them think twice of what alliances like Nato actually mean and whether – as some commentators have already mentioned – such pacts truly are fit for purpose if it means dancing to Washington’s tune whether other members like it or not.

Dancing to America’s tune, even if sometimes disguised in the language of the so-called special relationship, is of course a UK Government specialism as the Trump-Johnson cosiness showed. The lesson that Britain and indeed Europe of course should now realise, if it hasn’t done so already and now especially over Afghanistan, is that what Washington does and what is says for the political consumption of its “allies” are often two very different things.

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If there is one lesson the UK Government cannot hide way from now though it’s that grand posturing in the shape of “Global Britain” is a mirage that even the most gullible of Brexiteers and Rule Britannia types will have trouble buying into anymore.

Which brings us slap bang right here to our own doorstep in Scotland and that lesson that many Scots have already learned even before the current crisis in Afghanistan.

In short, no longer is it acceptable to be left politically impotent by a system, the Union, that prevents us making our own decisions on foreign policy and the profound implications it can bring. If the last decades of engagement in Afghanistan and the reasons for being there have taught us anything here in Scotland it’s that we must have the capacity to decide such involvement – or not – for ourselves. Put quite simply, there are lessons for us all in this tragic crisis that has befallen Afghanistan and its people.