The situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban is increasingly dire. Lacking access to foreign currency (and a government that knows how to run a country), Afghanistan’s economy has completely collapsed. Few Afghans are getting enough to eat, with estimates of food insecurity reaching as high as 95% of the population. The country’s women have suffered most. Secondary education for girls has been effectively banned, and women are forced to cover from head-to-toe and travel with a male chaperone. In early 2022, 94% of Afghans considered themselves to be suffering, a chilling statistic to say the least. Without a doubt, the current situation in Afghanistan is one of the greatest humanitarian and human rights disasters in the world today.
Many moral implications of these facts are obvious. No doubt, people feel an obligation to help the poor and starving. This is reflected in the donations that have flowed to the country. About $1.8 billion was pledged in 2021. For 2022, the United Nations made its largest ever call for donations for a single country: $4.4 billion. Although only about $2.4 billion of this sum has been committed by (overwhelmingly Western) donors, this still represents an enormous humanitarian contribution from the international community.
But is it enough to fulfil the West’s moral obligations to Afghanistan? This question is pressing given the blood and treasure that Western countries invested into the country over the past twenty years. The United States alone spent $2.313 trillion on the war (a whopping 117 times the GDP of Afghanistan in 2020) and more than $140 billion on aid. Canada’s more limited involvement cost more than $18 billion, and 158 members of the Canadian Armed Forces lost their lives there.
Despite these efforts, Afghans are suffering on a huge scale. This raises uncomfortable questions: Is Afghanistan simply another unstable and disastrously poor country (like Somalia or Syria) that merits humanitarian aid? Or are Westerners morally obligated to go above and beyond for Afghanistan due to our past commitments to the country?
There are no clear answers to these questions, but we can explore the ongoing public discourse over Afghanistan to try to determine how Western populations view the issue.
Yes, We Have Special Moral Responsibilities
There is no shortage of voices who believe that Western countries have higher moral responsibilities towards Afghans. The common thread of these views is that Western nations made past commitments to Afghans during the occupation that must be respected. The deal allegedly went something like this: engage in democracy and support Western armies, and the West will protect you. In accordance with this bargain, hundreds of thousands of Afghans fulfilled their end of the bargain and put their lives at risk. But Western countries didn’t. This breaks natural human intuitions about fairness and honesty, which creates a higher moral obligation for the West to right past wrongs. The best mechanism to do so is probably though refugee resettlement and humanitarian aid.
Although many people agree with the frame of this argument, there are disagreements about who ought to fall under the West’s protection. The narrowest (and seemingly the most common) interpretation restricts the West’s moral responsibilities to Afghans who cooperated with the armed forces. For example, the Editorial Board of the Washington Post argued that “duty still calls the U.S. in Afghanistan,” so the U.S. government should provide a path to permanent residence for Afghan workers who “stood with [the U.S.], and for our shared cause, during 20 long, hard years.” The Editorial Board of the Toronto Star made a similar argument to pressure the Canadian government to increase its intake of Afghans who assisted Canada’s mission. Ensuring these individuals have a path to Canada is “not an act of charity, or even of good will, but a moral obligation we bear”. The Royal Canadian Legion has echoed this sentiment in an open letter to the Prime Minister, calling on the “Canadian Government to uphold its moral duty to save the lives of our Afghan partners in Canada’s mission in Afghanistan” by expanding targeted refugee resettlement.
Although these voices focus on a limited group of Afghans – those who worked directly with Western armed forces – other people feel an obligation to wider populations. In a letter to the Guardian, a British social worker noted with concern that Western governments had encouraged refugees to return to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Now, those people who used to be safe in Western countries are at risk. “Have we not let these people down?”, the social worker asks. Ethnic minorities have also received special attention; human rights activist Ali Mirzad has accused Canada of “failing in delivering on its moral obligations” to protect the Hazara minority. Sara Gilliam, the founder of Task Force Nyx – an NGO that advocates for Afghan women – expanded the circle of commitment to include all Afghan women. She claims Western nations “owe Afghanistan’s women so much more” compassion and support, because we “encouraged their educational pursuits, their dreams of gender equity, and their hopes for their sisters, mothers, daughters and future grandchildren. But then, one year ago, we left.” This expanded definition of who is deserving of help no doubt increases the moral imperative to do so.
The most expansive moral view goes beyond a commitment to specific groups of Afghans. Instead, certain commentators claim that Western governments are principally responsible for the current instability, so the West has massive moral responsibilities to fulfil. David Vine, Professor of Political Anthropology at the American University, argues that the U.S. has “an obligation to help repair the damage caused by 20 years of a war that never should have been fought.” As a result, the U.S. should accept a million Afghan refugees over the next decade. Australian journalist and film-maker Antony Loewenstein, blaming the Western occupation as the main cause of instability, posits that Australians have a “moral responsibility” to expand refugee eligibility to include a broader range of individuals. Never missing a chance to blame the U.S. for global instability, Noam Chomsky co-wrote an essay arguing that the U.S. ought to help all Afghans as “damages, restitution, or reparations” for a “criminal war.” Under this view, every single Afghan is owed support from Western countries, and resettlement should be offered to everyone who wants it.
The Objection
These views are not universal, however. In fact, a survey of social media reveals a different interpretation of events: Western countries have fulfilled all past commitments, and therefore, they have no higher moral obligations to Afghans writ large. Interestingly, this view does not seem to be widely held by many journalists (at least those who write public opinion columns), but it is popular online. For example, an American wrote the following excerpt in a letter to the editor in response to the Washington Post editorial cited above:
So “duty still calls the U.S. in Afghanistan”? No. We have done our duty, and it is time to move on. Afghanistan had 20 years to develop some sort of stable, hopefully democratic, system. It failed. And it failed because most Afghans didn’t want what we offered the nation.
On Sara Gilliam’s article, which claimed that Westerners owe Afghan women more, the top-rated comment (60 likes) is the following:
It is unfortunate that the men of Afghanistan were not willing to fight for the rights of their women. There is only so much the West can do. Ultimately the citizens of Afghanistan must decide what is more important, Islam or equality.
A long Reddit comment clearly resonated with its audience; true or not, it received 1,800 net likes in ten days:
I was their [sic] in 2011-12 as a machine gunner. They whole country was like a Monty Python skit. We would give our Afghan police unit fuel every week for patrol, and we would watch them on raid camera drive half a mile up the road and sell all of the fuel and pocket the cash. Then complain to us that they can’t do their job because we shorted them fuel. During one join operation that lasted 3-4 days of clearing IED from a few scattered villages the Afghan police just got up and left. I mean POOF 150 guys just got in their trucks and went home. They didn’t give a fuck about the IEDs that would kill kids in the villages
A common thread unites these sentiments: although the current situation in Afghanistan is lamentable, the West is not responsible for it. If this is true, then it is difficult to understand whyWestern countries are morally obligated go above and beyond for the country and its people. If anything, the failure of the 20-year occupation reduces the West’s responsibility to Afghanistan, in direct contradiction to the claims of the activists, journalists, and academics above.
In my opinion, the thrust of this argument was most persuasively expressed in this section of a letter to the Economist from a retired captain of the Royal Navy:
Afghanistan had a once-in-several generations opportunity to pull itself up by its bootstraps and, hugely regrettably and tragically, it blew it. The Afghans say they feel let down by the West, but I do think it is fair to counter that the West can feel let down by the Afghans.
If this view is correct, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the West should do nothing. At the end of the day, there are large numbers of Afghans who did everything in their power to help the Western-backed government succeed – and millions of innocents who were barely involved. These people may deserve support from Western countries. But the West’s moral obligations would be considered fulfilled with a far more circumscribed package of support: perhaps only humanitarian aid and minimal resettlement quotas.
Policy Implications and Conclusions
These are just a selection of the views that I have uncovered through a review of dozens of highly visible articles and comments across the political spectrum from sources emanating from the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Canada. In general, four moral perspectives appear to be widely held in the West, at least according to this review of English-language sources:
- The situation in Afghanistan is a moral and humanitarian catastrophe, and Western countries have a responsibility to alleviate the suffering of Afghans through the distribution of humanitarian aid and limited resettlement.
- Countries that participated in the war and occupation of Afghanistan have higher moral responsibilities to Afghans who cooperated. They almost certainly deserve resettlement in safe countries.
- Their special moral obligations do not stretch far beyond this specific group. As a result, there is little appetite for the mass resettlement of every group that is threatened by the Taliban’s policies, as demanded by certain activists, journalists, and academics.
- Western countries are not responsible for the current instability in Afghanistan.
On balance, it appears that current refugee policies in Western countries are well aligned with the public’s moral views. Most Western governments have significant – but not enormous – targets for refugee resettlement from Afghanistan to complement humanitarian aid. Moreover, preferential status is granted to Afghans who can demonstrate their personal efforts to support Western military or political forces over the past 20 years. Members of vulnerable groups also receive preferential status, but targets are too low to allow all these Afghans to resettle in Western countries. This is the exact policy mix that my analysis of moral sentiments would recommend, if governments wish to respond to the four commonly held perspectives listed above.
Some readers may disagree. They may maintain that the Western response to the horrific humanitarian situation in Afghanistan is too meager. They may argue that we all need to do much more for these men and women whose lives are threatened by the brutal Taliban government.
And they may be right, but it’s clear that this is a minority view.