14/08/2026
The Great Abandonment: How the West Handed Afghanistan Back to the Taliban.
The United Kingdom & the US must apologise to us.
Today marks the 5th anniversary of Taliban and Twenty-five years after the US-led intervention began, Afghans are entitled to ask whether the United States, Britain and their allies kept the promises they made to our country.
For Afghans who lived through the past two decades, the story is not simply one of war. It is a story of promises made, sacrifices demanded and, ultimately, a profound sense of abandonment.
After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the United States and its allies, including the United Kingdom, intervened militarily in Afghanistan. The Taliban government was removed from power, and Western leaders promised security, democracy, reconstruction and a better future.
Afghan women and girls were told that their lives could be transformed.
And for a time, they were.
Girls returned to school. Women entered universities and professions. Afghan women became doctors, teachers, journalists, lawyers, politicians and civil servants. A generation grew up believing that Afghanistan could finally move beyond decades of war.
But the promises made to Afghanistan ultimately collided with the reality of Western foreign policy.
After twenty years of military intervention, the Taliban returned to Kabul in August 2021.
For many Afghans, that moment represented more than the end of a war.
It represented the collapse of a promise.
Twenty years — and back to where we started
The United States, Britain and their allies spent two decades supporting the Afghan government and security forces and fighting the Taliban.
Yet when Western forces withdrew, the Afghan state collapsed with astonishing speed.
The Taliban, whom Western forces had spent twenty years fighting, once again controlled Afghanistan.
That outcome demands serious questions.
Why did the political system built with enormous Western assistance prove so fragile?
Why were Western governments so unprepared for the speed of the collapse?
Why were so many Afghans who had worked alongside Western forces left in danger?
And why did the international community accept an outcome in which the Taliban could return to power while knowing what their return would mean for Afghan women and girls?
These questions cannot simply be dismissed as the unavoidable consequences of war.
They are questions of political responsibility.
The human cost
Western intervention did not create all of Afghanistan’s problems. Afghanistan had already endured decades of conflict, including the Soviet invasion, civil war and the rise of the Taliban.
Nor should the Taliban’s responsibility for violence and oppression be minimised.
But Western governments must nevertheless confront the consequences of their own decisions.
Afghan civilians suffered throughout the conflict. Thousands were killed, millions were displaced and communities endured insecurity, poverty and destruction.
Western governments repeatedly spoke of democracy, human rights and protecting civilians. Yet many Afghans experienced a painful contradiction between those principles and the realities of war.
That contradiction is at the heart of the Afghan sense of betrayal.
Billions of dollars of equipment — now under Taliban control
The collapse also produced an extraordinary strategic outcome.
The US government had spent billions of dollars equipping Afghan security forces. According to the US government’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, approximately $7.1 billion worth of US-provided equipment remained in Afghanistan following the collapse of the Afghan government and subsequently came under Taliban control.
Whatever the intentions behind that equipment, the outcome is difficult to ignore.
After twenty years of fighting the Taliban, large quantities of equipment supplied by the United States to Afghan forces ended up under Taliban control.
For Afghans watching from inside the country, this was another symbol of a war that had ended in a way almost impossible to imagine when the intervention began.
The greatest cost has been paid by Afghan women
The Taliban’s return has been particularly devastating for women and girls.
The Taliban have imposed sweeping restrictions on women’s education, employment, movement and participation in public life. Girls have been excluded from secondary and higher education, while women have faced increasingly severe restrictions on their ability to work and participate in society.
This is not simply a matter of cultural disagreement.
It is the systematic exclusion of women from public life.
The consequences extend far beyond individual women.
When girls are denied education, Afghanistan loses doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists and future leaders.
When women are prevented from working, families and the wider economy suffer.
When women are silenced, the entire country loses half of its potential.
The Taliban are responsible for these policies and must be held accountable.
But the West also has a responsibility to confront an uncomfortable question.
For twenty years, Western governments repeatedly invoked the rights of Afghan women as evidence that their intervention was making Afghanistan a better place.
What responsibility do those governments have now that those gains are being dismantled?
Women cannot be used as the moral justification for a war and then forgotten when the war ends.
Afghan women are not symbols.
They are human beings.
They have the right to learn, work, speak, move freely and participate in determining their country’s future.
What happened to those who stood with Britain?
The British Government has a particularly important responsibility toward Afghans who worked with British forces and institutions.
Interpreters and other Afghan personnel took significant risks by working alongside Britain. Their association with British forces could expose them and their families to threats from the Taliban.
Many Afghans were evacuated and resettled in Britain, and those efforts should be recognised.
But others remain caught in uncertainty.
The UK has now closed ARAP to new principal applications, while further ACRS referral routes have also closed. Existing eligible cases continue to be processed.
For Afghans who risked their lives working for Britain, the question is straightforward:
What does Britain’s commitment to its Afghan allies mean when the programmes designed to protect them are being closed?
A deadline cannot erase a person’s service.
A bureaucratic decision cannot erase the danger they faced.
And a change in government policy cannot make Britain’s moral responsibilities disappear.
Britain and America must confront their failures
The United States and United Kingdom have every right to defend their decisions.
But they should also be willing to listen to those who experienced the consequences.
Afghans did not decide when the Western intervention would begin.
They did not determine the military strategy.
They did not choose the timetable for withdrawal.
They did not decide how quickly the Afghan government would collapse.
Yet ordinary Afghans were left to live with the consequences of those decisions.
That is why many Afghans believe they were betrayed.
The word is strong.
But so is the experience behind it.
This is not a call for another war
Criticising Western policy does not mean asking for another military intervention.
Afghanistan does not need another generation of war.
It does not need another foreign army.
It does not need another experiment imposed from outside.
It needs peace, accountable government, education, economic opportunity and respect for human rights.
Above all, it needs Afghan women and men to have a genuine role in determining their country’s future.
The Taliban must end their systematic oppression of women and girls.
And Western governments must acknowledge that their responsibilities to Afghanistan did not simply disappear when their troops left.
An apology is the beginning, not the end
The United States and United Kingdom should have the courage to acknowledge where they failed.
They should listen to Afghan civilians.
They should recognise the sacrifices made by Afghans who worked alongside Western forces.
They should continue to address legitimate cases involving Afghans at genuine risk because of their service and association with Western governments.
They should support Afghan women and girls who are fighting for their right to education and freedom.
And they should stop treating Afghanistan as yesterday’s crisis.
For Afghans, it is not yesterday.
It is our lives.
It is our families.
It is our daughters.
It is our future.
The Taliban may control Afghanistan today, but they do not own the Afghan people.
And the United States and Britain may have left Afghanistan, but they cannot simply walk away from the consequences of the decisions they made there.
We Afghans remember the promises.
We remember the sacrifices.
We remember those who stood with the West.
And we remember how the West left.
The Taliban must be held accountable for the oppression they impose on Afghan women and girls.
The United States, the United Kingdom, and their allies must be held accountable for their failures.
The worst decision was made by UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who barred Afghan women and girls from attending universities and colleges in the UK. Those Afghan women who dreamed of attending a university in the UK are no longer able to do so. There is no difference, in this particular decision, between the Taliban and the UK Home Secretary. They both ban Afghan women from education.
And the international community must not abandon Afghanistan a second time, this time by simply looking away.
Afghanistan deserves better.
Afghan women deserve better.
And the Afghan people deserve to have their voices heard.
Mohammad Asif,
Director, Afghan Human Rights Foundation
