Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
China is treading cautiously in Afghanistan, a panel of experts told the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an independent U.S. government agency that reports to Congress, on May 12.
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But there was no local governance. There was no opportunity to participate. And what Afghans really wanted after all these years was really a chance to participate and they were never given that opportunity.
Last week, the Biden administration announced it will redistribute $7 billion in frozen assets that belong to the Afghanistan Central Bank, giving half to a trust fund supporting relatives of victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks and the other half to a trust fund to support the humanitarian needs of the Afghan people.
Afghans have been through four decades of conflict and war, more than any population should ever have to bear. The United States bears a sizable responsibility for this. The very least the Biden administration can do is release Afghan money to its rightful owners.
It is easy to believe that Afghanistan was not fit for democracy given the rapid collapse of its government. But during the early days after the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, there was a groundswell of support in Afghanistan for the international effort and the United States.
Join Aaron David Miller as he sits down with Brett McGurk, the President’s point person on the Middle East to discuss these and other issues.
International attention has been trained this week on Ukraine, where fears of an imminent outbreak of conflict have many observers worrying about the future of multilateralism in a period of strategic competition between the U.S., Russia and China.
Afghanistan has been caught in a four-decade-long cycle of state collapse. In that time, five regimes have been overthrown and replaced by subsequent governments that each resembled the last, with the same centralized political institutions that have characterized the Afghan state’s modern existence.
The United States has a reputational interest and a moral obligation in vigorously joining efforts to help the Afghan people preserve at least some of the social and economic gains made over the last twenty years.