The New York Times :
A female high school student in Kabul, Afghanistan’s war-scarred capital, is worried that she won’t be allowed to graduate. A pomegranate farmer in Kandahar wonders if his orchards will ever be clear of Taliban land mines. A government soldier in Ghazni fears he will never stop fighting.
Three Afghans from disparate walks of life, now each asking the same question: What will become of me when the Americans leave?
President Joe Biden on Wednesday vowed to withdraw all American troops by Sept 11, 20 years after the first Americans arrived to drive out al-Qaida following the 2001 terrorist attacks. “War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multigenerational undertaking,” he said, speaking from the White House.
The American withdrawal would end the longest war in US history, but it is also likely to be the start of another difficult chapter for Afghanistan’s people.
“I am so worried about my future. It seems so murky. If the Taliban take over, I lose my identity,” said Wahida Sadeqi, 17, an 11th grader at Pardis High School in Kabul. “It is about my existence. It is not about their withdrawal. I was born in 2004 and I have no idea what the Taliban did to women, but I know women were banned from everything.”
Uncertainty hangs over virtually every facet of life in Afghanistan. It is unclear what the future holds and if the fighting will ever stop. For two decades, US leaders have pledged peace, prosperity, democracy, the end of terrorism and rights for women. Few of those promises have materialised in vast areas of Afghanistan, but now even in the cities where real progress occurred, there is fear that everything will be lost when the Americans leave.
The Taliban, the extremist group that once controlled most of the country and continues to fight the government, insist that the elected president step down. Militias are increasing in prominence and power, and there is talk of civil war after the US withdrawal.
Afghans watched with cautious optimism when Biden assumed office in January. Many had hoped he would reverse the Trump administration’s rushed pledge to withdraw all US troops by May after brokering a shaky peace deal with the Taliban last year.
Afghan leaders were convinced that the new American president would be a better ally, who would not immediately withdraw the troops that have helped keep the Taliban at bay and out of major cities.
Since the Afghan government and the Taliban began peace talks in Qatar late last year, fighting between them has surged, along with civilian casualties. On Wednesday, the United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan reported that in the first three months of the year there were 573 civilians killed and 1,210 wounded, a 29% increase over the same period in 2020. More than 40,000 civilians have been killed since the start of the war.
