Afghanistan and the nature of evil

It was footage that shocked the world. At Hamid Kazai International Airport, desperate civilians grabbing onto the underside of the final US cargo plane. Some continued to hold on even as the Boeing C-17 took off. It is truly amazing they managed to retain their grip as the C-17 takes off at around 115 miles per hour or 185 kilometres per hour. The footage ends with the plane well into the air, turning back and flying over the airport, Afghans still tumbling through the air onto the baking tarmac.

I had tried to remember the last time I had seen human bodies in freefall and the grainy footage of American news - it had been the event that triggered this all off - September 11 - when those other humans had leapt from the burning World Trade Centre. There is grim symmetry at play here. Desperation makes ordinary humans pick one certain death over another. Immolation or torture on one hand or on the other falling through the air to smash onto the ground. But if you had to pick…

The implications for the Empire are also grim. Listening to the excellent podcast Blowback that the motivation to war in Iraq and Afghanistan had been to redeem American pride as a country that was capable to winning wars after Vietnam - of making lasting change. The fact that the forces they and their numerous allies had spent a decade cultivating and training had folded to the Taliban in a matter of hours will do lasting historical injury to their prestige.

The overriding sense is the futility of it all. It should give us pause to consider the nature of evil in this context. Afghanistan shows the human tendency to personalise evil as those leaders who perpetrate the evil acts. From the Afghanistan conflict, Bin Laden or George W Bush depending on which side of the fence you sit. It would be easy to add in the Dick Cheneys and the Ayman al-Zawahiri, those lieutenants who also seemed to have hands on the levers of power. Yet when looking at Afghanistan we are greeted with an version of evil alternative to personalised evil: systemic evil.

To see the total efforts of American forces with the assistance of great expense, terrifying military might, a multitude of well considered strategies and the very latest technology come to nought in a matter of hours has far flung implications for human’s capacity enact lasting change. That it was beyond the ability for the previous two presidents to leave Iraq despite their stated desire to exit, not to mention the political advantage in doing so successfully do so has shown the absolute limits of human endeavor.

Of course Biden could have taken months instead of days to leave and made a far more graceful exit yet it is debatable that the ultimate result for the Afghan people would have been any different. Instead we are greeted by headless evil all the time in which events gain momentum and entrench realities so that to redeem them is beyond all human effort. The same is happening with our ability to fight climate change and many nation states throughout the Arab world.