Men wait in a line to receive cash for food at an initiative organized by the World Food Program (WFP) in Kabul, Afghanistan, in November 2021. The country is faced with harrowing predictions of growing poverty and hunger.
(AP Photo/Bram Janssen)
As the West contemplates how to engage with the increasingly brutal Taliban government in Afghanistan, the country’s people will suffer enormously.
Explosions outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Aug. 26, 2021, worsened the devastation in Afghanistan.
Sayed Khodaiberdi Sadat/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Hiding the suffering and deaths of some from public view while showing others implies that certain lives are more valuable.
Forced from their homes by fighting between the Taliban and Afghan government forces, thousands of families seek refuge in a Kabul park.
Haroon Sabawoon/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
When the US invaded Afghanistan in late 2001, Afghans had endured 22 years of war. The Taliban were on the rise. Little has changed after an additional 20 years of war and suffering.
Militiamen join Afghan security forces during a gathering in Kabul last month. Together, they are trying to stem the tide of the latest Taliban gains.
Rahmat Gul/AP
In Afghanistan, it does not pay to be on the losing side. There is a danger that a spreading perception the Taliban are poised to take over could trigger a wave of government and army defections.
The people of Afghanistan that the author encountered live very different lives from Americans.
Brian Glyn Williams
As American troops leave Afghanistan, a scholar of the country’s history and culture reexamines his photos of the nation’s people.
A patient is connected to an oxygen tank at the Afghan-Japan Communicable Disease Hospital for COVID-19 patients in Kabul, Afghanistan, in June 2020. Afghan media has reported that COVID-19 patients are dying in government hospitals due to shortages of medical oxygen.
(AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
Decades of armed conflict in Afghanistan has destroyed health-care infrastructure and the reconstruction efforts have failed to provide accessible healthcare, exacerbating the COVID-19 crisis.