Over the weekend, US President Joe Biden met in Poland with a group of Ukrainian refugees whom he praised as “an amazing group of people.” But where was Biden when it came to the refugees from Afghanistan fleeing the Taliban government last summer?
It was, of course, Biden who created that refugee crisis with his ill-considered and ill-executed decision to unilaterally withdraw from Afghanistan, in August 2021, leaving the country at the mercy of the Taliban.
Biden has never visited any of the Afghan refugees that he, by his decisions, helped create.
The Biden administration has much more responsibility to help Afghan refugees than Ukrainians, as over the last two decades it is estimated that more than 250,000 Afghans have worked directly with the US military or with US officials based in Afghanistan. All of them and their families are at risk of reprisals from the Taliban.
Of course, the United States should do what it can for Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s scorched-earth war, but there’s a strange double standard when it comes to the Biden administration’s approach to America’s Afghan allies.
For example: this Thursday the Biden administration announced 100,000 visas for Ukrainian refugees. However, the Wartime Allies Association, an advocacy group for Afghans working for the US, estimated that of the 81,000 applicants for special immigrant visas in Afghanistan when the Taliban took Kabul, 78,000 were left behind.
Meanwhile, the administration has admitted around 75,000 Afghan refugees since the Taliban’s seizure of power. They can stay in the US for at least 18 months.
After the chaotic scenes at the Kabul airport when the United States withdrew last summer, in an interview with ABC News, Biden seemed dismissive of the situation in Afghanistan, saying: “The idea that somehow there is a way to get out without causing chaos. I don’t know how that happens”.
Four months after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the Biden administration convened the Democracy Summit of the world’s democracies, a club Afghanistan was once a part of. But not anymore.
The Biden administration also consistently proclaims its support for women’s rights. However, last week, the Taliban again denied entry to Afghan schools to women over the age of 12. Seven months after the Taliban took power, they continue to ban girls older than sixth grade from attending school.
The Taliban Ministry of Education said it is because they have not yet designed a uniform that complies with the law. sharia for girls. To use a Bidenism: “That’s a lot of nonsense.”
The Biden administration talks a lot about defending democracy and women’s rights, but it allowed the Taliban to take over Afghanistan. And now the Taliban have wiped out almost every element of a liberal democracy that ever existed there and have also severely restricted women’s rights.
The population of Afghanistan and Ukraine is approximately the same – about 40 million people. Why abandon 40 million in one country and try to save 40 million lives in another?
Of course, it’s fantastic that the United States is doing everything it can to save Ukraine, but the Biden administration’s abandonment of Afghanistan, a country that now receives scant media coverage, is still pretty amazing.