The one-year anniversary of the US exit from Afghanistan was marked by a startling NPR report about immigration. During the elapsed year, the US has considered 8000 of the 46,000 Afghan applications for immigration, and approved 123 of those. In the same time frame, at least 66,000 Ukrainian applications have been vetted and approved.
That’s roughly a 550:1 ratio.
Is it racism? Arguably not. 76,000 Afghanis have been moved to the US since the evacuation began, although some were held in other countries for months and some are still housed on US military bases. Ukraine is of course under active attack, creating a sense of emergency.
Yet over 70,000 Afghans who worked for the US military are still trapped in their country, being hunted by the Taliban, and many of their family members are at risk as well, while food shortages may soon present an existential threat to millions. Meanwhile, more countries in the world are welcoming Ukrainians as the world coalesces against Russia’s aggression.
Sadly, Afghans pay over $500 each in processing fees, which has generated over $20 million in revenue to the US, but Ukrainians can apply for no charge. These are different government programs with different rules, with the Ukrainian one being the more recently established. Possibly each new program is created without referencing what now exists? I’m trying not to see racism, or malevolent statism, and certainly not conspiracy. I’m striving to be open-minded, to remember that even active injustice can happen unintentionally. That’s probably the most common way it does.
Mikhail Gorbachev died today. That takes me back to a joyous event for the West, the fall of the USSR, when the threat of nuclear annihilation was lifted and the world seemed ready to enact the perfect harmony of a Coke commercial. Gorbachev was bitter at the end, but his personal contribution to non-violence is unassailable. Many remembrances today are wondering if, rather than declaring cultural victory, the West had offered some reconstruction aid and recognition to peoples whose instincts lead them to choose authoritarianism over democracy, we could have avoided or at least dampened its spread today. China took the opposite lesson–concession is weak–and rode a different path to power.
Perhaps I will still be around to see the results of today’s choices thirty years from now. Is that what I wish?
Culminating Triad 
The lesson we should have taken from both Afghanistan and Iraq is that we don’t create allies (or proxy fighters) and then hang them out to dry after they have served our ends. We created the mujahideen in Afghanistan to drive out the Soviets, and after we walked away, they morphed into the Taliban who welcomed al Qaeda onto their soil and under their protection. After the first Gulf War, we encouraged the Kurds and the Shia to rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein, but gave them no assistance, and the consequences to them when Saddam retaliated were unspeakable. If that weren’t enough, most recently we betrayed the Syrian Kurds, who were our bravest allies in the fight against ISIS, but then the Orange Abomination pulled out and left them to the mercy of the Turks, who have their own ax to (unfairly) grind with them. If the United States wants to continue to pretend to be the leader of the free world, we need to keep up our commitments and promises. Let’s hope the new right-wing GOP House doesn’t decide to cut and run with Ukraine and give Putin another victory.
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