Toby Neal: Another country left in ruins

Events in Afghanistan are bearing out the Afghan saying: You have the clocks, we have the time.

America is doing what Russia did before it. Bugging out. And as the clocks tick down, there are sleepless nights for Joe Biden.

His ultimate nightmare will be if Kabul falls on September 11, which given the pace of recent events has to be a possibility.

September 11, 2021, exactly 20 years to the day since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, which precipitated the invasion of Afghanistan by the United States in the first place.

Any hopes that the Taliban are a new, cuddly, enlightened version of the woman-stoning, hand-cutting-offing, statue-toppling extremists who harboured Bin Laden are dwindling with each new provincial town taken.

They are looking much the same but with the refinement of an international office and a negotiating team.

How Joe Biden would like to blame it on Donald Trump. But this is happening on Biden's watch and the withdrawal is Biden's policy.

The sending of American and British troops to Kabul to organise an evacuation of American and British nationals has awkward overtones of events which haunt the collective memory of Americans, that of the flight from Saigon in 1975.

Biden this week exhorted Afghans to "fight for their country." In the context of a riven land, it was a meaningless call.

If Afghanistan falls into the clutches of the Taliban once more, people will ask – they are already asking – What was it all for?

Hundreds of British dead. Thousands of American dead. Tens of thousands of Afghan dead, and hundreds of thousands displaced. There is already a refugee crisis.

Another one for the list then after Iraq and Libya, examples of modern imperialism where we in the West take it upon ourselves without invitation to sort out the problems in foreign countries and after staging a pyrotechnics display, swelling the cemeteries, and causing mass destruction, leave again, with those countries simply facing a different set of problems.

Not long after the American conquest of Afghanistan, with Britain going along with it, Tony Blair delivered a message to the Afghan people. The thrust was along the lines of: We will not abandon you. It was a promise that he could not possibly keep.

The problem is that America, taking on the role of the new Rome, has given itself licence to pursue neo-imperialist policies in which it has the military power to conquer nations, but does not have the appetite to adopt the accompanying responsibilities of imperialism.

We are all being taught nowadays that we should only talk of the British Empire in tones of shame and embarrassment, but compared with what America and Britain have been doing in modern times the British Empire was a model of long-term commitment and investment – exploitation if you prefer – in the countries around the globe which found themselves shaded red and on which the sun never set.

Instead of bombing buildings, buildings were built and enduring institutions were created.

And by and large the British did not wilfully abandon its imperial possessions, but departed with various degrees of grace when we were made to feel unwelcome, which was a sign that those nations were embracing nationhood and were chafing at the bit to govern themselves. They were ready.

Compare that staying power with the short attention span of American presidents. The poor ordinary people in Iraq. The poor ordinary people in Libya, the subject of a Sarkozy-Cameron vanity project with much more American military support than people realise.

The poor ordinary people of Afghanistan.

What happens is that after the saturation coverage of the military operations, the "victories" and flag waving, we then hear little about what's really happening on the ground because in the aftermath the nations have become so dangerous that it is impossible for Western journalists to operate and tell their publics what really is happening on the ground.

Perhaps the underlying problem is the advent of hi-tech warfare which makes making war easy, and the art of making peace has been lost.

These operations can be judged by their results. Bin Laden dead, no repeat of September 11, 2001.

That's the side of the ledger for Biden to hold on up as he flicks the page on all the rest.

The daily number of coronavirus deaths is up and down depending on the day of the week they are reported, but is roughly around 100.

At this time last year the number of deaths was in single figures. And there was no vaccine then. So I have been unpleasantly surprised by the continuing high number given that most of the population has now been vaccinated. Frankly I had hoped and expected numbers to be near zero by now.

We need to remind ourselves that the official dashboard figures are not of people who have died of coronavirus, although often they are reported as if they are. They are people who have died within 28 days of a positive test. So they have died with Covid, not necessarily of Covid.

Nevertheless, it's still with us. But am I right in getting the sense that people now just want to get on with their lives and are prepared to accept a certain level of coronavirus deaths?