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1960s Afghanistan presents a stark contrast to the war-torn region we recognize today. Take a peek at the way Afghanistan was and how it can be again.

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Dr. William Podlich (second from left) almost always had his small Olympus camera with him on his travels, and he was usually the man behind the camera. This is a rare photo that he himself appears in.

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Afghan men out for a picnic.

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Peg Podlich on a trip from Kabul to Peshawar, Pakistan.

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Dr. Bill Podlich on a hillside in Kabul.

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A Buddha statue in Bamiyan Valley. In 2001, the Taliban destroyed the two largest ones.

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Men looking over Istalif, a centuries-old center for pottery.

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Men and boys enjoying the waters of the Kabul river.

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An Afghan boy decorating cakes.

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Jan Podlich during a shopping trip in Istalif.

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An outdoor market selling a colorful variety of produce.

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A crowded plaza filled with people celebrating the new year.

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A senior English class at the American International School of Kabul.

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Young students in a playground.

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These students do their work in a shaded outdoor classroom.

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Desks and a leafy canopy are all these students need to make a classroom in the summer.

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Wading children play and women wash as ducks float serenely by.

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Students at the Higher Teachers College of Kabul, where Dr. Podlich taught for two years with UNESCO.

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An Afghani military band.

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An Afghan Army parade through Kabul.

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Afghan repairmen in Kabul.

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Shah-Do Shamshira Mosque, built in the early 20th century under the reign of Amanullah Khan.

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The streets fill with cars during rush hour.

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Kabul Gorge, sometimes called Tang-i-Gharu, connects Kabul with Jalalabad.

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The seasons change, and this winter crowd smiles for the camera.

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A boy sells balloons by the river.

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Men gather on makeshift mobile bleachers.

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Parking lot of the American International School of Kabul.

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A chemistry lesson in a mud-walled classroom.

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Sisters walking the streets of Kabul.

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Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley, home to numerous Buddhist monastic ensembles and sanctuaries, as well as Islamic edifices.

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A man bends his head for a shave.

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A man preparing jalebi, a sweet dessert.

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King's Hill in Paghman Gardens, constructed following Amanullah Khan's tour of Europe, India, and Iran. Paghman soon became a chic holiday retreat filled with chalets, villas, and gardens. These royal gardens were public; however, in order to enter, one had to don Western garb. At the tail end of the 20th century, though, Paghman became a Mujahideen battleground, and most everything has since been destroyed.

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A residential hillside in Kabul.

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The King's Palace, where guards are always on duty.

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The Soviet-built Salang Tunnel, which connects northern and southern Afghanistan.

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A man kneels to pray.

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Two Afghan men walking home.

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Afghan men exercise their civil rights and protest.

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A gas station in Kabul.

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Afghan girls coming home from school. Both Afghan boys and girls were educated until the high school level.

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Even as cities grow, many areas of rural Afghanistan remain untouched by the changing times.

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A truck trundles down a dusty road.

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Two Afghan teachers at the Higher Teachers College.

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A stop during the Podlich family's bus trip through the Khyber Pass.

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Peg Podlich arriving in Kabul.

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The peaceful mood and smiling faces that fill images of 1960s Afghanistan are a far cry from modern photos of a country struggling with war and vast corruption. In Afghanistan before the Taliban, the infrastructural investment and Western influence of the 1960s and early '70s created a sociopolitical climate much different than the one that's dominated the last several decades. See more of 1960s Afghanistan before the Taliban in the gallery above and dig deeper into the history below.

The 1950s and 1960s were a hopeful time for the inhabitants of Afghanistan. Internal conflict and foreign intervention had plagued the area for centuries, but recent decades had been relatively peaceful ones.

In the 1930s, the young and progressive king Amanullah Khan was determined to modernize Afghanistan and bring the social, political, and economic achievements he witnessed on his tours of Europe to his own land.

He asked the world's wealthiest nations for help bankrolling his projected reforms, and, seeing the strategic value in a modernized Afghanistan friendly to their own interests in the region, world powers agreed.

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1960s Afghanistan Before The Taliban In 46 Fascinating Photos

Ahmad Zai Ahmadi began interpreting for U.S. forces in Afghanistan when he was a teenager. Since coming to the U.S. as a recipient of a special immigrant visa, he has mainly relied on gig work to support his family. Andrea Hsu/NPR hide caption

Ahmad Zai Ahmadi began interpreting for U.S. forces in Afghanistan when he was a teenager. Since coming to the U.S. as a recipient of a special immigrant visa, he has mainly relied on gig work to support his family.

Ahmad Zai Ahmadi was just a teenager when he ran into a group of U.S. Marines at a bazaar in his hometown of Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2003.

"I just started saying, 'Hi' and 'How are you,' and they say, 'OK, you speak English. Do you want to be translating for us?' I say, 'Of course, yes!' " recalls Ahmadi, now 36.

He went on to work as an interpreter for U.S. forces for nearly a decade, a job that took him all over Afghanistan. He forged friendships with U.S. service members, including a number of high-ranking officers. His nickname was Rock.

In 2009, he applied for a special immigrant visa to come to the U.S., a program set up for Afghans who'd served the U.S. government and faced threats as a result of their employment.

It took 11 years for his visa to come through.

By then, he had a wife and three children. And soon after arriving in the U.S. in early 2020, he discovered his biggest test yet: He needed to find a way to support his family.

It's the central challenge facing tens of thousands of Afghans who have escaped their homeland in recent months as the U.S. has pulled out of a 20-year war. In the early months after arriving, the U.S. government provides a safety net for new arrivals refugee resettlement agencies help families with immediate needs such as food, medical assistance, housing and school for kids. But when it comes to finding employment, Afghans who have come to the U.S. in prior years say they were largely on their own.

Noah Coburn, an anthropologist at Bennington College and author of Under Contract: The Invisible Workers of America's Global War, has interviewed over 100 Afghans who made their way to the United States.

Afghan refugees arrive at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., on Aug. 27 after being evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Afghan refugees arrive at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., on Aug. 27 after being evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

Over the years, he has heard countless stories about their struggles to find employment despite their skills and experience, often gained while working for U.S. contractors.

"They end up doing things like landscaping. They end up driving for Lyft, driving for Uber. They end up working at some of these big-box stores because that's really the best that they can do," says Coburn.

A recent survey by the nonprofit No One Left Behind found that as many as half of Afghan special immigrant visa holders drive for Uber, Lyft or Amazon.

Coburn is calling on the many private companies that held big U.S. government contracts in Afghanistan to step up and do more.

"The contracting companies that made so much off the war in Afghanistan, and made so much off of paying these Afghans fairly low wages, really have a real moral obligation here," he says.

Ismaeil Hakimi, originally from Afghanistan's Ghazni province, trained as a lawyer in Iran. Shortly after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, he returned home to help rebuild his country. After working with the United Nations, he was hired by the U.S. contractor PAE to work on its Justice Sector Support Program, to help build a fair and effective criminal justice system for Afghanistan.

After he survived a Taliban attack on the Ministry of Justice and numerous other threats, a colleague urged him to apply to come to the U.S. through the special immigrant visa program. His application was approved in 2014, and he and his family settled in San Diego, where through a friend he found work as a teacher's assistant at a prep school.

Ismaeil Hakimi worked for U.S. contractor PAE until 2014, helping to build Afghanistan's criminal justice system. After coming to the U.S., he struggled to find work but eventually landed a library job at the University of Utah. He and his family visited the Statue of Liberty on Aug. 5. Ali Hakimi hide caption

Ismaeil Hakimi worked for U.S. contractor PAE until 2014, helping to build Afghanistan's criminal justice system. After coming to the U.S., he struggled to find work but eventually landed a library job at the University of Utah. He and his family visited the Statue of Liberty on Aug. 5.

The cost of living in Southern California was high, so after a couple of years, Hakimi moved his family to Salt Lake City, where the landscape was reminiscent of home. His children, by then old enough to work, found jobs at Target, Walmart and the airport, but he had a harder time. He didn't expect to be able to use his training as a lawyer, given his lack of familiarity with the American legal system, but he could not even land a job at the local grocery store Harmons.

Hakimi was out of work for three months until he finally got what he considers a big break. He was hired at the University of Utah's Marriott Library to help students and other patrons with research. Today, he is working to build the library's Middle East collection.

He considers himself lucky. His children are now in college at the University of Utah, studying computer science and medicine.

"We are very happy here," he says.

Jina Krause-Vilmar, CEO of Upwardly Global, a nonprofit that helps refugees find professional jobs, says Afghans often arrive with skills that don't exactly match what employers are seeking.

"They get kind of lost in limbo," she says.

Some people need additional certifications to work in the United States. Some need introductions to jobs that didn't exist back home. Often what they need most is help presenting their experience in ways that make them more marketable to U.S. employers.

She points out that many of the Afghans who make it in the U.S. are college graduates. They're lawyers, engineers, accountants.

"That's talent we're leaving at the table," says Krause-Vilmar. "It's a missed opportunity for our country."

At this particular moment, it's a huge opportunity, given how desperate employers are to find workers, she says. There are nearly 11 million jobs open in the U.S. right now.

Ahmad Zai Ahmadi arrived in the U.S. just as the coronavirus pandemic was forcing a shutdown. He started delivering food for Grubhub and DoorDash, working 12 hours a day, as a way to support his family. Andrea Hsu/NPR hide caption

Ahmad Zai Ahmadi arrived in the U.S. just as the coronavirus pandemic was forcing a shutdown. He started delivering food for Grubhub and DoorDash, working 12 hours a day, as a way to support his family.

That was not the case when interpreter Ahmadi landed in the U.S. back in January 2020. The coronavirus was taking off around the world. By spring, tens of millions of Americans were being laid off.

Heeding the advice of the Afghan community in Northern Virginia, Ahmadi got his driver's license. With the help of a retired U.S. colonel, he was able to buy a car. He started delivering food for Grubhub and DoorDash, working from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week. Later, he also started driving for Uber and Lyft.

It's decent money, but the costs of working in the gig economy are high. He has to pay for gas and insurance, and he doesn't get to see his children.

Last year, he got a job at McDonald's for five months as a cashier and customer service representative. But the $10 hourly wage wasn't even enough to cover rent. He then moved to Walmart, which paid $12 an hour, but the hours were erratic and the pay still wasn't enough.

Ahmadi has a high school education and various certifications from Afghanistan. In the many years it took to get his U.S. visa, he worked as the general manager of a fuel-delivery company and started his own travel agency, building up a bevy of skills, including in database programming.

But he has yet to find an opportunity to put those skills to use in the United States.

"My certification doesn't work here," he says.

He'd like to get an American degree but can't afford to take time off from work to enroll in classes.

The U.S. exit from Afghanistan did open a brief opportunity, one that allowed Ahmadi to take a break from gig work for a couple of weeks.

He heard that interpreters were needed at the expo center near Dulles International Airport, in the Washington, D.C., area, to help process Afghans who were arriving in the United States. He speaks both Pashto and Dari and was offered the job on the spot.

The pay was good, so he worked double shifts, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., to bank as much money as possible while he could. What he saw in those long hours was sobering. Many of the new arrivals he encountered do not even speak English.

"I'm so worried about these people," says Ahmadi. "Life is very challenging in the United States."

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They Got Out Of Afghanistan. Next Up: Finding A Job In The US - NPR

First there was the Biden administrations withdrawal from Afghanistan. Then there was the chorus of disapproval. And then, as is so often the case in American foreign policy, there was the Blob.

The Blob turns on Jake, Alex Thompson and Tina Sfondeles wrote in Politico, referring to President Bidens national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. And then: Ive got to say hats off to the Blob on this whole Afghanistan thing, the commentator Matthew Yglesias said sarcastically on Twitter. They couldnt achieve any of their stated war aims, but theyve proven they can absolutely wreck you politically.

What is this Blob of which they speak? What does it have to do with the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and whether they can actually govern? And why, like the nebulous malevolent organism in the 1958 horror film with which it shares a name, is it perpetually lurking around, sucking up everything in its path?

The term Blob is generally understood to describe members of the mainstream foreign-policy establishment government officials, academics, Council on Foreign Relations panelists, television talking heads and the like who share a collective belief in the obligation of the United States to pursue an aggressive, interventionist policy in the post-9/11 world. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen in this context as Blob-approved.

This foreign-policy philosophy has its origins in the post-World War II view of American exceptionalism, epitomized by officials like Dean G. Acheson, that U.S. military intervention in foreign conflicts was vital to defending American interests and generally did more good than harm. To the extent that the Blob holds this view, the Afghanistan withdrawal was a defeat for its position. For Blob critics, it was more fodder for discussing why the Blob gets things so wrong.

Coming out of Afghanistan was a rebuke to, or the swan song of, the neoconservative approach, which had its heyday during the Iraq war, said Vali R. Nasr, a professor of Middle East studies and international affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. After the first Iraq war, the United States developed a sense that the U.S. could basically engage in war, and help shape outcomes internationally, at little or no cost.

Former President George W. Bush positioned a group of ragtag terrorists as Americas great strategic rival and an existential threat to the United States, Mr. Nasr continued. Even though the effort failed early on, it continued unimpeded and became fundamental to the Blobs thinking post-9/11.

The term was coined in 2016 by Benjamin J. Rhodes, who was a deputy national security adviser for President Barack Obama at the time. It was not a compliment. Rather, it was a criticism directed at foreign-policy experts with an unrealistic set of assumptions about what America could do in the world, Mr. Rhodes, who is now a co-host of the Pod Save The World podcast, said in an interview.

Its not that people are issued a card with their name on it that identities them as part of the Blob, he said. But back in 2016, he singled out Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties, who, he said, had an unpleasant tendency to whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order.

As a simple branding exercise accusing ones enemies of practicing hegemonic groupthink and being mired in a sclerotic, outdated view of U.S. power it was a diabolical master stroke.

But to the foreign policy establishment, it was a provocation.

A lot of people who are proud members of the foreign policy community would object to the phrase, said Hal Brands, the Henry A. Kissinger distinguished professor of global affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He himself objected last year, writing an essay with Peter D. Feaver and William C. Inboden for Foreign Affairs that had a title intended to tease: In Defense of the Blob: Americas Foreign Policy Establishment Is the Solution, Not the Problem.

What I find troubling about the idea of the Blob is that it taps into this old conspiratorial mind-set about what produces American foreign policy, Mr. Brands said. It makes it seem that American foreign policy has been so disastrous and foolish that it must have been foisted on the American people by some elite that doesnt have their best interests at heart.

Even Mr. Rhodes realizes that, like the gelatinous alien mass in The Blob movie, his creature has grown out of control.

Everybody since then has sought to define it for their own purposes, including those who want to make it a badge of honor, and those who want to hang it on their opponents, Mr. Rhodes said.

Maybe, and maybe not.

Ben Rhodes had a very precise definition, and his definition was people who disagree with me, or people who disagree with me and Obama, said Mr. Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University.

And he added onto that a layer of faux populism, as in Woe is me, Im just a poor assistant to the president trying to speak truth to all these well-entrenched fat cats. That is nutty. No one could be more inside the system than the speechwriter for the president.

Mr. Feaver added: Everybody has borrowed this exact same conceit. Youll find Harvard professors complaining about the Blob.

At the American Enterprise Institute, Kori N. Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies, said that Blob was a reductive and obfuscatory term, used to misdirect.

Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Heres more on their origin story and their record as rulers.

Who are the Taliban leaders? These arethe top leaders of the Taliban, men who have spent years on the run, in hiding, in jail and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to govern, including whether they will be as tolerant as they claim to be. One spokesman told The Timesthat the group wanted to forget its past, but that there would be some restrictions.

The reason they lash out and snarl at the Blob is because their positions are so contrary to the widespread belief about the effective use of American power internationally, she said. Criticism of the so-called foreign policy Blob is a way of saying, I have been ineffective in persuading people that the policies I advocate are the correct ones.

Gideon Rose, a former editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Mr. Biden had to overrule the Blobbish, deep-state-ish, permanent government-ish factions within his own administration in order to carry out his Afghanistan withdrawal.

That is potentially confusing. For one thing, who could be Blobbier than Mr. Sullivan, the national security adviser, or Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, both veteran establishment foreign-policy figures? (The Blob is Back, The American Conservative magazine said in December, referring to the Biden administrations foreign policy team.)

The people claiming that there is some sort of unified theory of Blob-dom are not thinking clearly, said Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. For one thing, he said, even within Brookings there is a wide range of opinion on Afghanistan. He supported the withdrawal, for instance which would seem to make him a traitor to the Blob, even though he is, by any definition, in the Blob himself.

My impression is that people who talk about the Blob have not read or inquired into what the people in the think tanks have actually said about the topic, he said. They dont know what theyre talking about. But, he said, if they want to say that Biden is doing something that Richard Haass disagrees with, then thats true, he is.

It is also true that any discussion of this topic inevitably leads to Mr. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who was christened Pope of the Blob by the writer Andrew Sullivan in 2019. For the record, Mr. Haasss view on Afghanistan is that America should have maintained its presence by leaving behind a small number of troops and not pulled out completely.

In an interview, Mr. Haass said he was happy to be considered part of the foreign policy establishment, but not happy that the foreign policy establishment was called the Blob.

Its a lazy term, he said. Its a pejorative and imprecise way to dismiss those who disagree with you, and it doesnt advance the foreign policy conversation.

Lets have a serious conversation about what should be the lessons of Afghanistan, or about Americas role in the world, Mr. Haass continued. But to simply describe certain people who disagree with you as the Blob is useless. And that is a generous way of putting it.

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Afghanistan Outcome Affirms a Warning: Beware the Blob - The New York Times

EXCLUSIVE: In a letter led by California Republican Rep. Young Kim Friday, 19 GOP House members called on the Biden administration to adhere to congressional demands for increased "substantive briefings" on the situation in Afghanistan.

"Since the August 31stdeadline for U.S. troop withdrawal fromAfghanistan, Members of Congress have received little to no engagement from this Administration on classified briefings and updates on the situation inAfghanistan and ongoing efforts to evacuate our citizens andAfghanpartners," the letter first reviewed by Fox News read.

TALIBAN OFFICIAL CLAIMS AMERICANS ARE SAFE IN AFGHANISTAN, SAYS THERES NO 'INFIGHTING' AMONG LEADERS

"We request that your Administration provide more frequent classified briefings for relevant congressional committees as ourAfghanistan policy continues to evolve," she added.

Kim and her GOP colleagues thanked Secretary of State Antony Blinken for appearing in front of Congress earlier this week to address two days-worth of questions lawmakers had on the number of Americans still stuck in Afghanistan but said his answers "failed" to address congressional concerns.

They accused Blinken of strictly adhering to "administration talking points."

The State Department said this week that roughly 100 Americans remain in Afghanistan, but that many individuals keep reversing their intent to leave the country.

The letter informed Biden that previous briefings were equally unhelpful because they were "dominated" by lengthy presentations by administration officials that did not answer lawmakers questions.

FOX NEWS GOES INSIDE AFGHANISTAN PRISON WHERE THE TALIBAN FREED FIGHTERS

The congressmen applauded the work done by the U.S. military and State officials who helped to get over 124,000 Americans and Afghan allies out of the now Taliban-controlled country, but also blasted the administrations evacuation plan.

"Contrary to your repeated statements, the implementation of this withdrawal has been an unmitigated disaster," the GOP representatives wrote. "As you said previously, the buck stops here.'"

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"As long as Americans and ourAfghanpartners remain behind enemy lines and the Taliban continue to provide safe haven for terrorist organizations, Congress has a responsibility to hold your Administration accountable," they added.

Lawmakers have demanded that the White House comply with congressional oversight policies and adhere to any and all hearing and casework requests.

Kim was joinedin sending the letterbyGOP Representatives Steve Chabot, Mike Bost. Brian Fitzpatrick, AugustPfluger, David Valadao, Tim Burchett, Lisa McClain, John Rutherford, Brian Mast, Peter Meijer, Dan Newhouse,Chris Smith, TroyBalderson, Ted Budd,MariannetteMiller-Meeks,Ashley Hinson, Carlos Gimenez and Ben Cline.

Fox News' Kelly Laco contributed to this report.

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GOP Reps demand transparency from Biden on Afghanistan, blast withdrawal as unmitigated disaster - Fox News

Any exit was bound to be fraught; and second-guessing mortal, real-time decision making is an arrogant, infuriating exercise. That does not reduce our responsibility to assess the Biden administrations missteps during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the chaotic effort to rescue civilians that it propelled.

It would be a huge mistake, however, to limit a period of national introspection on Afghanistan, as many political leaders seem keen to do, to that last chapter of this costly misadventure. The United States spent nearly 20 years failing to achieve most of its aims in Afghanistan. The most pressing question now is not how the United States could have better managed the retreat in these last monthsas if a more competently administered defeat could excuse the strategic failures that produced itbut rather how could the United States have admitted earlier that there was ultimately no way to win. Here are a few lessons to carry forward.

Democracy cannot be exported by force. In retrospect, the effort to impose political and social modernity on Afghanistan, a campaign of wishful thinking that disregarded that countrys historical and cultural complexity, can only be described as the worst kind of nationalistic hubris. Americans have shown themselves too ambivalent and too nave about empire to be any good at keeping one together, and a thwarted attempt at mob rule on Jan. 6, plus the ongoing possibility of domestic political violence, suggest that the United States is presently in no credible position to play the global paragon of democracy.

The United States must not lead with military might alone. With no more boots on the ground in Afghanistanand diminishing numbers in other global hotspotsthe Biden administration must develop new soft-power skills and flex old diplomatic muscles. In the short term, that will necessitate rebuilding those capacities at the State Department, which were profoundly diminished during the Trump administration.

For far too long and at too great a cost, the United States has sought to impose its will and protect its interests primarily through its military capacity. But all that power has proved to be a poor match for the remote and asymmetrical security threats and geopolitical challenges of our times.

Stumbling into complex geopolitical realities with guns drawn has led to too many ruinous outcomes over the course of U.S. history. Taking a respite from a historic dependence on military power can only be to the good in this conflict-happy world. Of course, becoming a soft-power influencer in Afghanistan creates new perils for U.S. policy makers. A primary concern is that any program of economic sanctions intended to undermine or redirect the Taliban government will strike instead the Afghan people, who have suffered far too much already.

The last days in Kabul also suggest a new militarist temptation to be wary of: settling for a clinical, over the horizon war to replace the lethal capability lost by the U.S. withdrawal. Drone and fighter strikes are described as a precise, low-cost method of projecting U.S. power, but they are of dubious legal and moral legitimacy, and they have frequently produced collateral damage that provokes new cycles of enmity and violence.

Scrutinize the experts. Americans must reconsider how an active, engaged citizenry can better manage a self-appointed analyst class whose baseless optimism conjured into being this unhappy exercise in nation-building. Revelations from the leak of the Afghanistan Papers in December 2019 suggest the analysts and experts were abetted by those at the highest levels in the intelligence community and military and political leadership, who frequently hid from the public their harshest and most accurate assessments of progress.

Groupthink, supported by corporate profit or think-tank subsidies, was rewarded, and criticism of the project turned aside. The analyst class was incentivized to create a narrative of nation-building that was doomed to unravel as soon as a real end date in Afghanistan emerged.

Yet it must be remembered that the U.S. public, perhaps lulled by the myth of invincible American power and righteousness, allowed this catastrophe to unfold as it did. After two decades of war in a fractious, far-off place, only a tiny number of U.S. families, those with loved ones in harms way, were still paying attention, a complacency that is inexcusable and must be rejected. Those who served the people of the United States in Afghanistan deserve that reckoning.

So what now? What does the United States and its political and military establishment owe the people left behindthe collateral damage of this vast policy failure, especially Afghan women, who have been misled for 20 years about U.S. willingness to remain local enforcers of their human rights? At a minimum, perhaps the hope of a safe passage out.

If the United States remains in dialogue with its former adversaries, the Taliban, it can still do some good in Afghanistan. Ongoing negotiations with Taliban leaders should be aimed at securing the evacuation of the hundreds of U.S. citizens or legal residents who were unable to reach Hamid Karzai Airport during the last tumultuous days of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. Those who worked with the U.S. military and government or international agencies, as well as former members of the Afghan government or military and their families, similarly deserve the best U.S. efforts to secure safe passage out.

While the world rightly recoils from the Talibans systematic misogyny, there is some reason to hope that the worst excesses exhibited during the last Taliban rule can be mitigated. Regardless, Afghan women deserve whatever protection from gender-based violence the international community can muster.

The United States and other Western powers still have substantial leverage over the coalescing Taliban government. The International Monetary Fund has blocked access to $440 million in emergency monetary reserves, and most of the Afghan central banks $10 billion in assets are held outside Kabul. More than $7 billion is warehoused (and currently frozen) in the United States.

Sooner or later the new government will want overseas capital to begin reviving the economy and rebuilding Afghanistan after decades of conflict. The release of those reserves and assets can be predicated on the Talibans street-level performance on human rights and its efforts to quash any terrorist threat emerging inside Afghanistans borders.

Ultimately, like the rogues gallery of nations who would be kings in Afghanistan before it, the United States will be tempted to wash its hands of the calamity it has created. That must be resisted. America must find a different, peaceful and productive way to stay in Afghanistan, without drones and without troops, but with a resolve to put right what it still can.

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Lessons out of Afghanistan: Democracy cannot be exported by forceno matter what the 'experts' say. - America Magazine