The west betrays the people of Afghanistan again and again – Boris Johnson shows no sign breaking that habit

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A Taliban fighter runs towards a crowd outside Kabul airport, Afghanistan (Reuters)

The west has blood on its hands and is about to have even more. The people of Afghanistan have been betrayed again and again by the powerful western governments which mindlessly joined the vengeful response of the United States following the events of 9/11. We blindly followed the US into the invasion of Afghanistan, continuing a long tradition of trying to control this strategically placed nation.

Successive UK governments have perpetuated the narrative of Afghanistan harbouring terrorists, and still today it seems that Boris Johnson is driven by the twin imperatives of getting UK citizens out of the country and trying to prevent Afghanistan “lapsing back into being a breeding ground for terror”.

No mention of the millions of Afghans whose lives are about to be shattered. How is he planning to prevent that “lapse”? What is he planning to do? Enter negotiations with the Taliban? Do he and his cabinet have the remotest understanding of the brutal extremist ideology of these people? Being proud of what has been achieved in helping to educate some women and girls is totally irrelevant in the face of what is about to happen.

Yet again our prime minister demonstrates the ideology that drives him and his party and filters down through the whole of UK society, a deep-rooted selfishness and disinterest in anything beyond ever-shrinking horizons.

Lynda Newbery

Bristol

Lack of vision

At the heart of good leadership, and an essential attribute, vision will always be found. If there were ever something missing from Boris Johnson’s prime ministerial performance it is this. “Levelling up” – a photo opportunity with a big grin and a double thumbs up – or now, ensuring Afghanistan does not become a haven for terrorism, are all examples of what he appears to believe is leadership, but are no more than window-dressing.

Vision in a political context means thinking through a problem, consulting with others, then conveying the vision successfully to others, empowering them to achieve it, and measuring progress towards the goals implicit in the vision’s expression. I detect none of these essential elements in Mr Johnson’s Weltanschauung.

Richard Lloyd

Dunfermline

Biden has a point

President Joe Biden has rightly said: “Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires”. The USA are the third mightiest power in line to taste defeat after the British and Russians. Afghanistan is hard to be conquered for myriad reasons. The Afghans are proud of their culture and Islamic rituals and roots and impossible to yield to colonialist and imperialist rule; its tribal structure is hard to be governed by alien powers and its mountainous terrains are difficult to navigate.

Moreover, like Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, the US has not built a good governance system with transparency, accountability, efficiency and justice at its centre, but instead left behind states riddled with mayhem, social upheavals, corruption, mismanagement and elitism.

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob

London

Dangers of a weak west

The media frenzy aimed at vilifying Joe Biden for ordering the hasty withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan might be inevitable, but it carries its own dangers. Hammering home the notion of incompetence enhances the impression that American hegemony is over and promotes a decline in respect for its role as the global champion of freedom. However, the world will rue the resulting vacuum and may come to regret whatever comes to fill the void.

Ian Reid

Kilnwick

Do we ever learn?

Here we go again. Do we never learn? Does Dominic Raab really believe that threatening sanctions and removal of aid will have any influence on the behaviour of the Taliban? In the event, only the poor, cruelly abandoned ordinary citizens of that country will suffer. Next he will be telling them to shut up and go away.

Geoff Forward

Stirling

Youth mental health crisis

It was a moving, intimate small vigil in Plymouth for the victims of last week’s shooting. Such a heartbreaking event for several families. How does a family survive the loss of a father and a little child?

But did anybody remember the lonely child who had no little friends, the lonely boy who found life so difficult at school because of his mental health problems, the lonely young man whose contribution to social media never attracted even a single “like”, the lonely adult who got progressively more angry and sought to join a group of people who would “understand” because they felt equally as bad as he did?

Of course not. But we could have, and maybe recognise and help one of these unhappy youngsters before utter despair turns them into a deadly weapon.

Jenny Backwell

Hove