EXCLUSIVE — As President Joe Biden takes to the podium for the State of the Union address Tuesday, former Afghanistan Ambassador to the United States Roya Rahmani is asking Americans to remember the extreme suffering and anguish of Afghanis half a world away.
Rahmani has attended prior iterations of the marque presidential address twice before, but this will be her first time as a guest since the Taliban’s barbarous surge back to power — a “draconian regime” she hoped would never return. This year, she was invited by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) to highlight the dire straits of her people.
STATE OF THE UNION 2023: REPUBLICANS INVITE FORMER AFGHANISTAN AMBASSADOR ROYA RAHMANI TO ADDRESS
“[I have] a feeling of dismay about all that we have lost since last time I attended,” Rahmani told the Washington Examiner. “As the State of Union is happening, people are suffering. It’s a serious problem. And it’s like, more than 40 [million] people suffering under this draconian regime.”
Biden is likely to tout some of his foreign policy feats such as the United States’s efforts to undercut Russia’s unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine during his address. The nearly $100 billion onslaught of lethal military aid and humanitarian assistance has been paramount to frustrating Russian advances and marks a signature foreign policy achievement. But blemishes over the withdrawal from Afghanistan loom large over his record.
After nearly two decades of seemingly endless military occupation of Afghanistan that cost untold American blood and treasure, the country’s great strides of progress for its citizens quickly evaporated during the withdrawal. Afghanistan ostensibly wound up in the same place it began at the turn of the millennium — under fundamentalist rule that relegates women to second-class citizenship.
“We are witnessing what’s happening in the country which is very dire … not only for women, but particularly for women. The country is basically thrown back to a black hole, despite all the great progress that we made over the past 20 years,” Rahmani, who served as the country’s first female ambassador to the U.S. from December 2018 to July 2021, reflected somberly.
Taliban rulers have enacted a flurry of edicts rolling back the rights of women, such as: restricting education past sixth grade, calling for women to be covered head to toe, banning them from nongovernmental organizations. Virtually all of Afghanistan has been thrust into acute poverty, with some projections estimating that 43% of the population lives on less than one meal a day.
RETIRED MMA CHAMP HONORED BY CONGRESS FOR SAVING 17,000 FROM AFGHANISTAN
Many everyday Afghanis are disheartened by the Taliban takeover, but much like the West, they had grown tired of war and longed for stability, according to Rahmani. Decades of war had been an everyday reality for many Afghanis as tanks rolled through their streets and missiles flared through their skies. Many of their friends or family members were killed or gravely injured during the perennial fighting.
“The fact that people of Afghanistan have been tired of war and conflict and killing should not be translated as they are supportive for the Taliban,” Rahmani argued. “People of Afghanistan like people everywhere else in the world want the same thing. They want employment. They want health care. They want education for their kids. They want prosperity and progress.”
Harrowing images of Afghanis flooding airports and clinging to the exterior of a fleeing C-17 only to plummet to their deaths were cemented in the minds of Americans during the chaotic withdrawal. Biden’s domestic approval rating quickly cratered and hasn’t returned positive in most polling aggregates since.
Biden inherited the war and his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, helped lay the groundwork for the withdrawal. To Rahmani, western determination to pull out at all costs helped give the Taliban the upper hand during negotiations. Coupled with entrenched incompetence and corruption in Afghanistan’s government, the stage was set for a Taliban revival.
“When the definition of success for the international community in Afghanistan … became to be the same as withdrawal, the collapse was inevitable,” Rahmani said. “This situation was not helped by the incompetent [Afghan] government and political leaders.”
“I would say for the majority of people in Afghanistan, they welcomed the intervention of the United States and all the countries that accompanied them…there was massive progress, massive opportunities,” she added, before underscoring domestic gripes with Afghanistan’s government. “A lot of issues that people were unhappy about were related to governance issues, corruption, and the dysfunctionality of institutions.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Rahmani stepped down as ambassador roughly three weeks before the government collapsed and traveled to the U.S. where she now works to raise awareness of the plights of her people. Amid starvation and oppression gripping her country, Rahmani sees some glimmer of hope in the women of Afghanistan.
“The solution to end this vicious cycle of conflict, misery, extremism, and terrorism lies with women of Afghanistan….they must not be forgotten. And there needs to be a real comprehensive focus on them. The longer they are oppressed, they’re brutalized, the harder it is for the country and for the region to break out of this vicious cycle,” she said. “What happens in one corner of the world does matter in the other.”
