This time last year the Disasters Emergency Committee – which coordinates action by more than a dozen UK charities in response to major disasters – launched a Christmas appeal for Afghanistan. It warned of famine threatening 20 per cent of the population, as well as dire shortages of clean water, shelter and medical help.
How, you might observe, priorities change. The focus for aid agencies, in the UK as in much of the Western world, is now fixed on Ukraine, as it has been since the Russian invasion more than 10 months ago. Developments in Afghanistan have largely dropped from public view – except, thanks to dogged and dedicated Western campaigners, in one crucial respect: the status and rights of women.
You will remember the chaotic scenes at Kabul airport in August 2021, as Western forces ended their 20-year intervention and scrambled to evacuate their friends before the Taliban consolidated their return to power. There were hopes, even assurances, then that this Taliban was different from the one that the US-led coalition had helped to dislodge in 2001 – different for having mastered some basic diplomatic skills, different in being better equipped to govern; different, above all, in their attitudes to women.
