Ezgi Basaran, Stefan Dercon, Shabbir Lakha, Shabnam Nasimi. Rana Mitter hosts.
4 June 2022, Hay-on-Wry
Nine months ago Afghanistan dominated the news. Now it is a rare report or column. Yet since US and Western withdrawal the reality of life under the Taliban has become apparent. Girls are excluded from school or forced into child marriage, and women from employment. Meanwhile, economic collapse threatens millions of deaths as food scarcity turns to widespread famine. And the West, out of ideas, focusing on the rise of China or threats to stability in Europe, has no policy and no answers.
Were critics wrong to criticise the US’s role as a global police force? Do we need a strong America to keep Western humanitarian and democratic ideals alive? Or is the intervention itself a threat to those ideals and the rights of other nations? Or is the question redundant and the age of America, and of the West, over?
Eminent journalist Ezgi Basaran, Oxford economist Stefan Dercon, Stop The War campaigner Shabbir Lakha and British-Afghan social activist Shabnam Nasimi debate the failures of the West.