The G7 risks making its Afghan quagmire worse

The G7 – the group of industrialised nations that includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and US – held an emergency meeting on Tuesday. At the top of the agenda was the ongoing efforts to evacuate foreign citizens and at-risk locals from Afghanistan, which fell to the Taliban militant group last week.

The situation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, currently the only airport in Afghanistan operating evacuation flights, has grown increasingly desperate. The interior of the airport is under the control of US soldiers. Just metres away, Taliban soldiers patrol the vicinity.

Together, the two forces have had to form an unlikely alliance in order to manage the thousands of panicked civilians – including many Afghans with foreign passports, visas or active visa applications – who attempt every day to enter the airport in order to get a seat on one of the limited evacuation planes. At least 19 civilians, including a young girl, have died, either by gunshots or in the crush, since the mayhem began on August 15.

The evacuation is expected to last until August 31, the deadline Washington had agreed to previously with the Taliban for a full withdrawal of US forces from Afghan territory. This is despite US President Joe Biden coming under unrelenting pressure from activists, members of Congress and some of America’s closest allies, including many G7 nations, to sue for an extension.

The disastrous situation unfolding at Kabul’s airport is a direct consequence of the deadline itself. When US administrations – first that of Donald Trump, and now Mr Biden’s – gave American operations in Afghanistan a firm date of departure, without involving or consulting the now-fallen Afghan government, they gave the Taliban months to marshal the resources and political support from local power-brokers outside of Kabul to mount their takeover of the country. It was so successful, however, that the speed with which it was achieved came as a surprise even to the Taliban.

With no joint plan agreed for an orderly transition to a different kind of Afghan government that would include the Taliban, the group's military victory resulted in a calamitous political vacuum. While the streets of Kabul are relatively calm, the flight of the country’s top bureaucrats has crippled the institutions responsible for maintaining its economic health and infrastructure. Meanwhile, armed resistance groups, centred primarily in the Panjshir Valley, north-east of Kabul, are preparing for a protracted armed conflict, suggesting that the new order in Afghanistan may not be a peaceful one.

All of this raises alarm bells about what what some G7 nations, particularly Britain and Canada, have already advocated: the prospect of imposing sanctions on the new Taliban government in Kabul. The International Monetary Fund, based in Washington, has already frozen Afghanistan’s access to foreign currency reserves in its custody. A G7 "roadmap" for relations with the Taliban government is expected to be released at a later date.

While the Taliban will no doubt bristle at the thought of having Afghanistan’s economic prospects snatched away so quickly after taking power, however, the group thus far has managed to succeed without any access to legitimate funds, from Afghanistan or abroad. Sanctions at this moment in Afghanistan’s history would only hurt innocent Afghan civilians who are already suffering. G7 nations, most acutely the US, bear responsibility for the present chaos. They must not make it worse.