Over the past week, Afghanistan saw the 18 year anniversary of the 2001
US invasion, starting an occupation that continues to this day. This means every child in Afghanistan was born in a country at war, and has never known an Afghanistan at peace.
Having a war last that long has a lot of unfortunate consequences, as
the US and its allies will be deploying troops who weren’t even born
when the war began, to fight a war with no ending in sight.
High school students in Afghanistan see their country as having no
future without peace, seeing a state of non-war as a dream, but a dream
that many question if they’ll ever see.
UN reports have heavily documented violence committed against Afghan
children throughout the war, and between the constant danger and
corruption they’ve faced, Afghanistan’s youngest generation is likely to
have a long process of recovery even if a peace deal does come along.
That peace deal is looking less likely at this point, as the US and
Taliban had effectively already reached a deal, only for the US to ditch
the process and consider it “dead.” The deal still seems to be on the
table, as far as the Taliban is concerned, but whether it goes beyond
that remains to be seen.
Afghan Generation Knows Only Conflict as War Turns 18
Students see peace as an unattainable dream
Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.
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