Start of a ‘forever humanitarian disaster’?

Cutting ties: Will girls still be able to school if the Taliban takes over after US troops' exit? — AP

WHEN US President Joe Biden announced he was ending “the forever war” in Afghanistan by pulling out the last 3,500 or so US troops based there by Sept 11, my mind flashed to Afghans I know for whom that speech could spell prison or death.

I thought of Fawzia Koofi, a female member of the Afghan team negotiating with the Taliban, who was shot several months ago in an attempted assassination, and her fears for her daughters. And Suraya Pakzad, who runs shelters for battered women. And the female students of the Marefat School, which teaches grade 12 students humanitarian values in a poor, Shiite area in Kabul.