This is one of those things where lots of people, though judging from the thread maybe not as many as I'd expected here, will applaud. A wealthy, successful, American company is "stepping up" in a humanitarian crisis caused by the United States' misguided (to put it mildly) aspirations for a country that ultimately had little interest in western-style governance. And so it goes, these Afghan refugees will enter into these countries, and have a place to stay and recover from the trauma that they've assuredly experienced in the frantic exit from their home country.
Eventually, though, they'll have to actually live in the countries they reside in as, one has to assume, permanent residents. I helped sponsor my interpreter's visa years ago when I finished my time as an infantry platoon leader in Afghanistan. He landed in [undisclosed location] and has a stable job driving for a trucking company. He hates it here. He wants to go back. Do you want to know why? Because we let our girls go to school, because there aren't enough Muslims around him, and because he misses his home country, warts and all. He left because he was afraid that the Taliban would kill him, and he was probably right. He's probably still right. We rarely talk anymore, which is sad, but that's the reality. There's a wide range of views that interpreters held, and to be sure mine is absolutely not meant to be a representation of everyone coming from there.
I don't really have a point other than to say that resettling refugees isn't as simple as "oh just give them a place to sleep and some cash and the rest will take care of itself", like it's via osmosis or something that they inculcate the values and culture of the new "home" they find themselves in. This isn't software you can install, it's much harder than that.
I was halfway through suggesting that your former terp moves to a different Muslim country, but the
"we let our girls go to school"
grievance would be too much for most Muslim countries too. There is no religious ban on education of girls in Islam. He can move mentally into the 21st century or, well, sod off back, Taliban warts and all.
This is a serious cultural gap. We would not be able to integrate our own ancestors coming directly from year, say, 600. We won't be able to integrate contemporary people coming with mindset fit for early Middle Ages, unless they are willing to shed it.
Which is unlikely in adults. I wouldn't be able to remake myself to become a good Taliban fighter either, and I wouldn't be willing to. If your former terp sees us as degenerate and godless, he will cling to his old ways bitterly.
I'm from a poor country, currently live in the US and my parents have astonishingly "old-school" beliefs to put it lightly - similar to your interpreter. While it's frustrating to see people not take advantage of the freedoms Americans have, and to squander their new opportunity, reject American values, refuse to learn English and integrate, etc, we should absolutely let these people in because it's their children that will benefit from their new homes.
I saw where my parents come from vs the US, and with the fresh perspective of a child absolutely realized how lucky I am.
Now I'm a high achieving worker, donates heavily to charity (EA ftw), and mentors similar people.
I really hope people have patience for refugees like your interpreter because while it's understandable very frustrating watching their life happen, please think of their children who will undoubtably appreciate the US a ton more.
Frankly, my patience has run out. If spending a year with Americans, in a war, isn't enough to divest oneself of deeply held cultural beliefs like this then it's time to admit reality. He doesn't belong here.
>please think of their children who will undoubtably appreciate the US a ton more.
Why do you think this is assured? If he were to marry and have children here in the US it would be with someone who holds views culturally proximate to his. I think this event is unlikely, but it's not impossible. Is your claim that US cultural propaganda is so powerful that children will ignore their upbringing? It seems like you're saying the children will appreciate the US relative to the experience of their parents in their home country. But if they have no experience of that home country then what are they comparing it to?
All sub saharien africans cleaning dishes in our European restaurants live that shock.
My grand pa after his first day as a miner in Belgium, wanted to run back under the sun of his Croatian village. But stayed for his friends he met in the hole.
You land in a totally different environment, and have to adapt, and most do as they can.
I migrated from South America to Europe a couple of years ago and I didn't suffer any shock --- of course there are some differences, but I believe since both are western cultures the things in common dampen most of the shock.
How did the United States cause the Taliban control of Afghanistan?
The Taliban were in control before the US invasion following the 9/11 attacks. Although the US failed in training the Afghan military, it seems like the Taliban would be in control regardless. The alternative to occupation would be a more complete destruction of the country.
I don't think the parent comment is describing the humanitarian crisis going this far back, but the US is at least partially responsible for the pre-9/11 Taliban going back to the support of the Afghan mujahideen in the Cold War.
I tried to untangle all this stuff, but it looked really complicated. Apparently the US encouraged radical Islam as a way of opposing Soviet occupation - resisting state-sponsored atheism and culture and all. But there were a bunch of mujahideen groups, spanning multiple ethnic groups and ideologies.
After the occupation ended, a bunch of the groups signed onto the Peshawar Accord to create a government, but a few of the groups (notably Gulbuddin, who later razed Kabul) didn't, and sparked a civil war. Pakistani intelligence (ISI) backed Gulbuddin, and amidst the bloodshed the Taliban emerged as a force countering all the warlords tearing the place apart. Sensing the winds change, ISI backed the Taliban, who cleaned up the civil war and seized control. I'm not sure what radicalized the Taliban, other than seeing the bloodshed as products of moral failing and not heeding the Qur'an.
From Wikipedia, the early Taliban actually participated in peaceful interfaith debates with Christians and Hindus while it was in Pakistan. I'd like to know how it got so extreme.
“The alternative to occupation would be a more complete destruction of the country.”
You seem to be conflating a theocratic regime being in charge with the bloodshed of war, or as you call it, occupation. A great many people died and were horribly injured throughout the 20 year war. But you think the wrong regime would have been a “more complete destruction?”
So the way I see it, there no way we can tolerate the Taliban facilitating attacks on US soil.
So after the initial invasion and defeat of Taliban forces, what is the correct move? Occupation didn’t work, but leaving after overthrowing the theocracy just allows the theocracy to reform.
It seems to me that a more thorough elimination of the remaining Taliban is the only other option here. I am legitimately asking what the other options are.
I've spent the better part of a decade thinking about this question, and I've settled on one answer: if the objective was to erase the theocracy and install a western-style or western-aligned government, we should've treated Afghanistan like an Imperial colony. Fully erase all traces of how Afghans managed themselves, force them to pay taxes to the US government for providing security and administering their government, and hand off administration of that government in pieces over the course of a generation as the civil infrastructure matures.
I think this is a stupid objective, however. It would be astronomically expensive, it would've cost untold amounts of blood, and "doing Colonialism" in the 21st century is frowned upon for good reason. What would we gain? What would the Afghans gain? Money from mineral extraction? In the end, we did psuedo-colonialism anyway, and it got us nothing but dead Americans and dead Afghans.
I had one idea. Invest $60-80 billion dollars a year in infrastructure and humanitarian projects inside Afghanistan from 2002-2020. That's about triple their total GDP and similar to the cost of war. That investment gradually leads to deradicalization, both because people become better educated and happier, but also because they start to see the US as a legitimate friend.
There were lots of infrastructure and state building projects. Not only by US, many European countries funded development projects too. It was hard due to the ongoing violence, sometimes a project was funded and outcome couldn't even be inspected in situ, but only from satellite images.
I'm genuinely surprised that people still think "do more NGO investment" would've worked. What do you think we did for 20 years there? I walked I don't know how many patrols where we went to hand out money to Afghan "contractors" for building a road, and they'd just disappear after they got paid.
>That investment gradually leads to deradicalization, both because people become better educated and happier, but also because they start to see the US as a legitimate friend.
The US didn't. The anti-US propagandists will lie and claim the US created the Taliban in the process of supporting the Mujahideen against the Soviets, which is a stretched fiction. Back in reality, there were and are many powerful regional factions in Afghanistan, many disparate groups of Mujahideen. The Taliban came into existence long after the Soviets left Afghanistan.
The circumstances which lead to the rise of these forces, is informed by the history, including both Russian and American investment in a 'war by proxy'
I also used to repeat the simplistic trope the US made the taliban de-facto since the US made the Muhahideen to defeat the russian backed puppet government. I think it has elements of truth, but there's obviously a lot more to it.
It's not "there's nothing here" simple either. The Taliban might not have taken root if the whole war-by-proxy hadn't happened. Some stuff I read suggests modern Afghanistan is like Kurdistan: unfathomably hard to make work, against the political realities of the neighbours and the different pressures inside the country.
> I don't really have a point other than to say that resettling refugees isn't as simple as "oh just give them a place to sleep and some cash and the rest will take care of itself", like it's via osmosis or something that they inculcate the values and culture of the new "home" they find themselves in. This isn't software you can install, it's much harder than that.
Everyone understands that, including the Airbnb people. I don't think there's actually anybody mistaking the context as you're suggesting. Over a million poor immigrants - most of them de facto refugees trying to escape from very dangerous third world poverty in Latin America - enter the US every year with essentially nothing, looking to start a new life. Tens of millions of people from that context across the last 30 years alone. This is an old, understood, persistent process in the US.
>This is an old, understood, persistent process in the US.
Which apparently failed quite dramatically for my interpreter since he still holds views that clash with the mean understanding of what's politically acceptable in the United States. Perhaps that's my fault. To that end, no I don't think everyone "understands" this.
If he only wanted to avoid being killed by the Taliban but otherwise retain his religious and culturally acquired views and behaviours, Probably the US was never the right place to settle. It's possible Iran, or Pakistan, or Malaysia or something was going to be a better "fit". I doubt they wanted to be the final destination any more than any economy does, but possibly, the outcome would be more congenial for him if they had been the endpoint.
I suppose I mean that if he now has residency, he might have choices. He could (obviously, at some considerable expense) relocate. It is also interesting to wonder what a partner and children might think: His reluctance to acculturate, might be offset by what he sees his family doing. I know of like outcomes although a friend did a PhD on this stuff in cultural linguistics and oftentimes, the men in the family change faster than the women, it depends (this was research in the persian/iranian community. it may differ in the Hazara community. Being Shia reduces options for where to go in the islamic community, Shia being a significant minority religion in most economies. Being relocated from Afghanistan to Syria or Iraq or Lebanon would be pretty bizarre. Being relocated to Iran would probably have worked out ok)
I'm trying to avoid saying what i think about his choices given it's obvious I don't want a world with headscarf laws.
This isn't about if I approve or disapprove of sharia law and imposed norms on women, its about what he wants, wanted. Doing a good thing (helping him not die) has wound up making a range of (lesser?) bad things happen.
The Iran thing is so complicated. Probably, he's so tainted by his role with the US it's impossible. (I am making huge inferential leaps that he's Hazara/shia not sunni btw, there's no strong reason for only shia to have opposed the Taliban. If he's sunni, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan would be fine you would think)
You probably feel pretty conflicted about this. What would I know, I've never had to make this kind of least-worst choice for somebody else, at somebody else's behest. I don't envy anyone exposed to this stuff. Nobody feels completely good, when you do a good thing, but the outcome isn't entirely welcome. I know I've done some stupid things from good intent and the outcome is universally bad, and this isn't one of those times I think so, there's that. I think you did a good thing.
I agree with everything you said, and your inference is correct, he is Hazara. Settling him in Iran probably would've been the best possible outcome (ignoring the geopolitical reasons for why this can't happen for a moment), and not just for cultural reasons. There's enough local Islamic identity for him there that any lingering issue with him working with the US probably would've been overlooked given the on-going intra-Islamic conflict across that part of the world. It's weird, I read all of these articles by supposedly smart people and they're just wrong on so many parts about how resettling Afghans will or should work. I sent him an email tonight but I doubt he'll respond any time soon. He did create a LinkedIn profile during the pandemic (probably to look for other truck driving jobs) and linked me so perhaps I'll reach out there.
One of the Afghani refugees here in Australia spoke of how confusing it was to be welcomed into a completely secular western culture, and then have to cope with Sunni dominated mosques and expectations of behaviour. The Sunni imams were a bit distressed they weren't showing up, noting that if you didn't live close to the mosque here, and hadn't yet learned to drive, (drive: She was functionally illiterate, and dealing with a 6 month old baby with a hole-in-the-heart who was born in refugee camp. what a nightmare) that was .. hard. (because we don't somehow welcome mosques as much as we might, and they wind up being in bush locations, away from public transport, and only do Shia-imam stuff on alternate tuesday afternoons type things)
It sounded like a next to impossible balancing act. Somehow, a lot of them wound up in construction: specifically tiling. I wondered if the "silk road" building culture of decorated tiling had paid off, as a work model for them or if this is just that one lucky Afghan who gets a job and then hires his friends, to make a "thing" happen.
I was also told the whole Fasi/Dari thing was really funny from the Farsi side of things. The Dari speakers sound like they're enunciating olde-english, chaucer style, to modern english ears (if you see what I mean) -and the Afgans said that the Farsi interpreters were often mis-interpreting things which made for horrendous Immigration problems.
Looks like they have a rich trove of data on westerners and western sympathizers. I don't think Airbnb is thinking enough about protecting these rental records -- I can see the names and faces of previous guests even on public pages (those who left reviews). There must be tons of PII available to anyone who can access the Airbnb hosts' accounts.
edit: Also, the photos are full of things that immediately imperil the hosts -- innocuous details ranging from music disks to wine glasses to risque art prints.
If anyone from Airbnb is reading it would be wise to lockdown these pages. Though it's probably too late, the Taliban is quite media savvy.
Edit: someone commented, and deleted, a question about how to escalate this to Airbnb. I don't work for them, so I have no idea. But if Airbnb is going to do something like offer a place to sleep to Afghan refugees, sorry they've just stepped into a geopolitical game they might not be ready to play.
Airbnb: delete these pages. While it's likely Taliban have already taken down this data, it's also possible they're too busy dealing with everything going on at HKIA that they haven't had time or they forgot or the guy who did it is busy doing something else. You are putting folks at risk.
Presumably Airbnb is paying for the stays. The hosts are doing a nice thing too I guess, but it's also not too different from regular business, since they're, y'know, getting paid.
I don’t know the details of this program - but in the past Airbnb has asked hosts to “donate” their space for special causes - like medical workers during early Covid.
In that case it was definitely the hosts making donations, not Airbnb.
AirBnB offering accommodations is like the US government promising to take every refugee, only _after_ the airport has been closed off. They just gotta find a way into the airport, and we'll take care of the rest.
Why would you say that? If I bought 1000 hotel nights for refugee wouldn’t it be me offering them free accommodation despite the fact that I own zero hotels?
It's extremely generous of you to do this for foreigners, why not do this for the homeless here?
I think we are going to regret letting these thousands and thousands of Afgans into our country. Maybe one of these thousands has a friend or cousin who you never know
could want to harm the US...
And now they have an in......
Would you prefer to stay in a hotel or a refugee shelter? That's what this campaign says to me at the gut level. Might be nice and altruistic, but it's kind of lousy brand marketing.
I doubt he has lined up 20.000 properties yet who
want to do this. So that will be fun distribution:
1 to Alaska. 3 in Portland, 1 in Colorado Springs.
On a more serious note. this is not a promising idea,
Nobody has any real idea who these people are.
What sorts of trauma they may have experienced?
What their medical, psychological, or sociological needs are.
There is also the tragic issue that inevitably there will be a
few among them who mean to do harm to a country that occupied
them for 20 years.
Random AirBnB hosts who probably mean very well have no training
or practice to do something like this. And once it gets real
they will not want to either.
It is not a hippie utopian meeting of the minds and "all is chill"
It is real people, Real trauma, Real culture shock, and quite different
means of resolving conflict.
I hope Biden will not just dump the refugees into US cities.
However, the camps that Obama, Trump, Biden are using now for
refugees on the southern border does not fill me with a lot of
confidence that the refugees from Afghanistan will get the
help, care they will all need and the reeducation some will need.
The state should be forced to build and staff suitable accommodations
that are warm, friendly and safe.
That are set up to help them through a process of adjusting to life
outside of Afghanistan and towards a life in the US.
They also need to be screened to help identify those who may have ill intent.
"Thank you, science" is not a good marketing line. Because science is not good or bad -- it depends on what it's used for. A lot of terrible companies could say the same thing.
"Thank you, science -- Facebook" has a completely different ring to it.
Honestly this is the sort of thing Social Media companies could be really, really good at.
“Find all Pashto speaking Muslim families from the Kandahar area, currently living in the US, who have two extra bedrooms, and have lived in the US at least seven years. Rank families by likelihood they would sponsor refugees.”
Facebook knows exactly how many bedrooms it’s users has. If they know their address (pretty easy for FB to find out), the number of bedrooms is public record.
Who cares? People are getting shelter, if even for a little bit. This is honestly the most boring kind of cynicism because you've offered no real critique and no consideration of the people who have been forcefully displaced and can now have a place to stay.
Agree! Even if AirBnB didn't do it for the right reason (which I have no reason to believe they did - why always so cynical!?) the people in desperate immediate and "short term" need get help! (this is also why it's different to the homelessness issue, which seems more like a systemic issue that the cities and countries should honestly be ashamed of).
What would be a right reason? In my experience, all reasons boil down to either someone getting money or someone feeling good about themselves. It's just that, in this case, interests align - nothing more, but nothing less, either.
Exactly. If a company got money for hurting someone, then we need to have a conversation. If a company gets money for helping someone, my response would range anywhere from "Good for them!" to "What's for lunch?" at worst.
Yeah, unfortunately I default to cynic with just about all companies. I wish for a world where someone with the resources like this at their disposal thinks, "Oh shit, what can I do?" without thinking about the PR.
What are they actually doing? Asking their customers to temporarily house refugees. Seems like it won’t cost them much, and there are probably enough seasonal homes that go unused in off season to make this viable.
What boggles my mind is that someone who in all likelihood has done absolutely nothing to help Afghan refugees feels the need to chime in and criticize AirBnb for pulling a publicity stunt.
Is it not fun when companies big and small grab headlines by cynical offers like these. Presumably, once the PR stunt part dies, someone else is going to pay for them? Who I wonder will be that generous donor.
> Wouldn't it be easier to make Afghanistan a 51st state?
That's probably an viable option last century (see: Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico), but colonialism/imperialism is out of style right now so it would definitely not be easy to do that.
That's a drop in the bucket for a country that's already full of people from all over the world and constantly bragging about its diversity (despite looking very monocultural from the outside looking in).
At least legally, the US had no “rights” over Afghanistan. Afghanistan was not a colony, territory or state of the US. The government was “free” to kick out the US whenever they wanted.
In practice, US foreign policy doesn't recognize international law and never really has.
The US could annex Afghanistan, and apart from the CCP doing a lot of complaining about it (primarily because they want access to Afghanistan's mineral wealth), nothing would happen.
It may have been preferable for the Afghan people, the vast majority of whom prefer a democracy with election processes, and the vast majority of whom are young and mostly know the post-Taliban life under America's watch. It's unfortunate that America threw away its foothold in the region and has created another set of humanitarian crises - and I don't mean just displaced refugees but also women who will be brutally oppressed under Taliban rule.
Eventually, though, they'll have to actually live in the countries they reside in as, one has to assume, permanent residents. I helped sponsor my interpreter's visa years ago when I finished my time as an infantry platoon leader in Afghanistan. He landed in [undisclosed location] and has a stable job driving for a trucking company. He hates it here. He wants to go back. Do you want to know why? Because we let our girls go to school, because there aren't enough Muslims around him, and because he misses his home country, warts and all. He left because he was afraid that the Taliban would kill him, and he was probably right. He's probably still right. We rarely talk anymore, which is sad, but that's the reality. There's a wide range of views that interpreters held, and to be sure mine is absolutely not meant to be a representation of everyone coming from there.
I don't really have a point other than to say that resettling refugees isn't as simple as "oh just give them a place to sleep and some cash and the rest will take care of itself", like it's via osmosis or something that they inculcate the values and culture of the new "home" they find themselves in. This isn't software you can install, it's much harder than that.