How is Moral Responsibility Determined?

Q: Eight years after the U.S. attacked Afghanistan, fighting continues. Religious extremists in the Taliban and al-Qaeda retain significant power there. What is our moral responsibility to the people of Afghanistan? If religion is part of the problem there, how can it be part of the solution?

The first question that must be asked is, "Do we have a moral responsibility to anyone besides ourselves?" For those of us who answer in the affirmative, we then need to understand the criteria that would decide for whom do we have such a responsibility. I believe that trying to promote an ethical and moral world is an important and shared human responsibility, and I see the people of Afghanistan as within that sphere for several reasons.

First of all, the Taliban is a ideological terrorist organization that uses its extreme interpretation of Muslim religious beliefs to justify terrorizing, suppressing, and killing innocent people. Its leaders and many of its fighters have been trained in Muslim schools, have been guided and led by Muslim leaders and mullahs, and see themselves within the framework of a religious ideology that views all those who do not believe as they do as inferior beings. Where it is in control, the Taliban create an extremely oppressive situation in which there are countless innocent victims, especially powerless females.

This brings me to the second reason we have a responsibility in Afghanistan. Under the Taliban rule in the 1990s, females of any age could not go to school, work, or even leave their homes without a male relative. In most of those homes with no males (many men and boys had been killed during the various wars in the 1980s and 90s), women had no means to earn money, find food, or survive. If they did venture out and were caught, they were punished, tortured, and even killed. Unspeakable brutality occurred in the name of a very narrow religious ideology.

The third reason, and the clincher for me, is that when the U.S. first attacked the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in late 2001, we said we were there to remove the oppressors and thus gave hope to millions of innocent victims and oppressed people; we told them that they would have rights; we asked them to trust our intentions; we encouraged them to dream of freedom and equality and work with us toward attaining it. In short, we made a very big commitment to helping them. Now, eight years later, we have not fulfilled that commitment and there are many who, even if they supported us in the beginning, now hate us and want us to leave. Still, there are many others who continue to want the freedom we promised and are wondering if we will keep our word.

As I write this, the UN is picking up the pieces and mourning the loss of life that occurred in this week's suicide bombing of their World Food Program office in Islamabad, Pakistan. The WFP has been working for more than four decades in Pakistan trying to help address the increasing poverty in the country, but no one is free from being the target of terrorists. In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, terrorism reigns supreme in many areas. If the Taliban and al-Qaeda are able to expand their control and take over these countries and attain possession of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, it will be but a matter of time before they are used, bringing about a devastation unlike most of us could realistically imagine.

There are those who say that we are the evil ones by our presence in the two countries and we should leave immediately. They talk about all the weapons and money we sent there in the 1980s to defeat the Soviets, and how we are thereby responsible for the rise of the Taliban. Much of that is true. Nevertheless, we cannot go back and undo those actions and now have to decide: are we going to follow the politically convenient and easier short term approach and simply pull out, leaving a situation that will likely end in chaos and mass destruction....or do we fulfill our commitment to work toward bringing stability and, more importantly, peace and democracy to millions who want them? I think the latter is the moral thing to do at this point, but whatever we do to help must be done on Afghan's terms for the good of Afghans as a whole, not for us. We exacerbated the situation there and helped create the problem. Now it is our duty to try to help rectify it.

By Ramdas Lamb  |  October 7, 2009; 2:52 PM ET Save & Share:                 
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