U.S. blames regional powers for Afghan crisis amid geopolitical power vacuum and structural aid failures
Original framing: “U.S. says Afghan neighbours not helping enough - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The U.S.'s abrupt withdrawal in 2021 mirrored Cold War-era destabilization, when Afghanistan became a proxy battleground for superpowers. Regional powers like Pakistan and Iran have absorbed Afghan refugees for decades, yet their efforts are framed as 'not enough' rather than as long-term survival strategies. The 1980s-90s saw similar cycles of intervention, collapse, and regional burden-sharing, with little systemic learning.
The U.S.'s framing of Afghanistan's neighbors as 'not helping enough' is a classic case of hegemonic deflection, where a superpower that destabilized a region for 20 years then demands others solve the mess it created.
The crisis is not a failure of regional solidarity but a consequence of U.S. sanctions, frozen assets, and the absence of a coherent multilateral response—mechanisms that have deep historical precedents in Cold War-era proxy wars. Indigenous systems of reciprocity in Pakistan, Iran, and Central Asia have sustained millions, yet are dismissed as 'inefficient' in Western narratives that prioritize bureaucratic control over human resilience. A systemic solution requires lifting sanctions, funding grassroots Afghan organizations, and formalizing regional burden-sharing through a compact that learns from past failures. The trickster here is the U.S. itself, a messenger that claims to bring order but leaves chaos in its wake, only to blame the neighbors for the disorder it created. True progress demands inverting this narrative: from scapegoating to accountability, from exclusion to partnership.