Many Catholics will feel a moral obligation to provide support to Afghan refugees fleeing the country in the current crisis, according to Michael Binyon, former Moscow correspondent and diplomatic editor of The Times.
Addressing a Tablet webinar on Afghanistan, Binyon reiterated the comment: “Getting in is easy, it’s getting out that is complicated.”
He spoke as more than 10,000 people await evacuation from Kabul airport, many of them because they fear for their lives or because they fear they will lose their freedoms under the Taliban.
“The decision to leave itself will not cost Biden, it’s the chaotic way in which it has ended,” said Binyon who spent 15 years as a foreign correspondent at The Times, a further ten years as diplomatic editor and who is still a regular feature and leader writer for the paper.
Asked whether Biden could have done anything differently and whether the US should have delayed their departure, he said: “I don’t think there would have been much extra value in that,” suggesting that the situation might have occurred anyway.
Binyon said, however, that he did think it will prove a blow to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party, particularly as foreign secretary Dominic Raab has been accused of not pulling his weight, and has had to apologise for going on holiday in spite of the crisis.
The country sits right in the middle of where the silk road used to run, and has seen many empires come and go, from the British Empire, to the Soviet Union. Surrounded by the powerhouses of Iran and Pakistan, and in close proximity to China, geography is something the Taliban could try to exploit.
The question of China is particularly uncertain, said Binyon, not just because of China’s approach to their economy but also their treatment of Uyghur Muslims.
No one can be truly certain what the Taliban, who have caused immense suffering to so many Afghans, will do this time.