SWEDEN

The left fucks everything up

Sweden burned 27 billion fighting for feminism in Afghanistan
Published 18 December 2024 at 11.14
You pay. Sweden spent over 20 years at least SEK 27 billion on a combined military and aid effort in Afghanistan. Despite this, the goals of the effort were not achieved, a newly released investigation shows.
On Tuesday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Maria Malmer Stenergard (M) received the report from the parliamentary committee that reviewed the overall Swedish involvement in Afghanistan during the years 2001–2021.

The aim has been, among other things, to clarify what the Swedish military involvement - which had a strong feminist character - actually contributed to. Not much, it turns out.

According to the investigators, the failure was due to a lack of understanding of Afghanistan and a naive belief that change could be brought about quickly. Swedish politicians hoped that the period when Afghan women gained access to better education and healthcare would have positive effects in the long term, reports Sveriges Radio.

Despite the lofty intentions, it has now become clear that Sweden's efforts did not lead to the desired social change - to say the least.

The SEK 27 billion expensive Swedish intervention in Afghanistan can thus be summed up as an expensive feminist fiasco. Despite that, Maria Malmer Stenergard highlights the effort.

- The evaluation clearly shows the extensive involvement Sweden has had in Afghanistan over two decades. In no other place in the world has such a significant and long-lasting Swedish effort been carried out by so many Swedish state actors. It is important that it has been evaluated and that we can draw lessons from the work, says Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard in a press release.

Among other things, the parliamentary committee has mapped and evaluated the Swedish effort with a focus on aid, the military effort, foreign and security policy initiatives and other civilian efforts. The committee has also reviewed the evacuation that was carried out in connection with the Taliban's takeover of power in 2021. The evaluation has partly aimed to clarify which results the Swedish involvement contributed to, and partly which lessons can be learned from the work.

- Even though the Swedish presence in the country has now ended, our commitment to the Afghan people continues, not least the women and girls who are hit extremely hard by the Taliban's reign of terror, says Maria Malmer Stenergard.

The parliamentary committee stands united behind the report, which was submitted without reservations or special opinions.