Great point, the western example isn't necessarily the only path, but the thing is to note that there was a path, and that things like increasing women's workforce participation in developed countries were not even incompatible with the trajectory and needs of capital.
The Afghanistan papers revealed a track record of work by the ISAF on an abstract stencil of liberal values—for example, building co-ed schools in the countryside that weren't used, or were repurposed for militia operations. Many of the graduates of this new education system were unable to find meaningful work afterward.
These objectives were conjured up only after the initial punitive expedition, which was itself chosen by Bush's Cabinet and the MIC over and above negotiations offered for the surrender of arms and assistance in tracking down Bid Laden. There are many leaked documents where the various generals left in charge of the occupying forces stated themselves to be confused about to what they were supposed to achieve, and how.
It was a war crime to embark on a "nation-building" exercise in the country without a grounded theory of change. The US confusing its prowess at destabilisation via armed contras for a capacity to organise whole peoples into virtuous self-determination. It's not like we haven't seen this script.
Calls for social justice in conservative societies are one thing, but they're separate to the pretence justice can be achieved by military adventures. It ends up being murderous to indulge these fantasies when they're used as a casus belli, or at the moment, an apologia for an equally disgraceful hasty withdrawal. All this relies on the usual liberal illusions about how gains have been made in the imperial core.
Bottom line, this 20 year war has created a situation where a proportion of Afghan people remember the period of Taliban rule in the 90s with nostalgia—for now.
