The Evangelical Pope | A Message for Afghanistan

Each week we let Saint Pope John Paul II share meaningful signposts to spark socio-economic resolves through justice and righteousness combined with mercy and compassion; in short, love

               [Editor’s note: The people of Alaska and Afghanistan are in so many ways similar. Surprised? Alaska, like Afghanistan, is a crossroad of the world, inhabited by a diversity of people with so much promise.]

Fairbanks Airport, Alaska 2 May 1984 | Today, I have begun a pastoral journey to take me to Korea, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Thailand. This pilgrimage enables me to stop here in Fairbanks and to be among you! 

               In some ways, Alaska can be considered today as a crossroads of the world. President Reagan is returning from visiting the beloved people of China, even as I am making my way to a neighboring area in the Far East.

               The city of Fairbanks reminds us also of another direction. It is called “The Heart of the Golden North.”

               In this vast State, sixty-five languages are spoken, and peoples of diverse backgrounds find a shared home with the Aleuts, Eskimos, and Indians. 

I am deeply honored by the presence of President Reagan, who himself is just returning from an important trip to China. Mr. President, I thank you for your kind welcome on my arrival, and I wish to reaffirm my friendship and esteem for all the citizens of your great nation. 

Even when I am miles away, I hold the people of Alaska and the United States close to me in my heart. I do not forget you, for we are linked together by bonds of friendship, faith, and love. 

               This extraordinary diversity provides the context in which each person, each family, each ethnic group is challenged to live in harmony and concord, one with the other. 

To achieve this aim requires a constant openness to each other on the part of each individual and group.

               An openness of heart, a readiness to accept differences, and an ability to listen to each other’s viewpoints without prejudice.

               Openness to others, by its very nature, excludes selfishness in any form.

               It is expressed in honest dialogue based on mutual respect. Openness to others begins in the heart. 

If men and women hope to transform society, they must begin by changing their hearts first. Only with a “new heart” can one rediscover “clear-sightedness and impartiality with freedom of spirit, the sense of justice concerning the rights of man, the sense of equity with global solidarity between the rich and the poor, mutual trust and fraternal love.”

Here in Fairbanks [as in Kabul], you have the opportunity to rediscover such values and to express them in your harmonious relationship with your neighbor – which reflects the stunning harmony of nature that pervades this region. 

               May God grant you the strength to express this harmony in your own lives, in your relationship with others.

               May he give you the courage to share generously and selflessly the blessings that you yourselves have received in abundance. 

               God bless America!

Excerpted from:

Apostolic Journey to Korea, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Thailand, Address of Pope John Paul II to Authorities and People of Alaska, Fairbanks Airport (Alaska), Wednesday, 2 May 1984.

https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1984/may/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19840502_aeroporto-fairbanks.html

Read more: ‘The Great Collapse,’ published by Project Syndicate

19 August 2021

The implosion of Afghanistan’s government, propped up for two decades by the United States and its allies, recalls Ernest Hemingway’s description of how someone goes bankrupt: “Gradually and then suddenly.” Now that the Taliban have returned to power, observers are scrambling to understand why it happened and what it will mean for Afghans and the world.

In this Big Picture, Richard Haass, the Council on Foreign Relations president, faults US President Joe Biden for not recognizing that avoiding defeat in Afghanistan had become more important than attaining victory. Likewise, Brahma Chellaney of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi blames Biden’s decision to withdraw all US forces for the Afghan military’s inability to resist the Taliban’s advances and notes that this was the second time in two years America abandoned a besieged ally.

But Charles Kupchan of Georgetown University says that Biden was right to pull the plug on the Afghan government. The entire Western strategy was flawed from the outset, insofar as the goal was to establish a unitary, centralized state. For Bill Emmott, former editor-in-chief of The Economist, the problem was less a bad strategy than a bad neighbor in Pakistan and America’s failure to turn it into a benign one. More radically, Columbia University’s Jeffrey D. Sachs sees in Afghanistan a longstanding pattern of dubious US military interventions in developing countries, arguing that American priorities once again betrayed policymakers’ contempt for the local population.

Now, however, few doubt that the humiliating outcome in Afghanistan has badly dented America’s global credibility. As Fawaz A. Gerges of the London School of Economics notes, the harrowing scenes of panic and desperation that accompanied the fall of Kabul foreshadow a humanitarian catastrophe for which the US and its allies will be blamed. And Jim O’Neill, a member of the Pan-European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development, asks what waning trust in America could mean for the future of the dollar and the “exorbitant privilege” the US enjoys by issuing the world’s primary reserve currency.

As for Afghanistan, China and Russia, both of which have good relations with the Taliban, will now be the key players in the country’s reconstruction. And with America out, notes Djoomart Otorbaev, a former prime minister of Kyrgyzstan, the vision of a more integrated Central Asia, with open trade and better infrastructure, could begin to take shape.