Two dead in Afghanistan. That is the stark headline from a rare protest that erupted in Kabul on Tuesday, where women took to the streets demanding the return of their basic rights. The Taliban response was swift and brutal.
But for the markets in London, the news barely registered. Gilt yields remained flat. Sterling barely twitched.
The City, as ever, is preoccupied with its own anxieties: inflation, interest rates, the yield curve inversion. Yet this tragedy is a direct consequence of a policy that the UK has championed at great financial cost: the intervention in Afghanistan. We spent billions.
We lost lives. We achieved, it seems, very little that is lasting. The protest itself was a desperate act.
Women, many of them former government employees, teachers, and students, were demanding the right to work and education. The Taliban's response was predictable to anyone who has studied their playbook. But here's the uncomfortable truth: the UK's commitment to women's rights in Afghanistan was always a secondary objective.
The primary goal was stability. And stability, as defined by the market, is the absence of volatility, not the presence of justice. The deaths of these two women will not trigger a sell-off in gilts.
It will not cause capital flight from emerging markets. It will, however, serve as a tragic reminder that the bottom line of foreign policy is often measured in lives, not pounds. The UK government will issue a statement.
The Foreign Office will express deep concern. But the hard, economic calculus suggests that the UK's leverage in Afghanistan is now virtually zero. The Taliban holds the assets.
And the UK, like other Western powers, is engaged in a futile game of rhetorical posturing. The protest, and its bloody outcome, is a microcosm of a larger failure. A failure of policy, of strategy, and of moral conviction.
The markets, as always, are indifferent. They trade on risk, not on rights. And the risk in Afghanistan, for the UK, is largely priced in.
So two more names are added to a long list of casualties. The UK's commitment to women's rights will be restated. But the bottom line remains: in the cold, hard world of geopolitics and finance, some costs are simply written off.
