Joanna Williams Joanna Williams

Harry and Meghan’s glib Afghan statement

(Photo: Getty)

Finally, some news to cheer us all up on this grim, relentless August. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been rendered ‘speechless’ by the news from Afghanistan and Haiti. No doubt, there’ll be no more Oprah interviews or birthday messages. And there’ll be no more lectures from Harry on the importance of imagining how it feels to be a raindrop or from Meghan on the importance of people asking her if she is okay.

At least, that’s what we should assume, right? Surely being left ‘speechless’ is a sign that you are about to shut up? Unless, of course, you are Harry and Meghan. In their world, being ‘speechless’ requires the release of a 200-word public statement.

What’s so frustrating about this word soup is that Harry could have something useful to say about Afghanistan

And so follows a tortured account of ‘the exceptionally fragile’ world that has reduced the pair to such loquacious muteness. It’s the pain in Afghanistan that leaves them ‘speechless’; the earthquake in Haiti that sees them ‘heartbroken’ and the ‘global health crisis’, complete with ‘constant misinformation’, that makes them ‘scared’. As they write:

‘The world is exceptionally fragile right now. As we all feel the many layers of pain due to the situation in Afghanistan, we are left speechless. As we all watch the growing humanitarian disaster in Haiti, and the threat of it worsening after last weekend’s earthquake, we are left heartbroken. And as we all witness the continuing global health crisis, exacerbated by new variants and constant misinformation, we are left scared. When any person or community suffers, a piece of each of us does so with them, whether we realize it or not. And though we are not meant to live in a state of suffering, we, as a people, are being conditioned to accept it.

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