Chris Byfield, Express – 8 September 2021 William Dalrymple has commented on Tony Blair’s speech marking 20 years since the 9/11 attacks, in which he stated that the U.S.’ unwillingness to have boots on the ground puts the West at risk of terrorist attacks. Dalrymple claims that “in a sense he is the last person…
Dr. Sohail Mahmood – 12 September 2021 On August 30, the war in Afghanistan ended. America had managed to evacuate some 123,000 civilians from Kabul, including 6,000 Americans. The twenty-year war had a high cost. Some 2,461 US soldiers and civilians were killed. On August 26 a terrorist bombing killed 13 soldiers in Kabul. President Biden on August 31, 2021…
Stefanie Babst, Internationale Politik Quarterly – 2 September 2021 “The Western allies need to review what went wrong in Afghanistan with a genuine sense of humility. Otherwise they are bound to repeat the same mistakes in the future”. This article on Internationale Politik Quarterly looks at four hard questions for NATO after the fall of…
Shadi Hamid, The Atlantic – 23 August 2021 America’s nation-building fantasies painted over the realities of a failed state and created an insurmountable barrier between Afghan citizens and the US military, according to this article on The Atlantic. Instead, the Taliban made their return through grass-root dispute resolutions. Read the full article here.
The Conversation Weekly Podcast – 26 August 2021 In this podcast episode, The Conversation talks to two Afghanistan experts about the Taliban’s history and the events in the past two decades that have lead to their resurgence and the takeover of Kabul. Listen to the podcast here.
William Dalrymple, UnHerd – 30 August 2021 The correlation between the First and Fourth Anglo-Afghan War is substantive and a grasp of history dating back to the first war from 1939-42 would have, according to this article, prevented a disastrous war and avoided another military humiliation for the West. Read the full article here.
Anand Gopal, The New Yorker – 6 September 2021 “All the women I met in Sangin, though, seemed to agree that their rights, whatever they might entail, cannot flow from the barrel of a gun—and that Afghan communities themselves must improve the conditions of women”. In this poignant piece on The New Yorker, Anand Gopal…
Christopher Ankerson, MIT Technology Review – 23 August 2021 “If wars are fought through innovation, the Taliban won”. After 20 years of conflict, this article on MIT Technology Review argues that the technological advances within the US military have not been as pronounced as others would argue and, in fact, the Taliban have won the…
Martin Sandbu, Financial Times – 22 August 2021 Nation-building can only be done by those citizens who belong to it, this article argues, with Afghanistan being “too tribal and traditional a society” for it to ever fall to the influence of an outsider. Focusing on the economy and building a functioning state would have made…
