An imaginative programme of integration is needed, involving above all lessons in English and job opportunities Nato’s 20-year involvement in Afghanistan has come to an ignominious end with thousands of people who worked with Western forces and other organisations still trapped in the country. Questions will be asked for some time as to why preparations for their evacuation were not […]

Az Amerikai Egyesült Államok nem adta fel a világrend meghatározására való erős törekvését. A hegemón hatalom szerepét gyakran félreértik és redukálják egyfajta világcsendőri szerepre. Fontos a beavatkozási képesség – az erőprojekció –, de ennek számos módja van azon túl, hogy valahova bevonul a hadsereg. Már a 20. században nagy lépéseket tettek abba az irányba, hogy fejlesszék a nem katonai befolyásszerzés […]

Американцы полностью ушли из Афганистана — их последний оплот, кабульский аэропорт, переходит под контроль “Талибана”*, новой власти страны. Казалось бы, после двадцати лет оккупации все должны быть довольны — афганцы тем, что избавились от оккупантов, а американцы тем, что наконец-то закончили совершенно ненужную им войну. Но Штаты даже уйти не смогли по-человечески: последние дни ознаменовались новыми жертвами среди многострадального афганского […]

Billions of dollars of US materiel is now in the Taliban’s hands; but which leader will be taken to task for it, or for anything? “This is effing ridiculous,” we grumbled to each other as we eased our sedan onto the Autobahn. I was a newly minted 2nd lieutenant, accompanied by an enlisted squad leader, team leader, and rifleman from […]

CACI is a well-known company with a $907 million contract in Afghanistan — it also has undisclosed ties to think tanks opposed to withdrawal. Weapons firms and defense contractors consume over half of the Pentagon’s $740 billion budget and the end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan poses a threat for their share-holders and executives. That concern was laid bare […]

The foreign policy elite are focused on defending their reputations and privileges, not in confronting failure in Afghanistan. When the Nazi Party consolidated power in Germany in 1933, they enshrined into their version of history the myth that the German Army had not lost in the Great War but had been “stabbed in the back” by cowardly civilian politicians, Jews, […]

The Biden Administration, in dire straits over Afghanistan, is pursuing China for help. There have been two phone calls to Chinese State Councilor and FM Wang Yi from US Secretary of state Antony Blinken since August 16 alone. The taciturn readouts from Washington would have us believe that these conversations related exclusively to Afghan developments. But Beijing insists that they […]

The Americans, like the British and the Soviets before them, dug their own graveyard in Afghanistan. The Carthaginian general Hannibal, who came close to defeating the Roman Republic in the Second Punic War, committed suicide in 181 BC in exile as Roman soldiers closed in on his residence in the Bithynian village of Libyssa, now modern-day Turkey. It had been […]

Establishment journalists and politicians are despairingly asking: Why did we fail in our well-meaning efforts to help the Afghan people? What were our mistakes? But they ignore their first mistake: creating the Taliban. The USA’s attempts to dominate Afghanistan and its resources began 40 years ago when Jimmy Carter in one of his last acts as president approved a CIA […]