The Taliban on Tuesday called on foreign countries to reopen their embassies in Afghanistan, saying the war-torn nation now needed economic independence. After the September 9, 2001 attacks, the United States invaded Afghanistan on October 7 of that year and the Taliban regime was toppled. Then an interim government was set up under the leadership of Hamid Karzai who was […]

Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s rise to power there, religious scholar Dr. Attia ‘Adlan, a former Egyptian MP and current member of the International Union Of Muslims Scholars (IUMS), which is supported by Qatar and Turkey, published an article on the IUMS website in which he defended the Taliban against its detractors. Forcefully rejecting the fears […]

Marking the final withdrawal of all foreign forces, the Taliban on Tuesday pledged to work with foreign countries to ensure good relations. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said they want to have a relationship, based on international law and mutual respect, with the rest of the world, especially the United States. “The Islamic Emirate wants to have a diplomatic relation with […]

India’s ambassador to Qatar held talks with a top Taliban leader on Tuesday, the Indian foreign ministry said, the first formal diplomatic engagement since the Taliban took over Afghanistan. The envoy, Deepak Mittal, met Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, the head of the Taliban’s Political Office in Doha, at the request of the Taliban, the foreign ministry said.The foreign ministry said […]

Qatar’s foreign minister on Tuesday warned that isolating the Taliban could lead to further instability and urged countries to engage with them to address security and socioeconomic concerns in Afghanistan. The U.S.-allied Gulf Arab state has emerged as a key interlocutor to the Taliban, having hosted the group’s political office since 2013. “If we are starting to put conditions and […]

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 […]

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 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 […]