On August 15, the Taliban arrived in Kabul. The Taliban’s leadership entered the presidential palace, which Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had vacated when he fled into exile abroad hours before. The country’s borders shut down and Kabul’s main international airport lay silent, except for the cries of those Afghans who had worked for the U.S. and NATO; they knew that […]

All withdrawals in this part of the world end the same, with the vacuum being filled by hostile and radical terrorist elements. It wasn’t even really a battle. On June 10, 2007, clashes erupted between Hamas and Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip. Israel had withdrawn from the coastal enclave two years earlier, and after Hamas came to power in […]

Like other foreign powers, Turkey was caught off-guard by the speed of the Taliban’s recent blitz across the country, which has greatly complicated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s plans. While most NATO countries were happy to wash their hands of the conflict after a grueling 20-year counterinsurgency and nation-building effort, Erdogan was proposing that Turkey continue to provide security for […]

The images are already splashed all over the media: an Air Force C-17 Globemaster III rolling down the taxiway of Kabul’s airport while Afghan civilians run alongside it. Views cut to civilians clinging on to the wheel well doors, then long-distance shots of bodies falling from the ascending jet. Still shots all over the news and social medial show the […]

A number of lawmakers on Friday said that it would be challenging to build the same army the country established in the past two decades. They said that the poor management by Ashraf Ghani and his adviser Hamdullah Mohib led to the collapse of the nation’s armed forces. The lawmakers said that the escape of the former government officials from […]

With Herat now in the hands of the Taliban as the militant group consolidates power over the last outposts of government-held territory, protecting Afghanistan’s heritage has become a grave concern for many. Last month Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, accepted a request by the Afghan government to include the city in a list of world cultural […]

Joe Votel was only a few weeks into his new job as commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment, the US Army’s elite special operations force, when Al Qaeda hijackers attacked New York. At his base in Fort Benning, in the southern state of Georgia, his secretary came into his office and told him to switch on the TV. “It was […]

The leader of Afghanistan’s only region not to have fallen to the Taliban has said he would be willing to join a Taliban government, but only if the group proved itself to be inclusive and respect the rights of all Afghans. Ahmad Massoud, 32, leads forces in the Panjshir valley and said that war was on the cards if the […]

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday (17 August) called on the Taliban to prevent Afghanistan from lapsing back into being a breeding ground for terrorism, and said the Western defence alliance has agreed to send additional evacuation planes to Kabul. Western powers are scrambling to respond to the fall-out from their decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, and the Taliban’s […]

The Taliban has declared a general amnesty for former Afghan government officials, a statement by the Taliban said. “A general amnesty has been declared for all so you should have no doubt about resuming your normal activities,” the statement reads, TASS reported. Taliban members entered Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul on August 15, meeting no resistance, and took control of the […]