Michael Hughes: Today’s headlines about the ongoing U.S. exit from Afghanistan eerily resemble those published more than 30 years ago vis-à-vis the Soviet withdrawal, especially with respect to the infighting among the anti-government elements who had the most to gain by the expulsion of a foreign invader. The Peshawar 7 mujahideen factions never really operated
Michael Hughes: Pentagon officials have said the Taliban are not meeting key conditions of the withdrawal pact it signed with the United States nearly four months ago. Meanwhile, a recent UN report revealed that the insurgent movement is still in bed with al-Qaeda, violating – at least in spirit – one of the key promises
Michael Hughes: COVID-19 cases have dramatically surged in Afghanistan due to lack of resources, unconstrained refugee flows and the international community’s inability to respond, among other reasons, while health officials and aid agencies predict that the virus will continue spreading undetected. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) declared that Afghanistan is facing a humanitarian disaster, noting
Michael Hughes: The Taliban and ISIS differ only in terms of geographic aspirations. They embrace similar extremist ideologies and envision a society regulated by a harsh religious code. They even share the same tactics – like suicide bombings – and recruit from each other’s flocks. Despite what U.S. officials want the world to believe, the
The American Conservative: Reports surfaced recently that Trump has been privately pushing his senior military advisors to present a plan to end the war in Afghanistan and bring the troops home. The ostensible causal event is the risk to the troops of an expanding COVID-19 outbreak in the country, but there is a far more
Michael Hughes: The Taliban continuing attacks amid the coronavirus outbreak reveals not only a total disregard for life but a suicidal mentality given all of humanity’s real enemy is an invisible indiscriminate killer – it chooses no sides, sees no jersey colors. An escalation in Taliban attacks comes just as the rest of the world is at
Asia Times: It makes for a gripping intellectual exercise to study a country in the throes of a pivotal change that throws it off its familiar path. The study of such turnabout moments in Afghanistan, however, is not as promising, because of their sheer frequency. The country in at least five of the past decades
The Daily Beast: U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted last week, “I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.” The tweet followed the dangerous maneuvers on April 15 by Iranian naval vessels near U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf. The
Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska via The Diplomat: “Over the last five years, the United States has claimed that it has killed several different leaders of the Islamic State, Khorasan Province branch, through airstrikes and special operations. None of these previous deaths or removals of a leader of this group were enough to eliminate its ability to strike
Michael Hughes: It is hard to envision the powers that be in Afghanistan – amid ongoing civil war and political disunity – devising a coherent strategy to handle the coronavirus outbreak and the concomitant economic freefall. As of April 15, Afghanistan had 784 confirmed coronavirus cases in at least 27 of the country’s 34 provinces,