Damon Linker via The Week: After 18 years of waging war in Afghanistan, the Trump administration is attempting to pull back. But critics have responded with outrage. What’s the point of trying to reach a deal with the execrable Taliban? How can we contemplate abandoning the Afghan government when the country could be plunged into
Michael Hughes: The so-called withdrawal agreement the United States struck with the Taliban will leave about as many troops in Afghanistan as the Trump administration inherited. However, for U.S. President Donald Trump the net of this equation is trivial and something he hopes American voters don’t notice. This is because the White House’s single overriding
Gallup: Gallup will publish at least an article a week that reports on what Afghans are thinking on all these topics. August 19: Law and Order August 26: Food and Shelter September 4: Institutions and Infrastructure September 9: Good Jobs September 16: Wellbeing September 23: Brain Gain Click here to read more (external link). Related Inside
Michael Hughes: The United States handed bags of cash and awarded ministry posts to the most brutal warlords on earth in Afghanistan during the early post-9/11 era. The United States, for years, looked the other away as the Karzai family and tons of other Afghan government officials transferred millions of dollars into bank accounts in places
Michael Hughes: In 2003, then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad, with the full backing of the CIA, rendered Afghanistan’s Loya Jirga to a farce by strong-arming aside King Zahir Shah and anointing as president State Department darling Hamid Karzai. Now Zalmay, as special U.S. envoy, is once again guilty of foreign election interference
Michael Hughes: U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has shamelessly suggested that if he can help broker a ceasefire and ensure women are involved in intra-Afghan peace talks U.S. involvement in Afghanistan should be seen as a net benefit. This is quite audacious coming from a man who about 17 years ago single-handedly destroyed any chances for peace
Nasir Shansab via The Washington Times: A recent international study finds that Afghanistan is the world’s most insecure country. What has gone wrong? After Soviet forces quit Afghanistan in February 1989, and the Mujahedin toppled the Afghan Communist regime in 1992, Washington was in a hurry to forget war-shattered Afghanistan. That policy of neglect and abandonment of a Cold War ally was the
Hakim Young via CounterPunch: We’re the Afghan Peace Volunteers in Kabul, and we have three dreams. Our three dreams are about reuniting with nature and 7.7 billion other human beings! Our dreams aren’t prescriptions. They’re music and movements, distilled from today’s nightmares. Click here to read more (external link).
Michael Hughes: Members of the Taliban and Afghan government are supposedly set to begin negotiations within the next two weeks but it is hard to imagine how they will overcome what appear to be irreconcilable differences over the very nature and structure of the country’s future political system. Taliban officials have openly stated they refuse to
Michael Hughes: Washington will have to provide smoking-gun type evidence before any sane person believes the allegation that Iran was behind a recent terrorist attack in Kabul. Given the lack of any credible material proof we are forced to look at motives and capabilities of all relevant actors, in addition to other circumstantial evidence, which all