Afghanistan is America’s longest war, and it seems it could go on indefinitely. President Trump has said he ‘will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past’ but has inherited a blunder that he is going to find very difficult to rectify. The situation in Afghanistan is dire to the point…
‘Nations are born in the hearts of poets but they prosper and die at the hands of politicians’ said the most influential philosopher of Pakistan Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, as if to caution the young nation about the many challenges of statesmanship in an almost prophetic manner. A country is only as good as its statesmen,…
President Obama has decided to send 300 US Marines back into Afghanistan’s Helmand Province – the first time in three years that the US military has been sent into that conflict zone. Almost all of Helmand’s districts, except for the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, are either heavily embattled or fully controlled by the Taliban. The province…
On October 7, 2001, the United States launched an armed invasion of Afghanistan that was allegedly aimed at destroying Al-Qaeda. Fifteen years after this act of aggression, that was presented as a form of response to the 9/11 attacks in New York, Afghanistan remains the toughest security challenge in Central Asia – the strategic region…
US commander of US Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) General John Nicholson’s December 2016 briefing was paradoxical and perhaps indicative of the bankrupted foreign policy that defines America’s occupation in Afghanistan. The US Department of Defense published General Nicholson’s full briefing titled, “Department of Defense Press Briefing by General Nicholson in the Pentagon Briefing Room.” In it,…
More than 15 years into America’s war in Afghanistan, the Russian government is openly advocating on behalf of the Taliban. Last week, Moscow hosted Chinese and Pakistani emissaries to discuss the war. Tellingly, no Afghan officials were invited. However, the trio of nations urged the world to be “flexible” in dealing with the Taliban, which…
