Regardless of whether one sympathizes with those protesters’ causes or not, it should be acknowledged that these disturbances could greatly destabilize Afghanistan at one of its most sensitive moments in modern history amid its historic political transition back to de facto Taliban rule following the West’s withdrawal last month after nearly twenty years of occupation….
When it becomes a crime to reveal a crime, you know that it is the criminals who are actually in charge. I find as a general rule that sweeping generalizations coming out of the media and punditry about anything are frequently wrong. As a former intelligence officer, I find it amusing to read articles in…
These are the most realistic threat scenarios right now to Russia’s security interests. Tiny Tajikistan has outsized leverage that it might eventually employ in Afghanistan to push back against the Taliban. It’s well known that it shares a large border with its neighbor, the latter of which counts Tajiks as its second-largest minority, and its…
It actually appears to be the rule, not the exception, that presidents attach political strings to the military aid that they provide to their nominal allies. Reuters exclusively reported on the transcript and audio recordings of the last phone call between US President Joe Biden and former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on 23 July that…
The difference between the U.S. performances in Vietnam and Afghanistan is that in the first, the vehicles were painted green and in the second, sand. The lesson of Afghanistan is not that the US is washed up as a great power. The lesson is that the US is such a great power, militarily and economically,…
In recent days we have seen many horrifying and distressing scenes of thousands of Afghans crowding into Kabul airport, in some cases being crushed in their rush to leave their country – a country where the supposedly democratic USA has for over 20 years unsuccessfully tried to impose its vision of order. But for those…
