Ignoring the Taliban won’t end their reign of terror
The Taliban have always had a strange misogynist world view, weirdly preoccupied by sex. The first time they were in…
How Islamic State rose from the ashes to attack Moscow
Since America’s disastrous scuttle from Kabul in August 2021, there had been rising concern that Afghanistan would once again become…
The SAS fought a dirty war in Afghanistan
The SAS blocked UK visas for Afghan special forces soldiers, perhaps fearing that they would be able to produce evidence…
Tobias Ellwood is being the Taliban’s useful idiot
It has now been almost two years since the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan. In recent weeks, a number…
Biden can’t ignore the Taliban’s terrorist links for ever
President Joe Biden is either not being briefed on what is going on in Afghanistan, or more likely choosing not…
Why Iran and the Taliban are clashing over water
Remarkable as it may sound, it looks as if a border skirmish this week between Iranian and Afghan border guards,…
Is the West preparing to sell out the Afghan people again?
While the Taliban continues to double down against women in Afghanistan, the UN appears to be wanting to normalise relations…
Joe Biden’s shameful excuses for the Afghan withdrawal fiasco
It is an iron law that if governments put out important documents just ahead of a long holiday weekend there…
Afghanistan’s guerrilla generation: an interview with Ahmad Massoud
Fighting has continued against the Taliban in Afghanistan while the world has not been watching. The commander of the main…
Afghanistan, one year on
Afghan women’s meetings on Zoom with their supporters outside the country often now end in tears as the stories of…
Al-Zawahiri's killing exposes the US's shame in Afghanistan
Sherpur District, to the north of central Kabul, where al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed, lies at the western end of…
Could an uprising succeed against the Taliban?
The social media accounts of the new so-called ‘National Resistance Front’ (NRF) in Afghanistan give the impression of a raging…
Afghanistan is starving to death and there is nothing the West can do
The scale of the human tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan is hard to comprehend. The economy has collapsed, some 20 million…
How Muslim are the Taliban?
I first met Haji Mir, a tribal elder from Helmand, in Herat in western Afghanistan in 2002, not long after…
Punch-up at the palace: why the Taliban is tearing itself apart
The office of the Afghan president, the Arg, sits in more than 80 acres of parkland, quadruple the size of…
How stable is the Taliban government?
Some western governments and media have been involved in a collective act of wishful thinking in recent months over the…
The West is being played by the Taliban
There have been some curious juxtapositions in Afghanistan this week. On the one hand, the under-19 Afghan cricket team was…
Panjshir valley and the last resistance to the Taliban
The Panjshir valley, about three hours’ drive north of Kabul, has a mythical hold on the Afghan imagination. It is…
