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…
