David Loyn

How Islamic State rose from the ashes to attack Moscow

25 March 2024 9:50 pm

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

23 February 2024 2:00 am

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

19 July 2023 2:08 am

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

3 July 2023 6:39 pm

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

31 May 2023 12:41 am

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?

29 April 2023 5:00 pm

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

11 April 2023 6:48 pm

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 

5 December 2022 7:15 pm

Fighting has continued against the Taliban in Afghanistan while the world has not been watching. The commander of the main…

Afghanistan, one year on

14 August 2022 6:56 pm

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

2 August 2022 9:25 pm

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?

6 February 2022 6:30 pm

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

20 November 2021 9:54 pm

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?

30 September 2021 6:53 am

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

21 September 2021 5:28 am

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?

13 September 2021 7:38 am

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

6 September 2021 8:37 am

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

22 August 2021 6:02 pm

The Panjshir valley, about three hours’ drive north of Kabul, has a mythical hold on the Afghan imagination. It is…