South East Asia

ÉDITO. L’Europe devrait saisir l’occasion pour rompre avec sa sujétion aux États-Unis et réinventer l’alliance transatlantique.

La resa dei conti. Investito in sviluppo un 20° di quanto speso per guerreggiare. E solo un decimo di quel 20° è finito in progetti agricoli, per un popolo a cui non restava altro che coltivare oppio. A chi presentare il conto della disfatta? I paesi Nato potrebbero almeno accollarsi, in proporzione al Pil, l’impegno di dare ospitare le migliaia di profughi in fuga

Kreeta KarvalaEuroopassa ei haluta toistaa edellisen pakolaiskriisin virheitä, mutta uusien toimintamallien luominen on jäsenmaiden näkemyserojen vuoksi haastavaa, kirjoittaa Iltalehden Kreeta Karvala.

Afganistanissa asuu 38 miljoonaa ihmistä, ja Talibanien valtaan nousun myötä tuhannet ovat jo jättäneet maan.

Until August 31, we will attempt to provide our readers with a daily SITREP on Afghanistan, based on information we believe is credible, along with a brief analysis providing some measure of context.

Explosions Outside Kabul’s Airport

An explosion took place a few minutes ago today, outside Kabul’s airport. Unconfirmed reports speak of three wounded U.S. servicemembers.

On 15 August, the Taliban capped their drive for power in Afghanistan by taking Kabul, the country’s capital, for the first time since they ruled most of the country from 1996 to 2001. With the previous government’s collapse, the group is now the de facto power throughout the country and is in the process of forming a new government and revamped state system. Questions are swirling about how they will govern, such as whether they will attempt to exercise a monopoly on power or give some roles to other political forces and whether they will try to reimpose the harsh social restrictions, including on women, that they enforced in the late 1990s. As yet, there are no firm answers.

La cartographie des actions terroristes en Afghanistan apporte une première explication à la prise rapide de Kaboul le 15 août 2021. Celle-ci montre la très forte augmentation des actions terroristes et de guérillas à partir de 2012, la localisation des attaques et la concurrence entre les talibans et l’État islamique. Des éléments indispensables à maitriser pour comprendre le déroulement de cette guerre. Jeudi 26 août, deux attaques suicides aux abords de l’aéroport ont tué plus de 100 Afghans décidés à quitter le pays, ainsi que treize militaires américains, selon l’AFP. La branche afghane de l’organisation État islamique a revendiqué le double attentat.

The swift fall of the Afghan government and Taliban takeover over the past few weeks poses challenges for the countries to the north. Central Asian governments desire a stable and secure government in Afghanistan that can prevent the spillover of a destabilizing conflict across their borders. In addition, while Afghanistan is less of a lucrative market for trade with Central Asia, with less than $2 billion in trade per year, it is crucial to connecting the region with the 1.5 billion-person combined markets of Pakistan and India.

As the Taliban transforms its military chain of command into a governing structure for Afghanistan, alliances and tribal configurations that kept two rival Taliban factions together in recent years are now being tested.

“Conquering a country is always the easy part. Ruling it, in Afghanistan’s case, is the difficult bit,” says historian William Dalrymple, an expert on Pashtun tribal rivalries. “That’s when the tensions and the fault lines become apparent.”