The West is pulling out of Afghanistan after 20 years, but the conflict remains – and the Taliban are stronger than they have been for a long time. And now? The renowned Taliban expert Ahmed Rashid talks to Tobias Matern about mistakes made by the West and the future role of the Taliban in Afghanistan
The West is leaving Afghanistan – have the USA and its allies achieved their goals?
Some 3,500 U.S. troops and 7,000 NATO soldiers will withdraw from Afghan territory before September 11, 2021.
The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) spokesperson Fawad Aman confirmed that all U.S. troops and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces departed from the Bagram Airfield on Thursday.
On June 26, 2021, four Districts were captured by the Taliban. These Districts include Shor Tapa in Balkh Province, Chak and Sayed Abad in Maidan Wardak Province, and Rustaq in Takhar Province.
On June 25, 2021, Taliban militants took control over Dolina District in Ghor Province.
President Putin stated that his country and China are determined to turn their common border into a strip of peace.
On Monday, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping announced the extension of the 2001 Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation Treaty (GNF).
“Afghans are going to have to decide their future,” U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday in his first face-to-face meeting with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani.
The two met in the White House Oval Office as U.S. forces continued their withdrawal from the nation in south-central Asia.
In late April 2021, US President Joe Biden announced a withdrawal from Afghanistan. In other words, the US has been trounced in Afghanistan by its very own jihadist Frankenstein, the Taliban. The defeat of USA is covered with the ugly debris of history. The dirty war on Afghanistan was part of a disastrous process of occupying and controlling large swathes of the world. On September 16, 2001, President George W. Bush vowed to “rid the world of evil-doers,” then cautioned: “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.” The word “crusade” comes from the Latin for the cross, crux, and implies the warlike march of Christianity against the infidel, recalling one of the most shameful blots on the medieval maps of Western imperialism. The new Crusade by the American empire was waged in defense of a different professed faith, not Christianity but rather liberal democracy. But this belief also concealed less noble designs.
The United States, which has prosecuted a war against Afghanistan since October 2001, has promised to withdraw its combat troops by September 11, 2021. This war has failed to attain any of the gains that were promised after 20 years of fighting: neither has it resulted in the actual fragmentation of terrorist groups nor has it led to the destruction of the Taliban. The great suffering and great waste of social wealth caused due to the war will finally end with the Taliban’s return to power, and with terrorist groups, which are entrenched in parts of Central Asia, seizing this prospect to make a full return to Afghanistan.
If the military officials who talk to the press get their way, the U.S. war in Afghanistan will never end. This became execrably clear on June 9, when the New York Times published an article quoting anonymous Pentagon dignitaries informing us that after the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, it may continue to bomb the country, if it doesn’t like how things go. You read that right. President Biden says the war will end. The geniuses in the Pentagon say no it won’t, we’ll keep bombing.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has much to lose, both domestically and internationally, if the truth comes out. A muddled debate about the origins of the virus serves China just fine. Evading accountability — and suffering no little negative fallout — for unleashing a pandemic on the world that killed millions of people is not a bad outcome. And the economic results may even be better for China than for the rest of the world, thereby strengthening the CCP further.
China stands ready to work with all parties to build a closer Belt and Road partnership, President Xi Jinping said Wednesday in a written message to the Asia and Pacific High-level Conference on Belt and Road Cooperation.
Xi said the joint building of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that he proposed is aimed at carrying forward the spirit of the Silk Road, working together to build an open platform of cooperation, and providing new impetus for cooperation and development among countries.