Arun Singh, German Marshall Fund
As the Taliban appear to be on the verge of storming into Kabul, consigning possibly into the dustbin of history the two-decade-old United States-constructed governance and security structure, there is an inevitable sense of history coming full circle.
Aaron Rupar, Vox
The dark irony of who TV news talks to about Afghanistan.
Edward Luce, Financial Times
Not since Major General William Elphinstone's retreating British army was picked off in 1842, has a foreign occupier left Afghanistan under such a cloud. It took three years after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 for its Kabul ally to submit to mujahideen forces. It was two years after the US military's exit from Vietnam before Saigon fell to the communists in 1975. On Monday Kabul folded to the Taliban almost three weeks before the official day of America's departure.
Bobby Ghosh, Bloomberg
But the Afghan budget is more than five times that size. The country's gross domestic product, estimated at $22 billion,has grown nearly threefold since the Taliban were driven from power in 2001. And the economy has for several years been in precarious health, propped up by foreign aid. By the
James Holmes, 1945
It's a truism in the halls of professional military education schoolhouses that the enemy gets a vote in the success or failure of our strategy, just as we get a vote in the success or failure of the enemy's strategy. Each casts its vote in favor of stymieing the other, in multiple rounds of balloting. That's the nature of armed competition or warfare. Each contestant tries to one-up and outdo the other until one prevails, they strike a compromise settlement of some sort, or the competition deadlocks. Читать дальше...
Christoph Reuter, Der Spiegel
In early July, I met with a leading Taliban military commander. I asked when his fighters would arrive in Kabul. His answer: "They are already there." How the Afghanistan mission failed and what happens next.
John Simpson, New Statesman
The US retreat ensured a victory for the militant group. Despite talk of moderation, a creed of savage misogyny will now shape Afghanistan's future.
Gerard Araud et al, Atlantic Council
As policymakers in Washington grapple with the stark reality of losing Afghanistan, their counterparts across Europe are no less flummoxed over what happens next. What of the streams of refugees that may well pour onto the continent? And will Brussels be as ready to support future US foreign policy initiatives? Our experts from the Europe Center answer these questions—and much more.
George Friedman, GPF
I was shocked by what happened in Afghanistan in the past week or so. Not because I didn't expect it - President Joe Biden had in fact announced that the military would leave - but because people seemed to expect the withdrawal to be somehow orderly. The Taliban and the United States had fought a war for 20 years. The U.S. was leaving in defeat. The Taliban rapidly retook control, capturing those who collaborated with the enemy with an apparent joy that the war was over and victory was theirs. Читать дальше...