Afghanistan
The High Court’s war on truth
In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty-Dumpty tells Alice: ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose…
The mixed legacy of Zbigniew Brzezinski, strategist of the Cold War
Successful initiatives during the Carter presidency regarding the USSR, China and Afghanistan were counterbalanced by a serious misreading of the situation in Iran
The Afghan asylum leak cover-up saved lives
The United Kingdom’s immigration system is broken. Tens of thousands have entered the country who should not, and the bureaucracy…
Sad but beautiful exhibition of Afghanistan’s war rugs
Decades after its inclusion in the Hippie Trail, Afghanistan is again open to tourism, according to the Taliban’s spokesman Zabihullah…
Tall tales of the Golden East: the fabulous fabrications of two 20th-century con artists
Capitalising on his Afghan-Indian heritage, Ikbal Shah claimed to have crucial inside knowledge of Central Asia, while his son Idries later purveyed a rebranded Sufism for the West
Under the Taliban, Afghan light entertainment accrued unusual weight
For a television talent show, Afghan Star had unusually high stakes. When it first hit Afghanistan’s screens in 2005, four…
Ahmad Massoud: ‘I’m 100% sure I can topple the Taliban’
It’s fighting season in Afghanistan again. When the Americans were in charge, after the poppy fields had been harvested in…
A war reporter bravely faces death – but not from sniper fire
As a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, Rod Nordland learned to expect many dangers, but a brain tumour wasn’t one of them
A Guardsman’s life as not as glamorous as it might seem
Besides taking part in dangerous operational tours abroad, units of the Household Division keep up a gruelling schedule of ceremonial duties at home
How dangerous is the Sunni-Shia schism?
What unites the two groups is more fundamental than what divides them, says Barnaby Rogerson, and the more serious conflict among Muslims concerns ethnicity and language
Isis is wreaking havoc in Afghanistan
The bomb tore through an examination hall in Kabul on Friday, where students – mostly minority Hazara, mostly young women…
The Middle East maelstrom
For 25 years, Abed Takkoush assisted foreign reporters like Jeremy Bowen when they arrived to cover the chaos and conflicts…
A shaggy drug story
The Scottish writer David Keenan has published five novels in five years: This is Memorial Device (2017), For the Good…
Afghanistan, one year on
Afghan women’s meetings on Zoom with their supporters outside the country often now end in tears as the stories of…
A letter won’t educate Afghan girls
Well, that’ll show ‘em. Liz Truss has released a joint statement with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declaring themselves…
A game of life and death
No one boards an overladen dinghy and sets out across a choppy sea without very good reason. Laden into migrant…
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…
Operation Save Big Dog and the real scandal of Boris’s leadership
There is a theory which states the primary reason for Boris Johnson’s political longevity is that there are simply so…
New arrivals
What happens to Afghan migrants when they reach the UK?
Afghanistan: five shocking claims made by the Foreign Office whistleblower
Dominic Raab faced the media round from hell this morning. The former Foreign Secretary faced a series of questions about…
We should never have been in Afghanistan
Two important studies have been published this autumn on the apparent failure of our almost 20-year war in Afghanistan. In…
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…
Backbencher’s notebook
Politicians are supposed to have a survival instinct. Mine didn’t kick in last week, so I had no idea that…
Biden is losing Nato
The forming of the Australia-UK-US (Aukus) military alliance in the Pacific shows how everything Trump can say, Biden can do.…
Broken dreams
Oliver Balch 8 July 2023 9:00 am
Interviewing the Continent’s refugees and poorest rural inhabitants, Ben Judah reveals a world far removed from Brussels politics or Eurovision optimism