The world watched in disbelief and concern as the last of the U.S. armed forces left Afghanistan.
Two guests with ties to Afghanistan share their fears and hopes for the country.
“It’s Not Just the War of the Afghans”
September 04, 2021
Sher Jan Ahmadzai is an Afghan American who serves on the board of the Afghan American Foundation, an organization that is currently working overtime to help secure visas for Afghans who worked for American forces and now fear persecution and retribution at the hands of the Taliban. In this segment, he expresses the great fear, disappointment, and sorrow he feels as he watches from afar.
Counter-terrorism expert Abdul Basit has spent almost two decades studying the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS in Afghanistan and beyond from his position as a research fellow at the Ragnatratum School of International Studies of NTM University in Singapore. He describes a Taliban that is more media-savvy than it was in 2001 and says that the Taliban 2.0 is “making all the right noises” about not erasing the advances of the last 20 years.
Basit analyzes the shadowy and rapidly changing relationships between the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS-K. He warns of a potential fragmenting of the Taliban that could result in new balances of power, and reminds us that “the people of Afghanistan want peace.”
Abdul Basit. Associate Research Fellow at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Basit specializes in issues of politics, violence, religious extremism, terrorism, and security in South Asia. He has co-authored a book entitled Dynamics of Taliban Insurgency in FATA, published from Pakistan by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS).
