Afghanistan

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani defied expectations and remained in post today, telling Afghans he is holding urgent talks with local and international leaders to find a way to halt the Taliban offensive across Afghanistan. 

All the Afghan, British and American lives lost and the decades spent bogged down in the conflict.

Four more Afghan provincial capitals have fallen into Taliban hands today.

As territory falls with seemingly inevitable speed to the Taliban, the Washington Post journalist Craig Whitlock has claimed in his new book that three successive American presidents and their commanders misled the public, committing more and more troops to an endless conflict, despite losing all sight of their original objectives. 

We spoke to Sir William Patey, a former British ambassador to Afghanistan, and started by asking him for his thoughts on what’s happening in the country now.

We’ve been speaking to the US Republican Congressman Mike Waltz, a former US Army green beret who served in Afghanistan. 

We spoke to the Afghan MP Farzana Kochai, who’s in the capital Kabul, and asked her first what the situation was like in the city.

We spoke to the Afghan politician Fawzia Koofi, who is part of the Afghan delegation in talks with the Taliban in Doha. 

A United States negotiator has warned the Taliban that if they seize power in Afghanistan by force, they’ll be treated as international pariahs. 

We are joined by the former diplomat Annie Pforzheimer, who was the US Deputy Chief of Mission in Afghanistan between 2017 and 2018, and by Jawed Ludin, who served as chief of staff to the former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and as the country’s deputy foreign minister.

Thousands of people have fled their homes in the Afghan city of Kunduz, amid intense fighting for control between Taliban fighters and government forces.

Naveed Noormal is a former Afghan diplomat and commentator, and the Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood chairs the House of Commons defence select committee.

The Afghan president has condemned the hasty withdrawal of US forces from his country for the intensified violence, as advancing Taliban fighters continue to seize ground. Elite Afghan commando units have now been deployed to Helmand, where the Taliban is battling to take control of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah. Aid workers there have described…

Boris Johnson has insisted that Britain is not abandoning its commitment to Afghanistan, while announcing that most British troops have already left the country.

We spoke to Farzana Kochai, a member of the Afghan parliament and asked her now that the Western Forces are gone, do you feel safe?