Five years after the withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan, the Taliban remain firmly in power. After two decades of war, the Afghan government and security forces built and supported by the West collapsed within days, while many of the promises made after 2001, particularly to Afghan women and girls, have been reversed.
Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer at The New Yorker and one of the world’s most experienced foreign correspondents, joins General Lord Richard Dannatt, former Chief of the General Staff, and Afghan gender specialist Fatima Zaki for a discussion examining how a twenty-year military and political intervention ended this way.
Drawing together decades of reporting from Afghanistan, experience at the highest levels of British military leadership, and the perspective of an Afghan specialist working on women’s rights and gender, they will examine the decisions and misjudgements that shaped the war, the withdrawal and its consequences.
Five years on, what does Afghanistan tell us about the limits of military power? What should Britain and its allies have learned? And with women and girls excluded from much of public life under Taliban rule, what responsibility does the international community still have towards Afghanistan?
The discussion will include audience Q&A.
©Anahita RezvaniRad
