PeterRS

I am not sure of the regulations but I thought vaccinations are not yet generally available for people under a certain age. I persuaded my friend to try and get vaccinated. Fortunately he has a friend who is a hospital nurse and she got him an appointment for the Sinopharm vaccine. But I assumed that was an exception.

I think you've hit the next nail firmly on the head. China's determination to dominate the South China Sea in the face of opposition from a number of countries allied to all the veiled threats that Xi Jinping has been throwing out about Taiwan may well be the next major international dispute. We will see in the fullness of time if the opposition to XI within China's ruling mandarins will see him ejected from power. That could help diffuse both situations. Another could be if Biden attempts a closer relationship with Beijing. How useful that would be to him politically in the USA, I do not know - probably not much unless it opens up a lot more trade for US companies.

Thanks. Yes, I did misunderstand. I guess since I'm like you and personally don't like the idea of remote sex, I find it hard that others would. But when times are tough . . .

With the 25-year old friend of a good friend of mine having died yesterday of covid19 and with the Delta variant now running amok and accounting for many more cases in much younger age groups than before, I wonder who is going to take their life in their hands by bedding a young Thai guy who has not yet been fully vaccinated. My understanding is that few in the 18 - 30 group in Thailand have been vaccinated yet.

Just more thoughts. 1. Over millennia the great powers have discovered two things: that being the world's policeman is no easy job, and that very often their actions come back to haunt them at some time in the future. Also great powers never last - they never have. In that context I suggest those interested in the subject read a remarkable book by the British historian and specialist in economics and international relations, Paul Kennedy. When "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" first appeared in 1987 it was something of a revelation. It was one of the first books to examine and analyse in detail the relationship between military might, strategy and economics in determining the forces which result in the rise of Empires and their eventual - and inevitable - demise. Although the book only covers the period from 1500 onward, it is equally applicable to the Persian, Greek, Roman and other earlier Empires. Not long after its publication, the seemingly permanent Soviet Empire came crashing down. It had never mastered the balance between economics and military might. 2. Everything in our world changes much faster than before. Voters in many countries elect their governments every 4 or 5 years and it is surely true to say that most voters pay vastly more attention to local issues than foreign policy; hence domestic politics inevitably take precedence. But no great power can afford its major foreign policy goals always to change over the short term. Foreign policy requires a considerably longer time frame if it is to avoid often major errors further down the line, errors like mission creep, changing conditions on the ground and exit strategies. 3. The death of the Soviet Union was thought by some to be the end of a war. "We won," said Bush Snr. - a particularly stupid comment when it means rubbing another nation's face in the mud. I'll bet that was mild compared to Putin's feelings at the time! It wasn't an end. It was the start of a new international order where large and small nations flexed their muscle. The Korean and Indo-Chinese wars may have been to a large extent proxies of the Cold War. But the same is true today of much of the Middle East where the Iran regime is intent in righting the wrongs inflicted on it earlier largely by the USA and flying the flag of Shi'a Islam in a part of the world where Sunnis are very much in the majority. Russia with Putin in charge is determined not to forgive the USA for its "we've won" declaration and the way it won. China is flexing its muscles in a very big way and is on the verge of being a great power. Today it is just that the proxies have changed. 4. I don't have a solution to short-termism. But it is vital to my thinking that in terms of foreign policy great powers think long-term and have a constant body of expert advisors working closely with administrations to which administrations and their policy makers actually pay heed. The concept of invading a nation to impart America's values (or those of any other invading country) of democracy, freedom and a certain religion should be a dead duck. Nation building should be a thing of the past. Invasion should only be a final option. In the case of Vietnam and Iraq, the US Congress proved itself a fickle body by paying attention to a bunch of liars and interested parties paraded before it. It also took on board deliberate lies spun by its government officials. Look further back and you can say virtually the same about the parliaments of other nations. 5. The United Nations will never be an effective tool in controlling and solving world problems. Why have the 5 permanent members been there since the mid 1940s? China then was a third world country. The Soviet Union no longer exists. France and the UK may have had influence then. Today they are minnows. The make up of the Security Council was reshaped in 1965. Over the last 56 years, the world has seen massive changes. When it comes to the broader make up, why is Europe afforded 3 seats when the vastly larger Africa and Asia together only get 5? The former has a population of around 500 million. The latter over 5.7 billion! And its decisions are sometimes more than strange. Why was Pol Pot's genocidal regime permitted to retain Cambodia's seat in the UN thereby being the only legitimate representative of the Cambodian people after its defeat in 1979 until 1990? The UN's International Criminal Court in The Hague, on the other hand, has had a degree of success in bringing individuals from many countries to justice. But the USA is one of the main countries that refuses to join the Court or to have any of its citizens subject to the Court's Jurisdiction. In 2005, Hilary Clinton made the extraordinary statement, "Europe must acknowledge that the United States has global responsibilities that create unique circumstances. For example, we are more vulnerable to the misuse of an international criminal court because of the international role we play and the resentments that flow from that ubiquitous presence around the world." Unique circumstances? Such as, I wonder? Well, I know, but will not extend this further.

I do believe that is a subject for a separate thread. But I know much less about the Myanmar situation and do not believe my comments will be especially pertinent, apart from heaping a great deal of blame on Britain as its colonial power and what it left behind. But with respect, this Afghanistan thread is not about future years, it is about what has happened since the US invasion and its results. I can roam through various youtube sites to give ideas how Myanmar reached the present situation. But I am not ready to go further than that now. I am sure you could start a thread to stimulate discussion if you so wish. I can certainly say a lot more about Iran, but again that would require a separate thread. I'll start one if any reader is interested.

In a separate thread I recently wrote about my Thai/Burmese friend and his issue with the Sinpharm vaccine. 10 days ago he took his two flatmates, both also Thai/Burmese, to hospital as he suspected they might have covid19. Both tested positive. My friend was negative. One is now much improved and has been moved to 14-day quarantine. This morning his other friend died. He was only 25. Unless more vaccines are quickly located and those in the younger age groups are vaccinated, I fear this will become a much more common occurrence.

Try entering the USA with lots of Thai stamps in your passport. Living here and travelling a lot, virtually every page has entry and exit stamps. Whenever I enter the USA, I have no problem at Immigration. The moment a customs officer looks at the passport, I am told to go to a separate line. Then all my bags are searched.

Surely there has to be corruption somewhere in this idiotic decision. Roughly on the topic of medical costs, I always wonder why a drug I take occasionally for a relatively common condition costs so much more in Thailand when it is not even the original French drug. It is the Thai sanctioned clone version. If I buy it through a doctor in, say, Hong Kong, the cost per pill is around 20 baht with no doctor's fee added. When i buy the Thai clone version in Bangkok at the price mandated by the Ministry of Health, the cost is over 50 baht, plus I have to pay a doctor's fee for the privilege of having had him authorise it.

Thank you for a very perceptive post. There are indeed no good options. But let me try and give my view on some of your points. 1. It was clearly a major mistake, one which should have been realised when so-called negotiations with the Taliban commenced three years ago, to expect such an entrenched group as the Taliban to be a trustworthy partner. Besides, under the Accord which resulted in early 2020, the only deal was that the US would withdraw from the country and the Taliban would prevent attacks on US forces. It would also proceed to peace talks with the Afghan government (which oddly was not part of those early negotiations - did the USA actually rule the country?) and not allow terrorist forces to be based in the country. Why a mistake? Just look at its history. The Taliban emerged following the vacuum resulting from the withdrawal of the Soviets. They were backed by Saudi Arabia with the specific understanding that the Taliban would introduce the stricter Saudi form of Sunni Islam and Sharia Law. It seems that their initial takeover of the country in the late 1990a was largely welcomed. They rooted out much of the corruption. they made it safe for citizens to travel within the country thereby making local commerce easier, and they curbed lawlessness. The quid pro quo, as it were, were the much stricter religious laws. Men had to wear beards, women had to wear the full burka, girls only permitted to attend school till the age of 10, music, tv and movies banned. The worst was the introduction of horrible Sharia law punishments we all know about. The madrassas in Pakistan, despite that country's denial, clearly was another player in the creation of the Taliban. Thus only three countries recognised the resultant Taliban government - the US ally Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the UAE. Had Osama bin Laden and his lot not based themselves in Afghanistan, my view its that Taliban rule would have continued and the world as a whole would have paid it precious little attention. To expect that such a radical group would suddenly have changed its hard-line approach to rule and would be a worthy partner in peace negotiations was surely a monstrous leap of faith! As a perceptive report on the BBC a couple of days ago, the Taliban negotiators interviewed in Qatar presented a very different view of the group's intentions from those Taliban fighters interviewed in the country. It was chalk and cheese! 2. @fedssocrquestions "Would it be better that no one had a better life for that period of time because their hopes are going to be dashed now by the Taliban? Is the US required to stay there forever?" To the first part the answer has to be "Yes, it would have been better!" How do you explain to, say, a young 18-year old girl who is finishing school, looking forward to attending university and finding a good job, "Sorry dear, we opened the door for you but now it must be slammed shut. All you are good for now is to wear your burka, get married, stay at home to look after your husband, and bear his children. You are back to being a third class citizen, you cannot have a job and your punishments will be great if you dare to disobey." I'd rather be a gay man living in China than have all my hopes and dreams dashed in such a miserable manner. As to the US - and other NATO members, we know that around 5,000 US and NATO troops (sorry I don't know the exact number) along with their aircraft and drones were able to keep the Taliban at bay for some years. The US is perfectly happy to keep 11,000 troops in the Middle East, 28,000 in South Korea, 55,000 in Japan and 64,000 in Europe. It even has 1,700 in Australia. What is the difference between a few thousand troops stationed in Afghanistan to prevent a rogue state becoming a home once again to terrorist groups and 28,000 in South Korea because it has an unstable country to the north and an unfriendly country to the West. Why so many now still in Europe? Afghanistan was no longer a war zone in recent years. The US and its allies were there to maintain an uncertain peace and support a government it had helped to install. 3. "Sure, I think we all wish the Bush administration had more realistic goals. And the mission creep started long ago. But just because those things happened are we all required to stay there indefinitely? When does it end? How much more mission creep is required?" Are the Afghans to blame because the US invaded their country and then got bogged down in its own mission creep? With respect I find that a view I cannot support. Why do the Afghans have to suffer because the US got its nickers in a dreadful twist without realising in advance this could have been one of the possible results? Why do they have to suffer because the USA failed to learn the lessons of the Vietnam and IndoChinese Wars? And that's before looking at its adventure in Iraq! Why does the USA act first and then much later start to think about the consequences? (Yes, I know the UK had a disaster with a similar invasion of Suez in the 1950s. The UK policy makers had failed to accept that the UK was then a failed Empire and it could no longer do as it pleased. That massively embarrassing disaster resulted in the resignation of the Prime Minister and others). Besides, let's face it. The US mission creep in Afghanistan stopped some years ago and the number of US forces has been steadily reduced. 4. "People complain when the US intervenes and polices the world. And then they complain when the US doesn't." I agree. But in 2001 the US was the world's only superpower. And the invasion of Afghanistan was a decision by the USA which then persuaded NATO allies to come to the party. Let's also face the fact that the invasions of Vietnam (some will argue it was not an invasion; but when the CIA manipulates the government of the country you are supposedly helping and arranges the assassination of its leaders at the same time as you send 2.7 million troops and the good Lord only knows how much war equipment over a period of nearly 2 decades, that to me is an invasion) and Iraq were instigated by the USA. Let's also realise that both could have been avoided if the CIA and policymakers in Washington had had a much greater understanding of the countries they were invading, paid more attention to those who did know the countries (like the UN inspectors in the case of Iraq) and at the same time given much more consideration to possible consequences. It was reported a few days ago that in April the CIA informed Biden that the time it would take the Taliban to reach Kabul was between 6 - 12 months! How could so-called experts once again be so totally and utterly wrong? 5. "And there are plenty of other internal conflicts all of the world. Should we get involved in all of them?" Only the powers-that-be in Washington can answer that. But it is notable that those countries with which the USA has become involved were basically very poor, basically underdeveloped and initially with very few friends. With China now very close to great power status after around four decades when the USA has been the world's only policeman, the USA now has to refocus its foreign policy to a bi-polar world. When the Soviets invaded Hungary following the Prague Spring in 1968, the USA could do nothing because it feared nuclear war. Now in Myanmar, it can do virtually nothing because China is a neighbouring country and is backing the military. Further, with relations between the USA and Russia at such a low ebb, like it or not Russia will enjoy doing what it can to embarrass the USA. Trump's impact on US foreign policy was a total disaster. I believe Biden is aware the USA needs to build its alliances as a matter of great urgency. I do realise that the present situation in Myanmar can be traced back to British colonial rule. But the old colonial powers are now powerless. In any case, if the discussion is going to go that far back, the French created the problems in Indo-China and the British, French and Americans largely created all the multifarious problems in the Middle East. Last point!! One poster has mentioned sanctions. Today the USA today has more sanctions in place than ever in history - against more than 2 dozen countries, more than 7,000 companies, individuals and groups. Some - like those on Cuba - have been in place for many decades. Do they work? Mostly no. And one of many reasons why they don't is that the favoured form of sanctions - economic - usually punish the people of a country rather than the policymakers. Yet often the people have no say in the selection of those policymakers. One of the most sanctioned countries is Iran. I spent two weeks there 4 years ago. I thought it an amazing country, stunningly beautiful and with a rich and very long history. Everyone I met was warm and friendly, more than a few offering me coffee or tea, even though i was a westerner from a part of the world responsible for many of the hardships they endured. I also noted that every single Iranian I met not only disliked the regime, they loathed it. How do you sanction effectively without harming those who could be on your side?

Cash! 🤣

Privately appointed crony city council members and something like 9,000 inoperable CCTV cameras! What a total mess. The entire council should be lined up and jailed for some months as punishment for total incompetence!

At last a dose of reality. But even that may not be the full tally since hospitals are already near full to overflowing. A disaster the government could and should have seen coming with its lax oversight and its monstrous error in allowing travel over Songkran just after the third wave hit. My young Thai friend who had managed to get dates for 2 jabs of the Sinopharm vaccine was told 3 days ago that the dates would have to be put back as the government had not yet approved Sinopharm! Then yesterday he was sent 2 new dates that are actually earlier than the original ones! Who is playing games with whom this time, I wonder?

I think your facts are slightly skewed. According to news reports, the first planeload of 200 Afghans helpers landed in the USA only on July 31. Estimates of those yet to be repatriated to the USA vary from 50,000 to 80,000. These 200 "are the first of a group of 2,500 SIV applicants and their families who have almost completed the process." Those are the words of the Secretary of State. "Almost completed?" Given that the bureaucracy has a backlog of around 200,000 applicants (not all from Afghanistan), anyone who expects more than a thousand or so to be evacuated by the time all the troops depart must surely be living in some sort of cloud cuckoo land. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/airlift-begins-afghans-who-worked-us-during-long-military-campaign-2021-07-30/ “'Those who helped us are not going to be left behind,' Biden told reporters at the White House last month . . . Advocates are baffled as to why the Biden administration was so slow to act on evacuations, leading to a last-minute scramble that has already resulted in dozens of Taliban revenge killings and record levels of civilian casualties in the first half of 2021. "Chris Purdy, project manager of the Veterans for American Ideals program at the advocacy group Human Rights First, told me that the Biden administration seemed to assume that the Afghan government was going to be able to hold the Taliban at bay for a few years, or at least long enough for the US to process the 18,000 individuals in the SIV pipeline and tens of thousands of their family members." https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/8/9/22612320/afghan-evacuation-biden-refugee-taliban-withdrawal The UK appears to have acted with more haste. By May it accelerated its withdrawal programme. It had already pulled out 1,300 Afghan helpers and the Defence Secretary informed the media it planned to pull out the remaining 1,700 or so quickly.

Agree with your first sentence. But I think you are way off the mark in the second. For western powers to invade a country, flush out terrorists and then get out, there is perhaps some international legitimacy. But the USA in both Iraq and Afghanistan has this great power notion - one that the old colonial powers seemed not to have: the objectives then were much more trade, territory and markets - that along with invasion they have an almost God-given right to change a country by introducing the values they cherish but which have rarely if ever worked in those countries. Democracy is not alien to Afghanistan but it has rarely worked in such an entrenched tribal society. Why insist on it in Afghanistan apart from the US greater-than-thou belief? We may be appalled at the treatment of women by the Taliban. But what right have we over many years to fling open the doors to a far brighter future for the women of that country, to introduce full time education and provide opportunities for jobs, to provide security for educational establishments etc. when we then suddenly disappear in the certain knowledge that this brighter future was not merely a mirage, it has created expectations that will be totally dashed. For many young women in the country that will be a blow of the most crushing kind. I can't remember which US President said the US was not in the business of nation building. That's certainly not how it has seemed in Iraq and Afghanistan, sadly. The West puts up with and does virtually nothing about the massacres in a large country like Myanmar, the crushing of the 12 million or so Uyghurs in much larger China and goodness knows how many lesser conflicts around the world. Yet mission creep and the lack of a detailed, thought-out plan for the adventure in Afghanistan will result in a true tragedy for so many.

Thank you for clarifying the location. I remember the plan was to have two evacuation locations and just assumed this was the Embassy.

I just listened to the interview. Carter Malkasian has much of interest and of fact to say. I only wish the interview could have been much longer for I feel he could enlighten us on many, many more issues that will be vital if the world is not to get into such a complicated conflict again. Over the course of today, I have been watching various news programmes, most including the views of politicians, military men and commentators. According to several Ministers and former Ministers, the UK government seemed genuinely taken by surprise by Biden's announcement. It then talked to other NATO members to see if a small military team could remain in the country. Without the USA, there was just insufficient interest. The other point made clearly by several is that effectively there has been no war in Afghanistan for the last 5 or so years. US forces, including those of NATO members, were there primarily to help train up the Afghan military, to provide command and control, some air support and to keep the Taliban as firmly as possibly in their own areas. US troop levels were less than 10% of their peak and deaths of US servicemen totalled less than 100 during this more than 5 year period. Most UK troops had left its main base in Helmand Province in 2014. A smaller number remained with the Americans and will be pulled out soon. Only 2 British troops were killed during this period. The one lesson I wish the US had drawn from the adventure in Vietnam is the manner of its departure. In Vietnam, many US troops had to stay on specifically to train up the army of the corrupt government of South Vietnam. Despite Nixon's PR speeches about how successful this was, the fact is that it was spectacularly unsuccessful. Several major operations involving both US and South Vietnamese forces prior to the US departure had seen commanders disappearing and many troops without the guts to fight. The same seems to be generally true now, with a few notable exceptions, in Afghanistan. The decision to pull out all remaining personnel from Saigon in a fleet of 18 helicopters making round trips from the top of the US Embassy to nearby naval vessels, left behind a heaving crowd of desperate Vietnamese helpers and their families unable to get out. I had the pleasure of knowing Hugh van Es, the Dutch photographer who took one of the most iconic photos of that war - the last helicopter as it was about to leave Saigon. The helicopters were supposed to have a maximum load of 8 people but most were taking off with 12 or 14. Photo: Hugh van Es

23,418 new cases yesterday and 184 new deaths. Stay safe out there.

I totally agree with the first part. But not the second. What has the US achieved in Afghanistan? As you rightly point out, the original mission was accomplished many years ago - and in Pakistan at that, not in Afghanistan. But the US stayed partly because it had no real plan for what it was doing and what its exit strategy would be. So the US attempted, as it did in Iraq and as it attempted to do in Vietnam, to convert a society it did not understand (how many Iraqi, Vietnamese and Afghan experts worked in the State department? Almost none). Afghanistan is made up of a very large number of tribes unified for the most part only by common adherence to one religion. The US tried to fashion it into a country-wide democracy. It attempted to break down tribal values regarding education for women and their role in society and there being no need to adopt strict Islamic dress. 100% I agree these are laudable goals. But having gone much of the way, at least in terms of opening up Afghan society and the position of women, it decides to withdraw all its troops leaving the country about to be taken over yet again by strong Taliban Islamic militants who will overturn every gain made in the last two decades. That surely is the real tragedy of the US adventure in Afghanistan.

My OP was about what the US does when it leaves a country it has earlier invaded. The issue of other NATO and participant countries is a separate matter. You imply the USA has already evacuated "thousands of them." Funny, that's not what is being reported. As of August 7 the US had evacuated less than 1% of the more than 80,000 Afghans who assisted it. That does not even reach one thousand - and still leaves more than 79,000! "The plight of thousands of other Afghans who worked for U.S. troops or diplomats is even more uncertain and it's not clear if the administration will opt to fly them out. At the current tempo of 700 evacuees a week, it would take more than two years to fly out the roughly 20,000 Afghans who are in the SIV pipeline along with their families. "Meanwhile, the Taliban is on the march, advancing on major cities and setting off panic among Afghan civilians." https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/u-s-evacuation-afghans-likely-drag-after-american-troops-leave-n1276245

Are you sure it includes the translators etc.? All the reports state it is to evacuate the Embassy staff and Afghan personnel who work in the Embassy. Nowhere do the reports state that the troops will evacuate the tens of thousands of Afghanis who have helped the troops in the field.

If you read my post I was referring specifically to the powers-that-be who have been making regular pronouncements of this opening up date or that opening up date, only for them to eat their words when no dates are met and the situation in cities and the country as a whole just goes from bad to worse. Of course hope is vitally important. But rather than overly optimistic prognostications, a harsh dose of reality is surely far better at this time. That and providing a great deal of much needed assistance to all those who have been so badly affected by incompetent and corrupt government actions.

Say what you wish, there is absolutely no denying the fact that the invasion of Afghanistan was entirely at the instigation of the United States, firstly on September 26 2001 through covert infiltration of CIA operatives and thereafter with military force. As a US ally, the UK also infiltrated MI6 operatives only days later. The war was not a NATO instigated war. NATO as an organisation was not involved until later. But UK forces played a major role very quickly and several hundred of its military were killed and many more wounded. The UK and other countries still have forces there which will not be withdrawn until the US withdrawal. Some of the nations you list were part of the original Operation Enduring Freedom campaign. Others joined later as part of the NATO lInternational Security Assistance Force. But let's not forget that many of these nations in your list contributed just a few dozen soldiers and/or support staff up to in some cases a few hundred. Very few had more than 1,000 or more troops in the country at any one time. And let's also not forget that the NATO countries did not resolve to leave Afghanistan. So to put any blame on them is pointless. The fact is they are withdrawing only because the United States announced unilaterally that it planned to leave. According to General McMaster on CNN this morning, the first date of the US departure from Afghanistan was not conveyed to NATO by the Trump administration which regarded NATO as an inconvenient, irrelevant sideshow rather than as allies. McMaster added that Biden also did not inform NATO officially in advance of his announcement in April and further failed to consult neighbouring countries in advance as it had hitherto promised to do! McMaster added his view that the departure from Afghanistan now is a disaster. But the points you raise do not directly reply to the points I made. The fact is that the USA, often through the CIA, has been involved in operations in overseas countries from the time it, along with the British, arranged the ouster of the duly elected Prime Minister of Iran in 1953. In siding with the corrupt, repressive Shah, it thereby cooked its own goose when the Iranian public rebelled, the Shah was booted out and a violently anti-US regime installed in 1979, a regime that remains in power today and that has spread all manner of havoc in that part of the world. The main point of my OP was the lack of consideration given to the extreme urgency of getting those who had helped the USA out of the country before they are murdered by the Taliban. As stated, precisely the same happened after US invasions of Vietnam and Iraq. It is not as though the mandarins in Washington were not aware of the promises they made to those poor people. It is more the incompetence of those in the administration responsible for getting those people to freedom. That is the disgrace.

So after 20 years the US is almost out of Afghanistan. The peace talks with the Taliban which have been going on for three years next month were clearly a sham. Now the Taliban has speedily controlled far more territory than anyone involved seemed to have anticipated and we can surely expect the entire country to be taken over once again by that ultra Islamic bunch. Women will be forced out of schools, will have to wear strict Islamic dress, music will be banned, adulterers stoned, gays thrown from buildings - and goodness knows what else. That country has been fought over almost more than any other since the British disaster around 1840. In more recent times, the Soviet invasion at the end of 1979 achieved little apart from enabling the CIA to furnish a huge amount of weaponry to the local guerrillas, weapons that would eventually come back to haunt them. The CIA had actually been involved in Afghanistan even before the Russians arrived. As for their the Russian adventure, British journalist Patrick Brogan probably summed it up best when he wrote, "They got sucked into Afghanistan much as the United States got sucked into Vietnam, without clearly thinking through the consequences, and wildly underestimated the hostility they would arouse." The end result was a country all but ruined by war of whose population a third (over 5 million) had became permanent refugees. The guerrillas which saw the back of the Soviet forces in 1989 were led by the Afghan Mujahideen backed by the US, the UK and other powers using it as a proxy in the Cold War. Having thereafter backed the moderate Northern Alliance under Ahmad Shah Massoud, the western powers were left rudderless when two Al Qaeda operatives posing as cameramen filming an interview blew themselves up along with Massoud two days before the 9/11 attacks. Soon thereafter the US troops and their allies attacked with the aim of quickly flushing out Osama bin Laden. As in Vietnam, they found themselves stuck in the Afghan mud! President Biden may well be happy that his troops will all have departed by next month. But as has become a pattern, the USA's departure after invasion leaves a stink in the air. Just as happened at the end of the Vietnam war and just as happened at the end of the Iraq invasion, the US is leaving behind tens of thousands (if not many more) Afghanis and their families without whose help they would have had little chance of any success. And in all three cases it is not as though they did not have time to plan for these intelligent and now desperately afraid people's exit. Trump announced the withdrawal of troops 10 months ago. Biden, having hinted it for months, finally announced it four months ago. Yet the excuse now given for leaving behind so many who aided the US is that there has not been enough time to process the paperwork! I find that not merely utterly disgraceful. In my book it comes close to a war crime! Who in future is going to believe what have become essentially US lies? "Don't worry! We will look after you," surely rings more than hollow when a translator working for the USA for years is looking down the barrel of a Taliban gun seconds before becoming a corpse in the dust.

I'm sure lots loved it. The viewing figures must have been great to have kept the original running for 7 series. So many romantics around! LOL