Ahmed Rashid

Are we seeing a new kind of Taliban? The men who seized Kabul with such ease last weekend are doing their best to sound more moderate. Women, they say, should be allowed to work and have an education. They have offered amnesty to officials of the now-deposed Afghan government, something the old Taliban never dreamed of doing. It’s far too early to tell just how much of this will last. But the more interesting question is not about the elders but the next generation of Taliban: the young commanders who were really the ones who conquered Kabul. The Taliban never really showed much interest in exporting their type of Islamic revolution around the world. They only cared about Afghanistan. But the new, younger members are much more militant and radical.

It’s often said that the Trump administration is ‘isolationist’. This is not true. In fact, we are now witnessing a dramatic escalation in the militarisation of US foreign policy in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan. This has not been announced but it is happening, and much of it without consultation with Nato or other key allies, or any debate in Congress or the media. A few weeks ago, US aircraft carried out over 30 air strikes against Islamic militants in Yemen — almost the same as the number carried out there all last year. In Iraq and Syria there have been many reports of civilian casualties in US raids. As many as 200 are thought to have been killed in air strikes on Mosul, although Iraqi authorities dispute that. Andrew J.

Even by Afghan standards, it is an unorthodox cry for help. The governor of Helmand province, Mohammad Jan Rasulyar, has posted on Facebook tagging in Ashram Ghani, the Afghan president, to tell him that some 90 members of the security forces have killed in the past month fighting insurgents and that the province - under British control for so long - may be about to fall to the Taleban. He apologised for using Facebook, but said he was unable to make direct contact with the President by other means. He had this to say:- “Your Excellency, Facebook is not the right forum for speaking with you, but as my voice hasn’t been heard by you I don’t know what else to do. Please save  Helmand from tragedy.

Amid all the chaos in the Middle East, the breakdown of borders and states, a new threat is fast emerging. The key strategic bulwark to stabilise the region is a strong Afghanistan. But after 15 years of occupation by western troops and a trillion dollars spent, it now appears to be going the way of the Levant. A weak government in Kabul has proved unable to forge a political consensus. The Taleban is resurgent, while other similar groups control much of the Afghan country-side. And this — with the potential spread factor of Isis — means that Afghanistan is probably worse off today than when foreign forces intervened in 2001.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/workingwithal-qa-eda/media.mp3" title="Ahmed Rashid and Douglas Murray discuss how the West is working with al-Qa'eda" startat=38] Listen [/audioplayer]After plunging Syria into five years of a bloody civil war that has killed 300,000 and displaced 10 million, Bashar al-Assad is preparing for the endgame. He has been digging a bunker for himself, creating an enclave in the mountains around the coastal city of Latakia where his community, the Alawites, are in a majority. The Iranians are helping him set up this new retreat, but his hope of hanging on to Syria is dying.

 Lahore   From Washington to Kabul and in every capital in between, governments, armies, intelligence agencies and the media are asking what will happen in Afghanistan next year when the US and Nato finally leave after 12 years fighting a war they did not win. Despite the enormous amount of intelligence available, the truth is that nobody knows, not even the Afghans. The best predictions can only be based on knowing what is going right, what is going wrong and what can be done to minimise the dangers of things getting worse. For more than a year we have been deluged with the so-called success story of the military transition — the handing over of security to the 350,000-strong Afghan army and police — as western forces pull out.