Rania Khalek Dispatches from the Underclass

Tag / Taliban

All eyes are on Afghanistan as the Taliban has rapidly taken over the entire country. Most coverage is focused on what this means for the US. But in reality, the West is removed and distant. Iran, on the other hand, is Afghanistan’s neighbor and hosts about 2 million official or unofficial Afghan refugees and will […]

Read More

After seemingly forgetting Afghanistan for years, Western media has rediscovered it in time to provide panicked and hand-wringing coverage of the US-led coalition’s withdrawal, as well as the apparent rapid gains made by the Taliban. Is the country on the verge of collapse? What will happen and what do Afghanistan’s people want? To help make […]

Read More

Twenty years ago the US launched a war on Afghanistan. Four presidents, $2 trillion, and more than 200,000 Afghan lives later, the longest war in US history may finally be coming to an end without anything the US can call a victory and nothing Afghans can call stability or a future. So what was this […]

Read More

Is the US really ending the “forever war”? What does it mean for Afghans on all sides of the conflict? Rania Khalek is joined by Aziz Hakimi, an Afghan expert and researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute, who has done extensive field work throughout Afghanistan, for a comprehensive discussion on Afghanistan’s past and future in […]

Read More

The American public is so detached from the many wars being fought in their name that the killing of civilians abroad often goes unnoticed. The latest victims whose deaths barely registered in the national consciousness were two Afghan boys, identified as 11-year-old Toor Jan and his brother, 12-year-old Andul Wodood. They were walking their donkeys […]

Read More