This article, based on conversations with the former UN and EU representative Francesc Vendrell, describes efforts made by Vendrell to mediate between international community various players in Afghanistan conflict 2000 2008, including Taliban Northern Alliance. It covers breakdown of previous Tashkent Declaration, a meeting Mullah Omar, destruction Bamiyan Buddhas, ‘9/11’, subsequent Bonn Acco...

Is Afghanistan approaching unheralded success or tragic failure? It depends upon whom one asks. Several years after an international coalition and US-backed Afghan insurgents removed the ruling Islamic fundamentalist Taliban from power, experts differ as to Afghanistan’s future: will it be stability and democracy, or a return to its chaotic and turbulent past? On the one hand, after decades of ...

Afghanistan is confronting the Covid-19 pandemic and its socioeconomic fallout amid rising insecurity. Supported by donors, authorities boosted health social spending to cushion pandemic’s impact on vulnerable. Policy measures kept output contraction 2 percent in 2020, but poverty rose fiscal deficit widened. Political uncertainty has risen as peace talks between government Taliban stalled U.S....

Abstract While there is a substantial body of literature on the consequences terror attacks public attitudes toward state institutions in Western democracies, little known about impact that such events have context armed conflict. We address this gap by exploring attitudinal effects 2012 Taliban attack civilians Kabul City, Afghanistan. test two competing hypotheses: “rally-effect” hypothesis a...

The Medical Journal of Australia ISSN: 0025-729X 1/ 15 December 2003 179 11/12 591-593 ©The Medical Journal of Austral ia 2003 www.mja.com.au Frontline Medicine THIS IS A brief account of my six months in Afghanistan in 2003. I worked as the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) project doctor in the western province of Herat, spending alternate weeks in Herat City and in Kushk-e-Kohna, a sparsely pop...