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After the Fiasco: One Year Later, What Next for Afghanistan and the West?

Foreign
Policy

How much responsibility do countries like Britain and the United States have for the current crisis?

‘We did not go to Afghanistan to nation build’ – President Joe Biden, July 8 2021

One year ago the United States decided to withdraw from Afghanistan after two decades in the country. The Taliban, a militant Islamist group that ran most of Afghanistan in the late 1990s, swept to power without much resistance from the Afghan army and captured Kabul on August 15 2021.

The debacle left Western governments humiliated and ordinary Afghans afraid. The Taliban pledged to govern the country in a less brutal manner than in the past. But without the international funding that had long propped up the economy, millions of Afghans have become unemployed, the banking system has collapsed – partly due to Western sanctions – and according to a United Nations report nearly half the country’s population has been plunged into acute hunger, a problem exacerbated by an ongoing drought and supply disruptions linked to the war in Ukraine.

What responsibility do countries like Britain and the United States have for the current crisis? Should we be delivering more humanitarian aid and working with the Taliban? Should we be accepting more refugees? Is the war on terror over?

Event Name

After the Fiasco: One Year Later, What Next for Afghanistan and the West?

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Speakers for the motion

  • Paul Mason

    Journalist, writer and film-maker

  • Shabnam Nasimi

    Policy Advisor to the U.K Home Office

  • Jeremy Bowen

    BBC International Editor and author of The Making of the Modern Middle East

Chair

  • Manveen Rana

    Senior investigative journalist and host of The Times and Sunday Times flagship podcast Stories of Our Times

Speakers are subject to change.

Speakers

Speakers

Paul Mason

Journalist, writer and film-maker

Journalist, writer and film-maker. He is the former economics editor for Newsnight and Channel 4 News, and author of books including How to Stop Fascism, Postcapitalism and Clear Bright Future: A Radical Defence of the Human Being. In August 2021 he worked to help NGO workers escape Afghanistan during the U.S withdrawal.   

Shabnam Nasimi

Policy Advisor to the U.K Home Office

Policy Advisor to the U.K Home Office focusing on Afghan resettlement. She is the founder and Executive Director of Conservative Friends of Afghanistan, a group that exists to promote understanding and support for Afghanistan in the United Kingdom.  

Jeremy Bowen

BBC International Editor and author of The Making of the Modern Middle East

BBC International Editor. From 1995-2000, he was based in Jerusalem as the BBC’s Middle East Correspondent, winning awards from television festivals in New York and Monte Carlo, as well as a Best Breaking News report from the Royal Television Society on the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. During the Kosovo crisis of 1999, he reported extensively from the region, often in dangerous conditions, which included being robbed at gunpoint by bandits whilst reporting from the Albanian border. He was BBC Middle East Editor from 2005 to XX. He is the author of several acclaimed books, including Six Days: How the 1967 War Shaped the Middle East, The Arab Uprisings and The Making of the Modern Middle East.   
Chair

Manveen Rana

Senior investigative journalist and host of The Times and Sunday Times flagship podcast Stories of Our Times

Senior investigative journalist and host of The Times and Sunday Times flagship podcast Stories of Our Times. She was previously a broadcaster and reporter for BBC Radio 4's The Today Programme and The World at One.