SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Dr Najib and Mr Karzai: a Tale of Two Retreats

Abstract

The US-led international force in Afghanistan has started its withdrawal which is due to be completed exactly a quarter of a century after Soviet troops withdrew. Older Afghans are looking back to that earlier period when the government in Kabul managed to protect the city from destruction for over three more years without the aid of foreign troops.  What lessons can be learnt from its success, and its eventual fall?   Will the Karzai government be able to resist the advance of today's insurgency?  Must the pursuit of peace talks and a negotiated end to war turn out to be as fruitless as it was in the early 1990s?   Steele travelled to Kabul most recently in November 2012 where he interviewed a wide range of Afghans. He will discuss their hopes and fears for the future as another foreign army begins its retreat.

Speaker Biography

Jonathan Steele is an international affairs columnist who has reported regularly from Afghanistan.  As Chief Foreign Correspondent for the Guardian he first visited Kabul in 1981 during the Soviet occupation, and has been back during every subsequent regime.  A graduate of Cambridge and Yale, Steele was the Guardian's Bureau Chief in Washington in the 1970's and in Moscow during perestroika and the fall of Communism.  He has written books on South Africa, East Germany, Soviet foreign policy, Russia under Yeltsin and Gorbachev, and the American occupation of Iraq.  His most recent book is Ghosts of Afghanistan: the Haunted Battleground, an eyewitness analysis of thirty years of war and destruction.

Admission

Free and open to all