Returning to Afghanistan—One Year After the Fall of Kabul

Kabul fell a year ago this week. Afghanistan—after decades of near-constant violence, rampant corruption, failure to establish a sustainable government, and, to many observers, only limited gains in terms of women’s rights—was back to square one. The end had returned to the beginning. Now, the nation was in the hands of the Taliban, the same fundamentalist faction that had ruled the country from 1996 to 2001. I’d covered Afghanistan in the post–9/11 years, accompanying the American and Afghan armies into combat as the Taliban was reascendant. I also focused on the Afghan civilians caught in the middle of the cycle… Read Full Article