Nation Building Failed in Afghanistan

Clayborne Carson is the Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education institute, and hand-picked by Coretta King to publish the letters of his late husband. He's one of the foremost historians on MLK and his legacy. He joins to discuss King, color blindness, and ... Show More

Or... how to host a party if you have Asperger's. Nick Gray is an entrepreneur and an author living in Austin, Texas. I met him roller skating. He started and sold two successful companies: Flight Display Systems and Museum Hack. His YouTube and short videos have been seen by ove ... Show More

How did Venezuela become an economic basket case? Not socialism. Or capitalism. Venezuela is a textbook example of a petrostate in the thrall of the Paradox of Plenty, or "the Dutch Disease." Bonus: Norway's Big Bucket of Oil Money https://www.thepoliticalorphanage.com/p/bonus-no ... Show More

Twenty years after 9/11, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is moving faster than expected, and so is the Taliban’s takeover. The Taliban have already taken more than 50 of the country’s 400 districts since May, with the US intelligence community predicting that the Afghan govern ... Show More

America knew Al-Qaeda were behind the 9/11 attacks before the day was out. They knew they were being sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan and so the CIA went after them. Small teams were dropped behind enemy lines with bags of cash and very little else, instructed to link up w ... Show More

Acclaimed journalist Ahmed Rashid discusses Pakistan's new populist prime minister, Imran Khan, whom he considers woefully unprepared. He also examines Pakistan's debt-ridden economy and Pakistan's complex relationships with China, India, the U.S., Afghanistan, and the Taliban. " ... Show More

When the Taliban retook all of Afghanistan in 2021, it came as a shock to much of the West. The day after the last American soldier left, journalist and filmmaker Ibrahim Nash’at flew into Kabul to spend a year filming with the Taliban’s senior military leadership. What he found ... Show More

I was still in high school the year the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, 1979. I remember reading about it in Time magazine and watching President Carter denounce it on TV. The Soviets, everyone said, were bent on ruling the world. Detente had been a ploy to lull us to sleep. In ... Show More

Alix Kroeger in London speaks to the BBC’s world affairs editor John Simpson after his recent visit to Afghanistan. They talk about how life under the Taliban compares with the last time the regime was in power, where the country is getting aid from, and how the rest of the world ... Show More

Women in Afghanistan continue to be suppressed and marginalised by the Taliban government, with a steady stream of new laws and edicts, dictating what they can and can't do.This has alarmed and shocked human rights defenders in Afghanistan, and across the world. Also expressing t ... Show More

They were scenes of utter desperation and chaos: thousands of Afghans crowded outside Kabul’s airport, as American troops withdrew and the Taliban swept the country in August 2021. In a congressional hearing last month, former Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley blamed the ... Show More

Afghan women’s rights activists are facing deportation from Pakistan, along with hundreds of thousands of Afghans living there. The activists risk imprisonment or death if they return to life under the Taliban in Afghanistan. Afghans have sought refuge in Pakistan for years, but ... Show More