That's Ben Anderson. You might be interested in the rest of his body of work, as a lot of it touches on Afghanistan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Anderson_(journalist)

Suffice it to say that he's not exactly a fan of US interventionist foreign policy. Then again, who would be if they'd ever seen the sharp end of it?

Reserved. ^ I suppose now that Amy Goodman is pushing the airport “controversy” it means it’s been cleared for wider media coverage, maybe. Some dogshit takes on that day in this thread already, unsurprisingly.

The Taliban seems to have made a hard right and acted to curb women's education, to the delight of its hardline supporters.

Somewhat irrelevant to the thread's focus, but more than a thousand dead from an earthquake and ensuing mudslides!

So many dead because they're literally dirt poor - mud brick houses just don't hold back thousands of tonnes of mud sliding down hills.