SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
Afghanistan, graveyard of the empires
Drawing on his own experiences travelling the country during its 14 years of socialism under siege, NICK WRIGHT writes that the idea of Afghanistan as an ungovernable maelstrom of chaos is a purely the creation of Western imperialism
The air raids, drone strikes and military excursions over the years have embittered Afghans to the various occupying powers and in many cases government forces and clan militias swiftly reached local deals, essentially power-sharing arrangements which reflect long-standing local realities
Morning Star international editor ROGER McKENZIE says Trump’s ceaseless belligerence is a desperate effort to prevent the emergence of a multilateral world
Don’t dismiss Lebanon as a side theatre of this war, warns SEVIM DAGDELEN — there are signs Israel has expansion in mind, and it has demonstrated its willingness to expel and kill whole populations
The media present Starmer as staying out of Trump’s war — but we’re already deeply involved in a conflict that sees the US and Israel kill civilians on a huge scale, argues IAN SINCLAIR
LINDA PENTZ GUNTER reports on this week’s conference unveiling the findings of the Gaza Tribunal established by Jeremy Corbyn
CHRISTOPHE IMMER of the Morning Star’s German sister paper Junge Welt reports on a Berlin conference on the politics of art and the legacy of Marxist critic Hans Hess
“A WAR begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, was acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated.”
Thus, in 1843, GR Grieg, chaplain to the British Army wrote of the empires’s catastrophic defeat in the First Afghan War as an expeditionary force of 4,500 military personnel and over 12,000 camp followers fled Kabul to Jalalabad. Barely a handful survived.
The regional balance of power fell to the Russian empire and in 1878, the British invaded again and again in 1897. Britain went to war in Afghanistan again in 1919.
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