Labour’s persistent failure to address its electorate’s salient concerns is behind the protest vote, asserts DIANE ABBOTT
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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
Washington’s lawless behaviour towards countries in the region it considers its ‘back yard’ should be condemned by all law-abiding people, says LUKE DANIELS
In part I of a serialisation of his new book, JOHN McINALLY takes a look at the early days of organising government workers
Colombia’s success in controlling the drug trade should be recognised and its sovereignty respected, argues Dr GLORY SAAVEDRA
The shadow lord chancellor has recently made a name for himself as an rabid hater of immigration – but there are exceptions to every rule, says SOLOMON HUGHES
Plaid Cymru’s front-bench spokesman on health and social services MABON AP GWYNFOR, in a two-part series, analyses the Caerphilly by-election and the wider political scene in Wales ahead of the 2026 Senedd election
“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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