Volume 4 Issue 4 October - December 2021

At the primary level, although the Taliban takeover was swift and largely without military opposition-- the reasons for which are complex and lie in the nature of the US engagement in Afghanistan--, the resistance to the violent seizure of power is bound to grow. [...] Equally suspicious is the almost too neat a division of labour between the Taliban and IS-K in the choice of targets and methods employed, as well as the documented links between the ISI, LeT and IS-K and between the ISI-HN and IS-K, if not others.2 But possibly the most worrying phenomenon is the one that has been least visible asyet: the agenda of the multitude of fraternal regional and internat. [...] Finally, there can be little doubt that the triumph The Triumph of the of the Taliban in Afghanistan will herald a powerful Taliban in Afghanistan return of international terrorism of the Al Qaeda and will herald a powerful the Islamic State that had been on the back foot in the Arab world because of the war or terror over the last return of international 20 years. [...] In fact, every US action since its direct US outreach to the Taliban in 2018 in Doha - the signing of the US-Taliban deal stacked heavily in favour of the Taliban, the discreet projection of Sirajuddin and Anas Haqqani as potential Its unilateral and poorly future leaders of the Taliban, and its unilateral and planned withdrawal poorly planned withdrawal suggests that the suggests that the takeove. [...] But what is probably of greater long term consequence is the failure and betrayal by the US and the democratic world as a whole, of some of the core values of freedom, democracy, civil, political, and human rights that have underpinned modern civilization since the French Revolution through the American War of Independence, the two World Wars and the Indian struggle for Independence, in Afghanista.