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The Unz Review •�An Alternative Media Selection$
A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media
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Taliban Banning NGOs That Allow Women to Work
•�January 1, 2025
•�300 Words •�1 Comment • Reply
Women’s rights is the most ridiculous thing ever. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. Anyone who has grasped the absurdity of this situation with women lives in a constant state of bafflement at an entire civilization which takes this seriously. It’s no different than the tranny thing. AP: The Taliban say they will... Read More
Taliban Grants Men the Right to Look Out Their Window and Not See Women
•�December 31, 2024
•�200 Words •�19 Comments • Reply
The Taliban is so awesome, they invent new restrictions on women that no one else has ever even thought about before, but which make perfect sense. Why should anyone have to look out their window and see women? RT: The Taliban is like a futurist organization. They are designing a whole new order for civilization,... Read More
Taliban Officials Will Attend UN’s COP29 Conference
•�November 11, 2024
•�600 Words •�1 Comment • Reply
I don’t think the Taliban believes in global warming. The point here is, they’re now allowed to attend international events as a normal country. This is something that the US tried to prevent after surrendering to them in 2021, claiming that they were not a normal country because they don’t have gay sex or let... Read More
EU Court of Justice Rules All Afghan Women Have a Right to Move to Europe and Fuck Strangers
•�October 5, 2024
•�300 Words •�17 Comments • Reply
This is so silly and funny. ALL Afghan women have automatic right to “asylum” because simply being a woman in Afghanistan is “a human rights violation.” The Taliban doesn’t allow women to have sex with random men, they don’t allow abortions or slut clothes, therefore Europe has an absolute responsibility to transfer the entire female... Read More
How Soon Will the U.S. Return to Afghanistan?
•�September 28, 2024
•�1,200 Words •�2 Comments • Reply
Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban just announced the country will re-open its embassy in Muscat, Oman. This follows the United Arab Emirates’ acceptance of the credentials of the Afghan ambassador in August. And in January, Chinese leader Xi Jinping personally accepted the credentials of the Afghan ambassador to Beijing. (China’s new ambassador to Afghanistan was officially received... Read More
House Blames Joe Brandon for Heinous Afghanistan Surrender Process
•�September 9, 2024
•�500 Words •�24 Comments • Reply
The Taliban Lives. Who else would you blame for this? Harrison Ford? I don’t understand. New York Post: President Biden was so hellbent on getting out of Afghanistan that he rebuked any advice to the contrary, ignored the pleas of the Afghan government and disregarded objections from US allies. That was the one of the... Read More
Even the Taliban Didn’t “Solve” the Woman Problem. They Just Manage It Intelligently.
•�August 4, 2024
•�1,200 Words •�121 Comments • Reply
People look at women in Afghanistan and think “wow, the Taliban sure solved that problem.” This is true insofar as “they solved it as much as it is humanly possible to solve this problem.” But the reality is, if the Taliban had “solved” the woman problem, they would not need to keep them in bags.... Read More
Russia, SCO, BRICS: The Normalization of Afghanistan
•�June 1, 2024
•�1,200 Words •�15 Comments • Reply
The whole Russia-Taliban affair involves a humongous package – encompassing oil, gas, minerals and loads of rail connectivity. This past Sunday in Doha, I had a meeting with three high-level representatives of the Taliban Political Office in Qatar, including a founding member of the body (in 2012) and a key official of the previous Taliban... Read More
Who Will Talk to Afghanistan’s Taliban?
•�February 27, 2024
•�1,000 Words •�12 Comments • Reply
On Feb. 18 and 19, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres convened a meeting in Doha, Qatar, to discuss the “evolving situation” in Afghanistan and future engagement with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The Taliban declined an invitation to the meeting after the U.N. refused their conditions, including recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate government of... Read More
Who Will Lead the Way to Diplomatic Recognition of the Taliban?
•�February 18, 2024
•�2,100 Words •�Leave a Comment
In January 2024, Chinese president Xi Jinping accepted the credentials of the ambassador of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the Taliban) to China. And in September 2023 China was the first country to name a new ambassador to the Islamic Emirate since August 2021. Today, over a dozen countries maintain diplomatic representation in Kabul, though... Read More
Afghanistan Offers Lessons in Regime Change to Israel in Gaza
•�December 22, 2023
•�900 Words •�11 Comments • Reply
I talked to a lot of people in Afghanistan, where I reported about the fall 2001 U.S. invasion. Young or old, urban or rural, no matter their ethnicity, they all expected the victors to work miracles after the Taliban's defeat. "America will build roads, schools, buildings, everything." "Now Afghanistan will be beautiful." "We will have... Read More
The Taliban’s Opium Policy: “Just Say No”
•�June 23, 2023
•�1,600 Words •�6 Comments • Reply
In the summer of 2023, the Taliban implemented the ban on opium poppy decreed by supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzadain in April 2022. The Taliban told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) they banned poppy cultivation because of the harmful effects of opium and because it violates their religious beliefs, despite the 2022 crop being “the most... Read More
Afghanistan’s Water Demands: Its Impact on Central Asia
•�April 25, 2023
•�1,700 Words •�6 Comments • Reply
April has been a signal time for Afghanistan. First, the foreign ministers of China, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran met in Samarkand, Uzbekistan about alleviating Afghanistan’s economic crisis. Then, the Taliban government announced the Chinese mining company Gochin would invest up to $10 billion USD to mine the country’s lithium reserves, and would assist developing other... Read More
Will Asia Pick Up the Pieces in Afghanistan?
•�March 15, 2023
•�1,300 Words •�1 Comment • Reply
The U.S. and NATO hastily evacuated Afghanistan on 15 August 2021, ending the two-decade, $2 trillion-dollar effort to turn Afghanistan into Denmark with mountains or, more truthfully, to reform Pashtun culture to Western standards. The “mission transition” AKA “retreat” left Afghanistan without the hardware mod cons that, with the software – an enlightened Afghans populace... Read More
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Fear and Loathing in Washington
The Biden Administration’s Crimes Against Humanity
•�February 22, 2022
•�1,500 Words •�231 Comments • Reply
One can frequently disagree with government policies without necessarily regarding them with disgust, but the Joe Biden Administration has turned that corner, first with its senseless promotion of a new Cold War that could turn hot with Russia and, more recently, with its actions undertaken to undermine and punish Afghanistan. The fact that the White... Read More
Will the Islamic World Save Afghanistan?
•�December 21, 2021
•�1,100 Words •�23 Comments • Reply
Afghanistan was at the heart of the 17th Extraordinary Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers representing 57 nations at the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). It was up to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to deliver the keynote address to the session, held on 19 December at the Parliament House in Islamabad. And he... Read More
Our Rulers Can be as Barbaric as the Taliban
•�December 17, 2021
•�1,800 Words •�191 Comments • Reply
Look what they do to heritage. This video is available on BitChute and Odysee. Do you remember the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan? They were carved out of the stone of a cliffside in central Afghanistan more than 1,400 years ago. The Taliban blew them up in 2001. Here is the larger of the two, which... Read More
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Afghanistan: Between Pipelines and ISIS-K, the Americans Are Still in Play
•�November 10, 2021
•�1,400 Words •�67 Comments • Reply
Something quite extraordinary happened in early November in Kabul. Taliban interim-Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov got together to discuss a range of political and economic issues. Most importantly, they resurrected the legendary soap opera which in the early 2000s I dubbed Pipelineistan: the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline. Call it... Read More
Daesh Terror in Afghanistan: A Divide-and-Conquer Operation?
•�October 24, 2021
•�1,100 Words •�16 Comments • Reply
On Friday, October 15, more than thirty people were killed in a terrorist bombing of the Bibi Fatima mosque in Kandahar, Afghanistan. A week earlier, on October 8, a terrorist bomb devastated the Sayed Abad mosque in Kunduz, killing dozens of people and wounding more than 150. The previous Monday, at least seven people died... Read More
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From Russia, with (Taliban) Love
An Afghan bombshell in Moscow today: 'the country's reconstruction must be paid for by its military occupiers of 20 years.'
•�October 21, 2021
•�1,000 Words •�73 Comments • Reply
Facing high expectations, a five-man band Taliban finally played in Moscow. Yet the star of the show, predictably, was the Mick Jagger of geopolitics: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Right from the start, Lavrov set the tone for the Moscow format consultations, which boast the merit of “uniting Afghanistan with all neighboring countries.” Without skipping... Read More
Afghanistan: Chinese Uyghur Responsible for Savage ISIS-K Suicide Bombing; Taliban and Turkey Accuse CIA of Creating Group
•�October 14, 2021
•�600 Words •�22 Comments • Reply
Afghanistan's ISIS-K has identified the suicide bomber behind last weeks gruesome suicide attack on a Shiite mosque, "Muhammad al-Uyghuri," a member of China's Uyghur population that the United States has in recent years claimed is being oppressed by Beijing. The bombing in Afghanistan's Kunduz province killed up to 80 people and injured 143 others and... Read More
Taliban Fashion and Why It Matters
•�October 8, 2021
•�800 Words •�Leave a Comment
The British tabloid The Daily Mail is taking small-arms fire for publishing an article bearing the headline: "It's the trendy Taliban! Young fighters accessorize their traditional clothes with sunglasses, stylish trainers and own-branded baseball caps — while cracking down on Western dressing." Though the piece took note of the brutal comportment of Afghanistan's new and... Read More
Who Lost Afghanistan? H.R.
•�October 1, 2021
•�900 Words •�9 Comments • Reply
Congress, the media and many voters are asking military officials this week: How did we lose the Afghanistan War? I've been reading a book, "The Afghanistan Papers," by Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock, that shows how America messed up its longest war. (Every now and then, corporate media hypes something that's actually worth reading.) What... Read More
Fiercely independent, the Pashtun have famously lived for centuries on \"the margins of Great Empires,\" evolving into more sophisticated renditions, but never far from their roots. Photo Credit: The Cradle
The Pashtun Will Outlast All Empires, But Can They Hold Afghanistan's Center?
•�September 30, 2021
•�2,500 Words •�51 Comments • Reply
It was bound to happen: the remixed Saigon moment at Kabul airport and the stunning comeback of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, led by Pashtuns, has unleashed across the West a cheap Orientalization avalanche. The whole of Afghanistan is now “threatened” by the return of the “barbarians.” Once again, Afghan women need to be protected,... Read More
Afghanistan: Where's the Cash?
•�September 27, 2021
•�600 Words •�6 Comments • Reply
Afghanistan’s US-run government was the world’s largest producer and exporter of opium, morphine, and the end-product, heroin. As it did after first seizing power in the mid-1990’s, Taliban, the Islamic anti-drug and anti-communist movement, is shutting down the Afghan drug trade. Billions worth of heroin, opium and morphine that had been flowing into Central Asia,... Read More
Taliban Cops Aren't as Bad as American Cops
•�September 24, 2021
•�800 Words •�12 Comments • Reply
Journalism needs a new rule. Are you reporting about a human rights violation in another country? If the United States commits the same offense, you should be required to refer to that fact in your article or broadcast. Criticizing how a nation treats its prisoners or responds to internal dissent implies that the behavior being... Read More
A Letter to the Taliban
and •�September 22, 2021
•�2,700 Words •�5 Comments • Reply
On the demand for an “all inclusive government” Imagine if the French revolutionaries were asked to retain the elements of the kingdom of Louis XVI while forming the new republic to keep it all ‘inclusive’. Imagine that the American revolutionaries were asked to keep the British loyalists as a part of the new American republic... Read More
No, Lara Logan, Only Simpletons Think Afghanistan Is Simple
•�September 16, 2021
•�1,000 Words •�25 Comments • Reply
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson appears in thrall to Lara Logan’s political observations—to her “philosophical” meditations, too. Although treated as a Delphic oracle of sorts; Logan is no Roger Scruton. You might have heard Logan claim, recently and repetitively, that everything in the world is simple. “Everything is simple,” she keeps intoning in her appearances on... Read More
9/11: A U.S. Deep State Insider Speaks…
•�September 11, 2021
•�400 Words •�51 Comments • Reply
9/11: A U.S. DEEP STATE INSIDER SPEAKS Old school. Top clearance. Extremely discreet. Attended secret Deep State meetings on 9-11. Tired of all the lies. The following is what’s fit to print without being redacted. Part 1 THE PHONE CALL. Up next. “An emergency phone conference was held in the early afternoon of 9/11 based... Read More
Massoud leaving Bazarak in the Panjshir after our interview in August 2001, roughly three weeks before his assassination. Photo: Pepe Escobar
9/9 and 9/11, 20 Years Later
•�September 9, 2021
•�2,000 Words •�95 Comments • Reply
It’s impossible not to start with the latest tremor in a series of stunning geopolitical earthquakes. Exactly 20 years after 9/11 and the subsequent onset of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), the Taliban will hold a ceremony in Kabul to celebrate their victory in that misguided Forever War. Four key exponents of Eurasia integration... Read More
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9/11 Afghanistan
•�September 9, 2021
•�2,800 Words •�94 Comments • Reply
Closing the circle, completing Gestalt, opening a new chapter – any simile you like, but choosing 9/11 for inauguration day calls for a heavy-duty sense of humour. This is what the Taliban decided. Their new government, the first in 20 years to rule from Kabul, will be inaugurated on 9/11. They decided to troll Uncle... Read More
Government Failure Is the New Normal: Blaming the Spies Means Never Any Accountability
•�September 9, 2021
•�2,100 Words •�29 Comments • Reply
I find as a general rule that sweeping generalizations coming out of the media and punditry about anything are frequently wrong. As a former intelligence officer, I find it amusing to read articles in the mainstream media that blithely report how the latest international outrages are undoubtedly the work of CIA and the rest of... Read More
Empire’s Soldiers Head to Afghanistan to Defend The Homeland and Their Homeboys
•�September 9, 2021
•�800 Words •�29 Comments • Reply
Fox News celebrity anchors and their tough-talking guests continue to trip over one another to talk up the wonders of our Afghan allies and the legions of Afghan Americans who have American citizenship, but happen to hang out a lot in Afghanistan. It’s a terrible affront, they all say, that America has failed to lift... Read More
What to Expect from Taliban 2.0
•�September 8, 2021
•�1,600 Words •�13 Comments • Reply
The announcement by Taliban spokesman Zahibullah Mujahid in Kabul of the acting cabinet ministers in the new caretaker government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan already produced a big bang: it managed to enrage both woke NATOstan and the US Deep State. This is an all-male, overwhelmingly Pashtun (there’s one Uzbek and one Tajik) cabinet... Read More
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Why Have Embassies?
Taliban want to talk but US is reluctant
•�September 7, 2021
•�1,400 Words •�94 Comments • Reply
President Joe Biden’s departure from Afghanistan was the right thing to do even if it was handled disastrously. And he now has the opportunity to do some other “right things” that are in some ways related to the recently concluded fiasco in Central Asia in that the White House for too long has believed that... Read More
Why the Taliban Still Can’t Form a Government
•�September 3, 2021
•�900 Words •�8 Comments • Reply
It looked like everything was set for the Taliban to announce the new government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan after this Friday’s afternoon prayers. But then internal dissent prevailed. That was compounded by the adverse optics of a ragtag “resistance” in the Panjshir Valley that is still not subdued. The “resistance” is de facto... Read More
US Has Devised a Way of Waging War That Inevitably Leads to Failure
•�September 3, 2021
•�1,000 Words •�20 Comments • Reply
An ill-judged attempt to find out who is to blame for failing to predict the swift victory of the Taliban and the disintegration of Afghan government forces is masking the most significant strategic lessons of the Afghan war. Turning points in history usually come by surprise because, if the powers-that-be of the day could see... Read More
Cacophony and Confusion in Foreign Policy
•�September 3, 2021
•�900 Words •�68 Comments • Reply
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed Congress on Dec. 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the country was united behind him. The America First Committee, the largest anti-war movement in our history, which had the backing of President Herbert Hoover and future Presidents John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford, was... Read More
Afghanistan Recessional: Will It Lead to a War with Iran?
•�September 2, 2021
•�1,000 Words •�133 Comments • Reply
The evacuation of Americans and at least some vulnerable Afghans from Kabul has ended without further mishap, though questions remain about who might have been left behind in the poorly planned and executed operation. A badly damaged President Joe Biden has sought to regain the high ground by swearing vengeance against the presumed perpetrators of... Read More
Vetting Afghan Immigrants for a Religious Comorbidity (Islam)
•�September 2, 2021
•�1,000 Words •�9 Comments • Reply
Establishing a functioning centralized state in Afghanistan didn't work. Neither did the backend Deep State take in that country: Corruption runs deep in Afghanistan, but it's a decentralized affair. Even so, it would appear that the "U.S. government helped the country set up" a mini-American Surveillance State, namely, "the ability to wiretap and monitor phone... Read More
Fatima, Maliha and Nouria
Back to the Future: Talibanistan, Year 2000
•�August 31, 2021
•�3,400 Words •�42 Comments • Reply
Dear reader: this is very special, a trip down memory lane like no other: back to prehistoric times - the pre-9/11, pre-YouTube, pre-social network world. Welcome to Taliban Afghanistan – Talibanistan – in the Year 2000. This is when photographer Jason Florio and myself slowly crossed it overland from east to west, from the Pakistani... Read More
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Final US Troops Leave Afghanistan, War Officially Over, Taliban Officially Won
•�August 31, 2021
•�1,000 Words •�173 Comments • Reply
It’s just really amazing that after fighting a war for 20 years, the US military was incapable of planning an exit wherein everyone came out of the country. RT: That soldier who got fired for asking questions asked how it was possible to not plan to get everyone out. We still don’t have an answer... Read More
Enduring Terror Forever: From al-Qaeda to ISIS-K
•�August 30, 2021
•�1,200 Words •�10 Comments • Reply
It was 20 years ago today. Asia Times published Get Osama! Now! Or Else...The rest is history. Retrospectively, this sounds like news from another galaxy. Before Planet 9/11. Before GWOT (Global War on Terror). Before the Forever Wars. Before the social network era. Before the Russia-China strategic partnership. Before the Dronification of State Violence. Before... Read More
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Blowback: Taliban Target US Intel's Shadow Army
•�August 29, 2021
•�1,700 Words •�99 Comments • Reply
So we have the CIA Director William Burns deploying in haste to Kabul to solicit an audience with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar, the new potential ruler of a former satrapy. And he literally begs him to extend a deadline on the evacuation of US assets. The answer is a resounding “no.” After all, the... Read More
Who Profits from the Kabul Suicide Bombing?
•�August 27, 2021
•�1,500 Words •�150 Comments • Reply
The horrific Kabul suicide bombing introduces an extra vector in an already incandescent situation: It aims to prove, to Afghans and to the outside world, that the nascent Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is incapable of securing the capital. As it stands, at least 103 people – 90 Afghans (including at least 28 Taliban) and 13... Read More
What Will the Taliban Do? It's Up to Us
•�August 27, 2021
•�800 Words •�16 Comments • Reply
How will the Taliban govern Afghanistan? It may be up to us. The U.S. is out, but what the Biden administration and its Western allies do in the weeks and months ahead will have a big influence on whether the Central Asian country reverts to the insular, medieval barbarism of the 1990s or modernizes in... Read More
In Afghanistan, the Worst Is Yet to Come
•�August 27, 2021
•�800 Words •�55 Comments • Reply
Say what you will about President Joe Biden, he has stuck to his guns on ending America's 20-year involvement in Afghanistan's forever war. His decision not to delay our departure after Aug. 31 was fortified by hard intel that the terrorist ISIS-K was preparing attacks at Kabul airport. Thursday evening, the two bomb attacks occurred.... Read More
The Taliban Will Escape Pariah Status by Posing as the Enemy of Isis
•�August 27, 2021
•�1,200 Words •�58 Comments • Reply
The slaughter of at least 79 Afghan civilians and 13 American servicemen at Kabul airport has propelled the Afghan offshoot of Isis to the top of the news agenda, as it was intended to do. The movement showed with one ferocious assault, at a time and place guaranteeing maximum publicity, that it intends to be... Read More
Here Come the Terrorists. Again
•�August 26, 2021
•�1,300 Words •�140 Comments • Reply
President Joe Biden is being praised in some circles because he finally ended the war in Afghanistan that in all likelihood should never have begun. President George W. Bush initiated the conflict on a series of lies about 9/11 and the Taliban role in that attack and what followed. After bringing about regime change, he... Read More
Afghanistan: State Department Still Doesn’t Know Shiite from Shinola
•�August 26, 2021
•�1,000 Words •�9 Comments • Reply
With the American media as master of ceremonies, pundits and politicians—all partners in the neocon-neoliberal joint venture in Afghanistan—are barking mad over the images coming out of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, and the reality these optics portend. Naturally, media “reporting” from Afghanistan is nothing but an unremitting sentimental gush, aimed at creating... Read More
� Earlier Items �
"Taliban" Items Across Entire Archive
PastClassics
American Pravda: Oddities of the Jewish Religion •�55m ▶
The Surprising Elements of Talmudic Judaism
•�1,661 Comments • Reply
The 7 Tribes of Intellect
•�157 Comments • Reply
What Race Were the Greeks and Romans?
The evidence is clear — but often ignored
•�609 Comments • Reply
American Pravda: Understanding World War II •�2h31m ▶
The Shaping Event of Our Modern World
•�1,488 Comments • Reply
American Pravda: Holocaust Denial •�2h8m ▶
Analyzing the History of a Controversial Movement
•�2,327 Comments • Reply
American Pravda: Mossad Assassinations
The JFK Assassination and the 9/11 Attacks?
•�1,093 Comments • Reply