World

Tuesday

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Is Japan about to enter a ‘London-style lockdown’?

Just like the Olympics, which ended a fortnight ago, the Paralympics is set to commence amid a drumbeat of doom. Japan appears to be in the middle of a Covid renaissance, with around 5,000 new cases a day in Tokyo. The games will take place, like the Olympics, in a ‘state of emergency’ that now covers 84 per cent of the country. But how serious is the situation, and what exactly does 5,000 daily cases mean? Like much of the vaccinated world, the majority of the afflicted this time round appear to be younger people and overall deaths in Japan remain extremely low. It is at least as much a

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Pakistan’s masochistic support for the Taliban

Taliban flags are already flying in Islamabad. Among those hoisting the white flag of the group is the women’s madrassa Jamia Hafsa, affiliated with the adjoining Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), which has also released a song celebrating the Taliban as ‘the symbol of Islam’. Lal Masjid, a few miles from Pakistan’s military headquarters and parliament, has been an emblem of terror and factory of jihad in Pakistan since its formation in the 1960s. The Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Aziz has in the past pledged allegiance to Isis and appeared to defend the 2014 Peshawar school attack which killed 141, mostly schoolchildren. When the army moved against Lal Masjid in 2007

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Boris Johnson’s Macron-esque pettiness

How we all hollered with outrage in May when Emmanuel Macron closed France’s borders to people arriving from Britain on the dubious basis that Britons, and Britons alone, were in danger of infecting France with the Indian variant. I believed, and I still believe, that Macron and his government were in part motivated by Brexit — it was part of our ongoing punishment for daring to vote to leave the EU. It certainly wasn’t justified on scientific grounds: if Briton had more recorded Indian variant (or Delta) cases than other European countries at the time it was largely thanks to more samples of Covid being sequenced here. Some countries, France

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Germany is facing political stagnation

Jamaica, Germany, Kenya or traffic lights? The names of the potential German coalitions — and their corresponding party colours — can be quite exotic. But as the vote has begun to split in the run up to the federal elections next month, the possible combinations that will make up Germany’s government have grown. The race is still wide open. Coalitions were purposefully built into Germany’s post-war democracy — the voting system mixes first-past-the-post with proportional representation to ensure a workable splintering. With one notable exception in 1957, no political party has received the votes of over half of the electorate outright. It usually falls to the party with the most

Sunday

Dominic Green Dominic Green

The buck stops with Biden

Joe Biden is unfit to be President of the United States. It was obvious when he was running for office that he lacks the physical stamina and mental acuity for the job. It has become increasingly obvious since January that the part-time President has either hidden from the media or stumbled through the kind of scripted press conferences that Americans rightly used to deride as the hallmark of banana republics. The handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan has exposed Biden’s incapacity. The painful truth is now undeniable. He must go — even if that means Kamala Harris, who has been similarly wrong about Afghanistan and much else besides, taking over.

Ian Williams Ian Williams

China’s Great Game in Afghanistan

China greeted America’s chaotic retreat from Afghanistan and the Taliban seizure of power with a mixture of glee and trepidation. Its well-oiled propaganda machine has revelled in the fall of Kabul, but Beijing is fretting over the threat of instability on its doorstep – and there is a very real possibility that China will become next power sucked into the ‘graveyard of empires’. The humbling of the United States in Afghanistan fits nicely into the Chinese narrative of American decline, but Beijing has also used the withdrawal to pile pressure on Taiwan, warning the self-governing democratic island that Washington is an unreliable ally. ‘Afghanistan today, Taiwan tomorrow,’ ran a headline

Karan Thapar

My love for old Kabul

They say the city you most fondly remember is the one you grew up in. In my case that’s Kabul. I spent my formative years in the Afghan capital in the mid-1960s. It was a very different time and Afghanistan a very different country. But the Kabul that’s imprinted on my mind belongs to that decade. It was a happy city. No other description does it justice. Of course, it was poor, conservative and hierarchical but people were always smiling. They were warm, welcoming, courteous and generous. This was most obvious in their attitude to children. Everyone called me ‘bacho’. When Mummy took me out, shopkeepers would slip Hershey’s chocolates

David Loyn David Loyn

Panjshir valley and the last resistance to the Taliban

The Panjshir valley, about three hours’ drive north of Kabul, has a mythical hold on the Afghan imagination. It is a natural fortress, a long lemon-shaped valley surrounded on three sides by 13,000-foot-high mountain ridges, with the only entrance a narrow road in a deep winding gorge to the south, cut by the Panjshir river. It is a place of stunning beauty, with green fields either side of the river laden with apple blossom in the spring, irrigated by ingenious canals. The walls between the fields, and sometimes the houses themselves, are buttressed with rusting metal war remains – the wheels of a tracked vehicle, armour plating, bridges formed of

Paul Hunter

New Zealand’s zero Covid strategy is becoming unsustainable

New Zealand has done remarkably well over the past 18 months at protecting its citizens from the worst of the Covid pandemic – better than almost any other country in the world. Only 26 people have died of Covid in the country, after it has aggressively locked down at the first sign of a case and closed off its borders to the rest of the world. But as we have recently learned in Afghanistan, an exit strategy can easily undermine all your previous achievements. New Zealand is now in a very difficult situation. It is currently facing its first outbreak of the Delta variant, but only a small proportion of

Hannah Barratt

How the gender debate is dividing Germany

Pronoun politics can be something of a minefield. But if you think the gender debate is confusing, spare a thought for our German cousins. The quirks of the language make it hard to avoid causing offence, even for those determined to tread carefully. German, as with French and Spanish, has different noun endings for masculine and feminine words. For example, eine Ärztin specifically refers to a female doctor and ein Arzt to a male doctor. The masculine form is used most frequently and as a sort of gender catch-all. And it’s here that the issue arises. The language has, to be fair, adapted to cater for modern sensitivities. In modern

Saturday

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Lara Prendergast, Cindy Yu and Gus Carter

17 min listen

On this week’s episode, Lara Prendergast asks if it’s so wrong to talk about whether the Covid vaccine affects periods. (01:05) Cindy Yu says China’s ‘zero Covid’ strategy can’t last. (06:50) And finally, Gus Carter spends an hour in a sensory deprivation tank. (13:05)

Pratik Jakhar

China’s zero Covid strategy is being undermined by mahjong

Mao Zedong once said that the game of mahjong should not be underestimated, because: ‘If you know how to play it, you’ll have a better understanding of the relationship between chance and necessity. There’s philosophy in mahjong. It’s also dialectical… even if you have the worst hand, as long as you are strategic and methodical, the inferior will become superior; weakness will become strength.’ He even claimed the tile-based game was one of China’s three ‘great contributions’ to the world. Ironically, mahjong was outlawed under his rule. The early communists viewed it as an unnecessary distraction for the masses, and disliked its links to gambling and capitalism. It was not

Saqib Qureshi

Defence contractors were the real winners in Afghanistan

The fall of Kabul, like the fall of Saigon, will be taught in classrooms for decades to come. But the dramatic images coming out of Afghanistan don’t necessarily hail the beginning of a post-American world. If America learns the right lessons, it has the chance to pursue a more sustainable foreign policy. One lesson it could learn is to stop outsourcing its war-making and foreign policy to overpaid private firms. In a less politically correct era, these groups would be called what they really are: mercenaries. The corruption and graft expended on contracts of dubious value is legendary. In one episode, some £20 million was spent on forest camouflage for

Rodric Braithwaite

Afghanistan and the end of the American hegemony

We used to sneer at the way the Russians were chased out of Afghanistan by a ragtag of mujaheddin armed only with Kalashnikovs and American Stinger rockets. No longer.  The last superpower to be defeated in Afghanistan withdrew in good order, having negotiated the arrangements with Kabul and the mujaheddin. They left behind a competent government, and an Afghan army capable of fighting the mujaheddin to a standstill. That government survived as long as the Russians went on supplying food and ammunition. Then the Russian government, close to meltdown, stopped deliveries. The mujaheddin swept to victory and fell straight into a bloody civil war. Many Afghans were relieved when the

Dan Hitchens

Will Alta Fixsler be allowed to die at home?

If your severely disabled two-year-old daughter is dying, should you be allowed to take her home for her final hours? It sounds like the answer should be a simple ‘yes’. But in the law surrounding parents, children and healthcare, nothing is that simple. Alta Fixsler’s parents have been repeatedly thwarted in their efforts – as they see it – to do their best for their daughter. First, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust sought to withdraw life-saving treatment for Alta. A judge subsequently agreed that it was in Alta’s ‘best interests for the treatment that is currently sustaining her precious life…to be withdrawn’. This was in spite of her parents seeking to

Friday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Will China become Afghanistan’s new sponsor?

36 min listen

Last month, the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi welcomed senior Taliban leaders to Beijing, standing shoulder to shoulder for the photographers. China is carefully watching events unfold in Afghanistan. And while it hasn’t yet recognised the Taliban government, the Beijing meeting was a nod towards a potential alliance. But replacing America in Afghanistan wouldn’t be without its risks – can Beijing succeed where Washington failed? America’s 20 year mission in the country cost lives and money. And what would a closer alliance mean for China’s Xinjiang policy, considering the close links that the Taliban has historically had with militant Uyghur groups? I speak to Tom Miller, author of China’s Asian

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France is nervous about welcoming a wave of Afghan refugees

Emmanuel Macron has once more infuriated many in France, but this time it has nothing to do with Covid passports or mandatory vaccination. In an address to the nation this week, the president discussed the disturbing scenes from Kabul as the Taliban invaded the capital of Afghanistan. France, he said, would be a haven for those Afghans ‘who share our values’ but nevertheless the country must ‘anticipate and protect ourselves against significant irregular migratory flows that would endanger the migrants and risk encouraging trafficking of all kinds.’ His rhetoric went down badly with much of the French left. ‘Sordid’ was how two MPs of La France Insoumise summed up the

Daniel DePetris

Europe has been a helpless bystander in Afghanistan

America’s allies in Europe understood months before President Joe Biden’s fateful April speech to the American people that a full and complete US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan was a very real possibility. Biden talked about the urgency of getting the United States out of what he termed ‘forever war’ conflicts which required tens of billions of dollars a year (not to mention thousands of US troops on the ground) to maintain. Indeed, anybody who bothered to pay attention to Biden’s words for even a moment recognised the phrase was intrinsically tied to the war in Afghanistan, which had outlasted three consecutive presidents, resulted in the deaths of over 2,440 US

Katherine Bayford

How America failed to learn its lessons from Vietnam

The hasty withdrawal from Kabul has inevitably been compared to the Fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war. Pictures of a Chinook flying over the US embassy in the Afghan capital to pluck staff to safety did bear something of a resemblance to the airlift of 1975. But is the comparison fair? Joe Biden, at least, has been keen – for understandable reasons – to deny that Afghanistan is anything like Vietnam. A month ago, Biden told a reporter he saw ‘zero’ parallel between the Vietnamese and Afghan withdrawals: ‘The Taliban is not the same as the North Vietnamese army. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of

Thursday

Antonio Giustozzi

The Afghan state was dying before the Taliban took over

To understand how Afghanistan is going to change in the future, you have to first understand what the ‘Islamic Republic’ established by the United States was like. Even before the Taliban took over, Afghanistan’s democracy had been deteriorating for some time, with three presidential elections in a row ending in bitter controversies over vote rigging, manipulation and fraud on a massive scale. The parliamentary elections attracted less attention but were no less controversial. Voter participation had declined constantly and in 2019, when the latest elections were held, turnout probably did not exceed 10 per cent, although it is hard to know the exact figure. Persistent insecurity and high levels of