Dr. Lucy Morgan Edwards is a former political advisor to the EU ambassador, Kabul and author of ‘The Afghan Solution; the inside story of Abdul Haq, the CIA and how Western hubris lost Afghanistan’ (2011, Pluto)
As the debacle in Kabul unfolds, in Washington and London the mud slinging about who is to blame is beginning. British Generals are blaming ‘spineless Johnson and Biden’ and the ex military MP, Tom Tugendhat, contends that we should have stayed put. That the spectacular ending of Afghanistan’s brief interlude in ‘Western Liberalism’ appears to
Abdul Haq and the ‘Afghan solution’ Just after September 11 2001, a piece appeared in the London Evening Standard under the headline: ‘Rebel chief begs: Don’t bomb now, Taleban will be gone in a month’. The accompanying photo showed a bearded man shaking hands with a beaming Margaret Thatcher. The man was Abdul Haq, perhaps