Hello and welcome to the History Extra podcast from BBC History Magazine, Britain's best-selling history magazine.

Britain's best-selling history magazine. I'm Ellie Cawthorne. The Taliban recently regained control of Afghanistan as US forces withdrew after two decades in the country.

Following on from this seismic moment, back in September, we asked a panel of experts how history can help make sense of more recent events in Afghanistan.

Our panellists for this discussion, in the order that you'll hear them speak, are Bijan Amrani of the University of Exeter, writer and historian William Dalrymple, Elizabeth Leake, who's associate professor at the University of Leeds,

and the SOAS historian Rabia Latif Khan. They were speaking to BBC History Magazine, Deputy editor Matt Elton.

How much do you think that we need to understand the longer history of Afghanistan in order to make sense of what's going on at the

moment? I think it's vital. I mean, we think about the length of its history and also a question

very much in people's minds. Its history is a function of its location, its geography, and I mean,

to a certain extent, it's ethnic ethnic makeup and these things are all very

very important because I think they still play a very crucial role in the forces that are acting

on Afghanistan as they did in the past and as they do to this present day the idea that you have

neighbouring regions who I I think, throughout history,

have tried to treat Afghanistan as a frontier territory.

And the fact that the geography of the region doesn't really offer them an easy territory

or an easy line to be a frontier is a real

motive for the way that history has developed in the region and the way the conflicts have

developed from that problem over the question of frontiers between centres of power.

I mean, in the past, between Persia or Iran, between the Central Asian

states, and between India, and lastly, between India and Pakistan, that conflict which actually,

I think, spills over into Afghanistan in a very complicated way. Yes, I'd agree with all that.

And I think it's true of anywhere in the world that you can't understand the present unless you understand the past.

You don't know where you are unless you know where you've come from.

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