Afghanistan: The Legacies of Withdrawal

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In August 2021, after 20 years of military presence, the United States withdrew the last of their troops from Afghanistan. With chaos quickly ensuring and the world seeing images of desperate parents handing infants to evacuating forces, and civilians trying to force their way onto evacuation flights - the world's eyes were on Afghanistan as the Taliban took control. But two years later, what's Afghanistan like for the people who live there now, and did the US withdrawal set off a chain reaction of military events around the world?

In this episode, James welcomes back Dr Mike Martin to the podcast, to give an update on Afghanistan today. As a British Officer who served in Afghanistan, and now a Senior Visiting Fellow at Kings, Mike gives a detailed insight into the conflicts in the region today, and helps us to understand exactly what happened on that chaotic day two years ago.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	In August 2021, 2021, the United States withdrew the last of its troops from Afghanistan
0:06.4	ending its military presence there after nearly 20 years.
0:10.3	The US exit from the country resulted in the Taliban regaining control
0:14.0	leading to the undoing of two decades of effort that costs thousands of lives.
0:19.0	I'm your host, James Patton Rogers, this is warfare,
0:22.0	and to mark two years since the chaotic withdrawal,
0:25.4	I've invited Dr Mike Martin back onto the podcast. Mike is a former British Army officer
0:30.2	who served in Afghanistan and a senior visiting fellow of war studies at
0:34.3	King's College London. He's also the author of a new book, How to Fight a War.
0:38.8	Between us we investigate the failures in Afghanistan, we debate the current state of the country and we talk about the larger
0:46.4	international security implications of this seeming American and coalition
0:50.9	failure to secure a lasting victory and peace in Afghanistan. Hi Mike welcome back to warfare how you doing.
1:08.8	Hey James I'm good how are you? Yeah good. Currently in the midst of a move across the Atlantic over to the US,
1:17.0	but we needed to make time to focus in on this
1:25.0	chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan,
1:29.5	not just American,
1:30.5	probably a bit unfair to pin it in.
1:32.0	It is a coalition withdrawal, although the coalition partners
1:35.0	weren't particularly happy about it at the time. But with all of this in mind, I thought it's important to take stock and to look back at this conflict and also to see what's happened since that withdrawal back in 2021.
1:48.0	But Mike, you served in Afghanistan as an officer in the British Army. So perhaps you can tell us a little bit about your time there and what the British Army sought to achieve during its time in Afghanistan.
2:00.0	Yeah, so I spent two years in Helmond, which was a province in the south next to Kandahar, which is the major city in the south.
2:08.8	So I spoke Pushto, I spoke Fluent Pushto, which was the local language, and I was a political officer.
	...

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