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Hello and welcome to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henwood.

The usual two for today, the journalist Matthew Aikens,

one of the few western reporters still covering Afghanistan,

will talk about the situation in that unlucky country.

And Christina Dunbar-Hester will look at the relationship

of capitalist industry and the natural environment

in and around the ports of Los Angeles.

When the US military left Afghanistan in August 2021,

a process that began under the Trump administration

that was completed by its successor,

the US political class, media, and public lost interest

in the country, one of the poorest and most violent

damaged places in the world.

The desire to forget 20 miserable years is understandable,

but given how much responsibility the US bears for Afghanistan's state,

not just since the war that began in 2001,

but also during the anti-Soviet insurgency

that our government helped sponsor in the 1980s as well,

...