Good, bad and ugly: the Taliban and Afghanistan
The Intelligence from The Economist
The Economist
4.5 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Their return to rule is unequivocally bad for the country’s women and girls. But wholesale collapse has not come and some aspects of government have improved; it turns out threats of grotesque violence change behaviours. We investigate the curious case of Morocco’s absent king—and his unlikely mixed-martial-artist pals. And how the mobile phone has shaped cinema for half a century.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. |
| 0:07.1 | I'm your host, Jason Palmer. |
| 0:09.6 | Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:18.0 | Where is Morocco's King? |
| 0:20.2 | From last year's statistics, the odds are he's abroad somewhere. |
| 0:24.8 | Ever since he fell in with some social media savvy mixed martial artists, he hasn't shown |
| 0:29.6 | the kind of leadership that Moroccans are increasingly clamoring for. |
| 0:35.4 | And from the moment science fiction authors dreamed them up, portable communication devices |
| 0:40.2 | became plot devices. |
| 0:42.4 | But since 1977, when the mobile phone first hit screens, it's been changing plots, characterization, |
| 0:48.9 | even how films are made. |
| 0:55.7 | First up though. |
| 0:59.6 | Right now, in Afghanistan, 28 million people are in need of humanitarian aid, according |
| 1:10.2 | to the UN. |
| 1:11.6 | Three times as many as in 2020. |
| 1:14.4 | Some 97% of Afghans live below the poverty line. |
| 1:18.2 | A bad situation was made much, much worse in August 2021 when American troops suddenly |
| 1:24.6 | withdrew. |
| 1:26.3 | This historic moment, the last US troops have withdrawn from Afghanistan, ending America's |
| 1:31.1 | longest war. |
| 1:32.7 | Military planners had hoped to pass control seamlessly to an elected government in Kabul. |
| 1:39.0 | That failed spectacularly. |
... |
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