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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Every week, a few of our favourite writers read out their articles from the latest issue.

First, we'll be joined by the former intelligence officer

Andy Owen about what we can learn from our mistakes in Afghanistan. He had spent some time

in Helmand. Then spectator columnist Mary Wakefield joins the podcast and she talks about the

rise in neighbourhood crime and an app called Next Door. And finally Toby Young explores the

bizarre phenomenon of shrinking suits in lockdown.

First up, it's Andy Owen. After two tours of Iraq as a soldier, I spent six months in Afghanistan

in 2007 as part of Operation Herrick 6. My deployment came a year after the then Defence Secretary, John Reid,

said we would be perfectly happy to leave the country in three years time without firing one shot.

However, the very first night I arrived in Lashkar, the capital of Helmand, troops were battling the Taliban across the province,

with thousands of shots fired every day.

Plans would be made about how we would evacuate our camp if it was overrun.

Today, 14 years on, as the final US troops depart, left behind a more than 47,000 dead Afghan civilians,

more than 3,500 dead soldiers from the coalition and a country on the cusp of civil war. Lashkar will probably become one of the first major cities to fall to the resurgent Taliban.

The war on terror is yesterday's news, politicians say, having been replaced by the return of great

power rivalries. The rise of China, Russia's disinformation

war and the increase in cyber warfare are the issues that now dominate. George W. Bush's

misguided war in Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9-11 now seems as much a part of history as the Victorian

great game. For many, do not intervene is the

...