© AP Photo / Allauddin Khan
More than 17 years after US troops entered Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban, a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist political movement, the country is still in a state of disarray.
Ahmed Rashid, a journalist and the best-selling author of "
Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan" and several books on Afghanistan and Central Asia, including "
The Resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or Nationalism," joined
Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear Tuesday to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.
"It's very depressing, quite frankly," Rashid told hosts John Kiriakou and Brian Becker, referring to the fact Afghanistan has for a long time been in a state of political turmoil, with the government unable to establish full control over the country's territory due to various terrorist factions.
In 2017, after extremely tenuous efforts by Afghanistan's national army to thwart terrorist attacks, US President Donald Trump announced a resolution to send more troops to the war-torn state, while also appealing to NATO members to assist by increasing the numbers of their servicemen present in the war zone.
"I think a lot of advice was given to the Americans when they first came into Afghanistan, especially on reconstruction, rehabilitation by people like myself try to give the [then-US President George W.] Bush administration a proper direction.
Unfortunately, they did not take that advice. Of course, the biggest mistake they made is going into Iraq; and, of course, by doing so, they took away the best American troops and forces from Afghanistan to Iraq, and those troops never returned for another seven to eight years later, when [then-US President Barack] Obama sent in troops," Rashid said.
Comment: Russia has tried to blunt some of the propaganda value of this latest attack by publicizing the information it had about terrorist preparations for such an incident. The jihadis themselves only reinforced Russia's stance with a (presumably) non-approved attack. However, the Empire's grip on the mainstream media denies this information to its subjects.