Afghanistan Archive

Last week, just two days after U.S. President Joe Biden announced his decision to withdraw the last U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the humanitarian community commemorated the death of Marla Ruzicka, a humanitarian hero from the early years of the war there. A college student when the Twin Towers fell, Marla recognized that the U.S. invasion would weigh hard on civilians, and rather than watch from afar, she bought herself a ticket to Afghanistan to do something about it. Landing in Kabul, Marla set about making friends with U.S. soldiers, expatriate aid workers and local Afghans alike. More […]

Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden announced his decision to fully withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan by Sept.11. After 20 years and two generations of American service members fighting there, America’s longest war will come to an end. What will the legacy of that war be for the U.S. military? And will it have a lasting impact on American society? In this week’s big picture Trend Lines interview, Andrew Exum joins WPR editor-in-chief Judah Grunstein to discuss those questions and more. Exum is a partner at Hakluyt & Company, a global advisory firm. He began his career as an officer […]

When U.S. President Joe Biden announced his decision last week to fully withdraw American troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021, he justified it in part by pointing to an agreement signed by the Trump administration committing the U.S. to withdrawing by May 1. But he spent more time highlighting the disconnect between the original reasons the U.S. deployed its military to Afghanistan and the reasons now being used to justify its continued presence. “War in Afghanistan,” he said, “was never meant to be a multi-generational undertaking.” And yet, as Biden acknowledged in his speech, that is just what the […]

After two decades of a war that started out with what he called clear objectives and a just cause, President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he would withdraw the last remaining American troops from Afghanistan. In a 15-minute speech from the White House Treaty Room, where then-President George W. Bush informed the nation in October 2001 of the first U.S. airstrikes against al-Qaida training camps, Biden declared, “I’m now the fourth United States President to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan: two Republicans, two Democrats. I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth.” How he inherited the […]