Research & Commentary Results

A week and a half after the fall of Kabul, the world has yet to fully recover from the shock of how quickly the Ghani regime collapsed. As U.S. and international forces continue their evacuations and many Afghans struggle to leave for Western countries, the formation of a new government in Kabul has picked up pace. The Taliban have been consulting all stakeholders to form a government that has broad support from a variety of Afghan populations — one they say will be “inclusive” and “Islamic” — but what that will actually mean or look like in practice is as yet unclear.

Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.

Charles Lister on what Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban means for the future of al-Qaeda.

“You’re all going to die,” the diminutive, senior U.S. intelligence official observed in matter-of-fact fashion to her stunned Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) hosts. Her rather blunt appraisal was uncharacteristic of the engagement to which the senior Pakistani officials had grown accustomed and cut to the chase: the consequences of decades of Pakistan’s support to the Taliban, violent Kashmiri liberation groups, radical madrassas, and extremist local political groups were coming home to roost.

As Kabul falls to the Taliban, it’s safe to say that this is without a doubt the most significant day for al-Qaeda since 9/11. After two decades of relentless counterterrorism pressure from the United States and allies, al-Qaeda’s central leadership was in dire straits just weeks ago.

Weeks before the official U.S. military withdrawal, Afghanistan is unraveling rapidly as the Taliban continue their swift military advance. They now control more than two-thirds of the country and half of the provincial capitals. With the government’s hold on Kabul in doubt, the Biden administration has dispatched troops to evacuate U.S. citizens from the country. We asked experts and scholars from across MEI to weigh in with their thoughts on the situation and what it means for the country, the wider region, and key international players.

The Afghan government appears to be in a state of precipitous collapse. At least a dozen provincial capitals have fallen to the Taliban in a week. The Taliban now control around 66% of the country.

The debate about whether Afghanistan was worth thousands of U.S. lives and a trillion U.S. taxpayer dollars should have occurred before those lives were lost and the money was spent. The decision to pull out our remaining 2,500 troops was made after all of that was done. That minimal number of troops preserved everything we fought for in the last two decades. We had significantly reduced the risk to our forces and the expense to the U.S. taxpayer. 

The expiration of Israel’s 2003 citizenship law early last month has finally ended the suffering of roughly 30,000 Palestinian families and paved the way for their reunification. Despite the efforts of the Zionist political parties to renew the law, the abstention from voting of the two Arab Palestinian Knesset members from the United Arab List — which, for the first time, is represented in Israel’s new coalition government — blocked the majority needed to extend the long-standing “temporary” law, which subsequently expired on July 6. While this is welcome news for many Palestinian families, the defeat of this notorious law is by no means a panacea. Until there is real change in Israel, Palestinians, both those who are citizens of Israel as well as those in the occupied territories, will continue to face legal obstacles when it comes to obtaining their basic rights.

Despite being largely low-key and limited in nature, ties between pro-Al Qaeda jihadists operating in Indonesia and Syria respectively continue to exist. Recent activity involving Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and other militant Indonesian groups illustrates the potential security risks from this nexus, which should not be overlooked.

The United States and Pakistan have had a complex and often disappointing “love-hate” relationship since 1947 — one severely tested during the 20-year U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan. We believe the time has come for serious policy consideration of whether and how both nations can achieve a more strategically beneficial and sustainable post-intervention relationship between the American and Pakistani governments and their populations

As a Lebanese actor ideologically tied to Iran, Hezbollah has multiple allegiances and objectives that do not always align symmetrically. Hezbollah’s regional activities are a reflection of the group’s increasingly close alignment with Iran, rather than the interests of the Lebanese state or citizenry. Today, Hezbollah’s regional adventurism is most pronounced in its expeditionary forces deployed in Syria and elsewhere in the region, but no less important are the group’s advanced training regimen for other Shi’a militias aligned with Iran, its expansive illicit financing activities across the region, and its procurement, intelligence, cyber, and disinformation activities. Together, these underscore the scale and scope of the group’s all-in approach to transforming from one of several Lebanese militias into a regional player acting at Iran’s behest.

The withdrawal from Afghanistan marks the end of a historic chapter. It involves more than just the conclusion of a drawn-out international military engagement in Afghanistan. Rather, it signals the end of a decades-long phase in which Western militaries placed the broader Middle East and the fight against international terrorism at the center of their strategic attention. With competition between the great powers on the rise, Western militaries have realized their current vulnerabilities vis-à-vis near-peer competitors and the need to shift gears.

It would be an understatement to say that the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Germany has written the book on how to analyze textbooks. The Institute has actually published many books — ones that are meticulous, detailed, and dispassionate. Now the Institute has published one more, this time on Palestinian textbooks.

In a landscape of suppression and retaliation against Palestinian journalists and activists at the hands of Israel, social media networks have been at once critical organizing platforms and tools for exacerbating censorship.