2026-08-17
9 分钟Hello, this is Rosie Bloor, co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
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Five years ago, President Joe Biden pulled American troops out of Afghanistan.
He was not forced to.
America could have defended Afghanistan's flawed but democratically elected government indefinitely, but chose not to.
Voters were weary of America's longest war against the Taliban, a militia that controlled much of the countryside.
Donald Trump set a timetable for pulling out.
Mr Biden did so completely.
America's looming departure prompted every Afghan with a gun to revise
their expectations about who was likely to win their country's civil war.
Warlords switched sides.
Government soldiers abandoned their posts and melted away.
The government fell almost immediately.
The Taliban seized power almost unopposed.
Desperate civilians fleeing their new rulers clung to the wheels
of a departing American plane and plunged to their deaths.
The Taliban, whose name means religious students,
had first seized power in 1996 and imposed a brutal blend of Islamism and pre-modern tribal custom.