Long read: before and after the towers:Afghanistan’s forty-year crisis

A newly published special issue of LSE Public Policy Review aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the deeper reasons for the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, covering the whole period from the Soviet invasion of December 1979 through to the final western withdrawal in August 2021. Here Michael Cox introduces the discussions of how the Taliban finally triumphed and what this means for Afghan society. He discusses how competing actors in the international system have reacted to the Taliban takeover; whether the West’s withdrawal represented a major or only a temporary setback for NATO and the United States; and why for the foreseeable future there is not likely to be any improvement in the situation in Afghanistan.