Showing 1 - 10 of 12
Syria: It's those jihadis on the march again
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/12/2024
» One week in, the ceasefire in Lebanon seems to be holding, but everything is connected: only three days later, the civil war in Syria started up again after a de facto four-year truce.
Has crunch time arrived for 'Bibi' Netanyahu?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 24/05/2024
» It has not been a good week for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, chief decision-maker in the war in the Gaza Strip that has already cost at least 35,000 civilian deaths. (Some thousands of those 35,000 may have been Hamas fighters.)
Afghanistan faces famine, it can't be ignored
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/02/2022
» Because the Taliban have been designated as "terrorists", it is possible for the United States not only to embargo American aid and trade to Afghanistan, but also to block or at least seriously hinder efforts by other countries to send humanitarian aid. As a result, more than half the country's people -- 23 million at last count -- are suddenly near starvation.
Winter is on the way in Afghanistan
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 10/11/2021
» The first snow of the winter will reach Kabul any day now, and the death rate will start to climb: mostly children, at first, but it will not really be the cold that kills them. The cold will only finish the work that malnutrition began months or years ago -- but the other cause of their deaths will be a different kind of freeze.
Sept 11 didn't change the world forever
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/09/2021
» 'Changed the world forever' is the most hackneyed phrase in journalism, and if you can get through this week (the 20th anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks) without hearing it half a dozen times you'll be very lucky.
Time for a new discourse on Afghanistan
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/09/2021
» A man is sitting in a train somewhere in Europe, tearing sheets of paper into little pieces and throwing them out the window.
Recycled wars of benighted Afghanistan
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/08/2021
» In the year 2000, five years after the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, nobody elsewhere cared what happened in that land-locked, benighted country. It was ruled by angry rural fanatics who tormented the local people with their demented rules for proper "Islamic" behaviour, but it was not a military or diplomatic priority for anybody.
How did they think the Afghan war would end?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/08/2021
» 'I will never kneel before such a destructive force [as the Taliban'," declared Ashraf Ghani, the soon-to-be ex-president of Afghanistan. "We will either sit knee-to-knee for real negotiations at the table, or break their knees on the battlefield."
Biden speaks some sense on Afghanistan
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/04/2021
» 'If they go, we'll all have to go. That's the reality of it," said a British source about President Joe Biden's announcement that the last American troops will be out of Afghanistan by Sept 11, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. (What can possibly have possessed him to choose that date?)
Afghanistan: The same old sell-out
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 12/03/2021
» In an letter to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani last weekend, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken insisted that Mr Ghani agree to share power with the Taliban insurgents in a transitional government, to be followed at some point by some sort of election. Understandably, the Afghan leader views this as a shotgun marriage in which the Taliban will hold the shotgun.