Afghans have endured 40 years of uninterrupted war, and there is no plausible argument that war will soon end. In all the debate about troop surges or maintaining the status quo, two critical questions rarely get asked: Why have Afghans been at war for so long, and why can’t the United States and the international community end it? Some of the obvious answers include an incompetent Afghan government and security force, rebel sanctuaries in the mountains and in Pakistan, and the lucrative and illicit opium trade. Almost entirely ignored, however, is the role played by the decades of...
War State, Trauma State: Why Afghanistan Remains Stuck in Conflict
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