Is America's Longest War Over? With Dr. Sadia Abbas and Dr. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi

<p>In this episode, SWANA collective members David Lloyd and Rana Sharif speak with our guests &nbsp;Professors Sadia Abbas of Rutgers University in New Jersey and Shah Mahmoud Hanifi of James Madison University. They discuss the historical background to this latest war in and on Afghanistan, the continuing colonial and orientalist stereotypes that have fueled and legitimated it, its consequences for the region, and in particular Pakistan, where the Taliban’s victory has been greeted both with celebration and anxiety about its possible knock-on effects on a state whose military intelligence has consistently funded and supported the Taliban while also facing the rise of insurgent groups within its own borders.</p> <p>The Biden administration announced late on the night of August 30 the official end of America’s longest war, that is, the twenty years of its invasion, occupation and failed counter-insurgency campaign and air and drone warfare. That war, which largely remained under-reported and overlooked in the United States, perhaps because of its relatively low casualty rate for the US military, nonetheless has so far taken the lives of more than 47,000 civilians and some 66,000 Afghan military and police, whom Biden accused of not being willing to fight for their country, as well as some 50,000 Taliban and other opposition fighters. It has also left once again a destabilized Afghanistan, a prey to as much as a haven for global terrorist organizations, and a nation and a region facing a future that is uncertain except for the certainty that it will entail further violence and further suffering, possibly including famine and extreme and enduring poverty. Biden declared the withdrawal of “boots on the ground”, but he has insisted that the war on terror is not over: one thing is certain, which is that the United States will continue its wars and incursions in Afghanistan and throughout the SWANA Region, even if the mode of that warfare will increasingly be air war rather than by occupying troops. ​</p> <p><strong>Sa