This week marks 25 years since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, the beginning of what would become the longest war in U.S. history. After installing a pro-Western government in Kabul in December 2001, U.S. and other NATO troops would remain in the country for the next two decades battling a stubborn insurgency — until a chaotic U.S. withdrawal in August 2021 that saw the Taliban return to power.
“During the 20 years of America’s longest war in Afghanistan, we could clearly see that failure was coming,” says journalist Emran Feroz, just back from a month of reporting in Afghanistan. He says the relative economic and political gains under the Western-backed government were undercut by widespread corruption and violence, particularly in rural Afghanistan. “You had torture prisons next to Burger King and KFC and Starbucks.”
