Afghanistan: A War That Should Never Have Happened
Start: 2021-08-04 18:30:00 UTC British Summer Time (GMT+01:00)
This is a virtual event
As the anti-war movement predicted in 2001 the twenty-year occupation of
Afghanistan, led by the US and Britain, has been a complete
catastrophe. The recent hasty withdrawal of Western forces represents a
devastating defeat for the US and its allies and for the War on Terror
as a whole.
It is a failure that has resulted in the tragic
deaths of over 47,000 civilians, 2,312 US and 454 British troops. It has
also been an extraordinarily expensive tragedy with cost to the British
taxpayer estimated at £40 billion and the US over $1 trillion.
We
cannot allow Western leaders to sweep this catastrophe under the
carpet. As an anti-war movement we must continue to drive home the
lessons of this devastation and do all we can ensure it never happens
again.
Join this discussion as we assess the damage of the
occupation, look at the future for Afghanistan and assess the West’s strategy in the region with:
Tariq Ali is a noted writer
and filmmaker. A veteran of the movement against the war in Vietnam, he
has for decades been one of the most prominent critics of Western
militarism and imperialism. He has written over two-dozen books on world
history and politics—the most recent of which are The Clash of
Fundamentalisms, The Obama Syndrome and The Extreme Centre.
Phyllis
Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC
and has been a political commentator at CNN, PBS News Hour, Democracy
Now etc. She is the author of numerous books on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan,
Palestine and US foreign policy, including Ending the US War in
Afghanistan: A Primer.
Malalai Joya is an activist, writer and
politician from Afghanistan. She served as a Parliamentarian in the
National Assembly of Afghanistan from 2005 until early 2007, after being
dismissed for publicly denouncing the presence of warlords and war
criminals in the Afghan Parliament. She is an outspoken critic of the
Western-backed Afghan administrations that have governed the country
since 2001.