PHILOXENIA. Curated by Tessa Szyszkowitz

Tuesday, January 25th 6 pm London, 7 pm Vienna time

Live online Talk

Tessa Szyszkowitz in conversation with Tariq Ali

THE FORTY-YEAR WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: A CHRONICLE FORETOLD

The occupation of Afghanistan is over, and a balance sheet can be drawn. Rarely has there been such an enthusiastic display of international unity as that which greeted the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Compared to Iraq, Afghanistan became the “good war.” But a stalemate ensued, and the Taliban waited out the NATO contingents. Today, with the collapse of the regime in Kabul, the takeover of the Taliban and the messy retreat of the US, UK and allied forces in August 2021, what does the future hold for a traumatised Afghan people? Will China become the dominant influence in the country?

In his latest book the British-Pakistani author Tariq Ali presents his essays on war and peace in the region. Tariq Ali has been following the wars in Afghanistan for forty years. He opposed Soviet military intervention in 1979, predicting disaster. He was also a fierce critic of its NATO sequel, Operation Enduring Freedom. In a series of trenchant commentaries, he has described the tragedies inflicted on Afghanistan, as well as the semi-Talibanisation and militarisation of neighbouring Pakistan. Most of his predictions have proved accurate. The Forty-Year War in Afghanistan: A Chronicle Foretold brings together the best of his writings and includes a new introduction.

“Ali’s discussion of Afghanistan is highly valuable because of the questions it raises … a starting point for a much-needed debate.” New York Times

Tariq Ali has written more than 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—as well as the novels of his Islam Quintet and scripts for the stage and screen. He is a long-standing member of the editorial committee of New Left Review and lives in London.

„Ali remains an outlier and intellectual bomb-thrower, an urbane, Oxford-educated polemicist.” — The Observer

Tariq Ali, writer, historian and filmmaker member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso,

Tessa Szyszkowitz, Author and Journalist for PROFIL, Falter and Cicero. She is also Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.