Jean Marie Montali
Dear Mr. President,
Let’s not abandon Afghanistan again!
At the end of November 1998, three years before his trip to Europe, Commander Massoud, entrenched in northern Afghanistan, besieged on all sides by the Pakistan-backed Taliban, wrote me a long text.
Five pages in which he explained the dramatic situation in his country, the yoke that women were under, the danger that the Taliban represented for the whole world, the threat of Al-Qaeda, the urgency of helping it. He also denounced Pakistan’s role in the war. All these accusations and warnings were repeated, almost word for word, in April 2001 before the European Parliament.
Martine Gozlan
The terrible images of the abandonment of Kabul, with its groups of desperate Afghans clinging to the cabin of an American military plane ready to take off without them, will never stop haunting us. They confirm, twenty years after 9/11, that no lesson can be drawn from history, contrary to what has been preached on all the airwaves, all the platforms. Faced with Islamism, which, from Nice and Saint-Etienne-du Rouvray to Kunduz and Kandahar, slits the throats of both near and far, the “Never again” preachers, under their false airs of optimism, are nothing but pledges of resignation.
atmane tazaghart
The whole world was stunned at the overwhelming images of Afghan civilians clinging, by dozens, to the cabins of American military planes, which were about to take off from Kabul airport, abandoning them to their sad fate under the Taliban cut back to power, twenty years after being driven out, in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
A tragic and unbearable distress which leaves no one indifferent. Almost nobody. Because, during this time, in the supposedly moderate Islamist circles, which advocate a “political Islam” known as “golden mean”, supposed to be the exact opposite of the obscurantist and medieval doctrine of the Taliban, some self-congratulate, in an obscene delight, of a “grandiose victory” falling under the “divine will”!
Christian Malard
One cannot understand Afghanistan if one does not know its history, written in wars and punctuated by invasions from Alexander the Great, to the Soviets (20th century), via the Mongols (13th century) and, of course, the British in the 19th century. Each occupation obviously provoked a war of liberation until the invaders left. And every liberation of the country has been followed by a civil war. This is the Afghan curse. Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw the last 2,500 American soldiers, along with 7,700 NATO and allied troops, may therefore have far-reaching consequences.
Roland Jacquard
The news from Afghanistan are very disturbing. In less than a week, the Taliban seized half of the capitals of the Afghan provinces. They now control most of the country’s northern, western and southern provinces. Kabul, Mazar-e Charif and Jalalabad are the only major Afghan cities that escape, but for how much longer, their regained control over the country.
atmane tazaghart
At the end of several weeks of popular discontent, caused by a serious deterioration in the economic and health situation, which reached its peak on July 25 – the anniversary of the establishment of the Republic in Tunisia – with a day of protest calling for dismissal of the government and the dissolution of parliament, marked by the sacking of several headquarters of Ennahda, the Islamist party in power, especially in poor towns in the south of the country; President Kaïs Saïed has decided to deliver a radical “halt” to the political and social crisis shaking Tunisia.
Martine Gozlan
Tunisia’s misfortune makes Qatar’s colonial happiness. Indeed, it is against the backdrop of a country decimated by the coronavirus – the death rate is the highest in Africa – that a bill has been passed allowing the “Qatar Fund For Development” to manage the financial interests between Tunisia and Qatar. A real treaty that will allow Doha to intervene directly in the Tunisian economy, with considerable advantages for the backers of Islamism.
Martine Gozlan
You have to get used to it, Israel is not a country like the others. Normalcy, the ultimate goal of the Zionist project, is still out of reach, in the way the world looks at the Jewish state or in the way it looks at itself. Who would have imagined that Benyamin Netanyahu’s downfall would be brought about by the most disparate, original and unlikely coalition on the planet’s political scene?
Ian Hamel
There’s no need to go to the Armani Hotel’s kosher restaurant unannounced. It’s better to book well in advance. As for the terrace, it is crowded, in order to be able to attend a unique show mixing water jets, sounds and lights. Draped in his white dishdasha, the traditional dress of the men of the Gulf, our interlocutor tells us that in the lounge of a large hotel in Dubai, he recently found himself the only Arab among dozens of Jews. “But if this continues, there will be more of them than us!” he says with a smile. When they signed the Abraham Accords in September 2020 normalising Emirati-Israeli relations, the Emiratis expected to welcome a wave of visitors from Tel Aviv. But it is a wave that has swept through the Gulf. As for the Western Jewish communities, they no longer say “next year in Jerusalem”, but “the next holiday in Dubai”!
Roland Jacquard
Pakistan has been witnessing a rapid breakdown of its internal administrative machinery, with its police and security forces unable to control the country-wide violence engineered by the supporters of the radical Islamist party, the Tehreek -e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) that has been demanding the ouster of the French Ambassador and halting of trade relations with France. While the spotlight is on the grim domestic security situation with the government being held hostage by the TLP, the condition of its economy and its diplomatic standing is no better.
