What Did Twenty Years of Western Intervention in Afghanistan Achieve? With Jon Lee Anderson

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorenti. On today's episode, we're joined by foreign correspondent John Lee Anderson to discuss the rise and fall of the Taliban. Anderson first reported from Afghanistan in the late 1980s, covering the US-backed Mujahideen's insurrection. against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul.

Within days of the 9-11 attacks, he was again on the ground as an early eyewitness to the new war launched by the US against the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies. He sits down with journalist Hannah Lucinda Smith to shed light on this pivotal period in Afghanistan and to discuss his new book, To lose a War, The Fall and Rise of the Taliban. Now let's join our host, Hannah Lucinda Smith, with more. Welcome to Intelligence Squared. I'm Hannah Lucinda Smith.

Our guest today is John Lee Anderson, a world-renowned foreign correspondent, author and staff writer for The New Yorker. For the past four and a half decades, John Lee has been reporting on wars, crises and revolutions from Latin America to the Middle East and Africa. But it is Afghanistan that John Lee has returned to again and again, having first reported there in the late 1980s during the Soviet invasion. In his new book, To Lose a War, he brings together a collection of his reporting there from the aftermath of 9-11 to the resurgence of the Taliban 20 years later, and in doing so presents a nuanced and engaging insight into the long arc of Afghanistan's latest upheaval. Welcome to Intelligence Square, John Lee.

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