In this episode, I sit down with acclaimed journalist and author Jon Lee Anderson to trace Afghanistan’s long road to 9/11 through the eyes of someone who witnessed or followed much of it firsthand.
Jon first travelled into Afghanistan in the late 1980s, reporting from the front lines of the war against the Soviet Union and spending time with the Mujahideen. Over the decades that followed, he witnessed the rise of the Arab jihadists, the emergence of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, Afghanistan’s devastating civil war, the rise of the Taliban, the post-9/11 intervention, and ultimately the return of the Taliban to power.
We talk about the people he met along the way, the shifting alliances and loyalties, the warning signs that were visible long before 9/11, and why he came to believe that the Taliban would eventually prevail.
Jon Lee Anderson is a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and one of the most respected foreign correspondents of his generation. His reporting from Afghanistan spans more than three decades, and his books include A Lion’s Grave and To Lose a War.
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Producer | Host: Roh Yakobi
Assistant Producer/Researcher: Sa-aadat Yakobi
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