It seemed a likely place to find a good news story. With the fall of Kabul, Mazar was now the only town of any size not under Taliban control, and the de facto headquarters of the new Northern Alliance – a shaky coalition of Uzbek, Tajik and Hazara Shi’ite militias who had failed individually to ...
In 2008 when a populist, al-Qaida-linked Islamist movement called al-Shabaab took over the southern half of Somalia, including the country’s capital, Mogadishu, the parallels with the Taliban were immediately obvious. It wasn’t just that Mullah Omar’s militants had also emerged from the poor, neg...
I am indebted to him, as well as to Colonel Ben Bathurst and his team at the Public Relations Directorate in the Ministry of Defence.My thanks also to Susan Aird, Colin Ball, Jane Bonham Carter, Chloe Breyer, Rupert Chetwynde, Tim David, Adam Fergusson (both of them), Robert Fox, Phil Goodwin, Ja...
