Two US experts talk of Afghanistan development, US policies

Taliban forces have made significant progress in Afghanistan over the past week and have captured almost all of Afghanistan from the Afghan National Defense Security Forces (ANDSF). The successive fall of the Afghan provincial capitals to the Taliban, not with heavy weapons, fighters and helicopters, but with individual light weapons, once again stunned the world.

Some military and political experts believe that behind-the-scenes gangs and some groups within the government were involved in the downfall of the cities. According to the estimates of Western governments and American generals, who were the founders of the Afghan army in the early years of the twentieth century, in the best case, these forces would have to resist for up to six months without foreign aid, and in the worst case, for three months.

The available data set on the current developments in Afghanistan emphasizes that weakness and internal conspiracy can not be considered only as of the main cause of the early collapse of the Afghan army and the government of Ashraf Ghani and ignored the decisive role of the Americans.

To shed light on the reason behind the fall of Afghanistan and the role of the US during this period, we reached out to Professor Richard Anderson Falk, an American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and former UN official and Professor Frank von Hippel, an American theoretical physicist, and a Professor of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Following is the text of the interviews with Prof. Falk and Prof. von Hippel in which they shared their views with MNA audiences: