The world food programme, before the collapse of the government last year and the talaban takeover, was feeding a million people a month. Now they feed 18 million people a months. Is it sustainable for the u n to keep on flying in pallets load of pallet loads of cash? And, you know, probably not, i would say. But clearly the model that they used didn't work. Corruption is like a cancer. It's a cancer in the heart of any state. Western governments are hit by it too, but not in such an extreme way. I may have occasionally advised labor politicians, but that doesn't mean they've taken advice.
One year ago the United States decided to withdraw from Afghanistan after two decades in the country. The Taliban, a militant Islamist group that ran most of Afghanistan in the late 1990s, swept to power without much resistance from the Afghan army and captured Kabul on August 15 2021. The debacle left Western governments humiliated and ordinary Afghans afraid. What responsibility do countries like Britain and the United States have for the current crisis? To discuss these issues our host the journalist and broadcaster Manveen Rana is joined by Shabnam Nasimi, Policy Advisor to the U.K Home Office, BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen, and Paul Mason, the journalist, writer and film-maker.
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