How a regime falls.
From inside Afghanistan’s embassy in India, before it was deleted:
A central banker escapes
Ahmady is American-raised. Alum of UCLA & Harvard. Experience as US Treasury, World Bank, private equity and asset management and Booze Allen Hamilton.
Background: the anti-Taliban campaign and why it failed
Still the best podcast I have heard, the UK security expert Paul Rogers on Politics Theory Other. Has stood up for almost a week.
Background: Afghan politics
From one of the best economic historians on twitter a fantastic rundown on ethnic politics of Afghanistan.
The Afghan Opium business and the failure of suppression
Great thread on the microeconomics of opium farming.
Context (1): On Russia’s relaxed view
Why is Russia so calm about the Taliban?
Mark Galeotti’s take in the Moscow Times.
Context (2): The Indian view on China, Xinjiang and Afghanistan
The price of M16s:
Well if you were small time arms dealer with a cache of M16, the hundreds of thousands of guns the Afghan army is throwing away are bad news for your balance sheet!
Bond markets and the Taliban
As the region is rocked by the collapse in Afghanistan, both Reuters and the FT reported pressure in the bond markets of Pakistan and Uzbekistan.
So far it is Pakistan’s 2036 eurobond that is worst affected
If it spreads much beyond that particular debt issue, it will show up in the data here.
BHL
Most commentators responded in fairly predictable ways to events yesterday. Not so the French philosophizer Bernard-Henri Lévy. He was on TV to proclaim not only that the Taliban are not much to speak of as a military force, but that the people who (had) actually taking power in Afghanistan were the emancipated young women.
BHL loves himself a war and a bit of cleavage.