Headline Roundup • August 18th, 2021
Perspectives: Global Impact of the Afghan Government's Collapse
Summary from the AllSides News Team
After seizing control of Kabul, the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan's government after being driven out by the United States twenty years prior. The Taliban has claimed it would run the country in accordance with Islamic law and that "nobody will be harmed in Afghanistan"; many nations around the world remain concerned as the militant organization is known for violence and injustice against women and dissenters.
Coverage of Taliban takeover has been prominently featured on the majority of outlet's homepages over the past week. Some right-rated voices focused on how other world superpowers such as China used "Biden’s slapdash withdrawal" to "add salt to the wounds." Voices from across the spectrum pointed out how China hopes to maintain its relationship with the Taliban and capitalize on Afghanistan’s rare mineral deposits. Most voices, regardless of bias, also seemed to agree with the notion that the Taliban will embolden radicals across the region and continue to raise human rights concerns.
Featured Coverage of this Story
New York Post (News)
Great-power competition is back — just when America happens to be an overstretched, and now-humiliated, empire. Events in the wake of President Joe Biden’s botched exit from Afghanistan punctuate the point.
China wasted little time seizing on the debacle to make geopolitical inroads and assert a growing hegemony in the Asia-Pacific. The Beijing regime moved to develop relations with the new Taliban regime in Kabul and held assault exercises near Taiwan island on Tuesday.
Biden’s slapdash withdrawal came on the heels of months of failed intelligence assessments and years of naïve assurances from US military...
CNN Digital
The swift fall of Afghanistan to Taliban fighters two decades after the United States invaded the country has triggered a political and humanitarian crisis. It’s also causing security experts to wonder: What’s going to happen to the country’s vast untapped mineral wealth?
Afghanistan is one of the poorest nations in the world. But in 2010, US military officials and geologists revealed that the country, which lies at the crossroads of Central and South Asia, was sitting on mineral deposits worth nearly $1 trillion that could dramatically transform its economic prospects.
Supplies of minerals such as iron, copper and...
NPR (Online News)
Helicopters evacuating Americans from Kabul as the Taliban closed in was a scene likened to the 1975 fall of Saigon in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.
Afghanistan's U.S.-trained forces appeared to readily collapse in the face of a concerted push by Taliban forces. Names and places that became familiar to Americans during their country's long involvement there — including Kunduz and Kandahar — fell like dominoes in recent days as the Taliban swept toward the capital.
The Taliban have gained a reputation for brutality and enforcement of a harsh brand of...
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