I thought it would be useful, partly for my own sake, to keep a running tab of the (rare) instances in which journalists and other commentators have asked me to talk about the situation here.
12 October 2022
I spoke with Samuel Geddes of the KnownsUnknown podcast about visiting the country as a tourist, which at that time was still what I was doing:
Splash photo taken at Herat airport, summer 2022.
27 March 2023
Social-media behemoth Sangar Paykhar interviewed me over Zoom for his podcast, The Afghan Eye:
Splash photo taken near the Durand Line in Zazi Ayoub district, Paktia, summer 2022.
Yes, I know the cinch isn’t tied correctly. Thank you.
We spoke for nearly an hour about a range of topics, but if anyone wants further details about the mysterious transnational machinations at School of Leadership-Afghanistan (SOLA), feel free to check out my novella-length Twitter thread from a few weeks earlier.
Props to Noor Ahmad Haidari and his video team for their superb technical support in Kabul.
15 August 2023
The second anniversary of the Second Emirate drew far less attention than the first, but it did produce this excellent conversation.
Sulaiman Hakemy, opinion editor of The National—that’s the Abu Dhabi newspaper, not the awesome band from Ohio—spoke with me and Crisis Group’s Graeme Smith for the paper’s Beyond the Headlines podcast.
We discussed sanctions, central banking, and other issues facing the postwar Afghan economy:
23 September 2023
Abubakar Siddique of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reached out for some general comments about the state of Afghanistan’s mining sector:
https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-mining-deals-taliban-poverty-mineral-wealth/32605965.html
I’ll add more links as these things come down the pike.