News, Views From Nepal

  November elections will witness a ferocious battle not among individual parties but between two rival alliances Yuba Nath Lamsal Nepal at present has witnessed a sharp political polarisation giving rise widespread general impression that the politics is becoming unpredictable. Given the turns of events unfolding in our political landscape over the last couple of years, one cannot predict the direction and course our politics is heading towards. While political parties are key actors in a multi-party system the general people see the political parties and their leaders as the least trust-worthy and least credible. The more the politics becomes polarized, the more the society becomes fractured. Over polarization leads to over radicalization which may be fatal to democracy. The soul of democracy is tolerance and plurality. In a divided society coupled with radicalized politics, plurality and tolerance find the least space. Superstructure ...

 Yuba Nath Lamsal It’s been over a year since Taliban reigned in Kabul after withdrawal of the NATO troops. Afghanistan’s elected president fled the country in a helicopter even without giving a hint to his own staffs and advisors. Afghanistan fell in another dark cycle of chaos. All institutions built over two decades collapsed and failed to function. Afghan security forces, which consisted of over 3, 00,000 strong men at least in papers, did not fire even a single shot when a few thousands Taliban fighters swooped on Kabul and took control of all strategic installations including the President Palace.  It was the second triumph of the Taliban. They had taken control of Afghanistan in 1992 after the fall of Moscow-backed communist government of Mohammad Najibullah. Taliban were evicted from power in 2001 by joint military operation of NATO forces under US command following the September 11 terrorist attacks in America planned and executed by the Al Qaed...

  Published in ' Afghanistan: Way Forward', a book published by Consortium of South Asian Think Tanks (COSATT) and Political Dialogue Asia Programme, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) https://www.cosatt.org/uploads/news/file/AFGHANISTAN%20THE%20WAY%20FORWARD_compressed_20221010071030.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0WaN_WfK_na1ZARsDVT1wOTE8eCN3CpXJa8B6Z_ciY6WxAYO_8ldgpTE0 Yuba Nath Lamsal United States pulled out its last contingent of troops from Afghanistan on August 30, 2021, ending the two decade-long what Washington called the war on terror. Analysts and historians often like to draw parallels between America’s war in Afghanistan and Vietnam in terms of the protracted nature and the eventual outcome. Unlike other wars, the United States returned from Vietnam and Afghanistan in disgrace paving the way for its nemeses to come to power.   In Vietnam, Washington fought hard to prevent communists seizing power but after 20 years of the hard fight the United States had to withdraw from V...