Wall Street Journal, 15 April 2021
AAN’s Thomas Ruttig is quoted here, answering the author’s question about a comparison of the situation when the Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 with the current US withdrawal context and the chance for unexpected reallignments:
“In 1989 the institutions were more united, and everyone really was feeling their back to the wall,” said Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghan[istan] Analysts Network think tank, who served as an East German diplomat in Kabul at the time. “This is not the case now. Since then, the different factions all went into different alliances that sometimes were not expected, and that can happen again. Ideologically between some of them and the Taliban there is not that big a difference.”
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This article was last updated on 23 Apr 2021
