{"id":64626,"date":"2024-06-03T01:00:07","date_gmt":"2024-06-02T16:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/article\/2024\/jun\/02\/kabul-final-call-the-inside-story-of-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-by-laurie-bristow-the-afghans-three-lives-through-love-war-revolt-by-asne-seierstad-review"},"modified":"2024-06-03T01:00:07","modified_gmt":"2024-06-02T16:00:07","slug":"kabul-final-call-by-laurie-bristow-the-afghans-by-asne-seierstad-reviews-how-the-west-abandoned-afghanistan-and-what-happened-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=64626","title":{"rendered":"Kabul: Final Call by Laurie Bristow; The Afghans by \u00c5sne Seierstad reviews \u2013 how the west abandoned Afghanistan\u2026 and what happened next"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An ex-UK envoy\u2019s compelling account of the chaotic military withdrawal from the country is full of telling details, while Seierstad\u2019s latest work drives home the cruel reality of women\u2019s lives after the return of Taliban rule<\/p>\n<p>In August 2021, Britain\u2019s last ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Laurie Bristow, climbed on to a table holding a kitchen knife. He and a member of his security team had a small but important task. They unscrewed a portrait of the queen from the wall. Around them was \u201cincessant gunfire\u201d. Some of it came from heavy calibre weapons. A large TV screen nearby relayed the news on a loop. It was grim. The Taliban were at the gates of Kabul.<\/p>\n<p>From time to time, Bristow recalls, there were great crashes from the roof as soldiers destroyed sensitive equipment. The UK was shutting its embassy and relocating to a military facility inside Kabul airport. Soon, soldiers and diplomats would depart. The US-led campaign in Afghanistan \u2013 a 20-year saga of wishful thinking and blunders \u2013 was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/aug\/15\/the-fall-of-kabul-a-20-year-mission-collapses-in-a-single-day#:~:text=The%20final%20collapse%20of%20the,abandoned%20its%20embassy%20in%20panic.\">ending in ignominy and farce<\/a>. And, as Bristow describes in his compelling memoir <em>Kabul: Final Call<\/em>, with betrayal and human disaster.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/article\/2024\/jun\/02\/kabul-final-call-the-inside-story-of-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-by-laurie-bristow-the-afghans-three-lives-through-love-war-revolt-by-asne-seierstad-review\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An ex-UK envoy\u2019s compelling account of the chaotic military withdrawal from the country is full of telling details, while Seierstad\u2019s latest work drives home the cruel reality of women\u2019s lives after the return of Taliban ruleIn August 2021, Britain\u2019s l&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1638,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,511,71,415,939,4,543,61,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-books","category-culture","category-donald-trump","category-joe-biden","category-politics","category-politics-books","category-south-and-central-asia","category-taliban"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1638"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64627,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64626\/revisions\/64627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}