With recent international attention focusing largely on the battle to defeat Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, it has been easy to forget about the situation in Afghanistan. Almost 16 years have passed since the US launched Operation Enduring Freedom in the country, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Yet in recent years progress towards peace has slid backwards and the unwinnable nature of the war against Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents has never seemed more evident.
As US president Donald Trump dithers over whether to send fresh troops to bolster Afghan forces desperate for support, the Guardian’s Sune Engel Rasmussen reports for the Guardian Weekly’s cover story from Lashkar Gah, one of the few towns in Helmand province yet to have fallen back under Taliban control, and asks who can stop the insurgents now?
Trump last week sought respite from his recent disasters at one of his morale-boosting supporter rallies, this one in West Virginia. David Smith went along to soak up the Trump love and the slightly sinister spectacle.
The paper catches up with events in Venezuela, where turmoil continues and some now foresee a real prospect of civil war. In Europe a huge scandal involving contaminated eggs has hit supplies in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Tensions still simmer on the Korean peninsula over Kim Jong-un’s nuclear programme. There’s also a fascinating diary from Seoul, where forecasts indicate the biggest life expectancy rise in the industrialised world, but where living standards are failing to keep up.
There was excitement in the science world with a breakthrough discovery in genome-editing techniques, increasing future hopes of preventing inherited diseases from being passed from one generation to the next. This report, coupled with our Weekly Review lead exploring the hit-and-miss world of genetic testing, offers a glimpse into this fast-evolving but incredibly complex arm of medical science.
Elsewhere in the Weekly Review, Afua Hirsch catches up with the Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who talks frankly about her successes, failures and the work still to do in the west African country.
If you’re a fan of the TV drama Top of the Lake, don’t miss our interview with its creator Jane Campion, one of the world’s best film directors who has come to the view that the small screen is where the most interesting work is now to be found. Bob Dylan fans, meanwhile, may be interested in a new London stage production featuring some of the gravel-voiced folkster’s most notable songs.
Sport bids a fond farewell to Usain Bolt, the fastest man in history, who may not have rounded off a stellar athletics career in the manner of his choosing, but who none the less departed the running track in London last weekend with typical humility and generosity.
One of my favourite pieces this week is on the back page, where the distinguished journalist Mihir Bose takes a critically measured view of his birth nation, India, 70 years after partition. As it enters a new era, warns Bose, the country seems to be turning its back on the secular society that India’s founding fathers wanted.
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