Imperial wars are by design waged to benefit one country over the other - in the case of Afghanistan, 70% of the country's GDP comes from foreign aid, this creates a curious power dynamic whereby the state answers first not to the Afghan people, but to the funders who keep them in business. In this sense you could call Afghanistan a kind of rentier state, even.

Live from Kabul, journalist May Jeong reports on the internal and geopolitics of the Afghan peace process - from the progressing talks between the Taliban and Afghan government, to the West's disasterous economic and military occupation of the nation - and explains why President Trump's (professed) isolationism has some Afghans optimistic about the prospects for an end to the 16 year war.

May wrote the article The Patient War: What awaits Trump in Afghanistan in the February issue of Harper's.