The rapid withdrawal of the USA from Afghanistan in 2021 and the collapse of the government showed the failure of many years of international involvement. The German Bundestag is planning a committee of enquiry to clarify the causes. Scientific analyses of the last 20 years will provide important insights.

• The study, published for the first time "The double failure of the international community in Afghanistan" of the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University (ISPK) came to the conclusion back in 2011 that key mistakes in the initial phase of the Afghanistan mission prevented success in the long term. In addition, the later strategies were implemented too late, in an uncoordinated manner and neglecting important factors.

Two Contributions go into further detail on the contents of the study:

• In the article "The US intervention in Afghanistan: The policy of the Obama administration" criticised Christoph Bluththat the Afghanistan concept of 2008 was too short-term and hardly took Pakistan into account.
• Frances Z. Brown analyses in his article "Promoting local governance in Afghanistan: what went wrong?"which is why attempts to establish good governance in Afghanistan's provinces, districts and municipalities have failed.

The Brief analyses in the current issue:

• The brief analysis of Oz Hassan, "A critical assessment of the European strategy in Afghanistan is overdue"analyses the policy of the Europeans with regard to the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
• The brief analysis of Ellinor Zeino, "Afghanistan's eternal promise"asks about the consequences of twenty years of international presence in Afghanistan for the people there and how things should continue under Taliban rule.
• The brief analysis of Hannes Adomeit, "Russian-Belarusian Sapad-2021 manoeuvre: part of the preparations for war against Ukraine"analyses the Russian-Belarusian military manoeuvre Sapad 2021.

These contributions are supplemented by Commentsthe presentation of the results of various international strategic studies and a Book review.

Since the beginning of 2022, all articles from SIRIUS have been available online through the Open Access licence About the publisher De Greyter Brill HERE freely available.