Sami Omari, Independent Geopolitical Strategist and Policy Consultant, will Address the National Press Club on “Five Years of Silence: The Taliban Win Nobody Talks About”.
Five years ago, the world watched Afghanistan fall. Then it looked away — and that was the second defeat.
August 2026 marked five years since the fall of Kabul and the return of Taliban rule. Yet Afghanistan has almost entirely disappeared from Australian media, parliamentary debate and public consciousness.
This address proposes to change that and to ask why the silence itself is the Taliban’s greatest victory. It will examine the information blackout, including how the Taliban have systematically silenced journalists, expelled foreign media and made Afghanistan one of the hardest countries in the world to report from. It will examine the ongoing gender apartheid that has seen girls banned from education beyond Year 6 and women erased from workplaces, public life and universities. The address will also examine Australia’s unfinished obligation to a country where it spent 20 years and $10 billion and lost 41 soldiers, while thousands of Afghans who worked alongside Australian forces are still waiting on visas. It will challenge the silence in Canberra and put forward concrete policy asks, including accelerated visa processing for at-risk Afghans, an increased humanitarian intake and renewed diplomatic engagement.
Bio:
Sami Omari is an independent geopolitical strategist and policy consultant with extensive experience in governance, security, legal reform and civil military relations. In Afghanistan, he served as an Afghan prosecutor, as a lead cultural and political instructor on a DFAT funded project, delivering cultural, historical and political orientation courses to ISAF civilian and military personnel including Australian expats deployed to Afghanistan. He also worked as a legal adviser supporting Afghanistan’s justice sector under the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). He later served as Government Liaison Manager for NATO’s Resolute Support Mission during the US-Taliban Doha negotiations and the subsequent release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners. He also contributes to public discussion through community, academic and policy events. His current research focuses on Afghanistan and the broader geopolitical, peace and security dynamics shaping South and Central Asia and the Indo-Pacific.
This address will be moderated by Club Director and Chief political correspondent for SBS World News, Anna Henderson.
