Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Month: October 2011

Hope Amid Chaos: Mineral Resources & Afghanistan’s Economic Future

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Muftah, 31 October 2011 Article by IWA’s Javed Noorani discusses the opportunities, risks and pitfalls surrounding the extraction of Afghanistan’s mineral resources.

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Afghan Private Schools Under Scrutiny

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IWPR, 31 October 2011 Maiwand Safi reports about a probe ordered by President Karzai over Kabul’s private schools. While parents decry sometimes substandard teaching and high fees, the MoE criticises that English is taught instead of Dari and Pashto in some of them. The Chamber of Commerce sees an undue interference into the private sector.

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Trouble in Gizab; the fight everyone chose to ignore

Martine van Bijlert •

On 13 September 2011 a large convoy of armed men, accompanied by US Special Forces, travelled from the centre of Gizab to Tamazan, an area bordering Daikondi province. A murky chain of events led to a confused fight between what should have been friendly forces, in what should have been a stable area. By the […]

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How outside interference politicised the Achin land conflict

Fabrizio Foschini •

Reading the news in the morning sometimes brings big surprises. Even before a suicide car rammed into a US military convoy on Kabul’s Dar-ul-Aman road yesterday, causing the heaviest death toll among ISAF troops ever in the capital, the AAN office was already puzzled by another event: the latest bloody outcome of the years-old land […]

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U.S. Military Waste A Smoldering Afghan Health Issue

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RFE/RL, 28 October 2011 Not that Afghans were particularly environmentally aware (smell all the burning plastic at night), but this has another dimension: Afghan workers on the US base at Bagram report that the US military is burning ‘TVs, radios, mobile phones, and all sorts of electronics’ as well as more human remains in a […]

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Hazara: another ‘abandoned’ community

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Friday Times (Pakistan), 21 – 27 October 2011 In the Lahore-based independent Pakistani weekly, commentator Khaled Ahmad decries the systematic, fatwa- supported killing of Quetta Hazaras by sectarian terrorist groups, and the government’s failure to stop this, as ‘nothing short than ethnic-cleansing’ and ‘a sign of the demise of the Pakistani state’.

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Under Atta’s Shadow: political life in the Afghan north

Enayat Najafizada •

The collapse of the Taleban regime in 2001 paved the ground for the start of what had the potential to be a comparatively democratic political scene in Afghanistan. In due course, the existing jihadi parties and former communists in the northern province of Balkh slowly started to deal with the new situation. In the case […]

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Pakistan, Taleban, America and the vacillations of the Afghan president

Kate Clark •

President Karzai’s offer to back Pakistan if it ever came under attack from America was breath-taking. ‘God forbid,’ he told GEO TV during a visit to Islamabad, ‘if a war breaks between Pakistan and America, we will side [with] Pakistan. We are your brother.’ It was not just the scenario of an American-funded, trained and […]

Regional Relations Read more

Lawmakers want foreign reporters barred from Parliament

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Pajhwok News Agency (Kabul), 23 October 2011 The Kabul-based agency reports another unfortunate anti-foreigner rant of Afghan MPs who even want to have parliament staff prosecuted if they do not pick up this demand.

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Jamiat after Rabbani: The competition for the top job

Thomas Ruttig •

The murder of Ustad Rabbani also made one of Afghanistan’s oldest parties, Jamiat-e Islami, leaderless. For more than three and half decades, the Ustad had stood at its top. His killing came as the party had started considering internal reforms. This process has now accelerated, pushed by the need to fill the party’s top vacancy. […]

Political Landscape Read more

Counting victories and losses: the war of stats

Kate Clark •

In the last week, there has been a lot of discussion about what sort and how many Taleban are getting killed and captured, how many attacks the Taleban are launching and who, indeed, is ‘winning’ the war. Is ISAF beating the Taleban back or has it been exaggerating its claims? Kate Clark has been trying […]

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BREAKING NEWS: Double Rainbow over Kabul

Thomas Ruttig •

Rain in Kabul is always good news. But it also has an aesthetic component: Before the backdrop of the mountains around the city, it creates the most beautiful rainbows. This inspired AAN’s Thomas Ruttig and Fabrizio Foschini to muse about a few rain-related issues. The heavy shower that went down over Afghanistan’s usually dust-covered capital […]

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