Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Month: August 2013

Kabul’s Utterly Mundane Urban Planning Crisis

Martine van Bijlert •

Citylab.com, 21 August 2013 Article on Kabul’s urban planning crisis quotes Fabrizio Foschini’s dispatch on the conflicts that have broken out between different claimants to the land in Deh Sabz, where the Afghan government plans to establish the ambitious New Kabul City.

AAN in the Media Read more

The Big Maybe: First presidential candidates position themselves

Thomas Ruttig •

Less than a month before the registration of candidates for the 2014 presidential election opens on 16 September this year, a number of prominent Afghan politicians have positioned themselves as potential candidates. Others are just now making their presence known in public appearances. Several political party councils and opposition alliances still struggle to find a […]

Political Landscape Read more

Poetry in Motion: Love, war and politics on trucks

Borhan Osman •

I am chasing you like a drone You have become al Qaida; there’s no trace of you Trucks painted in vivid colours and lettered with poems like the one above, which has borrowed the terms of war to describe love, are part of the “cultural landscape” along the dusty roads of Afghanistan, especially the south […]

Context and Culture Read more

17 September 2013, London: AAN’s Martine van Bijlert at the Frontline Club

Martine van Bijlert •

The Afghanistan Debate: As the final stage of the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan begins, the Frontline Club in London will be bringing together leading experts to look at the country’s roadmap and the legacy of the past 12 years. BBC Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet will chair the debate, and with other eminent […]

Events Read more

Land Grabs (2): Deh Sabz, the new and the old

Fabrizio Foschini •

Kuchi nomads on their way to becoming sedentary and foreign and local investors planning a prestigious Kabul New City development project end up competing for the same piece of land. A recent, dramatic fire fight between the Kabul police and the armed supporters of a Kuchi leader in Deh Sabz sounded like an alarm bell […]

Rights and Freedoms Read more

Opaque and Dilemma-Ridden: A look back at transition

Thomas Ruttig •

At its Lisbon summit in November 2010 NATO made “transition” its official strategy for Afghanistan, setting mid-2013 as the time when responsibility for security throughout all of Afghanistan should have been handed over – or “transitioned” – from NATO to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in a process of five phases. This time has […]

War and Peace Read more

Thematic Dossier I: Looking back at transition

AAN Team •

The fifth and last phase of the security handover to Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), the so called transition, has been announced mid June. This prompts us to look back at the work done on this topic by AAN, starting in 2010. We find that looking at it as a whole allows a unique vantage […]

Dossiers Read more

“I, Mulla Omar”: Two takes on the Taleban leader’s Eid message

Thomas Ruttig •

It has become a regular exercise by now: Taleban leader Mulla Muhammad Omar addressing “our pious people” on the occasion of religious and national holidays. As this year’s Eid al Fitr message again plays some conciliatory strings – except towards the government in Kabul and its foreign military allies – many have argued that deeds […]

War and Peace Read more

Neue Gewalt in Pakistan

Thomas Ruttig •

Deutschlandradio Kultur, 9 August 2013 Listen to an audio of an interview with AAN’s Thomas Ruttig (in German) about the latest wave of violence in Pakistan, looking at the different strands of conflict – the Afghanistan-related one (and the different positions of the Afghan and Pakistani Taleban), the separatist movement in Balochistan and the sectarian […]

AAN in the Media Read more

Obama’s secret kill list – the disposition matrix

admin •

The Guardian Weekly, 9 August 2013 Learn more about Orwellian language and scary, secret tactics that make one wonder about where democracy is going: the ‘disposition matrix’, deprivation of citizenship in the UK for dual passport holders, ‘Terror Tuesday’ and a drone programme that is said to (by some) to be ‘curtailed’ but to be […]

Recommended Reads Read more

NSA und Afghanistan: Die tödlichen Folgen der Datensammelei (print only)

Thomas Ruttig •

Wochenzeitung (Zurich), 8 August 2013 When the government in Berlin had to answer questions about its cooperation with the US in the data collection operations of the NSA, its intelligence service, the BND, revealed that two listening installations in Bavaria are linked to “telecommunications intelligence gathering in Afghanistan”. When AAN’s Kate Clark reported in 2011about […]

AAN in the Media Read more

Bilateral [Afghan-Iranian] Relations: A blossoming friendship?

Thomas Ruttig •

Deutsche Welle (online), 8 August 2013 AAN’s Thomas Ruttig is one of the experts commenting on the recent signing of an Afghan-Iranian MoU mainly about military and security cooperation. He says that it was a “clear message to the US that Afghanistan has other options” of security cooperation; in the light of the withdrawal of […]

AAN in the Media Read more

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