Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Month: October 2017

The Fence Driving a Wedge Between Pakistan and Afghanistan

AAN •

Bloomberg, 31 October 2017 In this article, the AAN dispatch by Fazal Muzhary is quoted for background: There are 235 crossing points, some frequently used by militants and drug traffickers, of which 18 can be accessed by vehicles, according to a report by the Afghanistan Analysts Network research group last month. The Taliban are used […]

AAN in the Media Read more

The Man Who Thought He Could Fix Afghanistan

AAN •

Politico, 30 October 2017 (Nov/Dec. issue) A portrait of “Ghani’s Ghani” – senior advisor Scott Guggenheim – by great May Jeong, with some (given his position) interesting insights: “A decade and a half of American occupation, Guggenheim continued, produced “democratic institutions with the outward appearance of a democracy, but all about patronage,” he told me. […]

Recommended Reads Read more

Murder of a president: How India and the UN mucked up completely in Afghanistan [on Najibullah]

AAN •

Quartz India, 30 October 2017 A history piece: How India did not save former President Najibullah – new stuff.

Recommended Reads Read more
An improvised cave school on the outskirts of Bamyan city, for the IDP children from Maidan Wardak who in prolonged displacement in Bamyan. Photo: Jelena Bjelica, May 2016.

Education, an Ideal Corrupted: An assessment of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education

Jelena Bjelica •

The Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC), an independent anti-corruption body in Afghanistan, recently released its ‘vulnerability to corruption’ assessment of the Ministry of Education. The assessment points to 36 different types of corruption within the education sector, highlighting that corruption has become endemic in the last 10 to 15 years and that malpractice is systemic […]

Economy, Development, Environment Read more

Wie ein afghanischer Aufständischer den Krieg am Hindukusch sieht

AAN •

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 27 October 2017 In the Swiss daily, recent AAN guest contributor Franz J. Marty describes (in German) how he talked with a Taleban group commander in Nangrahar province who  – not a singular case, as Marty says – convinced him that the Taleban are not willing to negotiate. He also quotes AAN’s […]

AAN in the Media Read more

Afghan Shiites under attack as IS seeks to stir up sectarian violence

AAN •

AFP/Daily Mail, 27 October 2017 AAN’s Kate Clark is quoted her on Afghans’ resilience against IS attacks on Shias: … observers such as Kate Clark, a senior analyst at the Afghanistan Analysts Network, believe Afghans will continue to resist IS efforts to spark sectarian violence. “In Afghanistan most areas have been through really nasty communal […]

AAN in the Media Read more

Violence is so bad in parts of Afghanistan that Red Cross clinics are shutting their doors

AAN •

Washington Post, 26 October 2017 On this article about the ICRC forced to wind down its activities in Afghanistan by worsening security, AAN’s Obaid Ali is quoted: … smaller renegade groups — some of whom claim affiliation with the Islamic State — have taken hold in areas not under firm control of the government or […]

AAN in the Media Read more

How Taliban are evolving to compete in Afghanistan

AAN •

Christian Science Monitor, 26 October 2017 In a report about an Afghan policeman in Logar pressure by the Taleban to qit his job, AAN’s Obaid Ali is extensively quoted about the changing character of the Taleban movement: “This new generation is of course different from the Taliban of the 1990s,” says Obaid Ali, an insurgency […]

AAN in the Media Read more
The CIA, keen to ‘hunt' and kill Taleban, is reported to be about to start flying armed drones, such as MQ‐9 Reapers, for the first time in Afghanistan. Credit: US Air National Guard photo/Senior Airman Michael Quiboloy 2014.

CIA-proxy militias, CIA-drones in Afghanistan: “Hunt and kill” déjà vu

Kate Clark •

Reporting from the United States has said that the CIA is expanding its operations in Afghanistan, running Afghan militias to “hunt and kill” Taleban and “poised” to start flying armed drones. The CIA has run Afghan militias in the past; they were notorious for human rights abuses and for not being subject to the state […]

War and Peace Read more

Als wäre nichts gewesen: Nächster Abschiebeflug nach Afghanistan

Thomas Ruttig •

Neues Deutschland, 25. Oktober 2017 Reporting the latest German deportation flight to Afghanistan, the author uses a quote from AAN’s Thomas Ruttig (from his German blog Afghanistan Zhaghdablai) as his conclusion, saving that some of the deportees were from provinces even the German government considers unsafe and the the decision to deport was “to sell […]

AAN in the Media Read more

The Weaponization of Nostalgia: How Afghan Miniskirts Became the Latest Salvo in the War on Terror

AAN •

Ajam Media Collective, 23 October 2017 (article originally appeared on 9 September 2017) Alex Shams, an Iranian-American writer and a PhD student of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, takes a look at the report that US national security adviser McMaster showed Donald Trump 1970s-era photos of Afghan women wearing miniskirts in order to convince him […]

Recommended Reads Read more

Shiite Afghans worship at own risk

AAN •

Albuquerque Journal/Los Angeles Times, 22 October 2017 Reporting the latest attacks on Shia mosques in Afghanistan, this article’s authors quote twice from recent AAN analysis: But since 2011, the annual Shiite religious festival of Ashura has been attacked almost every year, according to the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a Kabul-based research organization. (…) In a paper […]

AAN in the Media Read more

Subscribe to receive updates from the Afghanistan Analysts Network

Sign up