Month: March 2022

A Pledging Conference for Afghanistan… But what about beyond the humanitarian?

Roxanna Shapour • Kate Clark •

The United Kingdom, Germany, Qatar and the United Nations are co-hosting a virtual, ministerial-level, international, pledging summit for Afghanistan, today. It aims to raise USD 4.4 billion for lifesaving humanitarian support to 22.1 million Afghans who are at “immediate and catastrophic levels of need.” Afghanistan’s Taleban government, in power since August 2021 but not recognised […]

31 Mar 2022

Afghanistan-Konferenz in China: Pekings Vorstoß Richtung Kabul

Tageszeitung, 31 March 2022 In this op-ed for the Berlin-based daily, AAN’s Thomas Ruttig looks at a series of recent Afghanistan-related meetings hosted by China’s government and the latest UN donor conference (in German).

31 Mar 2022

The Ban on Older Girls’ Education: Taleban conservatives ascendant and a leadership in disarray

Ashley Jackson •

The Taleban’s abrupt decision to keep girls’ secondary schools closed, despite promising for months that they would re-open, has caused distress to girls, parents and teachers alike. The Taleban’s justification was confused, with various officials giving different reasons for the closure, from lack of teachers to inappropriate school uniforms. Eventually, a formal announcement cited the need […]

29 Mar 2022

The Taliban is holding girls’ education hostage in Afghanistan – the question is, why?

The Conversation, 28 March 2022 This article by long-term Afghanistan analyst Sippi Azarbaijani Moghaddam deflates the myth about the success of girls education under the Western-backed predecessor government to the Taleban, also linking to AAN’s March 2017 seminal report, “A Success Story Marred by Ghost Numbers: Afghanistan’s inconsistent education statistics.”

28 Mar 2022

Afghanistan’s girls’ schools can — and must — stay open. There is no alternative

Nature, 28 March 2022 The leading science magazine quotes from a recent AAN report in its editorial: Others in the Taliban envisage a different future. … Many have been to schools and universities abroad and acquired professional qualifications. Among their number are current Taliban leaders whose own daughters and sons are being educated, according to […]

28 Mar 2022

Afghanistan’s struggle: it isn’t just the Taliban

The Guardian, 23 March 2022 AAN is quoted in this Guardian editorial: … as the Afghanistan Analysts Network warned recently: “This is not an economic crisis that has mainly hit the poor and the vulnerable and it cannot be addressed by emergency food aid alone. At its most basic level, the economy needs its cash to flow […]

23 Mar 2022

Marking a New Century in Afghanistan: Nawruz 1401

Roxanna Shapour •

The start of the Afghan new year on 21 March 2022, or by solar Hijra calendar 1 Hamal 1401, arrives in Afghanistan with a sense of foreboding and uncertainty for the future, after a mere seven months and five days since the Taleban took power and toppled the Republic. AAN’s Roxanna Shapour reflects on the […]

21 Mar 2022

L’analista Fabrizio Foschini: «In Afghanistan il popolo è stanco della guerra»

Settesere qui, 19 March 2022 Interview with regular AAN contributor Fabrizio Foschini in this regional newspaper in the Romagna region (in Italian).

19 Mar 2022

Climate change must become part of the global agenda on Afghanistan

Chatham House, 16 March 2022 Hameed Hakimi and Oli Brown of this British think tank, in their ‘experts comment’, make a point that is not new, but can’t be reiterated often enough, as this has been thoroughly ignored during 20 years of Western-driven ‘reconstruction’.

16 Mar 2022

Living in a Collapsed Economy (3): Surviving poverty, food insecurity and the harsh winter

Martine van Bijlert • AAN Team •

In this third instalment of ‘Living in a Collapsed Economy,’ we returned to the people we interviewed at the beginning of winter to find out how they had managed since we last spoke to them, especially during the harsh winter months. For many of them, not much had changed, although their situation had slowly worsened […]

13 Mar 2022

The Limits of Foreign Intervention in Promoting Women’s Rights in Afghanistan

The Diplomat, 8 March 2022 In this article reflecting on women’s rights in Afghanistan, the author refers to and quotes from AAN research on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) law: Although the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) law was promulgated in 2009 by presidential decree, it was the 2013 attempt to ratify […]

8 Mar 2022

Regime Change, Economic Decline and No Legal Protection: What has happened to the Afghan media?

Ehsan Qaane •

The Taleban takeover of Afghanistan delivered a devastating blow to one of the Republic’s few achievements – freedom of expression and a vibrant media sector. Since the fall of the Republic, nearly half of Afghanistan’s media outlets have closed and thousands of Afghan journalists and media workers have either left the country, lost their jobs, […]

7 Mar 2022