Month: August 2024

The Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Law, translated into English

John Butt •

The Islamic Emirate’s supreme leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, has issued a new law laying out the duties, powers and punishments available to the enforcers of the Ministry for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice. The law also specifies numerous acts and particular behaviour that the Emirate deems either obligatory or forbidden for Afghan citizens. Today, AAN has published […]

31 Aug 2024

Abflug zu den Taliban: Afghanistan wieder Abschiebeziel

Tageszeitung, 30 August 2024 AAN’s Thomas Ruttig reports about Germany, as first western nation, directly deporting Afghans to the Taleban since August 2021 (Sweden did do indirectly in 2023 in a few cases), after indirect talks with the Taleban via Qatari mediation (in German).

30 Aug 2024

State of Southasia #08: Kate Clark on how Afghans are coping after three years of Taliban rule

Himal, 26 August 2024 Listen to this podcast with AAN’s Kate Clark, published by the south-asian magazine, on how Afghan people have been living under the Taleban’s ultra-conservative rule while grappling with global isolation and a crumbling economy.

26 Aug 2024

Treating Drug Users in Afghanistan: How to respond to a massive problem? 

Jelena Bjelica • Rohullah Sorush •

Afghanistan was, until recently, famously, the largest cultivator of illegal opiates in the world. Less well-known is that it is among the countries with the highest prevalence rates of drug use. In April 2022, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) banned poppy cultivation and subsequently, in January 2023, its supreme leader issued an order saying […]

25 Aug 2024

Ein Gesetz gegen das „Laster“

Tageszeitung, 23 August 2024 AAN’s Thomas Ruttig looks at the Taleban’s latest vice and virtue law (in German).

23 Aug 2024

Zwischen Serbien und Bosnien-Herzegowina: Boot mit Geflüchteten kentert – zehn Tote

Spiegel, 22 August 2024 This article in the leading German news magazine, reporting a refugee boat capsizing on the river Drina, with ten people killed, uses an (enhanced) AAN map on migration routes on the Balkans as illustration.

22 Aug 2024

Einreiseverbot für Menschenrechte

Tageszeitung, 21 August 2024 In an op-ed in the Berlin-based daily, AAN’s Thomas Ruttig reports the Taleban’s entry ban for the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, and looks at the background and context (in German) – writing, for example, that he could ‘hardly be accused of being one-sided’ (as the […]

21 Aug 2024

1980s Pul-e Charkhi Commander Walks Free: War crimes conviction overturned by Dutch Court of Appeal 

Kate Clark •

A senior figure overseeing the notorious Pul-e Charkhi prison in the 1980s who was convicted of war crimes in the Netherlands, where he had been given asylum, has seen his conviction overturned by the Court of Appeal. His lawyers successfully argued that Abdul Razaq Aref’s crimes – arbitrary deprivation of liberty, cruel and inhuman treatment, […]

19 Aug 2024

Where Is the Taliban Regime Three Years In?

Lawfare, 16 August 2024 Probably the most concise, differentiated and realistic short assessment of Afghanistan’s situation after three years under the Taleban’s second rule by former world banker Bill Byrd, now at USIP, particularly on the economic side. He attests the Taleban “better-than-expected Taliban economic management”: The Taliban’s performance in this regard is dramatically different […]

16 Aug 2024

Afghanistan – schon wieder vergessen

ARD-Tagesschau, 15 August 2024 AAN’s Thomas Ruttig is quoted here on the German debate about resuming diplomatic contacts with the Taleban in order to facilitate deportations: “I find it very worrying that we are now [discussing] to start talking about deportations, rather than human rights, with representatives of a regime we so far sought to […]

15 Aug 2024

War Crimes in the First Two Decades of the Afghan Conflict: Republishing the UN Mapping Report 

Kate Clark •

In 2004, a major report mapping the war crimes and human rights violations committed in Afghanistan between 1978 and 2001 was published by the United Nations before being swiftly taken down under political pressure, allegedly from then president Hamed Karzai, some of his ministers and foreign backers and from within the UN. What became known as […]

15 Aug 2024

The UN Mapping Report 

In 2004, a major report mapping the war crimes and human rights violations committed in Afghanistan between 1978 and 2001 was published by the United Nations before being swiftly taken down under political pressure, allegedly from then president Hamed Karzai, some of his ministers and foreign backers and from within the UN. What became known as […]

15 Aug 2024