Month: January 2025

Trump Freezes Foreign Aid Fraud

Counterpunch, 31 January 2025 The magazine quotes AAN’s Martine van Bijlert with criticism on US spending practice in Afghanistan: Martine van Bijlert of the nonprofit Afghanistan Analysts Network commented: “As long as you spend money and you can provide a paper trail, that’s a job well  done.  It’s a perverse system, and there seems to […]

31 Jan 2025

Bericht zu Afghanistan-Einsatz: Ambivalente Empfehlungen für Hochrisikoeinsätze [Report on Afghanistan mission: Ambivalent recommendations for high-risk missions]

Tageszeitung, 28 January 2025 AAN’s Thomas Ruttig writes (in German) about the report by the German Bundestag’s Enquiry Commission on the country’s contribution to the US-led Afghanistan mission between 2001 and 2021, formulating recommendation for future deployments abroad it assumes it ‘will’ continue to make its contribution to, as the report states, although probably not […]

28 Jan 2025

In Pursuit of Virtue: Men’s views on the Islamic Emirate’s restrictions on women

Martine van Bijlert • AAN Team •

Since taking power in August 2021, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has introduced increasingly severe restrictions on the rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls, that have reverberated across families and communities. The new rules have bolstered traditional male roles as women’s ‘gatekeepers’, determining what they can and cannot do. At the same […]

26 Jan 2025

Reigniting the Flames of Justice: ICC seeks arrest of the Islamic Emirate’s Supreme Leader and Chief Justice

Rachel Reid • Roxanna Shapour •

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, has requested arrest warrants for two of the most senior leaders of the Islamic Emirate. Khan said that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani bear “criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on […]

24 Jan 2025

Afghans stranded in Mexico under Trump immigration crackdown face bleak choices

Reuters, 24 January 2025 The story of five Afghans who, after the Trump administration’s entry ban for refugees, had their US asylum appointments canceled and are stuck in a shelter in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, the only such refuge in this country specifically for Muslim migrants. Reuters reports: Muslim migrants face a series […]

24 Jan 2025

Strafgerichtshof Den Haag gegen Taliban: Ein feministischer Antrag

Tageszeitung, 24 January 2025 AN’s Thomas Ruttig summarises the ICC chief prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Taleban leader Hebatullah Akhundzada and their chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani (schar’i) and provides some contexts about international human rights campaigns for declaring ‘gender apartheid’ a crime against humanity and to also move the UN International Court of […]

24 Jan 2025

The Taliban’s persecution of women

ORF FM4 Radio, 23 January 2025 Listen to AAN’s Kate Clark explaining the theory and practice of the Taleban’s persecution of women at the English-language service of Austria’s public broadcaster.

23 Jan 2025

Trump seeks return of US military equipment from Afghan Taliban

Voice of America, 20 January 2025 AAN’s Thomas Ruttig is quoted here on the prospect for US-Afghan (Taleban) relations under the new Trump administration, although heavily redacted from his original version (see at the end of this entry): Thomas Ruttig from the independent Afghanistan Analysts Network warned of challenges for the Taliban under the Trump […]

20 Jan 2025

Trump 2.0: What difference will the new US president make to Afghanistan (if any)?

Kate Clark •

On Monday, 20 January 2025, Donald Trump will again assume the presidency of the United States. In his first term (2016-20), his administration negotiated the Doha Agreement and the near-unconditional withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan; his successor, Joe Biden, completed the pull-out seven months later, after the Taleban had already taken control of Kabul. […]

19 Jan 2025

Afghans evacuated by US in chaos of withdrawal are languishing in foreign camps, documents reveal

Guardian, 17 January 2025 Records show that Afghan citizens who fled the country with American assistance after the US’s chaotic withdrawal and with pending applications to enter US ‘forced to remain in limbo’ in at least 36 countries, some in ‘untenable conditions’. “US officials won’t say exactly how many Afghans remain at such sites. (…) advocates […]

17 Jan 2025

[India] Back to Kabul

Open magazine, 17 January 2025 In early January, Vikram Misri, the foreign secretary of India, held a meeting with the Taleban’s Acting Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai, the most high-level meeting between India and representatives of the IEA. During the meeting, India agreed to extend both “humanitarian and developmental support” to the country. The […]

17 Jan 2025

Pakistan air strikes in Afghanistan mark significant policy shift

Afghan Witness, 16 January 2025 A summary of and new detail information about the escalation at the Afghan-Pakistani border at the end of last year, triggered by Pakistani airstrikes against alleged TTP positions in Barmal district, southeastern Afghanistan, following TTP attacks on security forces in Pakistan. During those events, civilians were killed in both countries. […]

16 Jan 2025