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Tell Us How This Ends. Transitional Justice and Prospects for Peace in Afghanistan

AAN’s latest thematic report “Tell Us How This Ends: Transitional Justice and Prospects for Peace in Afghanistan” by Patricia Gossman and Sari Kouvo, asks whether, after 35 years of conflict, Afghanistan can move forward without addressing the legacies of its violent past? A timely and relevant question in the context of current efforts to find […]

30 Jun 2013 P. Gossman • Sari Kouvo • Special Reports

“Tell Us How This Ends”; Discussing Transitional Justice

AAN’s latest report ‘Tell Us How This Ends: Transitional Justice and Prospects for Peace in Afghanistan’ asks whether, after 35 years of conflict, Afghanistan can move forward without addressing the legacies of its violent past. The report includes an overview of war crimes and human rights violations from the Communist putsch in 1978 to the […]

30 Jun 2013 Sari Kouvo • Rights and Freedoms

Flash from the Past: When the Taleban wanted UN-monitored elections

AAN presents to its readers a 1996 interview with one of the current negotiators in the Taleban Qatar office, Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanakzai. The interview was conducted by Thomas Ruttig when Stanakzai was part of a Taleban’s diplomatic mission to Germany. The Taleban were then searching to try to establish diplomatic relations and gaining legitimacy […]

25 Jun 2013 Thomas Ruttig • War and Peace

The Taleban in Qatar (2): Biographies – core and constellation (Amended with more details)

The very public cutting of a red ribbon marking the opening of the Taliban office in Qatar on 18 June 2013 and the videoed raising of their flag allowed the world to see, for the first time in many years, a public face for the clandestine insurgent group. It has also allowed an initial assessment […]

24 Jun 2013 Kate Clark • War and Peace

The Taleban in Qatar (1): Head of office Tayyeb Agha

The opening of the Taleban’s political office in Doha brought the slither of a clandestine insurgent movement into the public eye. But just who is in the office, about to negotiate with the US and the Afghan government – if, that is, all sides can sort out protocols and procedures? The first of three pieces […]

23 Jun 2013 Anand Gopal • War and Peace

Freeing the ‘Guantanamo Five’ 2: Kafka in Cuba (first posted: 11-03-2012)

A possible prisoner exchange – captured US soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, for five key members of the Taleban who are held in Guantanamo Bay – is top of the Taleban’s agenda for negotiations, according to their spokesman, Sohail Shaheen, speaking to AP. When this exchange was first mooted in early 2012, it caused outrage among some […]

21 Jun 2013 Kate Clark • Rights and Freedoms

Releasing the Guantanamo Five? 1: Biographies of the prisoners (first posted: 09-03-2012)

Now that the Taleban office in Qatar has been opened, a US-Taleban prisoner exchange is again on the table. It would mean the American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured by the Haqqani-linked, Taleban commander, Mullah Sangin in 2009, being exchanged for four senior and one junior Taleban prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay; they include […]

21 Jun 2013 Kate Clark • Rights and Freedoms

28 June 2013, Brussels: Round-table discussion with Sari Kouvo

Dr Sari Kouvo of the Afghanistan Analyst Network (AAN) will present AAN’s upcoming report ‘Tell Us How This Ends – Transitional Justice and Prospects for Peace in Afghanistan’ at a European Peacebuilding Liaison Office (EPLO) Brown Bag Lunch. The EPLO lunch events are 1-1.5 hour-long, informal round-table discussions on a wide range of geographic and […]

20 Jun 2013 Sudhansu Verma • Events

The Opening of the Taleban Office in Qatar: A propaganda coup and an angry government

The long awaited Taleban office in Qatar has opened on 18 June 2013 with a press conference in which two spokesmen presented their movement as a government in waiting. With the old Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan flag behind them, Sohail Shaheen, in English and Mullah Naeem, in Pashto managed to portray an insurgency, whose main […]

19 Jun 2013 Kate Clark • War and Peace

Getting Ready for Change. Or: What to make of Fahim’s speech

On 11 June 2013 First Vice President Marshal Qasim Fahim gave a rare public speech, that has been reverberating in the media ever since. The speech was an impassioned and long-winded call for national consensus, but while he was at it Fahim managed to deliver a few thinly veiled threats, touch on a couple of […]

17 Jun 2013 Martine van Bijlert • Political Landscape