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The Morphing of the Andar Uprising: Transition to Afghan Local Police

The much-publicised anti-Taleban ‘uprising’ in Ghazni’ s Andar district is almost one year old, yet no side has managed to consolidate its control over the area. Violence has not let up during the last 12 months and the year ahead looks set to be just as bloody. Our author, Emal Habib, has been closely following […]

2 Apr 2013 Emal Habib • War and Peace

Inspiration in Kabul: Nancy Dupree and the Opening of the Afghanistan Centre

The Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU) has been officially opened. A beautiful, airy building with a central green courtyard, it has space for both researchers and the Centre’s collection of 80,000 (and increasing) documents collected over the last three decades. The driving force behind the project is Nancy Hatch Dupree who said that ‘for […]

29 Mar 2013 Kate Clark • Context and Culture

The ‘Bagram Duck’: Migrant bird killed north of Kabul and offered as game

If you drive to the Bagram detention centre, you pass by a row of small shops selling birds. Live finches and other wild song birds hop about in cages which hang among dead game birds on hooks, ready for the pot. The well-watered lands of the Shomali Plain, home to waders, ducks and many other […]

27 Mar 2013 Kate Clark • Context and Culture

Despite Growing Ulema Conservatism: Afghans Managed to Celebrate Nawruz

Increasingly, during the last few years, the millennia-old celebrations of Nawruz, the New Year which starts at the spring equinox, ie around 21 March, has become the object of a religious debate in Afghanistan. Although the spring festivity is a major official holiday and continues to be a popular occasion for families to go on […]

25 Mar 2013 AAN Team • Context and Culture

The Other Guantanamo 5: A New MoU for Bagram and, Finally, a Handover?

The Pentagon has announced and the Afghan presidential palace confirmed that the US military will hand over its detention facility at Bagram Airbase to the Afghan authorities tomorrow, 25 March 2013. The presidential spokesman, Aimal Faizy, told AAN the two governments have negotiated a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which, unlike the first MoU on […]

24 Mar 2013 Kate Clark • International Engagement

Rancour between the Allies: Karzai speaks to the Americans

If the Americans ‘surrender’ to Afghan demands, President Karzai has said, he will sign a bilateral security agreement with them. He told an Afghan audience on national TV that the US wanted bases in Afghanistan – a globally significant country – and, as the audience laughed and applauded, he said: ‘The USA has come and […]

22 Mar 2013 Kate Clark • International Engagement

22 March 2013: Mali/Afghanistan Podium Discussion in Frankfurt/Main (with AAN)

Freedom through war? is the question the organisers of a podium discussion in the German city of Frankfurt are posing. And: What are the expectations and expected results of the military in Afghanistan und Mali? The discussion, with participation of AAN Co-director Thomas Ruttig, will take place on 22 March 2013 at 7 pm.   […]

20 Mar 2013 AAN • admin • Events

Sal-e Naw Mubarak! Neway kal-mu mubarak!

AAN would like to wish all our beloved readers and contributors a peaceful and happy new year. The signs of spring are all about us here in Kabul – blossom on the almond trees, cats a-courting and sunshine, warm and pleasant, is mixed with thunder showers. The mud underfoot is drying to dust in the […]

20 Mar 2013 Kate Clark • Context and Culture

A War of Attrition in Farah Province

With the withdrawal of foreign troops taking place countrywide, it is inevitable that not all provinces fare the same, given the differences in insurgents’ and government’s degree of attention. Farah, a province where transition was scheduled late by all standards, has experienced a serious deterioration in security, even before the transition was over. The second […]

13 Mar 2013 Fabrizio Foschini • War and Peace

The Kabul Bank Tribunal: an exercise in containment

The Kabul Bank crisis is complicated and multi-layered. Its tentacles reached into almost all centres of power and threatened to embarrass not just the architects of the scam, but practically everybody involved: businessmen, politicians, senior government officials, the various Presidential campaign teams, Parliamentarians, Central Bank staff, international advisers, donors – the list is long. Since […]

9 Mar 2013 Martine van Bijlert • Economy, Development, Environment