Search results

Paint It Pink: The US redefining ANA success

Twice a year, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) reports to the Congress and Senate committees on defense, appropriations, and foreign relations on the ‘progress’ of the conflict in Afghanistan. AAN guest blogger, Gary Owen, a former soldier who now is working as a civilian development worker(*) has been scrutinizing the reports, teasing out, […]

2 Aug 2012 Gary Owen • International Engagement

The Networks of Kunduz: A History of Conflict and Their Actors, from 1992 to 2001

A new Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) report by author Nils Wörmer looks at networks of power in Kunduz province. Wörmer writes that when Germany’s political decision makers opted for Kunduz, in north-eastern Afghanistan, as the location for its future Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) and soldiers and governmental development workers started to deploy in 2003, they […]

2 Aug 2012 Nils Wormer • Special Reports

Kabuli Youth in Ramazan Nights: A Passion for Futsal and More

Under the growing fog of war in Afghanistan – ISAF just reported an increase of violence by 11 per cent – the Afghan youth are struggling to live normally and gain visibility nationally, let alone internationally. During the current month of Ramazan, futsal (1) outdoors and indoors has become particularly popular among a significant part […]

1 Aug 2012 S Reza Kazemi • Context and Culture

Afghan-led? or: People with one name only

Tom Peter, the Christian Science Monitor correspondent in Kabul, just wrote a story how US soldiers in Arghandab district had denied him access for 90 minutes to the local district governor with whom he had scheduled an interview and who did not want him to bring in his tape recorder. He wondered ‘how much control […]

31 Jul 2012 Thomas Ruttig • Context and Culture

Correcting Details: More on the NYT Reporting the Human Rights Mapping

The New York Times piece ‘Top Afghans Tied to ’90s Carnage, Researchers Say’ ‘revealed’ what everyone knows and rarely says, that many of today’s senior Afghan politicians have murky pasts. Talking about the war crimes of the last thirty years has proved difficult for Afghans and the international powers alike. The decision, in 2005, to […]

30 Jul 2012 Kate Clark • Rights and Freedoms

Libya and Afghanistan: Elections without a social contract

Long queues at polling centres, happy voters waving inked fingers in front of cameras, and musings on how a new, better era was in store for Libya – sounds like Afghanistan 2004. Our guest blogger Ann Mac Dougall(*), who has worked in both countries, cannot help wondering whether Libya will follow the Afghan pattern from […]

29 Jul 2012 • Political Landscape

The Cloak of Silence: Afghanistan’s Human Rights Mappings

On 22 July, the New York Times came out with an article on human rights abuses in Afghanistan which it wrote up based on a document that has neither been published (although it is waiting for publication since many months, and Afghan groups have now demanded that it finally happens)(1) nor it apparently has been […]

27 Jul 2012 Ahmed Rashid • Rights and Freedoms

Flash from the Past: Afghans’ Shattered 2000 Olympic Dreams (amended)

The 2012 Olympic Games start today in London with half a dozen Afghans representing their country in taekwondo, boxing, judo and athletics (1) and at least two Para-Olympians competing in weight-lifting and athletics (2). AAN’s senior analyst, Kate Clark, was in Kabul during the 2000 Olympics, when potential Afghan contenders had to stay at home […]

27 Jul 2012 Kate Clark • Context and Culture

Clashes in Eastern Tajikistan – with Afghan Participation?

Local media speak of ‘unprecedented violence’, after Tajik security forces have started a ‘special operation’ against what the government in Dushanbe calls an ‘armed, illegal group involved in drug trafficking and also tobacco smuggling and the trafficking of minerals’, following the murder of a high-ranking security official. Interestingly, it has claimed there were Afghan citizens […]

26 Jul 2012 Thomas Ruttig • Regional Relations

Written in Ice? Protests after the public execution of a woman in Parwan

There have been fresh demonstrations condemning the public execution of a young woman, Najiba, in a Taleban-controlled village in a province just to the north of Kabul in June. The video of the execution, which was shown across the world, alerted many to how near the capital Taleban ‘rule’ extended. However, the target of the […]

17 Jul 2012 Obaid Ali • Rights and Freedoms