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What comes after remembering? Some thoughts after National Victims Day in Afghanistan

There are days when Afghanistan’s sadness becomes overwhelming. For us, the Afghan National Victims’ Day was such a day. AAN Senior Analyst Sari Kouvo and Political Researcher Obaid Ali participated in the Afghan National Victims’ Day demonstration and commemoration. Around forty women and men have already gathered when we early Friday morning arrived at Kabul’s […]

16 Dec 2010 Sari Kouvo • War and Peace

Obama’s War Strategy: Stamping out the fire by pouring on gasoline

President Obama’s review of the first year of his war strategy in Afghanistan is extraordinarily upbeat. “The momentum achieved by the Taliban in recent years,” it says, “has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in some key areas… The surge… has reduced overall Taleban influence.”(*) For those of us living in Afghanistan, […]

16 Dec 2010 Kate Clark • War and Peace

16 December 2010: No Shortcut to Stability

An important new report on the linkages between Afghanistan’s insurgency and the lack of justice was released by Chatham House on 16 December. The report ‘No Shortcut to Stability: Justice, Politics and Insurgency in Afghanistan’ by Steve Carter and AAN’s Kate Clark argues that the sidelining of justice by the Afghan government and its international […]

16 Dec 2010 AAN • admin • Events

2010 Elections (40): A clear mess in the Land of the Light

Since Saturday it has become possible to do some real number crunching and to get a detailed analysis of the election results, after the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) finally uploaded the polling results per polling station. For weeks, the web page displayed an ‘Internal Server Error’ message, but a phone call to a senior IEC […]

15 Dec 2010 Fabrizio Foschini • Political Landscape

Reviewing the US in Afghanistan

The changes in the US administration after Obama’s election brought a short and rather refreshing burst of frankness on how bleak the situation in Afghanistan was. At the time I mistook this for honesty and a tolerance for complexity, but it turned out to have been a somewhat sophisticated version of ‘slam the predecessor.’ This […]

12 Dec 2010 Martine van Bijlert • International Engagement

Guest blog on Reintegration: Anyone want to surrender?

The Afghan government and its international backers, most prominently the Coalition forces, have developed a reconciliation program that aims to entice insurgent fighters to lay down their arms and re-enter normal life. But how is the program viewed by the local population? A recent assessment of local perceptions in West-Afghanistan by A.K. Frentzen, a social […]

11 Dec 2010 A K Frentzen • International Engagement

Guest blog: Peace on Hold

In spring of this year US troops in South East Afghanistan introduced a local peace initiative. It should have been a model for the whole country. Instead, it has ground to a halt, which highlights the huge challenge for the much vaunted reconciliation process. Nangarhar journalist Naqib Ahmad Atal, writing for Afghanistan Today, describes where […]

9 Dec 2010 Naqib Ahmad Atal • War and Peace

The Air Is Getting Thicker in Paktia

Some progress on the women’s front but the security situation spiraling further downwards and a population that cannot find anything good in the Americans anymore – these are impressions from a short visit to Gardez this week that was undertaken by AAN’s Senior Analyst Thomas Ruttig, two and a half months after his last trip […]

8 Dec 2010 Thomas Ruttig • Rights and Freedoms

Wikileaks and the Paktia governor

One of the US embassy cables published by Wikileaks relates to the Governor of Paktia, Juma Khan Hamdard. It contains detailed allegations that the governor is not only illegally amassing a personal fortune from US government-funded contracts, but is also fuelling money to active members of his tanzim, Hezb-e Islami, who are currently fighting the […]

6 Dec 2010 Kate Clark • Political Landscape

The Muhammad Omar everybody should listen to

In this Pashto Mashto blog, Fabrizio Foschini goes for a stroll in Kabul’s musical scene, according to his own, rather personal experience of it. I have always been a lazy student. When, on some Fridays, my ustad wakes me up shouting over the phone ‘Ahmad where the hell are you? Come, and today don’t bring your rubab! […]

5 Dec 2010 Fabrizio Foschini • Context and Culture