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2010 Elections 26: The IEC between pressure and scrutiny

The email was sent around today, not long before the planned press conference and not long after an earlier message had announced a delay. “Dear All: The IEC is intent to be more precise in announcement of WJ Elections results, therefore kindly be informed that IEC press conference for announcement of WJ preliminary results [is] […]

17 Oct 2010 Martine van Bijlert • Political Landscape

A back somersault in the US strategy: Lower aims, higher risks

Confronted with a too short timeline (the 2011-14 withdrawal plan), US strategy in Afghanistan is shifting again. In practice this means that political and military targets are ‘adjusted’ further downwards. Progress will be measured by purely quantitative criteria only. As one element of it, the population-centric COIN approach is being been sacrificed in favour of […]

16 Oct 2010 Thomas Ruttig • International Engagement

Afghan Reactions to the High Peace Council

The establishment of the High Peace Council (HPC) by President Hamed Karzai on 18 September has created a lot of attention. Finally, the competition about who will chair the body has been decided in favour of 1992-96 Interim President Prof. Burhanuddin Rabbani. Also, the still missing members have been appointed which let the HPC become […]

14 Oct 2010 Thomas Ruttig • War and Peace

Who wants peace, needs to get serious about justice

The current ineffectiveness in Afghanistan’s justice sector is a legacy of three decades of war and factionalism but not of an historical absence of a formal system of independent adjudication of disputes through courts of law. That it has not been rebuilt, is less due to an inherent inability but to a lack of political […]

13 Oct 2010 Nader Nadery • War and Peace

If you want to learn Pashto…

Sean Mann, a research intern at our partner organisation TLO, has put together an online bibliography to Pashto learning materials. It includes textbooks, dictionaries, multimedia, radio, university courses, etc. It is called ‘Pashto Language Resources’ and is hosted on Christian Bleuer’s ‘Afghanistan Analyst’ website – use this link. You can start with the following sentence: کاڼه […]

12 Oct 2010 AAN Team • Context and Culture

2010 Election 25: The ECC, one district a time?

The Electoral Complaints Commission is there after all. Beyond the criticism it has received, beyond the obscurity which surrounded its recent activities, beyond the fears of it being reduced – after last year’s confrontation – to a rubber-stamp body not willing to pick up a fight with strongmen if needed. The decision to invalidate all […]

11 Oct 2010 Fabrizio Foschini • Political Landscape

Facts for reconciliation: Human rights documentation needed

Over the past month a rather heated debate has arisen first over the leaked and then over the formally released UN mapping of human rights violations and war crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This debate has also drawn attention to other hidden UN gems, most notably to the unreleased UN mapping report […]

10 Oct 2010 Sari Kouvo • Rights and Freedoms

The Battle for Afghanistan: Zabul and Uruzgan

Martine van Bijlert, New America Foundation, September/October 2010 The paper by AAN’s Martine van Bijlert is part of a NAF series on Conflict and Militancy. It explores and compares the origin and evolution of the Taleban networks in Uruzgan and Zabul. The study is based on several hundred interviews by the author over the course […]

10 Oct 2010 Martine van Bijlert • External publications

2010 Elections 24: An anti-election insurgency in the making in Ghor?

While the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) keeps working on the preliminary results and announcing its decisions regarding suspicious or invalid polling stations, the importance of this phase of the electoral process is highlighted by protests and reports of fraud coming from different provinces. One of them is Ghor, an area that often escapes the attention […]

9 Oct 2010 Gran Hewad • Political Landscape

No Nobel Price (Yet) for Sima Samar

The Nobel Committee is never shy of picking a fight. The one it picked this year is with China – by awarding its Peace Prize to the jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo; it has been warned before by Beijing that this could impact on Norwegian-Chinese relations. AAN’s Senior Analysts Thomas Ruttig and Sari Kouvo wished […]

8 Oct 2010 Thomas Ruttig • Rights and Freedoms

7 October 2010: NAF collection on Afghanistan and Pakistan

With the ninth anniversary of the beginning of the war in Afghanistan upon us, the New America Foundation’s Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative has relased a series of research papers describing the insurgencies in Pakistan’s tribal regions and in Afghanistan. These collections, called “The Battle for Pakistan” and “The Battle for Afghanistan,” represent some of the most […]

7 Oct 2010 AAN • admin • Events

Talk about Talks Again (updated)

‘Bazaar du-bara garm shud’ – the market has become hot again. That’s how many Afghans reacted to the breaking news of ‘high-level talks’ between Taleban leaders and the Kabul government (and possibly some US actors) as well as about the not-so-secret-anymore talks in the Kabul Serena. But look at the small print: The talks were […]

7 Oct 2010 Thomas Ruttig • War and Peace

2010 Elections 23: The Wardak election in AP3’s shadow

A close look at the electoral result sheets published online by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) allows observers to get an idea of how elections went countrywide. The results for Wardak, where the number of polling centres (PC) this year was higher than during the past elections, reveal some problematic trends, raising the question whether […]

6 Oct 2010 Fabrizio Foschini • Political Landscape

2010 Elections 22: IEC delays preliminary final result

Not surprisingly, the Afghan Independent Election Commission has given the ECC a bit more time to work on the almost 4,000 complaints that have come in until now. But there are concerns about the ability of the ECC to work on them, given the very low speed with which it gives out precise information – […]

5 Oct 2010 Fabrizio Foschini • Thomas Ruttig • Political Landscape

2010 Elections 21: A Tale of Two Parliaments

Afghanistan sometimes really can be paradoxical. Its President, often (and wrongly) described as the ‘Mayor of Kabul’ has a grip on the administration country-wide, reshuffling ministers, governors and police chiefs at will, but his administration does not administrate – or only when bribes are paid. Parts of the opposition occupy government posts. And its parliament […]

3 Oct 2010 Thomas Ruttig • Political Landscape

2010 Elections 20: What if the Hazaras win in Uruzgan? (updated)

Afghanistan’s parliamentary election, as is by now well-known, is seriously pulled out of balance by fraud, insecurity and an unusual variation of the Single Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV), an electoral system that is prone to erratic outcomes. This has been played out rather illustratively in Uruzgan, where a small and secure corner of the province may […]

2 Oct 2010 Martine van Bijlert • Political Landscape

2010 Elections 19: Two cases of electoral violence

Afghanistan’s elections have been surrounded by a swirl of politicking and tricking, of wrangling and pressuring, of outcry and resignation, of threats and promises, and of outbursts of violence. They show how old habits die hard and how new prospects of power inspire violent behaviour – as Jawed Kohestani, the leader of the Freedom and […]

2 Oct 2010 Martine van Bijlert • Political Landscape

4/5 October: TLO presents Uruzgan report

Our partner organisation The Liaison Office (TLO) in Kabul has presented its latest report in the Netherlands’ parliament and in the Dutch Embassy in Kabul: ‘The Dutch engagement in Uruzgan’ – an analysis of the four-year Dutch civil-military engagement in this southern Afghan province that ended on 1 August this year. The publication of the […]

1 Oct 2010 AAN • admin • Events

2010 Elections 18: A look at the first Khost ballot sheets (updated)

Since a few days, the IEC posts – as promised in its pre-election transparency offensive – copies of the ‘result and tally sheets’ from the polling stations (PSt, vulgo: the boxes) on its website. This will make it difficult to tamper with the content of the boxes, i.e. stuff additional ballots into them post festum, […]

1 Oct 2010 Thomas Ruttig • Political Landscape

Afghanistan Bird Watch 2: Birds on the Wire

Earlier this afternoon shortly before grey clouds rising over Paghman let the sun disappear and brought a short drizzle, three bottle-green parakeets darted across the airspace over our AAN garden, between the high pine trees, the grapevines (that did not carry this year) and the neighbouring house’s wall on which his pigeons gather. This reminded […]

1 Oct 2010 Thomas Ruttig • Context and Culture