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The Unity Government’s First Six Months: Where is the governance?

After six months of Afghan Unity Government – what has been achieved? President Ghani, some say, has been ruling with a ‘two-man government’ (him and Hanif Atmar, head of the National Security Council), leading many to feel left out. ‘Strategic silence’ has become a somewhat mocking term for Ghani’s style of government – or is he […]

26 Mar 2015 Thomas Ruttig • Political Landscape

Finally Towards a Complete Afghan Cabinet? The next 16 minister nominees and their bios (amended)

Six months after the inauguration of the National Unity Government and two months after the last attempt to introduce cabinet members to the parliament, there is now a new list of nominees. It contains 16 names for almost all remaining cabinet positions. AAN’s Christine Roehrs, Qayoom Suroush, Naheed Esar, Ehsan Qaane and Obaid Ali have gathered […]

24 Mar 2015 AAN Team • Political Landscape

The Kabuliwala of Kolkata: Photo exhibition about a community longing for Afghanistan that once was home

In the suburbs of Kolkata, India, lives, in seclusion, a little known community of migrants who once came from Afghanistan – the first of them around the year of 1840. Kabuliwala they are called, and the today 5000 people have managed to preserve the way of life they brought from Paktia, Paktika and Ghazni. Inspired […]

22 Mar 2015 Nazes Afroz • Context and Culture

Happy Nawruz! A blessed year 1394 to our readers – and a few poems for the occasion

Dear readers and friends, the AAN team wishes you a blessed, healthy and hopefully more peaceful Afghan year 1394. Should you be in Afghanistan (and allowed out), try and visit one of the many Nawruz fairs that are happening across the country (see a picture of a merry-go-round for children during a fair in Mazar-e Sharif […]

21 Mar 2015 AAN Team • Context and Culture

Talks with the Taleban, Again: This time for real?

Over the past weeks, Kabul buzzed with rumours that talks with the Taleban would begin soon, specifically, in the first week of March. That particular week is now past and nothing has happened. But this does not mean that rumours were completely false or that no movement is being made towards new talks with the […]

17 Mar 2015 Thomas Ruttig • War and Peace

19 March 2015, Basle: OPIUM – an exhibition

OPIUM – that’s the title of an exhibition that opens on 15 March 2015 in the Museum der Kulturen Basel (MKB; Basle Museum of Cultures) in Switzerland. It is curated by Doris Buddenberg, former country director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Kabul and member of the Advisory Board of the Afghanistan […]

15 Mar 2015 Thomas Ruttig • Events

Failings of Inclusivity: The Herat uprising of March 1979

In the spring of 1979, Afghanistan was almost in open rebellion against the government of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA); first uprisings happened around the country. One, that started today 36 years ago in Herat, succeeded in driving out the ‘Khalqi’ government and controlling the city for three days of chaotic independence in […]

15 Mar 2015 Charlie Gammell • Context and Culture

A Perfect (Snow) Storm: What can be done against avalanche damage in Afghanistan

After an exceptional dry winter, snow finally arrived in Kabul and the northern and central provinces. However, the sheer amounts of what should have been a blessing for farmers, turned into a catastrophe for some communities living in these areas, as the snowfall triggered a series of avalanches, claiming the lives of almost 300 people. […]

10 Mar 2015 Ikramuddin Bahram • Context and Culture

The Refugee Dilemma: Afghans in Pakistan between expulsion and failing aid schemes

Nearly 52,000 Afghans living in Pakistan have, within the past ten weeks, packed their belongings and crossed the border back into Afghanistan – more than twice as many as in the whole 12 months of 2014. This started after an attack of Pakistani Taleban on a public army school in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, on […]

9 Mar 2015 Christine Roehrs • Migration

One Day in a Year: Afghan views on International Women’s Day

“The celebration of 8 March is a new concept, but Afghan women’s role in society has been respected for thousands of years,” President Ghani said in his speech for International Women’s Day on 5 March 2015, three days before the date. But if that is true, women’s rights activists asked after the event, why is […]

8 Mar 2015 Naheed Esar Malikzay • Context and Culture

Photographer in Jail: An example of arbitrary Afghan ‘justice’

President Ghani’s spokesman has told AAN that jailed Afghan photographer Najib Musafer will be released from Pul-e Charkhi, although he gave no date. Musafer took a photograph of girls parading in an Education Day ceremony seven years ago and sold it to a production company which turned it into an image advertising Etisalat telephones. One […]

5 Mar 2015 Ehsan Qaane • Kate Clark • Rights and Freedoms

Impunity and Silence: The meagre reaction to the latest HRW report

Human rights abuses in Afghanistan no longer make big waves outside the really concerned circles. Yesterday (on 3 March 2015), Human Rights Watch released a hard-hitting piece of meticulous research looking at the ease with which gross human rights violations and war crimes are still committed by the powerful in Afghanistan: “Today We Shall All […]

4 Mar 2015 Thomas Ruttig • Rights and Freedoms

The ‘Other Guantanamo’ (13): What should Afghanistan do with America’s foreign detainees?

The United States bequeathed Afghanistan a huge problem when it finally and completely transferred its detention facility at Bagram to the Afghan government in December 2014. For the previous 12 months, it had been urgently trying to get rid of all of the 50 or so foreigners it held there. In the end, it failed […]

2 Mar 2015 Kate Clark • Rights and Freedoms

“An attempt to wipe out history”: The destruction of the Bamian Buddha colossi in 2001

On 26 February 2001, the leader of the Afghan Taleban movement, Mullah Muhammad Omar, ordered from his headquarters in Kandahar that “all statues and non-Islamic shrines in the different areas of the Islamic Emirate must be broken” because they were worshipped by people of non-Islamic religious beliefs and were therefore ‘idols.’ This kind of worship, […]

1 Mar 2015 Kate Clark • Thomas Ruttig • Context and Culture

Because of Impunity: UN reports Afghan forces still torturing Afghans

It is two years since UNAMA last reported on torture by Afghan security forces of detainees suspected of conflict-related crimes. In the wake of its 2013 report, former President Karzai was stung into investigating the matter and instituted steps to try to root torture out. ISAF also strengthened its monitoring of detainees it transferred to […]

25 Feb 2015 Kate Clark • Rights and Freedoms

Six Days That Shook Kabul: The ‘3 Hut uprising’, first urban protest against the Soviet occupation

Today 35 years ago, the first large, urban uprising against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan took place in Kabul. It was eight weeks after Soviet tanks had rolled into the country to save the regime of the PDPA, which had taken over power in a coup d’etat 20 months earlier and quickly run up against […]

22 Feb 2015 Thomas Ruttig • Context and Culture

The Human Cost of the Afghan War: UN reports sharp rise in the killed and injured

Evidence – if more was needed – of the intensification of the Afghan war has come in the United Nations’ annual report on civilian casualties. 25 per cent more civilians were killed in the conflict in 2014 than in 2013, almost all Afghans by Afghans. Most civilians are now being killed in ground engagements, an […]

18 Feb 2015 Kate Clark • War and Peace

Electoral Reform, or rather: Who will control Afghanistan’s next election?

President Ghani and Chief Executive Officer Abdullah, in the September 2014 agreement, agreed to electoral reforms “to ensure that future elections are credible.” The details of these reforms, when they should take place and who should design them are, however, proving contentious. Meanwhile, parliament has been working on relevant laws, while commissioners of the Independent […]

17 Feb 2015 Martine van Bijlert • Political Landscape

The President’s CEO Decree: Managing rather than executive powers (now with full translation of the document)

It is one of the central documents of the new national unity government, but it has not received much public attention: the presidential decree that lays out the “responsibilities and authorities” of the new Chief Executive Officer and was already issued in December 2014. AAN’s co-director Thomas Ruttig has read the document (find an AAN […]

13 Feb 2015 Thomas Ruttig • Political Landscape

The Shadows of ‘Islamic State’ in Afghanistan: What threat does it hold?

The Islamic State (IS) group, also known by an Arabic acronym, Daesh, has gained a toehold in Afghanistan, although with the loss in a drone strike of its most prominent and recently appointed commander, Rauf Khadem, that toehold is looking precarious. Still, the situation has moved on from when AAN last reported on IS in […]

12 Feb 2015 Borhan Osman • War and Peace