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Tell Us How This Ends. Transitional Justice and Prospects for Peace in Afghanistan

AAN’s latest thematic report “Tell Us How This Ends: Transitional Justice and Prospects for Peace in Afghanistan” by Patricia Gossman and Sari Kouvo, asks whether, after 35 years of conflict, Afghanistan can move forward without addressing the legacies of its violent past? A timely and relevant question in the context of current efforts to find […]

30 Jun 2013 P. Gossman • Sari Kouvo • Special Reports

“Tell Us How This Ends”; Discussing Transitional Justice

AAN’s latest report ‘Tell Us How This Ends: Transitional Justice and Prospects for Peace in Afghanistan’ asks whether, after 35 years of conflict, Afghanistan can move forward without addressing the legacies of its violent past. The report includes an overview of war crimes and human rights violations from the Communist putsch in 1978 to the […]

30 Jun 2013 Sari Kouvo • Rights and Freedoms

Flash from the Past: When the Taleban wanted UN-monitored elections

AAN presents to its readers a 1996 interview with one of the current negotiators in the Taleban Qatar office, Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanakzai. The interview was conducted by Thomas Ruttig when Stanakzai was part of a Taleban’s diplomatic mission to Germany. The Taleban were then searching to try to establish diplomatic relations and gaining legitimacy […]

25 Jun 2013 Thomas Ruttig • War and Peace

The Taleban in Qatar (2): Biographies – core and constellation (Amended with more details)

The very public cutting of a red ribbon marking the opening of the Taliban office in Qatar on 18 June 2013 and the videoed raising of their flag allowed the world to see, for the first time in many years, a public face for the clandestine insurgent group. It has also allowed an initial assessment […]

24 Jun 2013 Kate Clark • War and Peace

The Taleban in Qatar (1): Head of office Tayyeb Agha

The opening of the Taleban’s political office in Doha brought the slither of a clandestine insurgent movement into the public eye. But just who is in the office, about to negotiate with the US and the Afghan government – if, that is, all sides can sort out protocols and procedures? The first of three pieces […]

23 Jun 2013 Anand Gopal • War and Peace

Freeing the ‘Guantanamo Five’ 2: Kafka in Cuba (first posted: 11-03-2012)

A possible prisoner exchange – captured US soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, for five key members of the Taleban who are held in Guantanamo Bay – is top of the Taleban’s agenda for negotiations, according to their spokesman, Sohail Shaheen, speaking to AP. When this exchange was first mooted in early 2012, it caused outrage among some […]

21 Jun 2013 Kate Clark • Rights and Freedoms

Releasing the Guantanamo Five? 1: Biographies of the prisoners (first posted: 09-03-2012)

Now that the Taleban office in Qatar has been opened, a US-Taleban prisoner exchange is again on the table. It would mean the American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured by the Haqqani-linked, Taleban commander, Mullah Sangin in 2009, being exchanged for four senior and one junior Taleban prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay; they include […]

21 Jun 2013 Kate Clark • Rights and Freedoms

28 June 2013, Brussels: Round-table discussion with Sari Kouvo

Dr Sari Kouvo of the Afghanistan Analyst Network (AAN) will present AAN’s upcoming report ‘Tell Us How This Ends – Transitional Justice and Prospects for Peace in Afghanistan’ at a European Peacebuilding Liaison Office (EPLO) Brown Bag Lunch. The EPLO lunch events are 1-1.5 hour-long, informal round-table discussions on a wide range of geographic and […]

20 Jun 2013 Sudhansu Verma • Events

The Opening of the Taleban Office in Qatar: A propaganda coup and an angry government

The long awaited Taleban office in Qatar has opened on 18 June 2013 with a press conference in which two spokesmen presented their movement as a government in waiting. With the old Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan flag behind them, Sohail Shaheen, in English and Mullah Naeem, in Pashto managed to portray an insurgency, whose main […]

19 Jun 2013 Kate Clark • War and Peace

Getting Ready for Change. Or: What to make of Fahim’s speech

On 11 June 2013 First Vice President Marshal Qasim Fahim gave a rare public speech, that has been reverberating in the media ever since. The speech was an impassioned and long-winded call for national consensus, but while he was at it Fahim managed to deliver a few thinly veiled threats, touch on a couple of […]

17 Jun 2013 Martine van Bijlert • Political Landscape

AIHRC Commissioners Finally Announced

Finally, the new commissioners for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) have been announced. The announcement comes 19 months after President Hamed Karzai unilaterally removed three Commissioners in December 2011, with another killed in a Taleban attack and a fifth dismissed. The movement after such a long time on these long overdue appointments has […]

16 Jun 2013 Martine van Bijlert • Sari Kouvo • Rights and Freedoms

Transition in Uruzgan (2): Power at the centre

“Only the dead see the end of war”. The encryption on the monument for fallen foreign soldiers in Camp Holland, the main international military base in Uruzgan, might end up a sad prediction for many inhabitants of this southern province. As foreign forces prepare to leave, Uruzganis are ever more worried about the future. Deedee […]

12 Jun 2013 Deedee Derksen • War and Peace

Transition in Uruzgan (1): The fights that don’t get mentioned

The daily news in Afghanistan is dotted with reports of small-scale attacks, mostly on police posts, district centres and government convoys. These reports illustrate what is going on, but do not provide a full picture: a large proportion of attacks and incidents go unreported. Although the strategic importance of the individual scuffles tends to be […]

12 Jun 2013 Martine van Bijlert • War and Peace

The Ongoing Battle for Education. Uprisings, Negotiations and Taleban Tactics

In a follow-up to a December 2011 report, AAN revisits the ongoing negotiations between the Afghan Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Taleban. The earlier report, ‘The Battle for Schools: The Taleban and State Education’, focused on the changing Taleban attitudes towards Afghanistan’s state schools, allowing for the opening of schools in some of the […]

10 Jun 2013 Antonio Giustozzi • Claudio Franco • Special Reports

A Slow Start: Afghan voter registration in urban centres first

On 25 May 2013, voter registration for the 2014 presidential election officially kicked off throughout Afghanistan. Female registration has been slow, even though the process is for the moment limited to the provincial capitals. Also general turn-out has been quite low and the process has proven to be cumbersome. It is however still very early […]

8 Jun 2013 Obaid Ali • Ali M Latifi • Political Landscape

War Doves: The Afghan sport of pigeon flying

It is a familiar sight in Kabul’s springtime skies: pigeons flying in thick flocks, circling and dipping, reacting to a man on a rooftop waving a stick. Kaftar bazi or the Play of Pigeons is an Afghan national sport – one of the calmer sort. This doesn’t mean it isn’t highly competitive. AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini […]

7 Jun 2013 Fabrizio Foschini • Context and Culture

Guest Blog: A Dangerous Case for Intervention: A response to the CNAS report on Afghanistan

The US-based Think Tank Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has released a report about the current political and security situation in Afghanistan and also looks at the future of US military involvement there after 2014 Afghanistan by some prominent authors, led by the previous ISAF commander General John R. Allen. It would be […]

5 Jun 2013 Gary Owen • International Engagement

Spring Offensive 2: Civilian casualties

At least fifteen children have been killed in the war in Afghanistan in the last 36 hours. All were ‘collateral damage’ from insurgent attacks – victims of two IEDs in Laghman and Farah and a suicide bomber’s blast in Paktia. The surge in the insurgency this year has been intense and civilians, generally, are being […]

4 Jun 2013 Kate Clark • War and Peace

After the ‘operational pause’: How big is the insurgents’ 2013 spring offensive?

With two high-profile attacks in Kabul and one in Jalalabad in the two last weeks, Afghanistan’s insurgents seem to have made true on their promise of a ‘monumental’ spring offensive. In terms of propaganda, the three attacks were successful: the media in Afghanistan and abroad gave the incidents wide coverage. AAN Co-Director Thomas Ruttig has […]

2 Jun 2013 Thomas Ruttig • War and Peace

Attack on the ICRC 2: Taleban denial

The Taleban have issued a rare public denial, saying they were not behind the suicide attack on the compound of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Jalalabad on 30 May, which left one Afghan, Abdul Bashir, the father of eight children, dead and the ICRC’s humanitarian work in Jalalabad suspended. The Taleban […]

1 Jun 2013 Kate Clark • War and Peace