Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Sudhansu Verma

6 January 2013: AAN author Thomas Ruttig in Spanish Review

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‘Cómo empezó todo: Un breve repaso a los orígenes de los conflictos en Afganistán anteriores a 1979’ (How It All Began: An Introduction into the pre-1979 origins of Afghanistan’s Conflicts) is an article by AAN co-director an senior analyst Thomas Ruttig written for issue 119 of the Spanish review ‘PAPELES de relaciones ecosociales y cambio […]

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Elders warn of pulling out kin from police, ANA

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Pajhwok News Agency (Kabul), 6 January 2013 ‘Tribal elders from various provinces on Sunday warned the government of withdrawing their relatives from the ranks of Afghan security forces if two former officials, including one charged with triple murder, were not tried publicly’. The report refers to a case in Baghlan province, but Kabul-based daily Mandegar […]

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133 Children Die a Day in Afghanistan

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Khaama Press (Kabul), 6 January 2013 The news agency’s report points out that ‘diarrhoeal diseases are responsible for the death of 48,545 children every year in the country’, amounting to 133 a day. ‘Even in the Afghan capital, Kabul, barely 25 percent of people, according to some reports, have direct access to potable water.’ The […]

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Afghan census dodges questions of ethnicity and language

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The Guardian, 3 January 2013 Not only questions about ethnicity and language are not asked, but also ‘first results, from normally calm central Bamiyan province, showed an actual population barely half official estimates’ and sparked protests: ‘Death to the enemies of Bamiyan! The statistics are wrong!

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Afghans just waiting for hell to break loose

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The Australian, 29 December 2012 A reportage from Uruzgan’s Chora distrcit, one month after the Australian military closed its second-largest base in Afghanistan.

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Afghan Prosecutor Faces Criticism for Her Pursuit of ‘Moral Crimes’

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New York Times, 28 December 2012 The only woman serving as chief prosecutor in any of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, in Herat, has come to personify the fine line between the progressive and the conservative. She has come under criticism — that her office is jailing women for so-called moral crimes at nearly the highest pace […]

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Afghan Reporter on Risks of Covering Sensitive Stories

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IWPR, 20 December 2012 Reporter Abdul Maqsud Azizi tells the story how he investigated land conflicts related to the extension of an US military base in the southern part of Logar province.

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At war’s end, ramping up drone strikes in Afghanistan

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Reuters (blog)
, 19 December 2012 Reuter’s Sanjeev Miglani
 picks up an under-reported issue: drone strikes in Afghanistan: ‘The United States carried out more drone strikes in Afghanistan this year than it has done in all the years put together in Pakistan since it launched the covert air war there eight years ago. […] U.S. Air […]

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Civilian analysts gained Petraeus’s ear while he was commander in Afghanistan

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Washington Post, 19 December 2012 Another interesting article by WP’s Rajiv Chadrasekaran, author of ‘Little America’, about how Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, ‘a husband-and-wife team of hawkish military analysts’ were hired by then ISAF commander Petraeus who allowed them unprecedented freedoms and influence on this thinking.

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Joint Statement Adopted at the Conclusion of the Seventh Trilateral Summit, 11-12 December 2012

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Joint Statement Adopted at the Conclusion of the Seventh Trilateral Summit of the Presidents of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the Republic of Turkey. The copy of the joint statement can be found here.    

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Former United States Envoy Returns To Kabul Politics

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Wall Street Journal, 8 December 2012 Zalmay Khalilzad, Afghanistan-born former US ambassador to Kabul and, in 2009, rumoured to have considered a presidential candidacy himself is currently in Kabul: ‘I am here to facilitate an agreement among key personalities and forces on a possible consensus on key issues confronting the country, and the formation of […]

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Pakistani officials promoting false split in Taliban leadership cadres, again

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Long War Journal, 7 December 2012 The terrorism watch website comments on a recent Reuters exclusive report about a leadership change in the Pakistani Taleban: ‘Dare I say that Pakistani officials are using Reuters and other news agencies as part of a not-so-sophisticated information operation designed to split the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan’s […]

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