Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Sudhansu Verma

Bribe and prejudice

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Afghanistan Today, 27 October 2012 Taxi drivers, business owners, street vendors and shopkeepers are exasperated by the daily harassment and shakedowns they face at the hands of police, customs and municipal authorities. Even children are being forced to bribe their teachers to come to class. In this special report, Gul Rahim Niazman examines the predicament […]

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The Taliban Aren’t the Only Ones Who Shoot Young Girls in the Head: The Killing of Benafshah

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Counterpunch, 23 October 2012 Italian journalist renders the story how soldiers from his country shot dead a young Farah girl in 2009 and about what appears to be the cover-up of it.

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Poor Afghans farm hashish as alternative to poppy

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Xinhua. 22 October 2012 The Chinese news agency reports from Baghlan province how Afghan farmers, threatened by winter, return to hashish growing. It also reports that Baghlan and Faryab provinces in the northern region and Kapisa province in the eastern region have lost the poppy-free status and resumed poppy cultivation.

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Converting the Taliban

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Time, 19 October 2012 Air Force Major, who served as an ‘AfPak Hand’ in Helmand supporting the Afghan Peace and Reconciliation Program, thinks out loud. ‘When things are top, down driven you see a lot of hedging type of behavior: “I’ll send six of my young men this way in case this side wins and […]

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19 October 2012 – AAN/AW Transition Seminar Series 1: Lessons Learnt from the Past Elections

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The Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) and Afghanistan Watch (AW) launched the first of a Transition Seminar Series on 18 October 2012. Professor William Maley and AAN’s Martine van Bijlert spoke about the lessons that were learnt through the previous elections in Afghanistan and the implications for the upcoming polls planned for 2014. Follow-up seminars on […]

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Afghanistan’s Gray Future

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Foreign Policy, 18 October 2012 The powerful argument of Haseeb Humayoon, a young Afghan analyst based in the country, attacking those who foresee a bleak future for the country, predicting a post-2014 civil war and a Taleban take over. One might add, though, that many of those attacked do not ‘predict’ but discuss possible scenarios.

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Afghan Army Turnover Threatens U.S. Strategy

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New York Times, 15 October 2012 Well, ‘turnover’ is a cautious word: This article discusses the -rising – figures of defections from the ANA. Ron Nordland writes that ‘deserters complain of corruption among their officers, poor food and equipment, indifferent medical care, Taliban intimidation of their families and, probably most troublingly, a lack of belief […]

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Has Taliban Leader Mullah Omar Lost His Mind?

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The Daily Beast (Newsweek blog), 15 October 2012 Interesting article with background of Taleban leader Mulla Omar’s biography and musings about his 11-year silence, explained by either psycholigical problems or even that he might have been killed.

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Afghanistan publishes mining contracts in anti-graft fight

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Reuters, 14 October 2012 As the Afghan government finalizes new laws designed to attract more foreign mining investment, it made public 210 previously awarded contracts in the fields of mining and energy.

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Time to Pack Up

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New York Times, 13 October 2012 In an unusually long editorial, the influential New York Times now takes the position that US troops should withdraw from Afghanistan even before the end of 2014. ‘This conclusion represents a change on our part’, it says. ‘The war in Afghanistan had powerful support at the outset, including ours, […]

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Anti-Taliban leader who rejects ‘corrupt’ Afghan police prefers to go it alone

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AFP, 13 October 2012 The French news agency reports another anti-Taleban ‘uprising’, this time from Logar’s Kolangar district and financed by a local businessman who has rejected to join the ALP. He claims he has already poured USD 160,000 into the uprising and has ‘the support of 50 villages and 200 armed men, with 2,000 […]

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