Sudhansu Verma

Afghan Drug Trade Sends Tremors

Wall Street Journal, 1 August 2012 Security operation in Tajikistan targets former rebel commender, now turned border police chief, in an attempt to rearrange who controls the drug trade in the border region, and turns into a violent clash. Details are unclear as phone, road and internet access has been blocked. An Afghan district police […]

1 Aug 2012

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Afghan war: Who’s in charge, again?

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Christian Science Monitor, 30 July 2012 Reporter Tom Peter didn’t think to bother the US troops, who shares a base with him, when scheduling an appointment with the district governor of Arghandab in Kandahar province. Read what happened. And when finished reading, imagine you’re an AFGHAN reporter. Or a relative of someone arrested.

30 Jul 2012

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Even the Taliban eat ice-cream – Afghan confectioner beats the odds

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Guardian, 26 July 2012 Emma Harrison’s must-read story about The Icecream-Maker of Herat, for which she even sacrifices herself as a tester of different flavours – with astonishing results. And also congratulations for her to condemning the ‘most annoying’ automatic tunes the icecream sellers are playing (and surely suffering from all day): Celine Dion’s Titanic […]

26 Jul 2012

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Corruption A Cost Of Life For Ordinary Afghans

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RFE/RL, 26 July 2012 A very graphic description by Frud Bezhan of how Afghans experience every-day corruption, in the cases of exaggerated electricity bills and when obtaining a passport

26 Jul 2012

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GAO: Military lowering bar to evaluate Afghan troop progress

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CNN blog, 25 July 2012 A new GAO report found ‘key definitions used in ANSF assessments have changed several times and assessments did not fully measure ANP (Afghan National Police) capability until recently.’

25 Jul 2012

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Afghan Cabinet Raises Concern About Mining Legislation, to West’s Unease

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Afghan Cabinet Raises Concern About Mining Legislation, to West’s Unease New York Times, 23 July 2012 A group of Afghan cabinet ministers and senior officials last week objected to the draft legislation as kowtowing to foreign mining interests, reports the Times. And Ashraf Ghani is quoted on a crucial point: ‘Will the advisers [who helped […]

23 Jul 2012

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Flash to the Past: The Mess in Afghanistan

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New York Review of Books, 12 February 2004 very rightly so, Ahmed Rashid is upset about The New York Times that wrote up a report on human rights abuses in Afghanistan based on a document that it has suddenly discovered or noticed billing it as an exclusive. He has sent an earlier article of him […]

23 Jul 2012

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Iran Sanctions Take Toll on Afghans

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Wall Street Journal, 22 July 2012 ‘The U.S.’s effort to wield economic pressure to influence Iranian leaders is having the unintended consequence of hurting Afghanistan, which relies on remittances from millions of migrants living in the country to its west’, writes the Journal. ‘On the Iranian side of the border, authorities have been forcing Afghan […]

22 Jul 2012

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Karzai Asks Berlin for Help with Taliban Talks

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Spiegel online, 22 July 2012 Now in English: The online version of Germany’s leading political weekly says that President Karzai has approached Germany at the margins of the Tokyo conference to help restarting talks with the Taleban. The report also says that former German special envoy Michael Steiner, now ambassador to India who had a […]

22 Jul 2012

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Afghanistan must stop the murder of its female leaders

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The Guardian, 17 July 2012 Read the reaction of Afghan women’s rights activist Orzala Ashraf Nemat in the Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ section: The Afghan government’s rhetoric on women’s rights and condolences when yet another woman is killed are not enough.

17 Jul 2012

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5 August 2012: AAN at Summer Seminar in Bavaria

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AAN’s Thomas Ruttig will talk about ‘Afghanistan – A Failed State?’ at the Academy for Political Education at Tutzing, Germany, on Sunday, 5 August 2012. This is part of a traditional ‘holiday seminar’ on international policy from 5-8 August focussing on Afghanistan for four days. Thomas, not a supporter of the ‘failed states’ approach, will […]

15 Jul 2012

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