Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Sudhansu Verma

AAN In The Media – June 2012

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The Taliban and Fear  The Diplomat, 26 June 2012 The Indian blog, in an article by Sanjay Kumar, quotes from Thomas Ruttig’s AAN blog about the Taleban attack in Kargha. Her er slakteren som overtar «norsk» provins Dagbladet (Norway), 25 June 2012 In an article reporting Dostum tightening his grip over the northern province of […]

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Khomeini Commemorations Met With Resistance By Afghan Youth

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RFE/RL, 1 June 2012 The website of the US-financed radio reports that young Afghans had protested in Kabul against the commemoration of the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, some of them defacing and tearing down posters of the late Iranian supreme leader.

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Afghan Militia Wins Uneasy Peace

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Wall Street Journal, 29 May 2012 A report about a local militia that successfully keeps the Taleban out of Qala-ye Zal district in Kunduz. The only problem: officially, these Critical Infrastructure Protection program (CIPP) militia, created last spring by the German military, ‘using American-provided funds’, should have been disbanded: President Karzai had told a reported […]

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Next to U.S. firing range in Afghanistan, a village of victims

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Washington Post, 26 May 2012 A report about the problem of NATO troops’ ‘unfenced and poorly marked’ firing ranges and training grounds in Afghanistan, here near Bagram where hundreds of unexploded explosives litter the area and ‘farmers, scrap-metal collectors and sheep herders have been crippled, blinded and burned by U.S. military ammunition’. It is not […]

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Kandahar schools brave harsh realities

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al-Jazeera, 25 May 2012 Our recent guest blogger Mujib Mashal has an interesting article about Kandahar province’s dire state of education. Students numbers, both male and female, are well below national average, as are high school graduates.Three district ‘never’ had a school.

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Afghanistan: ‘I Was Not Born a Slave’

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IWPR, 23 May 2012 A very gripping reportage about bonded child labour in the brick kilns of Nangrahar’s Sorkhrud district by Afghan journalist By Sayed Samiullah Sayidi, and a good follow up to the IRI report about the same issue some days ago in our ‘recommended reading’ list.

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Lost in transition: A political strategy for Afghanistan

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Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, 22 May 2012 Scott Smith and Andrew Wilder discuss Afghan election scenarios, argue (very rightly so) that ‘the international community has inherited a partial responsibility for ensuring that the next elections play the role of consensus-building and state legitimation that would be the most likely way to save the country from […]

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Transition and Peace Talks: Optimism and Confidence in Herat?

Hamisha Bahar •

Transition of security and the possibility of a process of peace talks with the Taleban are a concern to most Afghans. According to reports, house prices are falling, investors are getting more careful and more and more people are contemplating to leave the country because of concerns that the situation may get worse. However, the […]

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Getting human rights wrong is not an option

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Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, 17 May 2012 Read ex-AIHRC commissioner Nader Nadery’s article pleading for a human rights priority in NATO’s Afghanistan strategy, criticising that the West, since the end of the Bonn process in 2004, has ‘refrained from exerting real political pressure on the government to comply with its international obligations and the Afghan […]

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Attacks by Taliban Rise in Surge Areas

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Wall Street Journal, 16 May 2012 Taleban attacks are jumping in southern Afghan areas like the districts of Zhari, Panjwai and Maiwand that were the focus of the 2010 US troop surge, writes Yaroslv Trofimov, ‘posing a renewed challenge to the American-led coalition that hoped to pacify the crucial region before withdrawing from the country’. […]

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Bonded labour ensnares entire families

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IRIN, 16 May 2012 IRIN points to a new ILO report according to which more than half of the brick kiln workers surveyed in Afghanistan were children, with most under 14. 
ost children began working at the age of seven or eight, and almost 80 percent are under 10. According to the ILO, the kilns […]

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Beating a Retreat: Prospects for the Transition Process in Afghanistan

Barbara Stapleton •

As NATO member states gather for their summit in Chicago this coming weekend to discuss the security transition in Afghanistan and the prospect for continued engagement, the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) has released a new report exploring the complexities surrounding NATO’s current transition strategy. In the report ‘Beating a Retreat; Prospects for the Transition Process in […]

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