Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Sudhansu Verma

Emboldened Taliban Try to Sell Softer Image

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Wall Street Journal, 28 January 2012 In the article, Afghan education minister Faruq Wardak is quoted as confirming that the Taleban have become more lenient on education and he attributes this on pressure from the population (only). The report says further that ‘[e]ducation directors in more than a hundred of Afghanistan’s 398 districts have reported […]

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Hekmatyar’s never-ending Afghan war

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al-Jazeera, 28 january 2012 A very enlightening account about the Hezb-e Islami leader, his past and current relations with the US (and former Ambassador Khalilzad in particular who has handled Hekmatyar during his famous US tour when he refused to meet President Reagan), but also with brief comments about other former mujahedin leaders.

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Former Taliban Officials Say U.S. Talks Started

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New York Times, 28 January 2012 According to the Times, former Taleban officials in Kabul have confirmed that ‘four to eight Taliban representatives had traveled to Qatar from Pakistan to set up a political office’ and one of them spoke about ‘fairly advanced discussions’ between US and Taleban representatives ‘about the transfer of prisoners’. According […]

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The Afghan divide

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Los Angeles Times, 26 January 2012 An interesting op-ed by Sarah Chayes about whether the US is succeeding in Afghanistan and the measures used to answer that question. She refers to the latest NIE report and the negative reaction of US generals about critical remarks in it.

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طرح تغییر نظام، عزم واقعی یا جنگ زرگری

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8 Sobh (Kabul), 25 January 2012 An unsigned article in the Kabul-based daily weighing the arguments and reasons of both the government and the opposition in the recent political brawl about decentralisation.

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Afghanistan’s Terrorised Women

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The Straits Times, 25 January 2012 In his op-ed for the Singapore-based newspaper, the AIHRC Executive Secretary Muhammad Musa Mahmoodi summarised why violence against women persists in Afghanistan: the country’s patriarchal tribal tradition that assumes women’s inferiority; the strong political incentive by radical political groups like the Taleban to deprive women of their rights; because […]

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Agenten-Affäre belastet Deutschlands Beziehungen zu Pakistan

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Spiegel online, 23 January 2012 Pakistani authorities have closed what they call a German intelligence office in Peshawar and claim that three persons arrested there (flown out to Germany meanwhile) have used business cards and a car of German governmental development agency GIZ. Spiegel says that a BND office exists in Peshawar since years. GIZ […]

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Afghan asylum bids hit 10-year high

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AP, 21 January 2012 ‘More Afghans fled the country and sought asylum abroad in 2011 than in any other year since the start of the decade-long war, suggesting that many are looking for their own exit strategy as international troops prepare to withdraw. From January to November, more than 30,000 Afghans applied for political asylum […]

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The U.S.-Pakistan Relationship in the Year Ahead

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CTC Sentinel, January 2012 Ahmed Rashid looks ahead on possible developments in the US-Pakistani relations. He writes that ‘Certainly, military-to-military relations will improve in 2012, but Pakistan will not give the United States the kind of carte blanche it had in the past.’ And he warns: ‘In 2012, however, there is a real danger that […]

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Gains In Afghan Health: Too Good To Be True?

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NPR, 17 January 2012 A U.S.-sponsored mortality survey released last year announced huge improvements in health across Afghanistan. But the gains are so great that experts are still arguing about whether it’s correct, writes NPR’s Quil Lawrence. His conclusion: It’s unlikely that both the old life expectancy of 42 years and the new estimate of […]

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-2 February 2012, Barcelona: Afghanistan: Challenging the International Exit Strategy

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AAN will start the year with a conference on Afghanistan’s transition and its aftermath. Some of the questions to discuss are: Will Afghan security forces be ready to tackle the security challenges facing Afghanistan during and after transition? How can peace and justice be balanced in a reconciliation process? What prospects are there for economic […]

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Was $73 bn of Afghan aid wasted?

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Politico, 12 January 2012 A former US auditor throws a telling light on US aid (in-)effectiveness, pointing out that USAID ‘has struggled’ to keep NGOs (probably those famous for-profit NGOs) overhead costs ‘under 70 per cent’ and that ‘NGO’s raw accounting data is unaudited and unverified’. He also estimates that up to 15 per cent […]

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