Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Sudhansu Verma

Afghanistan’s ongoing election drama

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AfPakChannel, 12 May 2011 Scott Worden who served as a Commissioner on the 2009 Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission and was an observer of the 2010 Parliamentary Elections describes how President Karzai is still actively investigating the conduct of last September’s parliamentary vote, and how ‘ongoing investigations by the Karzai-appointed Special Elections Tribunal threaten to unseat […]

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10 May 2011: New AAN Report – The Takhar Attack

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The targeted killing of Osama Bin Laden has given a boost to those in the US who believe this is also an effective strategy to defeat – or at least degrade – the Taleban in Afghanistan. This new AAN thematic report, by senior analyst Kate Clark, warns against this strategy, stressing that the legality of […]

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5 May 2011 New AAN Report: The Insurgents of the Afghan North

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In this new AAN report, released on 5 May 2011, Antonio Giustozzi and Christoph Reuter turn their sights on the Afghan North again. They describe the rise of the Taleban in the seven northern provinces, discuss their recruitment and shadow administration, and explore the effects of the conduct of the Afghan government and of ISAF’s […]

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Was Afghanistan’s ‘Great Escape’ actually a great big sham?

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Global Post, 5 May 2011 Jean MacKenzie has an Afghan ‘Deep Throat’ in the Kabul government who told her that the big Kandahar prison escape throught the tunnel was a sham and the 500 or so prisoners actually released by the Afghan government. She has a high-ranking wirness, Afghanistan’s Minister of Justice – who said […]

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Sein Auto, sein Haus, sein Feld (Osama’s car, house and field)

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Frankfurter Rundschau, 5 May 2011 Willi Germund, a frequent contributor to AAN, has visited Abbottabad and talked to OBL’s neighbours: They report that ‘bearded men’ who spoke Pashtu often came out of the compound to buy icecream and sweets for the kids living there (in German).

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Inside the Taliban’s jailbreak tunnel

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CNN, 5 May 2011 On the same day as the Global Post (see there under ‘recommended reading’) put some doubt on the story, CNN had a reporter ‘inside’ the escape tunnel and takes the story at face value.

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Covering Obama’s Secret War

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Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 2011 Articles discusses the difficulties of reporting on the secretive drone war and the questions that often get overlooked:

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Costly Afghanistan Road Project Is Marred by Unsavory Alliances

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New York Times, 1 May 2011 The long and winding story about a road important to Afghanistan, promised to be paved by the US in 2002, still not done and bogged down in a mash of bad contracting and bad contractors.

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27 April 2011: First AAN Occasional Paper on Mahmud Tarzi and the Wesh Zalmian movement

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This paper of its senior Analysts Thomas Ruttig represents the opening of AAN’s new series of occasional papers. It addresses the influence of the thoughts of Afghan nationalist and moderniser Mahmud Tarzi (1865-1933), foreign minister under reformer-king Amanullah (1919-29), on Afghanistan’s 1940/50s pro-democratic opposition movement, the Wesh Zalmian (Awakened Youth). Mahmud Tarzi and the movement […]

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NATO Counters Taliban

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The Diplomat, 20 April 2011 Even US military receive Taleban night letters. US Army Col. Johnny Isaak, commander of a military agricultural team in Logar: ‘I’ve had the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which is the shadow government, send me letters, telling me … I didn’t have proper building permits, (so) I need to pay them […]

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Few politicians say it, but most think it: our Afghan war is a disaster

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Guardian, 11 April 2011 A few sentences of clarity by a journalist who once was optimistic that things in Afghanistan might change but saw that it did not happen.

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Anatomy of an Afghan war tragedy

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LA Times, 10 April 2011 ‘Combat by camera’ and the determination of drone pilots to see a threat where there was none. Released reports and transcripts of the 21 February 2010 US bombing of a civilian convoy in Daikondi show how “Technology can occasionally [sic] give you a false sense of security that you can […]

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