Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Sudhansu Verma

ANALYSIS: Afghan police – civilians or combatants?

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IRIN, 7 April 2011 This author-less article of the UN news agency says that ‘discrepancies in the number of civilian casualties of war in Afghanistan and the varying levels of blame attributed to warring parties by the UN and human rights organizations could, in part, be due to different interpretations of the legal status of […]

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Raids on ex-Taliban threaten Afghan peace process, diplomats warn

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Guardian, 6 April 2011 A story about a number of night raids on former Taleban Zaeef and Arsala Rahmani’s houses in Kabul by foreign and NDS forces. It quotes another ex-Taleb and member of the HPC Mujahed as saying: ‘We get phoned up by HPC [High Peace Council] members all the time, complaining that their […]

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Afghanistan: UN Losing PR Battle in Kabul

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Eurasianet, 6 April 2011 In the light of the recent unrest in Mazar and the Afghan government’s letter to limit the Unama mandate, Aunohita Mojumdar says that the United Nations ‘is struggling to remain relevant in Afghanistan. At the heart of the UN’s challenge is a growing perception that it has lost the trust and […]

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‘Taleban surrenders’ not all they seem

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IWPR, 4 April 2011 An interesting reality check of the reintegration programme: Sources interviewed by IWPR in northern Afghanistan say many of those coming over to the government are not insurgents at all but rather many of them originally part of the mujahedin who fought the Soviet-backed government in the 1980s, were supposed to have […]

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Abdul Ahad Momand – the first Afghan in space

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Financial Times, 1 April 2011 What many may thing is a joke on April fools’ day, is nothing but the truth: Momand was a cosmonaut in the Soviet space programme and boarded a Soyuz spaceship in 1988. He now lives in Germany.

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Afghan government plans crackdown on revealing wedding dresses

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Guardian, 1 April 2011 Another piece where you would hope it is an 1 April joke: The Afghan government apparently has nothing better to do then regulating by a new law — wedding dresses, and even worse, strict gender segregation at wedding and, even worse, wants to send ‘committees’ to check whether the new law […]

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The Stoner Arms Dealers: How Two American Kids Became Big-Time Weapons Traders

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Rolling Stone, 31 March 2011 Large amount of mind-boggling detail on how two boys in their twenties became the main ammunition supplier for the US government support to the ANA in Afghanistan, breaking and circumventing laws, while providing Bush’s DoD and the State Department with what it needed.

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Afghanistan’s Drug Career: from War to Drug Economy

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This new AAN thematic report (with SWP Berlin) by German scholar Citha D. Maass looks into the beginnings and the evolution of drug production in Afghanistan during its three decades-long war. Starting with the Western-supported anti-Soviet jihad in 1979, drug production became a major base for the country’s war economy. After the fall of the […]

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New Afghanistan Plan: Hole Up in Fortress Districts

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Danger Room (blog), 29 March 2011 A closer look at the successes in ‘key terrain district’ Baraki Barak, describing a deepening divide between ‘the half of district residents who live inside Baraki Barak’s virtual walls’ and ‘the half outside the fortress’.

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March/April 2011: Three New AAN Papers

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Since the Afghan New Year on 21 March, AAN has two new of its own papers out, both by German scholars – Lutz Rzehak on Pashtunwali and Citha D. Maass on Afghanistan’s war economy turning into a drug economy again. And thirdly, there is a new study by AAN Advisory Board member Ann Wilkens (published […]

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Uneasy Truce Holds in Afghan Mountain District

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IWPR, 28 March 2011 Taleban and local security forces live and let live in Kapisa’s Alasay’s district: ‘Saying that Afghanistan’s past and present conflicts had been fought on behalf of other countries, [the ANA soldier] said, “The Taleban are our brothers, too. They have certain demands, and they should be listened to. They aren’t crazy; […]

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JIEDDO: The Manhattan Project that bombed

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Public Integrity / McClatchy, 27 March 2011 A long list of failed projects and wasted money: JINs, JOLLERS, Rhinos, Devil Pups, BlowTorches, Hotshots, Trailblazers, ground-penetrating radars, aerostat balloons, million-dollar fake Iraqi villages and Furlong’s ‘Information Operation Capstone’. Leadership still insists JIEDDO is ‘not a slush fund’.

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