Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Thomas Ruttig

Risks from Afghanistan ‘Exaggerated’ in Central Asia

AAN •

Transitions Online, 3 July 2014 The specialised website, jointly run by Radio Free Europe and the Open Society Institute, summarises AAN’s last report about Afghan-Central Asian relations authored by Christian Bleuer and reza Kazemi: “Security risks” that link Afghanistan to the former Soviet republics of Central Asia are “often highly exaggerated,” according to a new […]

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Report Details Central Asian Governments’ Involvement In Drug Trade

AAN •

Eurasianet, 2 July 2014 In his Bug Pit blog on eurasianet, Joshua Kucera reviews and quotes from AAN’s report about Afghan-Central Asian relations, authored by Christian Bleuer and Reza Kazemi, adding that it is “worth reading in full”.  

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Afghan War Pulls Growing Number of Child Fighters Into Battle

AAN •

Wall Street Journal, 1 July 2014 The United Nations has classified the Afghan police and the Taleban as “persistent perpetrators” of underage recruitment and urged Kabul to “redouble its efforts” to eliminate child fighters. In a report released on Tuesday, the UN said at least 97 children were recruited to fight in 2013 alone, up […]

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Home Front: The changing face of Balochistan’s separatist insurgency

AAN •

The Caravan, 1 July 2014 Extremely interesting long text by Mahvish Ahmad describing how Balochistan’s 67-year-old movement for independence has turned from Marxist into a “middle-class insurgency of engineers, peasants, college dropouts, ex-policemen, shopkeepers and others”. “Today, when war and militancy in Pakistan are often equated with the activities of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, few, even […]

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Afghanistan-Pakistan Update

AAN •

Afghanistan-Pakistan Update, 30 June 2014 Colin Cookman, in his very worthy update, annotates Christian Bleuer and Reza Kazemi’s AAN report “Between Cooperation and Insulation: Afghanistan’s Relations with the Central Asian Republics”.

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Where have all Pakistan’s militants gone?

AAN •

BBC, 30 June 2014 After Pakistani troops have moved into Miranshah in North Waziristan, the BBC reports that most fighters of the TTP, the Haqqani network and foreign fighters, are “believed to have slipped into Afghanistan’s Khost province after Pakistani troops left a section of the border unmanned for a couple of weeks prior to the […]

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Amid polls protests, Afghans wary of ethnic conflict

AAN •

Agencies/Pakistan Observer, 29 June 2014 AAN’s Christine Roehrs is quoted about the Afghan past-election crisis and fraud accuations: “[Abdullah] is getting a lot of behind the scenes advice and warnings about what could happen,” says Christine Roehrs of the Kabul-based Afghan Analysts Network (AAN). “There’s a lot of mitigating going on behind the scenes,” she […]

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Afghan election impasse revives suspicions about Karzai’s role

AAN •

Reuters, 27 June 2014 In this article about Afghanistan’s post-election anti-fraud protests, AAN’s Kate Clark is quoted: Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analysts Network said the first round was genuinely competitive and eliminated the candidate considered by most to be Karzai’s favourite. “The fact that the election was competitive did really knock on the head […]

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Friedliche Proteste mit der Kalaschnikow in der Hand (not online)

Thomas Ruttig •

WOZ (Zurich), 26 June 2014 AAN’s Thomas Ruttig looks at the situation after accusations of fraud against high-ranking IEC staff and first protests in Kabul (in German).

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Afghan official’s resignation ‘won’t resolve standoff’

Thomas Ruttig •

Deutsche Welle, 24 June 2014 Short interview with AAN’s Thomas Ruttig about the current post-election crisis in Afghanistan and the Amarkhel resignation: “No, it [the resignation] doesn’t resolve the standoff. The Afghan election crisis is not only about the people involved, it is also about the electoral system. … There is no sufficiently independent institution of […]

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Prisoner exchange ‘strengthens hand of Taliban in Doha’

AAN •

The National (Dubai), 22 June 2014 I this article about the Taleban prisoners released to Qatar and about Qatar’s foreign policy role, AAN’s Kate Clark is quoted as saying: “Qatar is a state that can control its borders, said Kate Clark, a senior Kabul-based researcher with the Afghan Analysts Network. “You’ve seen how difficult it […]

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