Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Thomas Ruttig

Strafgerichtshof Den Haag gegen Taliban: Ein feministischer Antrag

Tageszeitung, 24 January 2025 AN’s Thomas Ruttig summarises the ICC chief prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Taleban leader Hebatullah Akhundzada and their chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani (schar’i) and provides some contexts about international human rights campaigns for declaring ‘gender apartheid’ a crime against humanity and to also move the UN International Court of […]

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The Taliban’s persecution of women

ORF FM4 Radio, 23 January 2025 Listen to AAN’s Kate Clark explaining the theory and practice of the Taleban’s persecution of women at the English-language service of Austria’s public broadcaster.

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Trump seeks return of US military equipment from Afghan Taliban

Voice of America, 20 January 2025 AAN’s Thomas Ruttig is quoted here on the prospect for US-Afghan (Taleban) relations under the new Trump administration, although heavily redacted from his original version (see at the end of this entry): Thomas Ruttig from the independent Afghanistan Analysts Network warned of challenges for the Taliban under the Trump […]

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Afghans evacuated by US in chaos of withdrawal are languishing in foreign camps, documents reveal

Guardian, 17 January 2025 Records show that Afghan citizens who fled the country with American assistance after the US’s chaotic withdrawal and with pending applications to enter US ‘forced to remain in limbo’ in at least 36 countries, some in ‘untenable conditions’. “US officials won’t say exactly how many Afghans remain at such sites. (…) advocates […]

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[India] Back to Kabul

Open magazine, 17 January 2025 In early January, Vikram Misri, the foreign secretary of India, held a meeting with the Taleban’s Acting Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai, the most high-level meeting between India and representatives of the IEA. During the meeting, India agreed to extend both “humanitarian and developmental support” to the country. The […]

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Pakistan air strikes in Afghanistan mark significant policy shift

Afghan Witness, 16 January 2025 A summary of and new detail information about the escalation at the Afghan-Pakistani border at the end of last year, triggered by Pakistani airstrikes against alleged TTP positions in Barmal district, southeastern Afghanistan, following TTP attacks on security forces in Pakistan. During those events, civilians were killed in both countries. […]

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Tajikistan, Taliban tone down the hostile rhetoric

BNE Intellinews, 9 January 2025 For the Berlin-based outlet, Bruce Pannier – Central Asia specialist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – analyses the (tacitly improving) Taleban-Tajik relationship. He writes that Tajik President Emomali Rahmon “viewed the Taleban as a threat” from the 1990s onwards, and that Tajikistan “was the only Central Asian state that rejected […]

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How Carter’s covert aid to Afghan rebels redefined his foreign policy record

Voice of America, 7 January 2025 Another look at Jimmy Carter’s role in Afghanistan, after the 1978 Saur coup and when the Soviets invaded – with extensive quotes from historian Conor Tobin of the University College Dublin who rejects the US ‘Afghan trap thesis’, that the Carter administration had lured the Soviets into Afghanistan. Others […]

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[SIGAR:] America, Afghanistan and the Price of Self-Delusion

New York Times, 2 January 2025 John F. Sopko, the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) since 2012, in a ‘guest essay’, draws sobering, although not fully surprising conclusions from the failed US mission in Afghanistan. He also underlines that scores of reports of his institutions had pointed out a “long list of […]

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NGOs in Afghanistan: „Ist das jetzt schon Kollaboration?“

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2 January 2025 AAN’s Thomas Ruttig – together with an Afghan NGO activist and former education minister Rangina Hamidi who had recently travelled to Kabul and left again unharmed – is quoted in this article about the insecure situation of Afghan NGOs: In the view of renowned Afghanistan expert Thomas Ruttig, dealing with […]

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Trapped without choices, Afghan women work grueling hours for paltry wages

Rukhshana, 1 January 2025 This story by the Afghan exile online media specialised on women affairs tells the story of several Afghan women who had to give up academic jobs or education after the Taleban ban and took recourse to manual labour in a raisin processing plant apparently in Mazar-e Sharif. They report about grueling […]

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