Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

AAN in the Media

Was kommt nach dem deutschen Truppenabzug?

ARD tagesschau.de, 28 November 2012 AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini on Germany’s main TV channel’s website about Afghanistan’s future development: ‘The worry I have is not a civil war in Kabul. The political elite will possibly be able to prevent that they fall out with each other completely and fires rockets at each other. I am worried […]

AAN in the Media

Afghan Clash Raises Sectarian Fears

Wall Street Journal, 25 November 2012 Wall Street Journal article selectively quotes AAN’s Martine van Bijlert (who had also stressed that such incidents currently remain small and scattered and do not necessarily represent widely spread sentiments): The incidents of sectarian tensions in Kabul that are becoming more frequent create a vicious circle, analysts say.

AAN in the Media

Police test Afghanistan’s fragile ethnic balance

Some analysts agree that Afghanistan’s ethnic divisions have been oversimplified, and even misunderstood. “There is a tendency among observers to overestimate the animosity between the north and the south, or rather to see it something fixed and static. As if people hate each other just because they are from different areas. It’s not like that,” […]

AAN in the Media

UN imposes sanctions on Haqqani network

Deutsche Welle (online), 7 November 2012 Quotes by AAN’s Thomas Ruttig on the new UN sanctions against the Haqqani network: ‘Of course, they [the Haqqani network] do not get arms from UN member states and their governments. [But] Pakistan is constantly accused of covertly supporting the Haqqanis, who operate out of Waziristan, which is Pakistani […]

AAN in the Media

ARTE Journal: US Elections and Afghanistan

ARTE (French-German TV), 6 November 2012 The evening news draw a balance of Obama’s Afghanistan policy, and AAN’s Gran Hewad is on air, saying that the US have early on given away the chance for an honest state-building process, have practically excluded civil society forces and instead re-empowered people who have committed war crimes (His […]

AAN in the Media

Saudi Arabia Positions Itself For Larger Afghan Role

RFE/RL, 6 November 2012 AAN’s Thomas Ruttig is extensively quoted on Saudi Arabia’s recent efforts to play a greater role in Afghanistan. “There are very strained relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Both those countries will be competing for influence in Afghanistan, with the sectarian differences between both sides in the background,” Ruttig says. “So […]

AAN in the Media

Questions abound as Afghans ponder 2014 elections

dpa/Gulf Times, 2 November 2012 The German news agency quotes from Thomas Ruttig’s AAN blog about the Afghan elections: the expected shortcomings of the 2014 elections ‘reflect on how poorly … the post-Taliban political process has been implemented and how weak the state of Afghan governance and democracy still remains’ and that the existing 17mn […]

AAN in the Media

Taliban can run for the Afghan presidency

Deutsche Welle (English), 2 November 2012 Ain his election date blog, Thomas Ruttig is quoted here as saying that inviting the Taliban to run in elections was nothing really new and that the same offer had been made to the militants earlier. The Taliban, he said, had not accepted the offer. Ruttig hoped that this […]

AAN in the Media