Foreign Policy, 26 October 2020 Barnett Rubin analyses lessons from the 1988 Geneva Accords (about the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan) and the 2011 Bonn Agreement, in order to avoid a breakdown like in 1992. As key conclusions he recommends to modify and the 2004 constitution for the transition that is supposed to result from the […]
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Institute for Economics & Peace, October 2020 Afghanistan is the least peaceful country in the world for the second year in a row, followed by Syria, Iraq, South Sudan and Yemen. Afghanistan is one of the few countries where the number of deaths has not decreased over the past few years, with the scope and […]
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USIP, 7 October 2020 Bill Byrd’s look ahead at the next (of the almost annual) donor conferences, this time in Geneva, hosted by the UN, as no single donor volunteered to host it. One of the author’s conclusions: … the outcome of the donors meeting … is uncertain: It could effectively promote development and peace […]
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World Bank blog, 4 October 2020 The headline is misleading on the harsh realities the text describes, Afghanistan’s grave deficites – despite some progress – in education and health and the gender gap.
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Samuel Hall.org, September 2020 The migration and displacement-focused social enterprise has looked at the growing elderly population of the country under the Covid19 pandemic and found that “Government ministries advised those over age 60 to remain inside their homes to minimize spread of the virus. Elderly women had higher rates of exposure, given their roles […]
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New York Times, 28 September 2020 Distrust and defiance of the government, rejection of peace talks with the Taleban and calls for decentralisation and re-establishing the Northern Alliance.
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8 Sobh, 26 September 2020 A very instructive article (in Dari) by Ali Karimi in the Kabul daily 8am about the fight over whether to make Hanafi fiqh the only constitutionally enshrined version of Islamic law in the 1964 constitution during a Loya Jirga and the role of former liberal prime minister Muhammad Musa Shafiq, […]
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AREU, 24 September 2020 By our AREU colleagues, an excellent new report by David Mansfield about the political economy of Afghanistan’ southwestern-most province of Nimroz, on the border with Iran, which is increasingly important for its income from the cross-border trade, both licit and illicit. (The catapults of the title refer to a pittoresk method […]
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BBC, 23 September 2020 Lyse Doucet’s insight and inside information on the Afghan peace talks in Doha in an essay that reads like poetry.
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RFE/RL, 16 September 2020 At RFE/RL’s Gandhara blog, Abubakar Seddique sees an emboldened Pakistani Taleban umbrella group, the TTP, after reuniting with two splinter groups, parallel to Afghan peace talks involving this country’s Taleban.
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RFE/RL, 11 September 2020 Since three months, the Taleban have cut access from and to Chinartu district in Uruzgan. 6,000 Chinartu residents, according to the United Nations, cannot access medical services and face food shortages because of the road closure. The siege has led to the death of more than 20 civilians, most of them women […]
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New York Times, 23 August 2020 “Instead of mass-casualty attacks, the Taliban are carrying out targeted assaults in the capital and neighboring districts. The country’s security forces seem unable to control them.” North of Kabul, the Taleban seem to cooperate with criminal networks – which is remarkable, as this area is controlled by strongmen of […]
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