(U.S.) Foreign Service Journal, June 2019 Insights into US Afghanistan policy by the former acting deputy assistant secretary for Afghanistan and deputy chief of mission in Kabul – not that we did not know, but good to have it in writing, from ‘the horse’s mouth’: The turnover of U.S. diplomats and military officials, and our short […]
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The Diplomat, 14 May 2019 A fascinating on-the-ground reportage from Kunar by Franz Marty about IS presence in this eastern province – a good antidote to latest alarmist pieces about IS planning to attack the US and Russian allegations about 5,000 Daesh fighters in northern Afghanistan. According to this report, Daesh took over two villages […]
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Institute for Economics and Peace, 12 June 2019 The “Global Peace Index 2019” now lists Afghanistan as the least peaceful country in the world. Out of 163 countries, Afghanistan ranks 163. Afghanistan also incurred the second-largest economic cost of violence worldwide in 2018, equivalent to 47 percent of its GDP.
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LSE blog, 28 May 2019 David Mansfield and Alexander Soderholm point out a new development in the Afghan drugs industry – the proliferation of low cost methamphetamine, and argue that this is obscured by the new and – in contrast – highly publicised US airstrikes against drugs labs in South-western Afghanistan, “claiming that they caused the […]
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Foreign Policy, 26 May 2019 Despite the headline that might somewhat trivialises the war, this photo essay points to a severely underreported part of Afghan reality: the lethal danger that stems from environmental damage (much of it conflict- and poverty-related): Air pollution is killing more Afghans than the war. According to the State of Global […]
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Foreign Policy, 16 May 2019 Starts as a reportage from Qala-ye Zal district of Kunduz where the government only controls two of 107 villages: “‘This is a safe area for the Taliban,’ Andarabi said. ‘They can have picnics in Qala-i-Zal, because the government doesn’t do any operations here.’ […] And now, in what appears to […]
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Foreign Policy, 5 April 2019 “Thousands of women have set off on their own for Turkey, but harassment from Afghan men often follows them to their new country” writes Fariba Nawa. Stories of Afghan girls and women, on the run from domestic violence, death threats, sexual assault, forced marriage, and a 40-year war.
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al-Jazeera, 5 May 2019 “The potential of regional conflict is high and investing in water management is crucial for Afghanistan’s security. While most of the country’s international partners are reluctant to make such costly, long-term investments that bring little profit, the government is increasingly seeing water as a security issue. If “hydro-diplomacy” continues to be put high […]
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Groundviews, 4 May 2019 Read this reportage by a local human rights activists about the appalling situation of refugees from Muslim countries, among them Afghanistan, after the IS-inspired Easter terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka: “House owners also told me mobs had threatened to destroy their houses if they hosted refugee families. This led to about […]
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The Economist, 4 April 2019 More American bombs and missiles fell on Afghanistan in 2018 than in any year since published records began a decade ago—more than five times as many as in 2015. Civilian deaths from air strikes correspondingly rose by 87% between 2017 and 2018 to 463, according to Action on Armed Violence […]
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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 21 March 2019 After a few TV serials on Iranian TV seen as discriminatory against Afghans, with Tehran Mayor Piroz Hanachi for the first time a high-ranking Iranian official has publicly appreciated the role of Afghan migrant labourers to his city, saying that Tehran owed much of its beauty to Afghans. […]
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ZOMIA, February 2019 Acquaint yourself with Bette Dam’s much discussed and much attacked findings about late Taleban founder and leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, here in an extensive English summary of her book which is so far only available in Dutch.
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