Washington Post, 14 February 2019 Amie Ferris-Rotman reports that while the Kremlin under Gorbachov in 1989 “called the Afghan war #a political mistake’ [and] Russian lawmakers, urged by President Vladimir Putin, are now trying to make a 180. On Friday, the date the last Red Army force withdrew from Afghanistan 30 years ago, the Russian parliament plans to […]
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PRIO, 12 February 2019 Kristian Haprviken, a specialist for south/central Asian regional relations at PRIO Oslo, looks at Russian intentions with regards to Afghanistan. He warns that one should not view Russia’s involvement “as having purely evil intent.” And further: One view is that the political capital Russia is now building in Afghanistan could be exploited […]
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Crossroads Asia project, 2014 Alessandro Rippa’ study of the Uyghur community of Pakistan, the Kashgaris, a group of migrants who left Xinjiang over the course of the last century, aiming principally at offering an overview of the history and current situation of the Uyghur community of Pakistan – a part of which migrated there via […]
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The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 8 February 2019 Moe on the modus operandi of CIA-backed NDS 02 unit based on Jalalabad airport, and another alleged case of killing of civilians in Nangrahar’s Rodat district in September 2018: A civil society activist in the province told the Bureau: “The 02 unit conducts operations with impunity and […]
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BBC Farsi, 7 January 2019 The BBC Farsi’s Fawad Masiha looked at the available sources on this subject (and the existence of a ‘Mashhad shura’ that does not recognise the Quetta shura’s authority. In his feature, he finds the source base rather narrow – although, he says, a Wall Street Journal article quoting one anonymous Western security official […]
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New York Times, 31 December 2018 Another key piece by Mujib Mashal, on an often overlooked aspect of US military presence in Afghanistan – the “parallel mission to the United States military’s [Resolute Support], but with looser rules of engagement.” “The Times went to the sites of half a dozen of their raids, often less […]
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The White House, 2 January 2019 Full text of the cabinet meeting and press conference in which Trump said, in some twist of history, that “Russia used to be the Soviet Union” and “was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia”.
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al-Araby , 7 December 2018 An interesting piece about how Afghans from different regions react to the sanctions-induced economic crisis in Iran, about their wages and how Iranian entrepreneurs save money employing undocumented Afghans.
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The National Interest, 5 December 2018 An interesting perspective on the current situation from the US, including the attempt to get peace talks with the Taleban going, by Ronald Neumann, who was US Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007 and returns regularly to the country but is not a government official anymore but knows enough […]
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Washington Post, 4 December 2018 The op-ed says: Last month, Russian lawmakers took another big step in the same direction by approving a draft resolution that seeks to justify the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. The formal vote on the measure — proposed jointly by lawmakers from the [pro-Putin party] United […]
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BAAG, 30 November 2018 This policy paper by the British & Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group (BAAG) looks at returns – enforced and voluntary – both from neighbouring countries Iran and Afghanistan as well as from Europe. Since 2015, 59% came from Iran, 41% from Pakistan, with the rest from EU countries including the UK (0.6%). […]
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TRT World, 14 November 2018 The founder of the notorious, and now defunct, Blackwater, has been making headlines for trying to privatise the Afghan war. What has gone unreported are his plans as “Trump’s advisor” to extract the country’s immensely rich mineral wealth. This article looks at his activities in Afghanistan. Although his spokesman said that […]
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