NBC, 26 July 2018 The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) charged with tracking government spending in Afghanistan has released its first estimate of the total amount of money wasted there — a staggering $15.5 billion over 11 years — but says even that figure is “likely … only a portion of the total waste, […]
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Financial Times, 19 July 2018 Ahmed Rashid makes an important point in this opinion piece, advocating for a neutral mediator or supervisor for US-Taleban talks – arguing that Starting negotiations is a good thing, but the current opportunity could be squandered if the US goes about the process in the wrong way. (…) So far, […]
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Asia Times online, 18 July 2018 Afghan analyst Haroun Mir makes a number of valid points on the proposed US-Taleban talks, namely thatthe Afghan government “lost the peace momentum because of the absence of a consensus among key members of the governing coalition”, adding that “the Afghan political elite in Kabul, instead of closing ranks […]
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IWPR, 4 July 2018 There are no official figures available for maternal mortality in Paktika, but Waligul [the provincial director of public health for Paktika] estimated that between 80 and 90 babies died during delivery each month, with an annual total of around 1,000. (…) “We only have one female doctor to serve 250,000 women in […]
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US Government, 20 June 2018 Read an outline on the US Afghanistan strategy, on negotiations with the Taleban, pressure on Pakistan, elections and the region.
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NOAS, April 2018 This report by the Norwegian NGO NOAS provides some new insight into Afghanistan-related migration policies in Western Europe. In the summary, the report says: As the only country in Western Europe, Italy has declared the whole of Afghanistan as unsafe. Norway, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland have defined insecure areas based on updated security […]
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Global Witness, 25 May 2018 This new report by the NGO Global Witness provides a rare and detailed insight in an aspect of the political and resources economy of the Afghan war – looking at one of the less ‘sexy’ minerals, talc. While some media picked it up under headlines such as “Baby powder helping […]
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Long War Journal, 7 May 2018 Do the US generals and government believe their own propaganda? The LWJ writes: The ignorance of US government officials on the situation in Afghanistan and the nature of our enemy continues to remain on full display. Over the past two weeks, senior US officials have scrambled to make uneducated […]
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New York Times, 7 May 2018 Reportage about a trip to Ghazni, “an Afghan city on the brink of falling to the Taliban” by the Times’ correspondent Jawad Sukhanyar, where “the Taliban infiltrate at will, shoot officials in broad daylight, and run a vast tax-collection system up to the gates of the governor’s compound.”
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IWPR, 3 May 2018 Slain BBC reporter and IWPR contributor Ahmad Shah’s last piece for IWPR: Afghanistan every day – environmental problems and land issues around a planned industrial park in the southeast, originally published in January 2018.
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BBC, 28 April 2018 AAN joins in mourning Shah Marai, the chief photographer for Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Kabul, who has been killed in a bombing in the Afghan capital this morning. Here a BBC article presenting a small selection of his work documenting his homeland.
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Guardian, 15 April 2018 This article describes how Afghan and other homeless asylum seekers and refugees are camping out on the street in makeshift tents trying to get into an Indonesian detention centre – an interesting update to the 3 April 2018 AAN dispatch about Afghan refugees protesting the abysmal conditions inside the centres (here).
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