AP, 15 October 2015 Self-explanatory.
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Pajhwok News Agency, 21 September 2015 The Kabul-based news agency reports about the number of advisors (79, eight more than under Karzai)under president Ghani, and that he has not met many of them yet.
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New York Times, 20 September 2015 The Times reports, quoting former military personnel serving in Afghanistan, that US soldiers had been told to ignore the bachabazi practice among Afghan allies. The current US commander in Afghanistan has denied the existence of such a ‘policy’ but there is sufficient detail in the report to make this […]
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RFE/RL, 14 September 2015 “An Afghan press watchdog says 23 Afghan media workers have embarked on a dangerous journey to Europe this week. Nai, a Kabul-based organization that advocates for open media in Afghanistan, says the journalists left their country because of “rising insecurity, censorship, and an uncertain future.” In a statement on September 14, […]
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Huffington Post, 11 September 2015 Self-explanatory headline. It just needed to be added that most Afghan refugees to Europe come through Greece; their percentage through North Africa and Italy is very low.
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New York Times, 10 September 2015 “The annual celebration of Afghanistan’s official national hero, Ahmed Shah Massoud, descended into violence and ethnic tensions again as his armed supporters began marauding through the streets here, officials said Thursday. At least two people were killed, one of them an officer of the National Directorate of Security, the […]
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TomDispatch.com, 28 April 2015 An fascinating, slightly older post (its contents were raised in this recent blogpost by Gary Owens) by Andrew Cockburn on the so-called Kingpin strategy. This node-centric approach has its roots in the drug wars and underlies the expanding US counterinsurgency targeting campaigns. It also turns out to have had the exact opposite effect as intended — as found by Rex […]
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New York Times, 18 August 2015 NYT’s Mujib Mashal takes a closer look at how deteriorating security in North Afghanistan prompted Vice President Dostum to activate a collection of local militias and to open a command centre in his pink palace in Shiberghan. “Partly because of pressures from President Ashraf Ghani, government officials said, Mr. […]
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New York Times, 15 August 2015 A reportage from Baghran district in Helmand “where the Taliban were scarcely ever out of power” – “fficially, the Afghan government acknowledges having lost only four out of roughly 400 districts to the Taliban. Of these, Baghran was the first to fall, about a decade ago, ” “There is […]
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Daily Times (Pakistan), 13 August 2015 A very concise analysis and commentary by the daily’s columnist Dr Mohammad Taqi: The Pakistani leadership’s mantra that it is desirous of an “Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process” comes across as an abject farce when Taliban leaders live and die — both politically and physically — on its soil. […]
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New York Times, 15 July 2015 “Throughout June, American drones and warplanes fired against militants in Afghanistan more than twice as much as they had in any previous month this year, according to military statistics. … The vast majority of the strikes appear to remain focused on Taliban forces, the traditional targets of American airstrikes here for more than a decade. […]
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Registan (blog), 8 July 2015 A look beyond Afghanistan’s northern border, into Tajikistan, by Helene Thibault, where the government uses all legal tricks to silence and suppress the only legal Islamic opposition party all over Central Asia.
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