Pajhwok Afghan News, 19 March 2020 Residents have accused the police chief for Wazikhwa district of southeastern Paktika province being involved in killing and beating innocent citizens, drug smuggling and extorting money from Hashish farmers. Arrest warrants have not been carried out. 1st Cor. Barat, 26, has before served as police commander for Janikhel district. He […]
Recommended Reads
Responsible Statecraft, 13 March 2020 An analysis by Prof. Barnett R Rubin, looking at factors such as the release of prisoners, ceasefire and intra-Afghan negotiations. He concludes: The pandemic makes it even more important to end the war. (…) But measures to control the spread of the pandemic could make it even more difficult to […]
Recommended Reads
The Nw York Times, 8 March 2020 US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has confirmed that the US-Taleban agreement concluded in Doha in late February has two secret annexes. he called them “military implementation documents.” They are only accessible to members of the US Congress who cannot divulge their content. The Times, nonetheless, compiles what is […]
Recommended Reads
Pajhwok Afghan News, 29 February 2020 The Kabul-based news agency that also regularly publishes civilian casualty data, did its own survey.
Recommended Reads
The Diplomat, 29 February 2020 An interesting reply by an Afghan(?) Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto to another of many opinion pieces arguing that Afghanistan’s (indeed) centralised political system “hampers the development of an inclusive and legitimate government that is representative of local interests” – thereby equating regional warlords’ with ‘local’ interests. The […]
Recommended Reads
The Guardian, 19 February 2020 An excellent reportage from Pakistan’s coal mines where Afghan miners make up around 50% of the workforce, toiling in “one of the world’s harshest work environments”: The story of the coal miners of Balochistan is one of debt bondage and human rights abuses [including sexual abuse of children], an absence […]
Recommended Reads
al-Jazeera, 7 February 2020 While the last Jew living in Kabul and his synagogue are well known, it is lesser known that Herat – and other cities of northern Afghanistan – had had Jewish communities for centuries. It is believed that the population of Jews in western Afghanistan was close to 40,000 as of 1836 […]
Recommended Reads
National Geographic, 3 February 2020 An important thematic reminder in the midst of the current hot discussion about ‘elections and peace’, on one of the gravest problems Afghanistan is facing: “Afghanistan is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, and one of the least equipped to handle what’s to come. […]
Recommended Reads
New York Times, 28 January 2020 This article doesn’t mention Afghans or Afghanistan, but it describes another facet of the ongoing refugee crisis at the gates of Europe: “The number of asylum seekers in Cyprus was five times higher in 2019 than it was four years ago, unlike in the rest of the [EU], where […]
Recommended Reads
Kabul Now, 28 January 2020 A hard-wrenching story of violence against children and family traumatisation. – Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission says violence against children is on the rise, and the International Bureau of Children’s Rights points out that the scale of violence against children is far beyond domestic violence: deprivation from education, beatings, rape, child labor […]
Recommended Reads
Daily Telegraph, 4 February 2020 Another story about intra-family violence against children, this time as the result of poverty and drug addiction, from Kabul and the border province of Nimruz. The province’s capital Zaranj has more than 10,000 addicts.
Recommended Reads
USIP, 1 February 2020 An interesting report about three of Afghanistan’s youth protest movements, ie case studies of Jombesh-e Tabasum (Tabassum movement) in 2015, Jombesh-e Roshanayi (Enlightenment movement) in 2016–17 and Jombesh-e Rashtakhez-e Taghir (Uprising for Change) in 2017. The authors – Srinjoy Bose (University of New South Wales), Nematullah Bizhan (Australian National University) and Niamatullah […]
Recommended Reads
