A Different Place (blog), 15 January 2013 Alex Strick has been working on the ISAF press releases data again. As a little teaser (also for another AAN publication to come), here’s a chart comparing the first fifteen days of January in 2011, 2012 and 2013. It shows the number of ISAF operations in which someone […]
Recommended Reads
Washington Post, 11 January 2013 A soft-spoken but dramatic analysis of a tacit US policy change by former US Ambassador to Kabul Ronald Neumann: ‘A presence of 3,000 to 6,000 troops is a counterterrorist policy that gives up on serious support for the Afghan military and focuses on killing our enemies. It offers nothing to […]
Recommended Reads
Foreign Policy, 10 January 2013 A very interesting and differentiated historical and post-2001 perspective on his experience in talking to Taleban, why they talk in certain contexts and what that means for future negotiations with them by Michael Semple.
Recommended Reads
Vanity Fair, 9 January 2013 The author looks into the narco-palaces of Sherpur, with ‘“For Rent” signs all over’ it and waiting that ‘Blackwater’s coming’, referring to the security firm now called Academi, and the US’s ‘zero option’.
Recommended Reads
Guardian, 8 January 2013 An interesting glimpse into often-idealised nomadic life in Afghanistan by Emma Graham-Harrison, based on research by the Pastoral Engagement, Adaptation and Capacity Enhancement (Peace) programme. According to it, ‘hundreds of thousands’ of nomads have settled down ‘or are petitioning the government for land so they can join a more mainstream way […]
Recommended Reads
Pajhwok News Agency (Kabul), 6 January 2013 ‘Tribal elders from various provinces on Sunday warned the government of withdrawing their relatives from the ranks of Afghan security forces if two former officials, including one charged with triple murder, were not tried publicly’. The report refers to a case in Baghlan province, but Kabul-based daily Mandegar […]
Recommended Reads
Khaama Press (Kabul), 6 January 2013 The news agency’s report points out that ‘diarrhoeal diseases are responsible for the death of 48,545 children every year in the country’, amounting to 133 a day. ‘Even in the Afghan capital, Kabul, barely 25 percent of people, according to some reports, have direct access to potable water.’ The […]
Recommended Reads
The Guardian, 3 January 2013 Not only questions about ethnicity and language are not asked, but also ‘first results, from normally calm central Bamiyan province, showed an actual population barely half official estimates’ and sparked protests: ‘Death to the enemies of Bamiyan! The statistics are wrong!
Recommended Reads
The Australian, 29 December 2012 A reportage from Uruzgan’s Chora distrcit, one month after the Australian military closed its second-largest base in Afghanistan.
Recommended Reads
New York Times, 28 December 2012 The only woman serving as chief prosecutor in any of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, in Herat, has come to personify the fine line between the progressive and the conservative. She has come under criticism — that her office is jailing women for so-called moral crimes at nearly the highest pace […]
Recommended Reads
IWPR, 20 December 2012 Reporter Abdul Maqsud Azizi tells the story how he investigated land conflicts related to the extension of an US military base in the southern part of Logar province.
Recommended Reads
Reuters (blog)
, 19 December 2012 Reuter’s Sanjeev Miglani
picks up an under-reported issue: drone strikes in Afghanistan: ‘The United States carried out more drone strikes in Afghanistan this year than it has done in all the years put together in Pakistan since it launched the covert air war there eight years ago. […] U.S. Air […]
Recommended Reads
