Counterpunch, 23 October 2012 Italian journalist renders the story how soldiers from his country shot dead a young Farah girl in 2009 and about what appears to be the cover-up of it.
Recommended Reads
Xinhua. 22 October 2012 The Chinese news agency reports from Baghlan province how Afghan farmers, threatened by winter, return to hashish growing. It also reports that Baghlan and Faryab provinces in the northern region and Kapisa province in the eastern region have lost the poppy-free status and resumed poppy cultivation.
Recommended Reads
Time, 19 October 2012 Air Force Major, who served as an ‘AfPak Hand’ in Helmand supporting the Afghan Peace and Reconciliation Program, thinks out loud. ‘When things are top, down driven you see a lot of hedging type of behavior: “I’ll send six of my young men this way in case this side wins and […]
Recommended Reads
Foreign Policy, 18 October 2012 The powerful argument of Haseeb Humayoon, a young Afghan analyst based in the country, attacking those who foresee a bleak future for the country, predicting a post-2014 civil war and a Taleban take over. One might add, though, that many of those attacked do not ‘predict’ but discuss possible scenarios.
Recommended Reads
New York Times, 18 October 2012 A reportage from rarely-covered Nimruz province.
Recommended Reads
New York Times, 15 October 2012 Well, ‘turnover’ is a cautious word: This article discusses the -rising – figures of defections from the ANA. Ron Nordland writes that ‘deserters complain of corruption among their officers, poor food and equipment, indifferent medical care, Taliban intimidation of their families and, probably most troublingly, a lack of belief […]
Recommended Reads
The Daily Beast (Newsweek blog), 15 October 2012 Interesting article with background of Taleban leader Mulla Omar’s biography and musings about his 11-year silence, explained by either psycholigical problems or even that he might have been killed.
Recommended Reads
Reuters, 14 October 2012 As the Afghan government finalizes new laws designed to attract more foreign mining investment, it made public 210 previously awarded contracts in the fields of mining and energy.
Recommended Reads
New York Times, 13 October 2012 In an unusually long editorial, the influential New York Times now takes the position that US troops should withdraw from Afghanistan even before the end of 2014. ‘This conclusion represents a change on our part’, it says. ‘The war in Afghanistan had powerful support at the outset, including ours, […]
Recommended Reads
AFP, 13 October 2012 The French news agency reports another anti-Taleban ‘uprising’, this time from Logar’s Kolangar district and financed by a local businessman who has rejected to join the ALP. He claims he has already poured USD 160,000 into the uprising and has ‘the support of 50 villages and 200 armed men, with 2,000 […]
Recommended Reads
IPS, 10 October 2012 Gareth Porter with a new piece: on how the Taleban’s IED war affected the US troops surge and made it fail finally. With some gruesome statistics about killed and maimed soldiers.
Recommended Reads
Wall Street Journal, 10 October 2012 The closure of already five of over two dozen NATO PRTs ‘is effectively turning off the money flow to Afghanistan’s provinces’, the Journal reports. Of the once millions-strong Commander’s Emergency Response Program funds for PRT commanders (the Nangarhar PRT spent $24 million on projects in the province in 2010) […]
Recommended Reads
