ICRC, 8 October 2012 Reto Stocker’s worrying conclusions: ‘I am filled with concern as I leave this country. Since I arrived here in 2005, local armed groups have proliferated, civilians have been caught between not just one but multiple front lines, and it has become increasingly difficult for ordinary Afghans to obtain health care. People […]
Recommended Reads
Wall Street Journal, 3 October 2012 According to this report, ‘researchers working for the U.S. military have concluded [in a draft report] that it could cost more than $54 billion to build and run a railway network across Afghanistan, a price [that] could make some large-scale mining economically unviable’. ‘Because of the daunting terrain between […]
Recommended Reads
bulletproofafghans (photoblog), 1 October 2012 I got my vest, you don’t: another explanation for ‘green-on-blue’?
Recommended Reads
Washington Post, 30 September 2012 A reportage from Garmser, Helmand, where again ‘tribal leaders are the backbone of this strategically vital region near. If they refuse to support the government after NATO forces leave, U.S. officials say there’s a good chance the Taliban could make a vigorous return. But if traditional leaders present a united […]
Recommended Reads
The Independent, 29 September 2012 An interesting story about a man who was called to ‘help build an Afghanistan economy on the foundations of trillions of dollars-worth of copper and gold buried beneath its war-torn surface’ by a US State Department official and ‘a Wellington College-educated former SAS commander who is now chief executive at […]
Recommended Reads
The Guardian, 27 September 2012 The British military in Helmand ‘had built too much … trying to win “hearts and minds”‘, ‘without enough consultation with the Afghan government and without thinking through how [it] would be maintained’, according to a new report. Now the PRT commander has to sort out which schools and clinics have […]
Recommended Reads
Reuters, 26 September 2012 The story of Mabry Anders, from Oregon, killed by Welayat Khan, from Nangrahar, in a so-called green-on-blue shooting, who was subsequently killed by a US helicopter himself while fleeing and cannot tell what his motives were anymore. So what remains are three people dead (including another US soldier) and different versions: […]
Recommended Reads
People’s Daily (China), 25 September 2012 … including for China, writes a commentator with the interesting name Chen Chenchen in Beijing’s official English-language daily, the Global Times. ‘Many are speculating about the long-term ambitions of Beijing, believing that the emerging power is seeking a larger role in post-NATO Afghanistan and is looking for greater influence […]
Recommended Reads
IWPR, 25 September 2012 ‘Local officials in Afghanistan’s Laghman province are taking tens of thousands of US dollars a month in fees and taxes from drivers using the Kabul-Jalalabad highway, and the way the money is collected indicates that it is being pocketed’, writes the Kabul-based news agency. We also find the reporter’s name remarkable: […]
Recommended Reads
New York Times, 24 September 2012 A judicial panel here ruled in favor of Afghanistan’s national security chief Rangin Dadfar Spanta on Monday in an unusual case of a senior government official turning to the courts and the public to prove that allegations of corruption against him.
Recommended Reads
The Daily Beast
(blog), 19 September 2012 The experience of a former US trainer embedded in the Afghan security forces, saying that already ‘by the mid 2000s, the relationship [between the trainers and the Afghan troops] had begun to fray’ – because ‘the ANA was growing, getting better at its job, and chaffing at the […]
Recommended Reads
FR online and Basler Zeitung, 17 Sept. 2010 Willi Germund’s protrait of a Kabul candidate with democratic leanings and some of his opponents, like the big landlord who was charged for drug offenses and still has better chances than the democrat (in German, the Basler Zeitung is only accesible for subscribers).
Recommended Reads
