Wall Street Journal, 1 April 2012 Yaroslav Trofimov tells the story of Commander Abdullah, locally known as Charsi, or hashish smoker, one of the most feared insurgent leaders in western Afghanistan and now ‘reintegrated’, waiting to be put in charge of the local Afghan Border Police. Local elders worry: ‘What lesson is this teaching to […]
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Pajhwok News Agency (Kabul), 31 March 2012 The priceless ancient Kushan Chehel Burj fort with its 40 surviving towers is on the verge of being lost due to natural and human influences, but local and foreign archeologists remain silent on the issue, the Kabul-based agency reports.
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Comedy Central, 28 March 2012 Ahmed Rashid tells the Americans what they apparently did not realise: there are two different Talebans – the Afghan and the Pakistani and answers the questions why, despite the Hellfire they let rain on Pakistan, no one loves them there.
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IRIN, 26 March 2012 The gradual drawdown of US-NATO troops, and the planned handover of full security responsibilities to Afghan forces in 2014, has had the aid community worried about a corresponding drop in aid funds. But many aid workers also see the transition as an opportunity to reset aid delivery in Afghanistan, which for […]
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BBC, 26 March 2012 A British citizen who was released after two years in Guantanamo, and never charged with any crime thereafter, reports that the tirture technique he feared most was being tortured with music. Listen to a documentary that charts the progress of him, alongside other ex-detainees, campaigners and psychologists, as they attempt to […]
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Pajhwok News Agency (Kabul), 23 March 2012 Five members of a tribal militia, ‘drug addicts who belong to one family, [and] had been appointed directly by US Marines’, according to the district governor, have defected to the Taleban in Marja district, Helmand province.
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al-Jazeera, 21 March 2012 The Qatar-based channel reports how on 8 March members of Karzai’s team clashed, involving physical violence and mutual accusations of spying, over the strategic agreement with the US during a meeting in the presidential place and in the presence of US diplomats and military who had to separate them.
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Bamdad website, 21 March 2012 The Taleban recently released a statement calling Nowruz an unlawful celebration and had declared ceremonies would be targeted for attack.
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The New Republic, 20 March 2012 That’s my quote of the week, from the article recommended: ‘It would be drastically wrong, not only morally, but also psychologically, to think of murder as a normal response to the experience of combat.’
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al-Jazeera, 19 March 2012 al-Jazeera did: Here are the names of the killed and wounded by the US soldier Bates’ killing spree in Pamjwai – we are grateful that they do not remain anonymous.
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Financial Times, 18 March 2012 Some interesting figures: Afghanistan’s central bank found that the amount of declared dollars flown out of Kabul doubled to $4.6bn last year; this was almost equivalent to Afghanistan’s 2010-11 state budget of $4.8bn. The sum amounts to more than $150 for each Afghan citizen, in a country with average per […]
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Sunday Telegraph, 11 March 2012 A nice piece of uncommented inteqal propaganda, just read this: ‘[T]he aim is to get the [ANA] recruits to a level where they are “Afghan good enough”. It is a phrase that rings around the ISAF headquarters and represents a more qualified understanding of what is achievable.’ More quotes to […]
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