Washington Post, 3 November 2010 Joshua Partlow and Karen DeYoung report another governance desaster (after Marja): ‘Despite months of American prodding, the Afghan government has failed to fill dozens of key positions in Kandahar, leaving an ineffectual local administration that U.S. officials fear will cripple the battlefield progress the military says it is making in […]
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Pajhwok, 2 November 2010 The historic decorative glass industry in western Herat province is teetering on the brink of collapse due to lack of market, officials said on Tuesday.
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1 November 2010 This article originally from th Washington Post (but with a better headline here) describes how a 58-year-old Californian bar-and-burger owner turned his business, along with a young Kyrgyz partner, into a multinational jet fuel business that has received Pentagon contracts worth nearly $3 billion. Their companies, Mina Corp. and Red […]
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Eurasianet, 28 October 2010 Aunohita Mojumdar puts another part of the current spin straight: The PSC ban does NOT hamper humanitarian work, at least not that of non-governmental organisations. And even ‘[n]ot all donors use private security companies […]. The Canadian government also indicated that a ban would have a minimal impact on aid operations […]
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The News, 28 October 2010 ‘We wonder if today we have foolishness, or great courage, on display in Islamabad. Our president smiles often – even as killings in Karachi intensify, the war in the north becomes more and more complex, […] millions of flood victims [that] face the threat of death due to disease and […]
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War is Business (blog), 27 October 2010 This blog presents the information from SIGAR’s latest report on contracting in Afghanistan is presented in “web-friendly tables”, listing which businesses got the US reconstruction contracts over the last few years.
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Le Monde diplomatique, Oct. 2010 Louis Imbert analyses the political economy supporting the Taleban and, moreover, gives concrete figures on how much contractors must pay to them on certain projects and puts the number of convois supplying NATO bases in Afghanistan at 6-8,000 per month, annual value: US$ 2.16 nn.
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CBS News, 22 October 2010 Nick Turse discusses the extensive plans for new American military bases and existing base expansions, that will take the US far beyond the July 2011 drawn-down date. Which poses the obvious question: How Permanent Are America’s Afghan Bases?
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Columbia Journalism Review, 21 October 2010 Joshua Foust on military operations and media spin: “the military is, literally, the only group inside or outside of Afghanistan that sees hope and progress in the war”, and “This disconnect between military spin and ground reality is not only dangerous, it is insulting: Americans can handle the truth […]
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Global Post, 21 October 2010 There is more smoke than fire surrounding reports of talks with the Taliban, writes Jean MacKenzie, quoting AAN’s Martine van Bijlert. And parliamentary candidate Janan Mosazai adds the following analysis: Karzai has come to the conclusion that unless there is a settlement to this war, things will get substantially worse […]
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Foreign Policy (blog), 20 October 2010 As the US, Afghanistan and Taleban discuss commencing talks that might eventually strike a peace deal, former UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is ‘back on the scene’, writes Colum Lynch. He quotes ‘one UN-based official’ that Brahimi had been approached by the Americans and asked whether he might consider a […]
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Telegraph, 13 October 2010 US forces are tracking down the leadership of the Wahhabi group thought to be responsible for her abduction, Jamaat-ud-Dawa al-Quran wal’Sunnah that had formally joined the Taleban in January this year; with details about the group.
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