Penn State University website, 23 November 2010 Former Guantanamo prosecutor and defence attorney discuss the case of Jawed, an Afghan minor who was ultimately released – after the prosecutor resigned and came out in his defence.
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BBC, 23 November 2010 An interesting account of the third round of this meeting, in terms of the participants (including MPs, civil society and ‘representatives of the two vice presients’ from Kabul but not from the government as well as, reportedly, those of the Taleban, HIG and the Haqqani network) as well as atmosphere – […]
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Time, 22 November 2010 This reportage from Peshawar describes the Sikh and Hindu community there, growing as a result of displacements elsewhere in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Former Pakistani Taleban leader Hakimullah Messud had demanded they either convert to Islam, leave their ancestral land or pay a lump-sum jizya (head tax) of 140,000 dollar
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Current Intelligence, 22 November 2010 Alex Strick van Linschoten explains: “Petraeus wants to present an empirically valid case for continuing along the current course — the so-called “default position” turbo-charged with all the money and weapons the heart could ever want. Petraeus wants to use all these “masses of data” to make you believe five […]
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New York Times, 22 November 2010 ‘An episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel’ – or told by Mulla Nasreddin: The highest-ranking Taleb people in Kabul had been talking to after ‘heaving been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace’ (apparently Western diplomats also saw him) […]
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Financial Times, 18 November 2010 Ahmad Rashid, after having spoken to him for two hours, discusses how Karzai now sees the world, how that has changed over the years and what that means for the cooperation with the West (no indications of breaking with the West yet, despite the FT headline).
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McClatchy Newspapers, 16 November 2010 Jonathan landay picks another hot iron: the privatisation of Karkar coal mine, again with some Karzai involvement.
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BBC, 15 November 2010 Scientists warn that the extraction of copper from the giant, Chinese-operated Aynak mine in Logar will destroy a 2,600-year-old Buddhist monastery with stupas when work begins. They say they are under pressure now to reduce a three-year unofficial deadline agreed between the mine’s operator, Chinese government-backed China Metallurgical Group Corp, and […]
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Maisonneuve, 15 November 2010 A Canadian internist who served in Kandahar’s Combat Surgical Hospital discusses how “[f]or someone used to the life and the pathologies of the rich and settled, much about practicing medicine in Afghanistan felt unfamiliar.” On diabetes, urbanisation, skinny Afghans, the Polynesian sea and much more.
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IRIN, 15 November 2010 A steady rise in food prices this year is posing serious risks for millions of Afghans, aid agencies say. The average wheat price in September was 7.3 percent higher than in August, and wheat prices in Afghanistan were ‘the highest in the region’, according to the WFP. Afghanistan is expecting a […]
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Washington Post, 8 November 2010 SIGAR reports: since 2005 Washington has supplied $6.6 million in salary supplements to employees in Karzai’s office. US agencies in Afghanistan
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NY Daily News, 5 November 2010 A range of opinions among the international military on the state of the insurgency: NATO spokeswoman claiming ‘low morale’, others stressing increasing tactical capabilites, but also a wider variety from ‘very competent to barely competent.’ With as closing statement: “If you ever underestimate this enemy, that’s the day they’ll […]
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