Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Economy, Development, Environment

This priority area covers Afghanistan’s political economy, economic development and poverty, with a focus on sectors with important political and/or rule of law implications, such as mining, banking and transport and, in the past, the private security sector.

Power to the People: How to extend Afghans’ access to electricity

Mohsin Amin •

More than four billion dollars have, to date, been spent on Afghanistan’s power infrastructure. And yet there are still considerable deficiencies, even in the country’s capital, which has seen most of the investment – and most of the progress. At the same time, the demand for electricity is rapidly growing and the supply-demand gap has […]

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Battleground Kankur: Afghan students’ difficult way into higher education

Obaid Ali •

For some hundred thousand Afghan high school graduates, the university entry tests, known as kankur, have started. The first to sit the exam, from December onwards, were students in more-remote provinces, for example Badghis, Bamyan, Daikundi, Nuristan, Wardak, Logar and Sar-e Pul. Pictures of rows of students sitting on city squares  or mosques taking the […]

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Going in Circles: The never-ending story of Afghanistan’s unfinished Ring Road

Qayoom Suroush •

Since the presidential campaign and during trips abroad President Ashraf Ghani has been promising to turn Afghanistan into an “Asian roundabout” for regional trade and transit. However, for this, Afghanistan would need to improve its transport systems and build new and better roads. That is probably why, in his first cabinet meeting, on 2 October […]

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Kabul Bank: glitzy facade, foul credits. Photo: ToloNews

AAN Podcasts: Martine van Bijlert talks Kabul Bank

Thomas Ruttig •

Regular visitors to the AAN website will have noticed that we have added an additional channel to our publications: podcasts. Although we already posted some podcasts earlier on (visit the archive here), you will be able to literally hear from us more regularly, from now on. We start our new podcast series with a comment […]

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Between Rhetoric and Reality: Access to health care and its limitations

Frank Dorner • Lena Langbein •

While the world’s attention is focused on the withdrawal of international forces and the security handover, people in Afghanistan continue to die because they do not have access to adequate healthcare. The health system is frequently held up as a glowing example of the aid efforts of the international community, and since 2002 much progress […]

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Return of the Goodwill? London conference as symbol of a new start

Christine Roehrs •

Initially, the upcoming London Conference on Afghanistan (3 and 4 December) was supposed to be a hard check on the Afghan leadership’s governance standards. Corruption, women’s rights, elections – how did the country do, and would it deserve fresh aid commitments? However, the new government to discuss these things is, except for president and CEO, […]

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One Thousand Dollars for Books per Year: Afghanistan’s undersupplied universities

Christine Roehrs •

Afghan university students still do not have proper textbooks. Their professors give them so-called ‘chapters’ – copies of excerpts from lecture notes or books that are often out-dated. Libraries on the other hand remain underfunded dumping grounds for donated books that mostly do not fit needs, curricula or lecture contents. Why is that still so, […]

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Under Pul-e Sukhta bridge. Photo: Qayoom Suroush

Under the Bridge: The drug addicts’ scene in Kabul

Qayoom Suroush •

Addiction to drugs is an often underestimated phenomenon in Afghanistan. Thousands of people become addicted to drugs every year in a country that is the world’s major producer of opiates, although many of them developed the habit while living abroad as refugees. In Kabul, they concentrate in western areas of the city, living in veritable […]

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How good are Afghanistan’s private universities? An interview with the author of AAN’s latest paper

AAN Team •

AAN is launching its latest paper, looking at the state of Afghanistan’s private higher education sector (download paper here). Over the past five years, private universities have experienced an unprecedented boom. This is not only good news. In this interview, the author of the paper, Niamatullah Ibrahimi (*), an Afghan analysts who has extensively researched and written about current and […]

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Slippery Slopes: Ecological, social and developmental aspects of the Badakhshan landslide disaster

Thomas Ruttig •

A huge double landslide, of possibly unprecedented proportions, destroyed parts of a village in Badakhshan’s Argo district and killed a still unconfirmed number of people on 2 May. AAN Senior Analyst Thomas Ruttig looks at the combination of causes of this disaster including the long-term effects of global warming impacting large parts of South Asia, local […]

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May Day on Workers Street: Trade unions and the status of labour in Afghanistan

Thomas Ruttig •

More than 1,000 Afghan men and women took to the street on International Labour Day on 1 May. With the country’s latest mining disaster, killing at least 24 workers only one day earlier, the participants had one acute problem to address: workers’ safety in the mining sector. However, the new leadership of Afghanistan’s largest trade […]

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Photo: Pajhwok Afghan News, 2013

Cure or Curse? Implications of the Kilij mine closure for Bamyan’s security situation

Jalil Benish •

As Afghanistan prepares to take full responsibility for security and state functions by the end of 2014, the country’s natural resources are often touted as a major source of future state revenue to substitute for dwindling international aid. There are, however, concerns regarding the ability and willingness of the Afghan government to ensure that extraction is […]

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