Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Reports

Reports – previously known as dispatches – are the flagship of the AAN website and our main type of publication. AAN reports are based on extensive desk and field research and provide timely and in-depth information and analysis.

Covering for Each Other in Zanabad: The defiant widows of the hill

Naheed Esar Malikzay •

On top of a hill in Kabul’s southeast is a unique community. It is locally known as Zanabad (“Women’s Town”) and has survived all turmoil of the last decades. A group of widows started building homes there for themselves as far back as the 1990s. Initially, the people of the neighbouring communities looked down on […]

Rights and Freedoms Read more
ALP guarding a road in Imam Saheb (in an area now taken by Taleban) during 2014 operations. Photo: Bethany Matta.

ANSF Wrong-Footed: The Taleban offensive in Kunduz

Thomas Ruttig •

The Taleban’s first major onslaught in their ‘spring offensive’ this year took the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) by surprise. But after a few days, they were able to react and push the insurgents back in some areas while the latter held their ground in others. Although the ANSF kept control over Kunduz city and […]

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The Killing of Farkhunda (2): Mullahs, feminists and a gap in the debate

Borhan Osman •

From ultra-conservative Salafis to secular-minded feminists, an astonishingly diverse range of voices have found their heroine in Farkhunda, the young woman who was lynched by a mob in Kabul on 19 March 2015. She has become the rare victim of violence to be almost unanimously called a shahid, a martyr. The consensus on her status, however, […]

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The Killing of Farkhunda (1): The physical environment and the social types party to her murder

Fabrizio Foschini • Naheed Esar Malikzay •

40 days after the violent killing of Farkhunda, supporters gathered on Monday, 27 April 2015, to mourn and protest her death. Afghan public opinion has now reached a broad consensus over the unprecedented gravity of this murder. Yet, many questions remain as to what triggered the killing and how it was possible for such a […]

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Hazaras in the Crosshairs? A scrutiny of recent incidents

Qayoom Suroush •

Eight abductions of groups of people have been reported since late February by officials, activists or media as having targeted ethnic Hazaras. The first was also the biggest: the abduction of 31 bus passengers in Zabul on 23 February 2015. Other crimes ‘against Hazaras’ have been reported from Ghazni, Farah, Daikundi and Balkh. AAN’s Qayoom […]

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First wave of IS attacks? Claim and denial over the Jalalabad bombs

Borhan Osman • Kate Clark •

The suicide attack on the Kabul Bank in Jalalabad on 18 April 2015, which killed more than 30 people and injured at least 100 others, was condemned by the Taleban and claimed by the Islamic State (IS), or at least by a Facebook site purporting to represent IS, also known as Daesh. President Ashraf Ghani also […]

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Picture shows candidate ministers sitting in Parliament.

Afghanistan (almost) has a cabinet: MPs confirm all candidate ministers

Kate Clark •

Members of parliament have endorsed all sixteen candidates put forward by Afghanistan’s national unity government. This means that, six months into its term, the country has an almost complete cabinet – only the defence minister is still missing. This is the MPs’ second such vote. The first, on 28 January 2015, saw only a third […]

Political Landscape Read more
Tajik gentlemen discussing in Dushanbe. Photo: Thomas Ruttig

‘Peace-for-Power’ versus Participatory Solutions: Lessons of Tajikistan’s civil war – a book review

Arne C Seifert •

In a highly relevant 2013 book, Central Asia analysts Kirill Nourzhanov and Christian Bleuer (*) have looked at social relations and the political system in Tajikistan at the end of the 1990s civil war in this Central Asian neighbour of Afghanistan. Our guest author Arne C. Seifert (**) has read the book and argues that […]

Regional Relations Read more
Library in Kabul. Photo: Qayoom Suroush

Reading in Kabul: The state of Afghan libraries

Qayoom Suroush •

With Afghanistan’s educated class growing rapidly over the past decade while education resources remain scarce, there is an increasing need for a functioning public library system, AAN’s Qayoom Suroush argues. However, the only public library of Afghanistan’s capital – at the same time standing in for a non-existent national library – is not even close […]

Economy, Development, Environment Read more
Members of the anti-Taleban uprising in Alasai - photo by Obaid Ali

Fire in the Pashai Hills: A two-district case study from Kapisa

Obaid Ali •

The Taleban are making further headway towards Kabul. In Kapisa province, 80 kilometers northeast of the capital, they have already established an administrative system governing one of the districts, Alasai. An uprising staged against them last summer by local Jamiati commanders failed,  largely due to lack of support from government forces. At the same time, […]

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Post Runners, Aerogrammes and the Big E-Mail Challenge: Scenes from 135 years of Afghan postal service

Thomas Ruttig •

Calling the pre-email postal service (hand-written letters, you remember, and postcards) “snail mail” has been appropriate for Afghanistan for most of the past century, and even before. Established in 1878, it took Afghanistan’s service half a century to become part of the international postal system. After that, it was cut off during long years of […]

Context and Culture Read more

The Unity Government’s First Six Months: Where is the governance?

Thomas Ruttig •

After six months of Afghan Unity Government – what has been achieved? President Ghani, some say, has been ruling with a ‘two-man government’ (him and Hanif Atmar, head of the National Security Council), leading many to feel left out. ‘Strategic silence’ has become a somewhat mocking term for Ghani’s style of government – or is he […]

Political Landscape Read more

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