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.

Finally Towards a Complete Afghan Cabinet? The next 16 minister nominees and their bios (amended)

AAN Team •

Six months after the inauguration of the National Unity Government and two months after the last attempt to introduce cabinet members to the parliament, there is now a new list of nominees. It contains 16 names for almost all remaining cabinet positions. AAN’s Christine Roehrs, Qayoom Suroush, Naheed Esar, Ehsan Qaane and Obaid Ali have gathered […]

Political Landscape Read more

The Kabuliwala of Kolkata: Photo exhibition about a community longing for Afghanistan that once was home

Nazes Afroz •

In the suburbs of Kolkata, India, lives, in seclusion, a little known community of migrants who once came from Afghanistan – the first of them around the year of 1840. Kabuliwala they are called, and the today 5000 people have managed to preserve the way of life they brought from Paktia, Paktika and Ghazni. Inspired […]

Context and Culture Read more

Happy Nawruz! A blessed year 1394 to our readers – and a few poems for the occasion

AAN Team •

Dear readers and friends, the AAN team wishes you a blessed, healthy and hopefully more peaceful Afghan year 1394. Should you be in Afghanistan (and allowed out), try and visit one of the many Nawruz fairs that are happening across the country (see a picture of a merry-go-round for children during a fair in Mazar-e Sharif […]

Context and Culture Read more

Talks with the Taleban, Again: This time for real?

Thomas Ruttig •

Over the past weeks, Kabul buzzed with rumours that talks with the Taleban would begin soon, specifically, in the first week of March. That particular week is now past and nothing has happened. But this does not mean that rumours were completely false or that no movement is being made towards new talks with the […]

War and Peace Read more

Failings of Inclusivity: The Herat uprising of March 1979

Charlie Gammell •

In the spring of 1979, Afghanistan was almost in open rebellion against the government of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA); first uprisings happened around the country. One, that started today 36 years ago in Herat, succeeded in driving out the ‘Khalqi’ government and controlling the city for three days of chaotic independence in […]

Context and Culture Read more

A Perfect (Snow) Storm: What can be done against avalanche damage in Afghanistan

Ikramuddin Bahram •

After an exceptional dry winter, snow finally arrived in Kabul and the northern and central provinces. However, the sheer amounts of what should have been a blessing for farmers, turned into a catastrophe for some communities living in these areas, as the snowfall triggered a series of avalanches, claiming the lives of almost 300 people. […]

Context and Culture Read more

The Refugee Dilemma: Afghans in Pakistan between expulsion and failing aid schemes

Christine Roehrs •

Nearly 52,000 Afghans living in Pakistan have, within the past ten weeks, packed their belongings and crossed the border back into Afghanistan – more than twice as many as in the whole 12 months of 2014. This started after an attack of Pakistani Taleban on a public army school in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, on […]

Migration Read more

One Day in a Year: Afghan views on International Women’s Day

Naheed Esar Malikzay •

“The celebration of 8 March is a new concept, but Afghan women’s role in society has been respected for thousands of years,” President Ghani said in his speech for International Women’s Day on 5 March 2015, three days before the date. But if that is true, women’s rights activists asked after the event, why is […]

Context and Culture Read more

Photographer in Jail: An example of arbitrary Afghan ‘justice’

Ehsan Qaane • Kate Clark •

President Ghani’s spokesman has told AAN that jailed Afghan photographer Najib Musafer will be released from Pul-e Charkhi, although he gave no date. Musafer took a photograph of girls parading in an Education Day ceremony seven years ago and sold it to a production company which turned it into an image advertising Etisalat telephones. One […]

Rights and Freedoms Read more

Impunity and Silence: The meagre reaction to the latest HRW report

Thomas Ruttig •

Human rights abuses in Afghanistan no longer make big waves outside the really concerned circles. Yesterday (on 3 March 2015), Human Rights Watch released a hard-hitting piece of meticulous research looking at the ease with which gross human rights violations and war crimes are still committed by the powerful in Afghanistan: “Today We Shall All […]

Rights and Freedoms Read more
The remainders of the US' foreign detainees in Bagram: two Tunisians, two Tajiks, one Egyptian, and one Uzbek. (The photo shows other prisoners.) Photo: Khaama Press

The ‘Other Guantanamo’ (13): What should Afghanistan do with America’s foreign detainees?

Kate Clark •

The United States bequeathed Afghanistan a huge problem when it finally and completely transferred its detention facility at Bagram to the Afghan government in December 2014. For the previous 12 months, it had been urgently trying to get rid of all of the 50 or so foreigners it held there. In the end, it failed […]

Rights and Freedoms Read more

“An attempt to wipe out history”: The destruction of the Bamian Buddha colossi in 2001

Kate Clark • Thomas Ruttig •

On 26 February 2001, the leader of the Afghan Taleban movement, Mullah Muhammad Omar, ordered from his headquarters in Kandahar that “all statues and non-Islamic shrines in the different areas of the Islamic Emirate must be broken” because they were worshipped by people of non-Islamic religious beliefs and were therefore ‘idols.’ This kind of worship, […]

Context and Culture Read more

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