Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Regional Relations

This priority area covers AAN’s reporting on Afghanistan’s relations within its neighbourhood, with reporting so far focused mainly on Iran, Pakistan and the Central Asian republics.

The Thin Red Durand Line

Fabrizio Foschini •

The air-strikes that hit two Pakistani check-posts on the border between Mohmand Agency and Kunar province, killing 24 (some sources still report 25 or 26) Pakistani security forces and injuring a dozen more, have triggered, as expected, a strong reaction from the Pakistani authorities. As of now, Pakistan, ISAF and the Afghan military have very […]

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Pakistan: There Is Also Good News

Ann Wilkens •

Disturbing news is coming out of Pakistan at such a pace that one item tends to crowd out the other. For example, how much of a mark have the millions of flood-stricken, homeless people in the Indus delta left on the international media scene? Even in Pakistan itself, their fate is not prominent any more. […]

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Afghanistan Conference in Istanbul: The clogged arteries of the ‘Heart of Asia’

Thomas Ruttig •

While governments usually try to keep the mood positive in the run-up to important diplomatic conferences, this time they have not even succeeded in doing this. The title of the upcoming regional conference on Afghanistan in Istanbul on 2 November is ambitious title – ‘Istanbul Conference for Afghanistan: Security and Cooperation in the Heart of […]

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Pakistan, Taleban, America and the vacillations of the Afghan president

Kate Clark •

President Karzai’s offer to back Pakistan if it ever came under attack from America was breath-taking. ‘God forbid,’ he told GEO TV during a visit to Islamabad, ‘if a war breaks between Pakistan and America, we will side [with] Pakistan. We are your brother.’ It was not just the scenario of an American-funded, trained and […]

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Fire at the Durand Line

Ann Wilkens •

Since mid-June, warming relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have run into serious trouble again. Pakistan accuses Afghanistan (and ISAF) of doing nothing to stop militants from attacking Pakistani border posts and villages, Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of shelling villages in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces, killing civilians and causing hundreds of families to flee. AAN Advisory Board […]

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AAN Reads: The Soviets in Afghanistan, In Their Narrative

Thomas Ruttig •

Rodric Braithwaite’s ‘Afgantsy’ has already deservedly been widely praised for its Soviet and Russian sources-based account of the Soviet intervention years in Afghanistan. AAN’s Senior Analyst Thomas Ruttig joins in, but finds that Artemy Kalinovsky’s ‘The Long Goodbye’ is a more than worthy addition on this issue. Rodric Braithwaite’s book has already deservedly been reviewed […]

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Where exactly is Abbottabad, or A Vindication of Geography

AAN Team •

Abbottabad (or, in the local pronunciation: Abtabad) has already risen to a status shared only by some of Calvino’s ‘Invisibles Cities’: that of a mysterious fairy land of which everybody talks but few know something for certain. In particular, when the news of Osama bin Laden’s killing broke, its exact distance from the Pakistani capital […]

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Facts and Fiction on the Frontier: The Haqqanis and the Kurram peace deal

Fabrizio Foschini •

For a few weeks, it looked like the sectarian conflict in Kurram Tribal Agency had been brought to a solution. The years-long siege on Shia residents had been lifted thanks to a much talked about peace agreement, allegedly brokered with the help of Jalaluddin Haqqani. This, however, now looks increasingly doubtful and seems to be […]

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Pakistani Anger with WikiLeaks

Karl Fischer • Ulrike Schulz •

Pakistan has remarkably free media. However, this freedom has been limited on a few subjects. Journalists would not touch the Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan during the ‘jihad’ against the Soviet occupation in a critical way, for example. It looked as if the ISI often was dictating the leaders on this subject in at least some […]

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