Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

War and Peace

This thematic category brings together AAN’s reporting on the conflict in Afghanistan, its underlying causes and drivers, the various armed actors and how it affects Afghans in their everyday lives.

Afghanistan’s ‘Cumulative’ Protests and the West’s Dilemma (amended)

Thomas Ruttig •

Afghanistan has seen its largest protests since the fall of the Taleban. For six days in a row, demonstrations protested the burning of copies of the Qur’an at Bagram airbase in about half of the Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Roads were blocked, ISAF bases stormed and an UN office targeted and there were calls for jihad […]

War and Peace Read more

Quran Burning on Bagram Base

Thomas Ruttig •

This blog can be very short, thinks Thomas Ruttig, a Senior Analyst at AAN, and doesn’t require any Afghanistan expertise: Books and other reading material, Islamic or otherwise, do not belong in the garbage. If you stick to this basic rule, Quran burnings and retaliatory riots can be avoided. For an alternative to dispose of printed material, […]

War and Peace Read more

Are the Taleban talking to Karzai (and does it matter)?

Martine van Bijlert •

When little is clear, all clues seem relevant. And so it can happen that a handful of fairly vague sentences by the President are taken as proof of a significant new step towards negotiations in Afghanistan. A closer look at these claims of emerging “three-way talks” shows that this reading is rather premature, as is […]

War and Peace Read more

Talks Have Not Stopped Killing of Afghan Civilians

Kate Clark •

The number of Afghan civilians being killed in the war has risen yet again, according to UNAMA’s yearly assessment of civilian casualties for 2011. The eight per cent increase since 2010 (25 per cent increase since 2009) is largely due to the actions of ‘anti-government elements’, as the UN refers to the insurgents who are, […]

War and Peace Read more

Talks on Two Channels? The Qatar office and Karzai’s Saudi option

Thomas Ruttig •

The latest reports about developments on reconciliation – or better: talks with insurgent groups, both with the Taleban and Hezb-e Islami* – have been rather contradictory. Or haven’t they? The main insight from these reports, is that President Karzai has only rhetorically bowed to the unilateral US/German thrust to establish a Taleban liaison office in […]

War and Peace Read more

Talking and Killing in Early 2012

Kate Clark •

A series of suicide attacks have left dozens of people killed and injured in the last few days in southern Afghanistan. There was inevitable carnage among civilians when suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowded bazaar in Helmand on Wednesday (18 January) and at the entrance to the NATO base in Kandahar on Thursday. […]

War and Peace Read more

Striking at Kabul, now and then

Fabrizio Foschini •

The start of a new year is always an opportunity for reflection. 2011 was not the first and will probably not be the last year that drew to a close amid violence in Kabul. AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini takes a historical look at how the conflict has reached inside the gates of the Afghan capital in […]

War and Peace Read more

An Address for the Taleban in Qatar

Thomas Ruttig •

The much heralded Taleban office in a third country seems finally about to be opened. The news that this will happen in Qatar, broken by an Indian newspaper on Wednesday* and picked up by Kabul-based Tolo TV a day later, was followed by President Karzai calling back his ambassador in Doha ‘for consultations’ claiming that […]

War and Peace Read more

Life on the Frontline (1): Travelling on Wardak’s Roads: ’We feel we are dead’

AAN Team •

In a new occasional series of blogs AAN will be looking at what it is like to live in areas contested by Taleban and the Afghan government/US forces. In this first contribution, a reporter from Wardak who asked not to be named, spoke to men from Jaghatu district about travelling on the province’s roads. How […]

War and Peace Read more

Bargaining over US bases: Will they stay or will they go?

Kate Clark •

US intentions – what it wants or plans or thinks it might possibly do in Afghanistan after 2014 – are again in the news. Will Washington want bases? Will US soldiers ‘just’ be training Afghan troops or participate in fighting? And how many soldiers might remain in Afghanistan? On the Afghan side, both President Karzai […]

War and Peace Read more

Guest Blog: Andkhoi between Drought and Insurgency

Marga Flader •

The sale of government jobs, unexplained killings, abductions by the Taleban and a severe drought that has resulted in a nearly complete crop failure this year. It is difficult to say what is worse for the people in Andkhoi, the security situation or economic crisis, our guest blogger Marga Flader who works for a German […]

War and Peace Read more

Ashura Attacks (3): A new type of violence in Afghanistan

Fabrizio Foschini •

One of the last taboos of violence in Afghanistan was broken by yesterday’s suicide attacks on the Ashura commemoration in Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif. Historically, sectarian tensions or conflicts have occasionally been seen in Afghanistan, but they have usually been stirred up and leveraged by politics or war. Sectarian hatred has never enjoyed public recognition […]

War and Peace Read more

Subscribe to receive updates from the Afghanistan Analysts Network

Sign up