Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

AAN Guests

Recommended Reads on Afghanistan: From travellers’ tales to ‘peace negotiations’ to stories of oppression and resistance

AAN Team • AAN Guests •

Today, we bring you some book reviews. We asked AAN writers and friends to recommend books about Afghanistan that they had enjoyed. Their choices are an eclectic mix, ranging from the scholarly to the journalistic, memoirs and travelogues to novels and short stories, and even a podcast. Our reviews begin with a gripping account of […]

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Recommended Reads from AAN Writers: The poetry of peace, magical realism in Logar, class in Nuristan, Sufis

Kate Clark • AAN Guests • AAN Team •

We thought we would start 2025 by asking AAN writers and friends to recommend books about Afghanistan. Their choices are eclectic, ranging across the academic and journalistic, memoirs and fiction, books written by Afghans and others. Our recommended reads include one book which its reviewer believes will become a standard work for universities teaching about […]

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Recommended Reads from AAN Writers and Readers: The search for context, deeper understanding, surprise and good stories

AAN Team • AAN Guests •

We thought we would start the new year by asking AAN writers and friends to recommend books about Afghanistan. The books they reviewed were diverse – fact and fiction, classics and newly-published and written in English, Pashto and German. Two were books that the reviewers felt helped make sense of why the Islamic Republic and […]

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A Taleban Theory of State: A review of the Chief Justice’s book of jurisprudence

John Butt •

In the second of our mini-series on Taleban publications, this report examines what may be the fullest and most authoritative account yet of what the Taleban believe an Islamic state should look like. In his book, ‘Al-Emarat al-Islamiya wa Nidhamuha’ (The Islamic Emirate and its System of Governance), the Islamic Emirate’s Chief Justice, Abdul Hakim […]

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Living with the Taleban (2): Local experiences in Nad Ali district, Helmand province

AAN Guests •

What is it like to live in an area controlled by the Taleban? How does their rule affect your life and can you influence what they do? To answer these questions, we embarked on a research project scrutinising three districts in depth, looking at the local dynamics of citizen/Taleban interactions, the structure of Taleban government and whether local […]

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Collection of books related to Afghanistan and the region at AAN's Kabul office. 2019

Afghanistan Analyst Bibliography 2019

AAN Guests •

Today, we publish an important work, a bibliography of Afghanistan. It is intended to be an up-to-date resource for studying and researching contemporary Afghanistan, particularly the post-1979 period. The author, Christian Bleuer, began compiling this bibliography in 2004/05 when, as a graduate student, he became increasingly frustrated with trying to find sources. Initially, it was […]

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Innocent, guilty – useful? What’s behind the US-Afghan clash over 88 prisoners from Bagram

AAN Guests • AAN Team •

The Afghan government announced yesterday (7 January) that it would go ahead with the release of 88 Taleban prisoners from Bagram despite US objections. American politicians, including two senior US senators who visited Kabul in early January, have warned of further damage to US-Afghan bilateral relations if the prisoner release goes forward. The issue has […]

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A Note from the (Soccer) Field

AAN Guests •

Here a dispatch received and sent in by ONE OF OUR FRIENDS in Afghanistan. It seems that not only the Africa Cup of Nations (with the attack on the Togo team bus) is overshadowed by violence. The dispatch has been slightly edited. For your information: In Kandahar province a football tournament has started on Friday […]

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AAN Guest Blog: Some ANSF Maths

AAN Guests •

The following blog is contributed by A FRIEND of AAN in Kabul who – for a good reason which in the media is usually described as that she/he is not authorized to speak about the subject – does not want to see her/his name printed here. After following the recent discussions about number increases in […]

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