Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Michael Semple

Not Everybody’s Hero: The assassinated communist-turned-post-2001-parliamentary candidate Jabbar Qahraman

Michael Semple •

The assassination of Kandahar’s police chief and strongman of southern Afghanistan Abdul Razeq in Kandahar on 18 October, along with the province’s NDS chief, and more members of the provincial leadership wounded soon overshadowed the killing of parliamentary candidate Abdul Jabbar Qahraman in neighbouring Helmand by a bomb one day earlier. Qahraman means “hero”, a […]

Political Landscape Read more

Guest Blog: Why the Buddhas of Bamian were destroyed

Michael Semple •

It would have been possible to save the Bamian Buddhas from destruction. But it was not an important enough issue for the western powers to intervene over. And the outsiders who did consider the Buddhas important were not prepared to contemplate the kind of intervention that might have worked. The Buddhas were abandoned, argues our […]

Context and Culture Read more

Ten Dead in Badakhshan (2)

Christopher Reuter • Michael Semple •

We follow up our reporting on the murder of ten aid workers on Thursday with two contributions from guest authors, Michael Semple and Christoph Reuter (1). They shed more light on three of the victims, Dan Terry, Daniela Beyer and Karen Woo; Michael additionally analyses the status of the insurgency in the area the killings […]

War and Peace Read more

Subscribe to receive updates from the Afghanistan Analysts Network

Sign up