Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Posts tagged: foreign fighters

foreign fighters

Bozoi Gumbaz in Badakshan where the old Soviet base was built nearby to stop infiltration of mujahedin coming in from China. Photo: Author (2017).

Tilting at Windmills: Dubious US claims of targeting Chinese Uyghur militants in Badakhshan

Franz J Marty • Ted Callahan •

In early February 2018, US forces conducted airstrikes in Afghanistan’s north-eastern province of Badakhshan, supposedly targeting ‘support structures’ of the ‘East Turkistan Islamic Movement’ (ETIM), allegedly a group of Uyghur extremists hailing from China’s far west said to be focused on attacking the Chinese state. (1) United States Forces – Afghanistan claimed the strikes targeted […]

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Tall-hatted Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev opened a ‘Chechen embassy’ in Kabul in 2000. Photo: Natalia Medvedeva (2000)

Chechens in Afghanistan 3 (Flash from the Past): Diplomats, yes, but fighters?

Kate Clark •

Following the authoritative account of Chechens – or rather lack of Chechens – in Afghanistan by Christian Bleuer, and how they have frequently been reported on, but rarely encountered, AAN’s Kate Clark here describes her own experiences with Chechens in 2000. In January of that year, she reported on the opening of a Chechen embassy […]

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Chechen cadets (but not in Afghanistan): Chechen separatist government National Guard cadets on parade in Grozny, 1999. Photo: Natalia Medvedeva

Chechens in Afghanistan 2: How to identify a Chechen

Christian Bleuer •

Researchers focusing on Chechen issues point to clear evidence that many Chechens are fighting in Syria, but roundly reject the notion of a Chechen presence in Afghanistan. In the first part of his special two-parter, Christian Bleuer looked at how Chechens became a battlefield myth for western soldiers and a tool for Afghan and US […]

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Resistance leader Imam Shamil, an ethnic Avar and hero to many Chechens, surrenders to Russian forces in August 1859, (finding pictures of Chechens in Afghanistan is difficult) painting by Alexei Kivshenko, 1880

Chechens in Afghanistan 1: A Battlefield Myth That Will Not Die

Christian Bleuer •

 In 2001, as the United States and other allied military forces attacked Taleban and al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, numerous soldiers, journalists and Afghans allied to the Americans relayed stories of a fearless and deadly opponent, incomparably worse than any other enemy: the Chechen. Such reports have never gone away, despite no Chechen having ever been […]

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Soldiers collect the bodies of killed colleagues after the Taleban attack on the Dahan Ab-e Khostak base in Jurm, Badakhshan. The process took up to ten days because of the lack of available helicopters to transport them out of the district. (Photo Credit: Local authorities, April 2015)

Violence in Badakhshan Persists: what last year’s Jurm attack still tells us about insecurity in the north

Bethany Matta •

On the one year anniversary of a major attack in Jurm in April 2015, and not long before the Taleban are expected to announce their new spring offensive, Badakhshis are nervously anticipating the year ahead. AAN guest author Bethany Matta revisits the attack, detailing how it happened and showing how the attack and its aftermath […]

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Badakhshan – from anti-Taleban bulwark to contested province. Photo: Mirco Kreibich (2005).

The 2015 Insurgency in the North (2): Badakhshan’s Jurm district under siege

Obaid Ali •

The foreign fighter communities are growing, their recruitment is speeding up and the national security forces deployed to fight them are regularly beaten back – or they give up their bases before, as some claim, “a single bullet has been shot.” Badakhshan, once a province almost free of insurgency, has become contested. AAN’s Obaid Ali […]

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