Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Posts tagged: India

India

Creating the ‘Idea’ of a Country: The ‘Afghanistan in World Literature’ dossier

Fabrizio Foschini

How do foreign literary works shape attitudes towards Afghanistan and Afghans? That is the subject of this dossier which brings together AAN reports from its ‘Afghanistan in World Literature’ series. Over the years, we have written many pieces on this subject, spurred not only by a passion for everything related to Afghanistan, but also by […]

Dossiers Read more
Helmand peace marchers in front of the Russian embassy. Photo: People's Peace Movement/2018

A Troika of Four: Looking back at the March 2021 Afghanistan meeting in Moscow

Thomas Ruttig

The ‘extended troika’ meeting in Moscow on 18 March did not spark a significant new impulse in the search for peace in Afghanistan. Instead, it followed a well-known pattern. Foreign powers offered platitudes about an ‘Afghan-led, Afghan-owned’ peace process, again, while they insist on setting the timeline themselves and handpick those who are to be […]

Regional Relations Read more

Caught Up in Regional Tensions? The mass return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan

Jelena Bjelica

More than half a million Afghan refugees have returned from Pakistan since July 2016, a huge number, on a scale not seen for a decade. United Nations agencies and human rights organisations have blamed fear of harassment and oppression by the Pakistani authorities, or in the case of undocumented refugees, fear of expulsion for the […]

Migration Read more
The expedition after their arrival in Kabul, with Hentig (seated, 2nd from left) and Niedermayer (seated 3rd from l.). Photo from: Niedermayer's book, In der Glutsonne Irans.

Afghanistan in World War I (2): “England must lose India” – Afghanistan as a German bridgehead

Thomas Ruttig

100 years ago and a good year after the outbreak of World War I, a German political-military mission crossed the border into Afghanistan on the night of 19 to the 20 August 1915. Oskar Ritter von Niedermayer and Werner Otto von Hentig, a Bavarian military officer and a Prussian diplomat, both with Persian experience, led the […]

Context and Culture Read more

The Kabuliwala of Kolkata: Photo exhibition about a community longing for Afghanistan that once was home

Nazes Afroz

In the suburbs of Kolkata, India, lives, in seclusion, a little known community of migrants who once came from Afghanistan – the first of them around the year of 1840. Kabuliwala they are called, and the today 5000 people have managed to preserve the way of life they brought from Paktia, Paktika and Ghazni. Inspired […]

Context and Culture Read more
Presidents Ghani and Xi, during the former's second trip abroad, after umrah in Saudi Arabia. Photo c/o ToloNews.

On the Road through Beijing (and Kathmandu): The new Afghan leadership’s attempts to engage with Asia

S Reza Kazemi

Compelled by widening economic and other challenges, the new Afghan government seems determined to diversify Afghanistan’s foreign relations by slowly forging stronger economic and political ties with countries in the region. For this purpose, it has at least two cards to play: the country’s geographic position as a corridor for regional trade and its natural […]

Regional Relations Read more

[Interview with former Pakistani ambassador] Husain Haqqani

AAN

The Diplomat, 21 February 2014 "I am worried about the fact that in 1947 what is today India had a literacy rate of 18 percent and what is Pakistan today had a literacy rate of 16 percent — a difference of just 2 percent. Today, the difference is about 20 percent. Today, India has a […]

Recommended Reads Read more

Football Victory II: A night and a day of celebrations

AAN Team

It was a burst of massive happiness, a moment of sheer bliss and pride, something few Afghans have experienced much of in the past and thus even more powerful: only moments after Afghanistan won the South Asian Football Federation Championship, defeating India with 2:0, waves of people filled the streets of Kabul and many other […]

Context and Culture Read more

Football Victory I: Lions beating Tigers – the match report

AAN Team

The jubilation of football players who have just won a cup final is similar the world over, but neither Bayern Munich, who won this year’s European Champions League, or Spain, who won the last World Cup, celebrated as the Afghan national team did in Nepal last night. They danced wildly, threw their manager in the air […]

Context and Culture Read more

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. […]

Regional Relations Read more

Response to Questionnaire: India-Afghanistan relations

Thomas Ruttig

Thomas Ruttig, in: FPRC Journal (Foreign Policy Research Centre, New Delhi), No. 7/2011 Answers on questions from ‘Why  Afghanistan is important to India?’ to India’s position on talks with the Taleban. Full paper available below: Response  to  Questionnaire: India-Afghanistan relations

External publications Read more