Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Posts tagged: Pakistan

Pakistan

Ghorband – A Valley Once Friendly

Thomas Ruttig

In May, we have been reporting about the deteriorating security situation in Eastern Afghanistan. There, it appears, an ‘insurgency corridor’ has been emerging, through which insurgents ‘will be able to move unhindered from the Pakistani border to Laghman, and from there into Kapisa and Kabul provinces’*. The killing of the Bamian Provincial Council (PC) chairman […]

War and Peace Read more

Fire at the Durand Line

Ann Wilkens

Since mid-June, warming relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have run into serious trouble again. Pakistan accuses Afghanistan (and ISAF) of doing nothing to stop militants from attacking Pakistani border posts and villages, Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of shelling villages in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces, killing civilians and causing hundreds of families to flee. AAN Advisory Board […]

Regional Relations Read more

AAN In The Media – July 2011

AAN Team

Kabul’s economy leaves poor in the dark Sydney Morning Herald, 30 July 2011 AAN’s Thomas Ruttig is quoted here on expected post´2014 effects, on security and the economy. On the former, he quotes an Afghan friend: ‘”The day the West stops paying for the Afghan army and the Afghan police, the next day there is […]

AAN in the Media Read more

Cost Of Wars In Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan To Reach $3.7 Trillion: Report

admin

Huffington Post, 29 June 2011 Read the summary of a Brown UNiversity report – and find the link to the full report there.

Recommended Reads Read more

Certainly Not the First, Unlikely To Be The Last

admin

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1 June 2011 Daud Khattak’s obituary for his abducted, tortured and killed colleague Syed Saleem Shahzad who is only the last in a growing number of Pakistani journalists murdered, apparently for writing things they are not supposed to write.

Recommended Reads Read more

AAN In The Media – June 2011

AAN Team

NATO air strike kills fighter linked to Afghan hotel attack Reuters, 30 June 2011 In this background article about what the Interconti attacks says about the ‘transition’ process, AAN’s Thomas Ruttig is quoted as saying that it reflects ‘one of the concerns […] that the Afghan security forces are growing in quantity, not in quality’. […]

AAN in the Media Read more

Where exactly is Abbottabad, or A Vindication of Geography

AAN Team

Abbottabad (or, in the local pronunciation: Abtabad) has already risen to a status shared only by some of Calvino’s ‘Invisibles Cities’: that of a mysterious fairy land of which everybody talks but few know something for certain. In particular, when the news of Osama bin Laden’s killing broke, its exact distance from the Pakistani capital […]

Regional Relations Read more

AAN In The Media – May 2011

AAN Team

Afghan president seeks to limit NATO airstrikes AP, 31 May 2011 AAN’s Kate Clark – misidentified as a freelance reporter here – is quoted as saying that President Karzai was clearly ‘completely furious’ at the civilian deaths caused by a recent NATO airstrike in Helmand. ‘It’s just the latest in a series of operations where […]

AAN in the Media Read more

(Former) Red Lines and Blue Helmets: More on the Century Foundation report

Barbara Stapleton

AAN continues commenting on the Century Foundation’s Afghanistan Task Force report on ‘Negotiating Peace’. Today, Barbara J. Stapleton(*) points to the issue of (non-)permanent US bases in Afghanistan, to Hillary Clinton’s Asia Society speech that turned ‘red lines’ into an ’end state’, to Pakistan’s role and to the idea to deploy UN blue helmets after […]

International Engagement Read more

AAN In The Media – April 2011

AAN Team

Afghan military pilot kills 9 Americans in Kabul Los Angeles Times, 28 April 2011 AAN’s Martine van Bijlert comments that such attacks are part of a Taliban strategy to undermine the Afghan population’s faith in NATO troops and their own security forces as the U.S. prepares to begin drawing down its forces this summer: “The […]

AAN in the Media Read more

March/April 2011: Three New AAN Papers

AAN admin

Since the Afghan New Year on 21 March, AAN has two new of its own papers out, both by German scholars – Lutz Rzehak on Pashtunwali and Citha D. Maass on Afghanistan’s war economy turning into a drug economy again. And thirdly, there is a new study by AAN Advisory Board member Ann Wilkens (published […]

Events Read more

Flash from the Past: An Alternative to the Taleban?

Thomas Ruttig

A former Pakistani general pulled new strings in Afghanistan’s conflict in the summer of 2000, trying to set up a Pakistani-controlled ‘anti’ or ‘neo-Taleban’ force. It was to get rid of the increasingly discredited Mulla Omar, safeguard the alliance with the US – and Pakistan’s influence on Afghanistan. The plan failed, or was abandoned – […]

War and Peace Read more