Pashtun Archives - Afghanistan Analysts Network

Pashtun

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

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 […]

22 Mar 2015

Context and Culture Read more

Elections 2014 (25): Election mobilisation of women in the Pashtun southeast

Pakteen Ibrahimi • Thomas Ruttig •

For the second round of the presidential election on 14 June 2014, some of the major tribes in Paktia have decided their women should also participate more actively, allowing them to cast their votes themselves. Women turnout in Pashtun-inhabited areas is usually below average, which is increasingly being perceived as a disadvantage by candidates relying […]

12 Jun 2014

Political Landscape Read more

A Joint ‘Durrani’ Candidate for President? After the Unity Jirga in Kabul

Thomas Ruttig •

Tribal elders from most areas of the country came together in an attempt to reduce the field of Pashtun, and among them the Durrani, candidates. The jirga ended in a duel between the two main contenders, both of them close to the president. The meeting remained open to interpretation, after an initial vote apparently met the […]

5 Mar 2014

Political Landscape Read more

Afghan [Zazi Maidan] District Makes Own Peace

AAN •

IWPR, 20 January 2014 Residents say a local arrangement governed by "nerkh", part of customary law, has kept the peace in the district "to an extent rare in other parts of the country", IWPR reports. Although Zazi Maidan "shares a border with the restive northwest of Pakistan, people here say they are able to work […]

20 Jan 2014

Poetry in Motion: Love, war and politics on trucks

Borhan Osman •

I am chasing you like a drone You have become al Qaida; there’s no trace of you Trucks painted in vivid colours and lettered with poems like the one above, which has borrowed the terms of war to describe love, are part of the “cultural landscape” along the dusty roads of Afghanistan, especially the south […]

17 Aug 2013