Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Posts tagged: Pashtuns

Pashtuns

AAN Reads: An Afghanistan history covering 750 years

Thomas Ruttig •

Eminent Afghanistan specialists and historians have praised Jonathan L Lee’s 2018 Afghanistan: a history from 1260 to the present as “detailed research of the highest quality” and even the new go-to “encyclopaedia” on this subject. It is indeed encyclopaedic, pulling interesting episodes out of the dark of Afghan history, but still, it is partly disappointing, […]

Context and Culture Read more
Power transmission line in Balkh province. Photo: Jelena Bjelica (2011).

Power to the People (2): The TUTAP protests

Thomas Ruttig •

When protesters interrupted President Ashraf Ghani’s speech in London three times on 13 May 2016, the heated controversy surrounding the route of TUTAP, a main electricity grid initiative, received even international attention. In Afghanistan, the tensions have been simmering since January 2016 when Hazara members of the government started trying to prevent a potential rerouting of […]

Economy, Development, Environment Read more

Trouble in Khas Uruzgan: Insults, assaults, a siege and an airlift

Martine van Bijlert •

After three months of near non-stop fighting in Khas Uruzgan, a mixed Pashtun-Hazara district in northeast Uruzgan, the Taleban decimated the district’s Afghan Local Police (ALP) and forced most of the other security forces back into the district centre. The attack was not just part of a wider, concerted effort by the Taleban to put […]

War and Peace Read more

From ‘Slavers’ to ‘Warlords’: Descriptions of Afghanistan’s Uzbeks in western writing

Christian Bleuer •

From the early 1800s to the present day, western writers have explored Afghanistan either in person or from a distance, their publications providing a view of Afghanistan’s governments and people to the wider audience in Europe, the United States and the west. However, this view is distorted in many ways. One noticeable case in this […]

Context and Culture Read more

The Study and Understudy of Afghanistan’s Ethnic Groups: What we know – and don’t know

Christian Bleuer •

From voting blocs to the share of power in government ministries to the composition of the insurgency, references to ethnic groups are frequently made in reporting and analysis. Accurate analysis requires a careful look at the complicated social lives and local politics in which members of these ethnic groups operate. But what is actually known […]

Political Landscape Read more

AAN Myth Busters (II): Taleban = Pashtuns?

Thomas Ruttig •

The Afghan government’s draft strategy for reconciliation with the Taleban and other insurgents to be published soon is heating up the discussion about talks to ‘moderate’ Taleban amongst Western politicians. While this discussion is useful, it is necessary to look at its background a bit more closely. German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a rising […]

Political Landscape Read more

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