Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Posts tagged: Soviet

Soviet

A Tomb in Kabul: The Fate of the Last Amir of Bukhara and his country’s relations with Afghanistan

Thomas Ruttig • Vladimir N Plastun •

In addition to the last Amir of Bukhara’s former garden, on which we reported some days ago, there is another landmark in Kabul that reminds us of this unlucky ruler – his tomb at the Shuhada-ye Salehin cemetery. The Amir, Muhammad Alem Khan, died in Kabul in 1944 and remains buried in Afghanistan despite his […]

Regional Relations Read more

AAN Occasional Paper on the Pre-1979 Causes of the Afghan Conflict

AAN • admin •

For most people, it was the Soviet invasion over Christmas 1979 that put Afghanistan on the political map when, in the very last days of the 1970s, the Soviet leadership made the central Asian country the arena of the hottest conflict in the last part of the Cold War. As a result, the internationalised Afghanistan […]

Events Read more

How It All Began: Pre-1979 Origins of Afghanistan’s Conflict

Thomas Ruttig •

For most people, it was the Soviet invasion over Christmas 1979 that put Afghanistan on the political map when, in the very last days of the 1970s, the Soviet leadership made the central Asian country the arena of the hottest conflict in the last part of the Cold War. As a result, the internationalised Afghanistan […]

Special Reports Read more

6 January 2013: AAN author Thomas Ruttig in Spanish Review

AAN • admin •

‘Cómo empezó todo: Un breve repaso a los orígenes de los conflictos en Afganistán anteriores a 1979’ (How It All Began: An Introduction into the pre-1979 origins of Afghanistan’s Conflicts) is an article by AAN co-director an senior analyst Thomas Ruttig written for issue 119 of the Spanish review ‘PAPELES de relaciones ecosociales y cambio […]

Events Read more

Cómo empezó todo: Un breve repaso a los orígenes de los conflictos en Afganistán anteriores a 1979 (How It All Began: An Introduction into the pre-1979 origins of Afghanistan’s Conflicts)

Thomas Ruttig •

Papeles de relaciones ecosociales y cambio global. (Número 119), Madrid For most people, it was the Soviet invasion over Christmas 1979 that put Afghanistan on the political map again after many decades. But the origins of the internationalised Afghanistan conflict, currently in its 33rd year and often explained through a Cold War perspective only, goes […]

External publications Read more

On the Roof of the World: The Last Kyrgyz in Afghanistan

S Reza Kazemi •

At most 2,000 individuals, pastoralists living for centuries in the harsh environment of Afghanistan’s north-easternmost Pamir region, are the last remaining ethnic Kyrgyz in Afghanistan. As a part of its nationalist discourse, post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan has been vocally politicking, but not doing much in practice, for the return of these Kyrgyz ‘brethren’ to their titular homeland, […]

Context and Culture Read more

Afghans in Kyrgyzstan: Fleeing Home and Facing New Uncertainty

S Reza Kazemi •

Migrants, refugees, students and business people – these are the major groups of Afghans living in nearby Kyrgyzstan. Of late, new asylum-seekers have been joining them, fleeing Afghanistan’s uncertain future with the coming withdrawal of NATO troops and using the country as a transit stop on their routes to North America, Western Europe or Russia. […]

Migration Read more

10 myths about Afghanistan

admin •

Guardian, 27 September In 1988, the Soviet army left Afghanistan after a concerted campaign by the western-backed mujahideen. But since then, many enduring myths have grown up about the war-torn country. In his new book, Jonathan Steele sorts the fact from the fiction.

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Guest Blog: Author’s Reply to AAN Reading ‘Afgantsy’

Rodric Braithwaite •

It is usually a mistake for an author to come back to a reviewer, but you raise a number of interesting and useful points, which made me think it would be worth breaking the rule, wrote Rodric Braithwaite*, author of ‘Afgantsy’ which primarily looks at the impact of the Afghan war on Soviet people. Here […]

War and Peace Read more

AAN Reads: The Soviets in Afghanistan, In Their Narrative

Thomas Ruttig •

Rodric Braithwaite’s ‘Afgantsy’ has already deservedly been widely praised for its Soviet and Russian sources-based account of the Soviet intervention years in Afghanistan. AAN’s Senior Analyst Thomas Ruttig joins in, but finds that Artemy Kalinovsky’s ‘The Long Goodbye’ is a more than worthy addition on this issue. Rodric Braithwaite’s book has already deservedly been reviewed […]

Regional Relations Read more

Abdul Ahad Momand – the first Afghan in space

admin •

Financial Times, 1 April 2011 What many may thing is a joke on April fools’ day, is nothing but the truth: Momand was a cosmonaut in the Soviet space programme and boarded a Soyuz spaceship in 1988. He now lives in Germany.

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UN suppressed report on Afghan rights violations

admin •

AFP, 2 October 2010 The UN never published a report into rights violations in Afghanistan between 1978 and 2001 that accused Soviets, Islamists and US forces of ‘atrocities’, reported the Swiss daily Le Temps, Not mentioned is in this report that US pressure played a great part in the stop of the publication.

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