Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Posts tagged: War

War

A Quarter of Afghanistan’s Districts Fall to the Taleban amid Calls for a ‘Second Resistance’

Kate Clark Obaid Ali

In the last few weeks, the Taleban have captured scores of district centres across Afghanistan. In this report, we look at the general reasons for the success of the Taleban onslaught, before focusing on the north, which has seen a collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) of unprecedented speed and scale. The fall […]

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Children in an IDP camp in Dand district, Kandahar province. Thousands of people fled their homes after Taleban offensives in Helmand and Kandahar provinces in October and November 2020, and ANSF counter-offensives. Photo: Javed Tanveer/AFP, 7 January 2021.

As US troops withdraw, what next for war and peace in Afghanistan?

Kate Clark

The United States’ decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan unconditionally, and the apparent dead end of its efforts to broker peace in Afghanistan, will have profound ramifications for the conflict. The likely outcomes can already be seen, including, ominously, in how civilian casualties are back up to their 2019 levels. Scrutinising the patterns […]

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Afghanistan 1400: The dawn and decline of a political movement

Rachel Reid

Ten years ago, a group of bright young Afghan professionals formed Harakat-e-Afghanistan 1400 (Afghanistan 1400 Movement), aiming to break the mould of Afghan politics. With the new century of the Afghan calendar year 1400 (2021) as their horizon, they wanted to establish a political entity that – unlike existing Afghan political parties – was not based […]

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Joe Biden Will Have to Address the War in Afghanistan—Again

The New Yorker, 20 January 2021 On the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration as president of the United States, Steve Coll looks at what he might do in Afghanistan. Assessing the war in the wake of the US’ deal with the Taleban, signed on 29 February 2020, Coll quotes AAN’s Kate Clark at length: Since […]

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New special report on Afghanistan’s newest local defence force: Were “all the mistakes of the ALP” turned into ANA-TF safeguards?

Kate Clark

Today, AAN publishes a special report looking at Afghanistan’s newest local defence force, the Afghan National Army Territorial Force (ANA-TF). Set up by presidential decree in February 2018 and funded and supported by NATO’s United States-led Resolute Support mission, it was intended to be a lightly-armed, low-cost, local arm of the ANA which could hold […]

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War in Afghanistan in 2020: Just as much violence, but no one wants to talk about it

Kate Clark

As memories of the relative peace of the Eid ul-Adha ceasefire fade and direct talks between the government and the Taleban should be about to begin, it seems a good time to look again at what has been happening in the conflict since the United States and the Taleban signed their agreement on 29 February. […]

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Covid-19 in Afghanistan (4): A precarious interplay between war and epidemic

S Reza Kazemi Fazl Rahman Muzhary

Afghans are now being killed by both the continuing war and Covid-19. The epidemic has ground much of life to a halt – with the notable exception of the fighting. In this report, AAN researchers Reza Kazemi and Fazal Muzhary (with input from Kate Clark) look at the interplay between war and disease. They provide […]

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AAN’s most-read dispatches in 2018: So much war… and a little peace and justice

Kate Clark

Here at AAN, we have been looking back at what we published in 2018, in English and Dari and Pashto. We have also been considering what you, dear readers, have been most interested in. Compiling the list of our most-read dispatches in 2018 was a sobering task, says AAN Co-Director, Kate Clark (with data from […]

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UNAMA Mid-Year Report on Civilian Casualties: Highest number of deaths on record

Kate Clark

UNAMA has released its mid-year assessment of the harm done to civilians in the Afghan conflict. It found that more civilians were killed in the first six months of 2018 than in any year since 2009 when UNAMA started systematic monitoring. This was despite the Eid ul-Fitr ceasefire, which all parties to the conflict apart […]

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What Links Sarajevo to Kabul? Impressions from the western end of the Persianate world

Thomas Ruttig

Sarajevo and Kabul lie over 4,000 kilometres apart. One feature that connects the two cities, however, is that both were destroyed during civil wars in the last decade of the twentieth century. Earlier this year, when AAN’s co-director Thomas Ruttig visited Sarajevo and other parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia during a vacation, he came across […]

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Taliban attack in Kabul signals the start of summer offensive

Martine van Bijlert

ABC RN Drive (radio), 20 April 2016 “The Taliban says the truck bomb detonated in the Afghan capital signals the beginning of a summer offensive. But analyst Martine van Bijlert says fighting never stopped for the winter. For her, the significance of this attack comes from the effect it has had on Kabul’s civilian population, who felt […]

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Meeting of women activists in Khost, 2014. Photo: Pajhwok.

Four next public events with AAN participation

Thomas Ruttig

There are four public events in the next two weeks with AAN participation, in Copenhagen (Denmark), Heidelberg and Berlin (both Germany), Basle (Switzerland).   22 April 2015, 8pm at Heidelberg Theatre Podium discussion (in German), “Peace?! Afghanistan after the ISAF mission“ Participants: • Thomas Ruttig, Co-Director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network; • Ahmad Nasir Formuli […]

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