The terrorist attack on the Iraqi Embassy in Kabul on 31 July 2017 – by a suicide car bomber and three gunmen – has once more directed attention to the activity of local groups that have declared their allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (IS, also known ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) and its local, Afghan-Pakistani […]
Afghanistan’s history has long been dominated and shaped by the interaction of militias with the state. In the post-2001 era, international actors, sometimes with Afghan state cooperation, have tried to use militias to fill perceived gaps in security. Since 2002, a range of foreign-backed local, hybrid or non-state security forces (LHSFs) have emerged. They include […]
Since AAN published its last collection of reports and dispatches about the insurgency in the Afghan northeast, ‘The evolution of insecurity in Kunduz’, in May 2015, there have been tumultuous events, security-wise, in that region. In terms of governance, however, matters are still as dire as they were. Indeed, it can be seen how insecurity […]
Oxford Analytica Daily Brief, 17 November 2015 Thomas Ruttig, “Afghan Taliban Contain Islamic States’ Regional Reach” Reported clashes between Islamic State group’s (ISG) fighters and Afghan security forces, and the appearance of ISG-style black flags, have raised concerns about the ISG threat in Afghanistan. However, many of the alleged sightings of ISG fighters are vague […]
The flurry of recent ‘peace-related’ events – talks about talks, actual talks, denials of talks, re-definitions of peace, attacks and key figures dying – has compelled AAN to take another look at the whole body of our work on the subject. This “Peace Talks and Reconciliation Thematic Dossier” brings you all related AAN analyses in one […]
In the last week, the Taleban launched their second large-scale assault on Kunduz in six months and came close to taking the provincial capital, Kunduz City, before being pushed back by Afghan National Security Forces. For the Taleban, Kunduz is probably the key province in the north, the last to be left in 2001 and […]
Thomas Ruttig, in: Charles King Mallory IV/Joachim Krause (eds.), Sustainable Strategies for Afghanistan and the Region After 2014, Aspen Institute, European Strategy Forum, reader for a conference, 10-11 January 2012, Berlin. This conference contribution draws on an earlier papers co-authored with Citha D. Maaß for Berlin’s SWP in August 2011. It discusses post-2014 scenarios for […]
Despite representing the bulk of Afghanistan’s post-2001 policing, the paramilitary dimension of the Afghan police has received little attention among analysts. In AAN’s latest report, ‘Paramilitary Policing in Context. The Risks of Expediency’, Antonio Giustozzi and Mohammad Isaqzadeh describe the origin and development of paramilitary policing in Afghanistan, and explore what this means for the […]
In this latest AAN report, Mathieu Lefèvre unpacks the myths about local defense initiatives in Afghanistan. His analysis of three local defense initiatives shows the contradictions in the claimed successes and points at possible long-term security challenges posed by these initiatives. In this report, Mathieu Lefèvre analyses three local defense initiatives in Afghanistan: The Afghanistan […]
In this first Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) report “The Other Side: Dimensions of the Afghan Insurgency. Causes, Actors and Approaches to Talks”, author Thomas Ruttig – an Afghanistan expert working on and in the country since 25 years – seeks to unpack the complexities of the insurgency in Afghanistan and develop a sophisticated approach to […]