Events
11 September 2010 - New AAN Report 'Who Controls the Vote? Afghanistan's Evolving Elections'
A new report by AAN takes a close look at last year's provincial council vote, in order to better understand how the upcoming parliamentary elections will probably proceed. read more »
EID-e MUBARAK!
The AAN executive board wishes all its members, friends and readers as well as their families some happy and peaceful Eid days.
18 July 2010: Afghan Civil Society Launches Access to Information Campaign
This morning a large number of Afghan civil society organisations and several media organisations used the media attention surrounding the Kabul conference to launch a campaign highlighting the need for access to information and calling for the necessary legislation to be drafted. The demand is an important one. The pervasive ambiguity, the lack of clarity on what the rules are and the lack of transparency on how they are implemented within government instutitions undermines the efforts towards better governance and the strengthening of citizen's rights. read more »
29 June 2010: New AAN Thematic Report 'How Tribal Are the Taleban?' launched
The Taleban in Afghanistan should be treated as a political movement with political aims, and not as a tribal one, concludes Thomas Ruttig, author of the new report ‘How Tribal Are the Taleban? Afghanistan’s Largest Insurgent Movement between Tribal Roots and Islamist Ideology,’ published today by the Kabul and Berlin based, Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN). read more »
29 June 2010, Washington: Afghanistan Today Karzai, Reconciliation, and Western Strategy
As Afghanistan’s "summer fighting season" kicks into high gear and the Obama administration’s December 2010 review comes ever closer, join Afghanistan expert Martine van Bijlert and New America Foundation president Steve Coll for a discussion of Afghan politics, militant reconciliation, and the West’s plan in Afghanistan. read more »
24 June 2010: New report - The Northern Front: The Afghan Insurgency Spreading beyond the Pashtuns
27 May: New AAN report about Local Defence Initiatives launched
5 May 2010: New Publication 'Nation-Building Is Not for All'
In this latest AAN report Afghanistan scholar Antonio Giustozzi explores the deeply political and contentious history of education in Afghanistan. read more »
22 April 2010: New Publication 'Golden Surrender?'
The reintegration of former fighters is one of the main pillars in the unfolding counterinsurgency strategy. It is however more complex and difficult to accomplish than is commonly appreciated. read more »
15 April: New Publication: Two Interventions: Comparing Soviet and US-led state-building in Afghanistan
This thematic report compares the current US-led intervention and the Soviet state-building intervention that took place between 1979 and 1989. It focuses on three sectors of state-building: the security sector, fiscal policy, and state legitimation, and explores how issues of ownership and sequencing have influenced the outcomes of both state-building efforts. read more »
21 March: AAN wishes everybody a happy, peaceful and safe 1389!
4 and 9 March 2010: New AAN Publications on Pakistan
Two new AAN papers explore the situation in Afghanistan’s neighboring country Pakistan. While the first briefing provides a look back on the AfPak strategy, a term already dropped again barely one year after it was invented, the second briefing deals with the deepening crisis of Pakistan's young but already elusive secular democracy. read more »
26-28 March 2010, Bonn: Conference ‘Who Are the Taliban?’
The conference jointly organized by Arbeitsgemeinschaft Afghanistan (Afghanistan Working Group of German academia) and Evangelische Akademie im Rheinland is designed to shed light on the background of the Taleban phenomenon. read more »
17 February, Kabul: AREU Lecture about the Shia Personal Status Law
AREU invites for a special lecture that will look deeper into the process around the controversial law that met strong protest both inside and outside of Afghanistan. read more »
5 February, Amsterdam:
Martine van Bijlert will be participating in the Dutch "Loya Jirga" in Amsterdam which will explore what the Netherlands' civilian and military involvement in Afghanistan looks like in reality. read more »
25-27 January 2010, Prague: conference "Provincial Reconstruction Teams - What's Next?"
Martine van Bijlert will be on one of the panels during the three-day international conference in Prague on "Provincial Reconstruction Teams - What's Next? Challenges of Reconstruction in Afghanistan". read more »
21 January 2010: New Publication "Governance in Afghanistan in Regional Perspective"
In discussions about governance and reforms in Afghanistan, the regional dimension – and in particular Afghanistan’s relative position in comparison with its neighbouring countries – is often neglected. In this paper Dr. Christian Wagner, head of the Asia Research group at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Berlin), compares Afghanistan to other South Asian countries to assess what can realistically be expected. read more »
9 January 2010: New AAN Publication "The State of the Afghan State"
In this paper, Anders Fänge, AAN member and Country Director of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, gives his views on where Afghanistan stands, what went wrong and what can be done - in this third attempt of government-driven ambitious and wide-ranging national reform programmes within a hundred years that caused a major armed rebellion. read more »
9 December, Washington: 2009 Jamestown Terrorism Conference
AAN's Thomas Ruttig will be on a panel of the 2009 Jamestown Terrorism conference ('The Changing Strategic Gravity of Al-Qaeda'). He will speak about 'Major Actors and Leadership in the Taliban Insurgency'. read more »
3 December: New publication 'Afghanistan, 1979-2009'
The Middle East Institute (MEI) of the American University in Washington DC launched another of its special editions of its publication ‘Viewpoints’, titled ‘Afghanistan, 1979-2009; In the Grip of Conflict’. This volume is a compilation of short analytical essays intended to be accessible to specialists and non-specialists alike. read more »
24 November 2009, Berlin: Afghanistan conference of German NGOs
"Mission impossible in the Hindukush? Taking stock of international Afghanistan policies" - a conference organised by VENRO, the umbrella of German developmental NGOs. AAN's Martine van Bijlert will be one of the presenters. read more »
Soon to come: AAN policy paper: The ‘Afpak’ Strategy – Perceptions and Visions in Pakistan
Based on earlier experience with the United States, from the very beginning there was an inherent element of doubt amongst political actors and analysts in Pakistan in the sincerity of the new ‘Afpak’ policy says Pakistan expert Karl Fischer who is authoring AAN's next policy paper. read more »
3-4 November: Afghanistan experts meeting in Bavaria
Thomas Ruttig represented AAN at a two-day experts meeting organized by German Hanns Seidl Foundation in the Bavarian spa of Wildbad Kreuth on 3-4 November, titled "The Interlocking Security Dilemma of Pakistan and Afghanistan". Thomas gave a presentation on the question: ‘Are there moderate Taleban and what does this mean for the future political development’ in Afghanistan?’ Below a report on the meeting written by Burkhard Bischof for the Vienna daily ‘Die Presse’ (the link to the German original can be found under ‘AAN in the media’). read more »
23 Oct.: SWP Comment by Thomas Ruttig on the Afghan elections crisis published.
Afghanistans Wahlkrise: Die gefälschte Präsidentschaftswahl und Strategien für »danach« (Afghanistan's Election Crisis: The fraudulent presidential elections and strategies for ‚thereafter‘), Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Berlin), SWP-Aktuell 2009/A 56, October 2009, 8 pp. read more »
Report on the 6 Oct. Podium in Berlin: A Legitimacy Breakdown
Green Security Policy specialist Winfried Nachtwei – arguably the most knowledgeable MP in the German Bundestag who, unfortunately, did not run again on 27 September, and just came back from his 14th trip to Afghanistan -, Spiegel magazine reporter Susanne Koelbl, who just had visited Kunduz after the fateful airstrike against two hijacked kerosene transporters that killed more than a hundred people and AAN’s Thomas Ruttig discussed strategies for Afghanistan on Tuesday. The podium was organised by the Green Heinrich Boell Foundation and Berlin daily ‘tageszeitung’ (or taz). Taz reporter Stefan Schaaf summarized the discussion with ‘evil tidings from the Hindukush’ and diagnoses ‘wrong strategies’ of the West as the reason. read more »
9 Oct 2009: AAN report summary 'The Other Side' in Italian
Our partner organisation ARGO has translated the executive summary of Thomas Ruttig's AAN report 'The Other Side - Dimensions of the Afghan Insurgency: Causes, Actors and Approaches to ‘Talks’' into Italian. read more »
6 Oct and 13 Oct 2009: Two podiums with AAN’s Thomas Ruttig in Berlin.
In early October, AAN’s Co-director Thomas Ruttig will participate in two public discussions of Afghan issues in Berlin. On Tuesday 6 October, Heinrich Boell Foundation invites for a jour fixe under the title ‘After the elections in Afghanistan and Germany: Quo vadis at the Hindukush?’ A week later, he will discuss issues of the elections and the German involvement in Afghanistan in the Gedaechtniskirche in Berlin. Both events are public and admission-free. read more »
September 2009: New Book Out: Decoding the New Taliban
Edited by London School of Economics’ Antonio Giustozzi, the new book ‘Decoding the New Taliban’ combines a number of analyses of how the post-2001 Taliban made their way forward in various regions and provinces of Afghanistan. Additionally, cross-cutting issues - the Taliban’s link with the opium trade and their propaganda campaign – and the Pakistani Taliban movement are addressed. All of these contributions draw on experience gathered during years of work in Afghanistan of all authors involved. The authors include AAN members and friends Martine van Bijlert, Thomas Ruttig, Joanna Nathan and Antonio himself, guest blogger Christoph Reuter as well as three Afghan authors, Tariq Osman Elias, Burhan Younus and Abdul Awwal Zabulwal. read more »
Epistemology of Reconciliation debate
While analysts, journalists and diplomats obsess over the twists and turns of the vote count in Kabul, an interesting discussion on ‘Reconciliation’ unfolded in the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies on Wednesday evening. ‘Reconciliation’ did indeed prove to be a magic word loaded with politics, possibilities and polarities, drawing a packed house with no standing room left by the end. -- By Aunohita Mojumdar* read more »
26 August 2009, 5 pm, Kabul: Book Presentation and Discussion on Reconciliation
A new book by Michael Semple titled 'Reconciliation in Afghanistan', published by the US Institute of Peace (USIP), was released in the United States in July. read more »
11 August 2009: AAN's second report released: How to Win an Afghan Election
In its second report the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) holds the magnifying glass to the Afghan elections, exploring the impact of high-level deals, local-level decision-making processes, and electoral manipulation. read more »
14 July 2009: Release of AAN Report: 'The Other Side. Dimensions of the Afghan Insurgency'
AAN launched its first thematic report on 14 July 2009. The report by Thomas Ruttig discusses the different dimensions of the Afghan insurgency and the implications for outreach. read more »
June 2009: Conference on Governance in Istanbul
In late June, AAN’s Thomas Ruttig participated in the conference ‘Fundamentals of Governance in Afghanistan’ organized by The Hollings Center for International Dialogue and the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies (AIAS) in Istanbul (Turkey). read more »
Presentation on the Policies Surrounding Senior Subnational Appointments
On 10 June 2009 Martine van Bijlert presented the findings of her AREU Briefing Paper on the policies surrounding provincial governor and district administrator appointments. The presentation, which took place at the AREU office in Kabul, was attended by diplomats, policy makers, researchers and Afghan government officials. read more »
Presentation on Transitional Justice and Rule of Law
On 5 June 2009 Sari Kouvo made a presentation at the Conference ‘Transitional Justice and Rule of Law: Institutional Design and the Changing Normative Structure of Post-Authoritarian Societies’ in Brussels. read more »
Presentation at EC Conference ‘Making the Difference? Strengthening Capacities to Respond to Crisis and Security Threats’, Brussels.
On 3 June 2009 Sari Kouvo participated in the panel discussion ‘Afghanistan at the Crossroads: Military, Civilian and Diplomatic Options’, as part of the European Commission's conference on international crisis' responses. The discussion focused on the challenges to state-building in Afghanistan, including the consequences of a compromised election process and the lack of institution-building. read more »
Afghanistan and its Region: A Review of Obama’s Strategy
The three co-directors of AAN (Thomas Ruttig, Sari Kouvo and Martine van Bijlert) participated in the conference “Afghanistan and its Region: A Review of Obama’s Strategy” (7-10 May 2009), organized by the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination. read more »
Conference “Future Prospects in Afghanistan and the Region
On 23 April 2009 AAN co-director Martine van Bijlert participated in the Washington conference “Future Prospects in Afghanistan and the Region”. Her presentation focused on the need to put greater and more thoughtful emphasis on “the third D” of the 3D approach (the D of governance and politics) and included lessons learnt from the work in Uruzgan. read more »
KAS Election Workshops
From 20 to 22 April 2009, Thomas Ruttig moderated three election-related workshops at the Kabul office of the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Representatives of the Afghan civil society, media, political parties and members of the Afghan Parliament participated in the workshop. read more »