Afghanistan analysts Network (AAN) / January 28, 2011

Despite the recent deployments of more troops and greater military resources to Afghanistan by the US-led Western coalition, there has been no abatement in the insurgency. It rather is increasing in lethality, territorial scope and mobilisation beyond their main base in the Pashtun ethnic group. As a result, doubts about the efficacy of conventional war-fighting, counter-insurgency and transition strategies grow and alternative means of mitigating the conflict come into sight.

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The Express Tribune / January 28, 2011

akistan and Afghanistan have established a joint commission to work out modalities for direct negotiations with the Taliban in a bid to accelerate the Afghan-Taliban reconciliation process.

Headed by the Pakistani and Afghan foreign ministers, the bilateral commission will comprise top military and intelligence officials from both countries. This agreement was signed after Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and his Afghan counterpart Zalmay Rassoul met in Islamabad on Thursday.

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The Telegraph / By Duncan Gardham /January 28, 2011

The number of “expressions of interest from senior members of the insurgency” have “distinctly risen” the official said.

The individuals were interested in “coming home and living in Afghanistan,” the official added, implying that the Taliban leaders were currently outside the country, probably in Pakistan.

"Whatever one says about the rate of progress of overt reconciliation, there is no doubt that the number of feelers coming out is going up," the official said.

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Post / January 26, 2011

Afghan justice and security officials want to adopt the U.S. practice of detaining suspected insurgents indefinitely without trial, according to senior U.S. and Afghan officials involved in efforts to have the government in Kabul take control of detention operations in the country.

The Afghans' embrace of prolonged detention could provoke an angry reaction from human rights advocates who say that low-level insurgents and sympathizers have been swept into an opaque system that allows only limited opportunities for adjudication and redress.

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Human Rights Watch / January 24, 2011

While fighting escalated in 2010, peace talks between the government and the Taliban rose to the top of the political agenda. Civilian casualties reached record levels, with increased insurgent activity across the country. An additional 30,000 United States troops increased international forces to more than 150,000. Endemic corruption and violence marred parliamentary elections in September 2010.

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Human Rights Watch / January 21, 2011

Farooq Wardmak, the Afghan education minister and a key ally of President Hamid Karzai, claims that the Taliban leadership no longer opposes education for girls. The question is not whether this claim is true - teachers and students who continue to be terrorised by Taliban attacks would find it laughable - but why a senior Afghan official would engage in such misinformation.

The education ministry's own statistics show that 20 schools were bombed or burned down between March and October 2010. At least 126 students and teachers were killed in the same period - an increase from the previous year. It's hard to know how many of these attacks were carried out by the Taliban, but the evidence in many cases points in their direction.

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The Wall Street Journal / January 20, 2011

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday delayed the incoming parliament's opening by a month to give a tribunal more time to investigate fraud allegations, as the conflict over controversial legislative elections intensified.

Mr. Karzai has repeatedly criticized the new parliament, which was scheduled to convene for the first time Sunday, as unrepresentative because it doesn't allocate enough seats to the country's biggest ethnic group, the Pashtuns. Mr. Karzai, a Pashtun who created the special court last month to review fraud claims by losing candidates, agreed to that court's request for the delay just hours after it was made.

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The New York Times / January 18, 2011

Afghanistan’s attorney general expressed hope on Tuesday that a special court appointed by the president to look into election fraud would throw out the results of the country’s parliamentary elections, and predicted that the court would delay this week’s planned inauguration of a new Parliament.

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The Boston Globe / January 18, 2011

A few months after insurgents launched a rocket attack on Kandahar’s air base, US soldiers kicked down Khan Mohammed’s door and whisked the stout, ruddy-faced 27-year-old — blindfolded and handcuffed — to an American prison near Kabul.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, US forces have detained thousands of suspected enemy combatants without trial in facilities such as Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and Bagram in Afghanistan. US officials say the detentions prevent attacks, but critics charge that innocent people have been unfairly held for years.

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The New York Times / January 17, 2011

To parse Ben Franklin, the only thing certain about life in Afghanistan is death. Taxes are another matter.

The Ministry of Finance says its efforts to change that have run into robust resistance from the very people lecturing it about the rule of law: American and European allies who do not want to see their own contractors taxed.

Those contractors respond that taxing them is an absurdity, because foreign companies are here spending military and other foreign aid money that, by United States law and plain common sense, ought to be tax exempt.

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