Afghanistan has two education systems; the religious and the government. The religious system is taught by Mulas (religious leaders) at masques that includes teaching Quran and provide religious advices. The government system is implemented at schools which is free of charge and is consist of different subjects including religious. Afghanistan does not only have different […]
George Packer’s latest piece in the New Yorker is a must read for anyone interested in Afghanistan and the war, there, boiling over. Packer is sifting through President Obama’s Afghanistan war strategy. He’s interested in parsing through the infighting, the dramatic change in leadership personnel, the wild hedging on Obama’s fruitless partnership with the heroically incompetent Karzai […]
It seems that the day’s reportage always fails to deliver good news. Lives lost and opportunities squandered, squarely pegged in the middle of each New York Times piece, is the mounting price we pay. NATO troops and Afghan sons and daughters, fathers and mothers dead and dying. Today’s bomb attack has added four more casualties […]
Those Bolshevik posters depicting the Russian Orthodox Church as an integral pillar of dictatorship had to wait almost a century for vindication. Ironically, it may come from as surprising an ally as the European Court of Human Rights, to which the museum curators sentenced for hosting anti-religious art have applied to contest their convictions. For […]
Writing day in and day out about the collapse of this and the fall-out from that, it can be difficult to step back and assess where we are in Afghanistan’s broader narrative. I promise you that today, the soldiering attempt to seek some clarity in Afghanistan’s historical trajectory will break your heart. The photographs that […]
First of all, a shout-out to the folks at registan.net, for doing everything well. Here is a great post on how sudden and unexpected the violence was for journalists and scholars of the region, as the region is known for for relative peace. Poverty, but peace. What is so interesting is that no one on […]
How did Russia soften up stubborn Belarus into entering the Customs Union that Lukashenko had so strongly resisted? In part by openly using the media, and specifically NTV, as a tool for diplomatic hardball; disproving all those liberal haters who predicted irrelevance for the formerly critical channel after its takeover by the Kremlin. To send […]
Today’s news of the friendly fire incident reported by the New York Times could not have come at a more inopportune time. Of course, bad news seldom arrives at one’s doorstep at an opportune time. Afghan soldiers waiting to ambush Taliban militants were bombed by NATO war planes. No doubt a grievous result of […]
Like other countries, Afghanistan also celebrates 5th of May “The International World Press Freedom Day”. It is a day to remind the government the duty to respect and uphold the rights to the freedom of press. It’s a day that the country should stand up and say we are democratic and freedom of speech is […]
It is not too much to think that in the last few weeks the ground beneath their feet has shifted for the military and political teams charged with delivering U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. General Stanley McChrystal’s hasty, and ill-becoming dismissal from office has given cause for recrimination that only a few weeks ago […]
I’ll be headed out on a two week vacation tomorrow and will likely not be posting during that period. Don’t cry, Tahera will still be here and I’m not leaving you empty handed. Look down. Yes, some super cool Afghan-related articles to check out! So enjoy these pieces and have a happy American Independence Day. […]
As soon as the Russian spy scandal broke, commentators rushed to lazy pop cultural comparisons: James Bond, the novels of John le Carre, the BBC TV series Spooks. Yet no one seemed to mention the one bit of TV that the operation truly resembles (in structure and scope, not in success of execution): Michael Apted’s […]
Hot Russian spies having sexy spy sex! Hijacking the identities of dead Canadians! Using social networking sites! Burying caches of cash in NY! Praising Fidel Castro! Being all-American! And posting inane and ridiculous status updates on facebook! In fact, the 11 accused of being ‘deep cover’ Russian spies did pretty much anything but acquire any […]
Just a couple items and recommendations: First, I highly recommend checking out this the first part of the New York Times coverage of the deployment of the First Battalion, 87th Infantry. The Times will follow this battalion for the next year as they head to the increasingly restive provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan in Afghanistan’s […]
It looks like Afghanistan does not only have estimated $3 trillion untapped minerals, but also has hidden historical pieces like Buddha’s sculpture. People believed Bamyan was the only province where Buddhiests made their living centuries back, but Ministry of Information and Culture just discovered other precious pieces of Buddhas in south of Kabul in Shadah-i-Salihin […]