Afghanistan
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Afghanistan: History, Culture & Economy
July 31, 2010 by A'Keiba Burrell
The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is a landlocked country in south-central Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast. In addition; India claims a border with Afghanistan at the Wakhan corridor as part of its claim on the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Kashmir currently controlled by Pakistan.
The territories now comprising Afghanistan have been an ancient focal point of the Silk Road and human migration. The land is at an important geostrategic location, connecting East, South, West and Central Asia, and has been home to various peoples through the ages. The region has been a target of various invaders since antiquity, including Alexander the Great, the Mauryan Empire, Muslim armies, and Genghis Khan, and has served as a source from which many kingdoms, such as the Greco-Bactrians, Kushans, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Timurids, and many others have risen to form empires of their own.
The political history of Afghanistan begins in the 18th century with the rise of the Pashtun tribes (known as Afghans in Persian), when in 1709 the Hotaki dynasty established its rule in Kandahar and, more specifically, when Ahmad Shah Durrani created the Durrani Empire in 1747 which became the forerunner of modern Afghanistan. Its capital was shifted in 1776 from Kandahar to Kabul and most of its territories ceded…
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Book Review: War Games by Linda Polman
July 31, 2010 by Matt Keighley
War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times
by Linda Polman
There is this idea of a pre-9/11, pre-internet, pre-24-hour rolling news where the world existed in clear terms, in simplistic black and white, good and evil, west and east. There was a story, a narrative to how our lives progressed and with it came a sense of certainty. Call it what you like, a nostalgia for the old Cold War binary or simply rose-tinted glasses but we all know it was never really that simple.
The problem is we like to make these stories because they’re clear and comforting, they draw a line and we know on which side of history we stand. Worse still, we beg for it, it’s how we demand to be fed information. So in a world where information comes at us faster than we can possible digest it and formulate our own opinions on the matter how do we deal with the shades of grey?
Linda Polman’s latest book would seem to suggest that we don’t. While the nature of war and disaster hasn’t changed all that much, how we perceive it and deal with it has. What has been…
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The Chronicles of War Against Terror in Pakistan
June 18, 2010 by Zohaib Butt
April 5, 2010 at ANP’S public rally in Timergarah Tehsil of Lower Dir was being taken out in favour of the province’s name being changed to Khyber Pakhtoonkhaw. During which, a blast occurred that ripped through the rally and the death toll in the blast rose to 56 till last reports came in. Suicide bombing, violence and extremism are not new for the Malakand Division. A series of incidents has led towards the current situation and it started here from district dir. Dir was the headquarters of Mulana Sufi Mohammad who started Tehrik-e-Nafaz-e-Sahriait-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) in 1985. TNSM came into the spotlight when they forcefully seized control of Saidu Sharif Airport and other important buildings in 1994. They demanded that the government appoint Tehsil and district Qazis in the seven districts of the Malakand division and Kohistan district of the Hazara division. He believed that a shariah based justice system was the only way solution to the present unrest. Benazir Bhutto the prime minister of the time made a peace agreement with TNSM and ended their armed movement. According to regulation 1994, Qazis were appointed in courts along with session judges.
In 2001 after 9/11 when America attacked Afghanistan and named…
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Notes from Transparency Camp
March 27, 2010 by David Sasaki
Photo of Transparency Camp opening session by Avelino Maestas.
I’m at Transparency Camp in Washington DC this weekend, an unconference organized by the Sunlight Foundation. It is difficult for me to believe that Sunlight Foundation has only been around for four years now. It has grown so much over that time – in terms of reach, visibility, operating budget, and influence. Jake Brewer begins the day by asking participants to call out some of the achievements of the transparency movement over the past year. The list is impressive:
- Open Government Initiative
- Open 311
- Data.gov
- Rep. Mike Quigley intoduced the Transparency in Government Act
- Reps. Quigley and Darrell Issa launched the Congressional Transparency Caucus
- Apps for Democracy
- Apps for America 2
And many others. So many others that my thumbs weren’t able to keep up as I tried to list them on my phone. Most of the participants here are based in Washington DC and focused on transparency and open government in the United States, but there is also a small group representing international projects. Four of our advisors from the Technology for Transparency Network are…
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The Stoning of Soraya Demonstrates Women’s Injustices Around the World
July 25, 2009 by Renee Blodgett
“The Stoning of Soraya M.,” is moving film about a woman wrongly persecuted in a rural Iranian village. The film, which opened June 26th, 2009 in a variety of theaters across the country, took the Audience Award for Best Picture at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
This provocative film demonstrates the injustices many women around the world experience in their daily lives through the story of one woman’s struggle to finally let the world know about her small village’s ugliest, most guarded secret.
Around the world, women continue to be discriminated against or attacked outright for the simple crime of being a woman.
In Afghanistan, rates of domestic violence are increasing and schoolgirls are subjected to acid attacks for the crime of attempting to attend school.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, women are the target of an ongoing campaign of rape employed by armed combatants attempting to seize power.
And in Iran, where The Stoning of Soraya M. takes place, women have been subjected to the brutal punitive system of stoning. The film and the work of Women for Women International both demonstrate that marginalized women should be empowered to access their human…
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Question: What Do Christiane Amanpour and Afghanistan Have to Do with the Prom?
May 7, 2009 by Mona Gable
I really wasn’t planning on writing about my daughter going to her prom. But sometimes the most unexpected occasions take on political meaning.
Don’t get me wrong. It was priceless, one of those moments you hope your teenager will eventually appreciate you showed up for. Before the dance my daughter and about 20 best friends and their “dates” convened at someone’s house. The guys looked impossibly awkward in their dark, shiny suits. The girls looked like they’d just finished a shoot for America’s Next Top Model. Proving, once again, how much sooner girls mature than boys.
As for me I pretended I was Annie Leibowitz and annoyed my daughter no end by insisting on taking photos. The horror! (In one shot she’s reaching out toward the camera, glaring at me like I’m one of the paparazzi. I probably won’t upload that one on Flickr.)
So what does a high-school prom in Los Angeles have to do with Christiane Amanpour reporting on Afghanistan? Just how different a young woman’s life can be by virtue of geography.
Cut to a few nights later. I’m sitting in a packed ballroom at the Beverly Hills Hotel at the Global Women’s Rights Awards held by…
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A Thousand Splendid Suns Breaks Your Heart
October 25, 2007 by Renee Blodgett
We all love storytellers. Good storytellers. When I find one buried inside a book, whether its the character or the author, I marvel in the same way I did as a child listening to one new one after another from a family member or friend.
Is it a lost art or does one merely have to return to the villages and small towns where they are more readily found? Do people not honor and cherish storytellers the way they did a hundred years ago?
Khaled Hosseini is one of those storytellers. He kept us present and begging for more in the Kite Runner and he did the same thing in A Thousand Splendid Suns. The only difference is that you could ‘bear’ the Kite Runner, whereas in the latter, the story is so heart wrenching that at times, you find it hard to breathe. At least I did.
The behavior of civilian men and the Taliban towards Afghan women were so brutally depicted in this book, I couldn’t put it down, but I also couldn’t stop crying and asking out loud over and over again, “can this be real?”
Of course, it’s…
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