Measuring Perceptions about the Pashtun People
21 March 2011
This report documents the results of a study, not about the Pashtun people, but about beliefs about the Pashtun people. The purpose of this study was to identify the range of perceptions or misperceptions of Pashtun communities among policymakers, experts, and other opinion leaders, including some who have a degree of influence over policy and strategy decisions in the Pashtun belt of Afghanistan and Pakistan. In a sense, it was an effort to catalog...
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Iran Deports Afghan Children without Parents' Knowledge
21 March 2011
[...] Abdul Majid is one of hundreds of Afghan refugee children deported from Iran and taken from the Islam Qala crossing to camps such as Ansar, funded by the International Organisation for Migration, IOM, and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR. Some of these children have never been to Afghanistan before and appear to have been removed from Iran without their parents’ knowledge. Observers from the Afghan...
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Photos of Alleged US Atrocities in Afghanistan Raise Fears of Backlash
21 March 2011
The German news outlet Der Spiegel has published photographs of what appear to be two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan posing over the bodies of dead Afghans -- images which threaten to further complicate the American military effort there. Two images show the soldiers kneeling by a bloody body sprawled over a patch of sand and grass. A third shows what appears to be two bodies propped up, back to back, against a post in front of a military vehicle....
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An Evaluation of Counterinsurgency as a Strategy for Fighting the Long War
21 March 2011
The single greatest national security question currently facing the U.S. National Command Authority is choosing the best, sustainable strategy to combat al Qaeda and its affiliates. The U.S. national strategy against al Qaeda is far broader than the Department of Defense (DoD) mission. Nonetheless, DoD’s contribution to the fight is substantial, both in terms of resource allocation and the net effect in reducing the al Qaeda threat. The National...
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Speculation ahead of Karzai's Announcement on Transition Plans
21 March 2011
The city of Lashkar Gah is one of six places that diplomats expect Hamid Karzai to name in on Tuesday night after the Afghan New Year holiday. The symbolic announcement begins a transition aimed at allowing Afghan soldiers and police to take over combat duties across the whole country by the end of 2014. Security in the city has increased significantly in the past two years according to residents and commanders, though elsewhere Helmand province...
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