21 June 2011

Far away from the war, in the remote hills of Badakhshan, there is another battle raging. Trundling into the valleys on dusty roads ripped up by large SUVs, an Afghan task force is heading towards their target: an industry so profitable that many fear it's Afghanistan's only viable option once the West pulls its troops and money out. We've joined up with the Ministry of Counter Narcotics looking for opium. Here in Badakhshan, the Taliban aren't much...

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21 June 2011

While May concluded with the reporting of extraordinary levels of conflict related activity (surpassing the previous peak recorded in August 2010), the opening period for June indicates a continuation of this momentum, reporting similarly high levels of incidents (see p. 7). This periods figures also reveal that despite security force efforts at interdiction and disruption of AOG networks (both manpower and supply related) through the winter and...

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21 June 2011

In Afghanistan and Pakistan, the humanitarian crises are twofold: on the one hand, the ‘Afghan’ crisis affects not only Afghanistan but also Iran and Pakistan, where almost four million Afghan refugees are still living; on the other hand, Pakistan is affected by a twinfaceted crisis with still more than 1.2 million people displaced by the conflict and almost 20 million affected by major flooding as from July 2010. In Afghanistan the deterioration...

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21 June 2011

A Taliban suicide bomber targeted a provincial governor in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing two civilians and wounding another two, the interior ministry said. The attack struck the usually peaceful province of Parwan, when the bomber tried to enter the compound of governor Basir Salangi. "At around 10:45am (0615 GMT) Tuesday, a suicide bomber detonated himself in front of the gate of the Parwan governor's compound. As a result, two civilians...

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