The Spine-Chilling Emptiness of Afghanistan’s Voting Booths
October 1st, 2010On election day, a pack of bone-thin, restless dogs wandered into the main polling center in Sheikhabad, a town in Afghanistan’s Wardak Province. A pair of Afghan policemen tried to chase them away, but the determined bunch kept returning, looking for a shady redoubt from the morning sun. Eventually the police [...]
Ballot Stuffing Witnessed Amidst Troubled Afghan Vote
September 18th, 2010Saydabad, Afghanistan-When campaign aide Qais showed up at a polling center in the troubled province of Wardak Saturday morning, he found that guards would not allow him to enter. When he tried to peer through the windows, he found that workers had erected huge cardboard sheets to block the view.
Inside, election workers were busy stuffing [...]
Afghan Election: Taliban Not the Only Culprits of Campagin Violence
September 17th, 2010Kabul, Afghanistan —Daud Niazi, a candidate in Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections on Saturday, was returning from a campaign event in his native Laghman Province when a group of gunmen suddenly appeared by the roadside. They forced his campaign caravan to a halt, robbed the passengers, and then ordered the vehicles to get moving.
As the convoy pulled [...]
In Afghanistan Warzone, a Movie Theater Comes Back to Life
April 1st, 2010Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan-Lashkar Gah is typical of the conservative, war-battered towns of southern Afghanistan: few women on the streets, the constant drone of helicopters overhead, concrete blast barriers everywhere.
Yet here in the provincial capital of Helmand Province, where NATO forces just waged its biggest offensives against the Taliban in nine years, one structure near the [...]
The Battle for Marjah
March 8th, 2010It was late November, 2001, and the Taliban were on the run everywhere in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance had captured Kabul and much of the rest of the country; only parts of the southwest—including the province of Helmand, remained in the Taliban’s hands. In Marjah, a quiet market town near the Helmand desert, the dying [...]
Pakistan Arrests Senior Taliban Leaders
February 24th, 2010KABUL-Pakistan has arrested nearly half of the Afghanistan Taliban’s leadership in recent days, Pakistani officials told the Monitor Wednesday, dealing what could be a crucial blow to the insurgent movement.
In total, seven of the insurgent group’s 15-member leadership council, thought to be based in Quetta, Pakistan, including the head of military operations, have been apprehended [...]
Afraid of the Dark in Afghanistan
January 28th, 2010One quiet, wintry night last year in the eastern Afghan town of Khost, a young government employee named Ismatullah simply vanished. He had last been seen in the town’s bazaar with a group of friends. Family members scoured Khost’s dusty streets for days. Village elders contacted Taliban commanders in the area who were wont to [...]
Likely Afghan Runoff Spurs Power-Sharing Talks
October 17th, 2009By Anand Gopal and Joe Lauria
KABUL — President Hamid Karzai failed to win a decisive majority in Afghanistan’s election, an official familiar with the ballot counting said, a development that has the two top candidates stepping up power-sharing talks to avoid a protracted runoff.
Results of an audit of suspect votes from the August polls are [...]
Afghanistan Civilians Hit, Straining U.S. Alliance
September 5th, 2009By Anand Gopal and Yochi Dreazen
KABUL — An American airstrike on militants in northern Afghanistan killed an unknown number of local villagers, dealing a fresh blow to the U.S. campaign and adding fresh political pressure on NATO members struggling to defend an increasingly unpopular war.
The strike on a pair of hijacked fuel trucks in Kunduz [...]
Taliban Punish Voters In Wake Of Afghan Elections
August 27th, 2009KABUL — The Taliban are attempting to exact revenge on Afghan voters and disrupt the ballot count — part of a campaign to exploit the political uncertainty after last week’s presidential election and try to undermine the results.
Since the Aug. 20 election, Taliban fighters have launched nearly a dozen attacks. They have severed the fingers [...]
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