Registan’s Afghanistan News & Analysis Archive

Afghanistan news and analysis have been frequently featured at Registan, especially since 2006. Registan’s coverage of Afghanistan has primarily examined ISAF’s efforts to stabilize the country and US policy in South and Central Asia through the prism of Afghanistan. Several Registan contributors, including editors Nathan Hamm and Joshua Foust, have worked as full time analysts covering researching Afghan socio-cultural issues and the effects of military operations and Afghan society on one another.

Some of Joshua Foust’s essays and articles on Afghanistan that originally appeared on Registan have been collected and reworked into a book, available in print and digital form from Amazon.

Has War in Afghanistan Ruined Central Asia?

by Nathan Hamm

While Central Asia’s international political profile has risen considerably since 2001, it has primarily been seen in the West through the prism of Afghanistan. The policies of Western governments towards Central Asia as a whole and as individual states have widely fluctuated, but in almost every case, been heavily shaped by policies toward Afghanistan. US [...]

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Reading the Asia Foundation’s Afghan Voter Behavior Survey

by Oliver Lough

Earlier this month, The Asia Foundation (TAF) released a large survey on voter behavior in Afghanistan’s last parliamentary election. With two years until the next major Afghan election (excluding for a moment the important but widely-ignored Provincial Council elections, due in mid-2013 but unlikely to be on-schedule), it might seem like an odd time to [...]

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Chicken Politics

by Joshua Foust

I have a piece up at the Atlantic, discussing why chickens sometimes factor heavily into national politics. Chickens are a surprising bellwether for international economic and political issues. Sounding for all the world like some modern-day Khrushchevian Red Plenty economic master plan, the Uzbek government has demanded that not only agriculture do more, but that [...]

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Making Sense of Jund al-Khilafah’s Claims

by yaqubjan

Jund al-Khilafah (JaK), a Kazakh-led terrorist group based in Pakistan, issued its second statement on the Ansar al-Mujahideen online forum on April 1 claiming affiliation to Mohammed Merah. JaK’s first statement was released on March 22. On the day after Mohammed Merah was killed in Toulouse on March 22 JaK issued the following the statement [...]

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Karzai’s Misdirection

by Sekundar

Going after President Karzai is something I’ve so far (more or less) avoided, but recently he stated “Sometimes I hear that some businessmen are fleeing and moving their businesses to outside Afghanistan… Curses be upon such businessmen that made tons of money here and now that the Americans are leaving they flee. They can leave [...]

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Sunday’s Massacre in Afghanistan

by Joshua Foust

The massacre on Sunday of 16 innocent Afghans — 9 of them children — is appalling. It is impossible to imagine, even as we see images floating over the TV and newspapers. But what does it mean? I tried to answer this a bit on Sunday and over the last two days. On Aljazeera English, [...]

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Why Did the Taliban Kill a Chinese Student in Peshawar?

by yaqubjan

On February 28, a 40-year old Chinese female was shot dead in Peshawar, Pakistan along with her male interpreter. According to various news sources, she was a “tourist,” which is surprising considering that the Chinese are famous for group tours and that even the boldest of female travelers is unlikely to engage in tourism in [...]

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Award-Winning Blogging

by Joshua Foust

Tom Ricks’s award-winning blog has posted a curious broadside against me over my misidentifying the charity Paula Broadwell is contributing some of her book royalties to. The author, a Major currently teaching at West Point who founded the charity she does contribute to, spends about a thousand words calling me shameless while expressing outrage I [...]

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Another Year, Another Year of Turning Points

by Joshua Foust

Just about a year ago, I noted a disturbing trend in reporting on Afghanistan: every single year was a critical turning point in the war, going back to 2002. 2011, we were told, was the turning point where things would either get better or get worse. Anyway, now that it’s 2012 we have a fresh [...]

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